d20 dinos

[Gez]

If you don't have dinosaurs, then what would the magical ninja schoolgirls ride to battle?

OK. More seriously, haven't used any yet. Not that it's impossible, mind you, but they wouldn't fit in the areas that have been travelled through to date IMC.

But I'm not adverse to using them later.

 

[Desdichado]

PS does anyone else think the Tarasque looks like an Ankylosaur?

No, not really.

As to the original question, I like dinosaurs. A lot. But they simply don't fit in every setting, so I don't often use them. Currently, I'm much more likely to use the stats for dinosaurs, but change the images and names dramatically. I could also do a game where dinosaurs were the dominant local fauna, but in that case, I'd get rid of a lot of other animals in their place.

 

[Kalendraf]

In all my years of DM'ing 1e thru 3.5, I don't recall ever using a dinosaur. I've kept open the option for a kind of "lost world" island or continent where they would fit in, but no one has ever wound up travelling there to explore it.

Perhaps in some future campaign, I'll find a better way to expose my party to them.

 

[Voadam]

I don't see them in places with snowy winters in my mind's eye, but I have no problem picturing them in deserts and jungles and badlands in a typical D&D world setting.

And triceratops riding warlords are a fantasy image that feels right.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Goodman Games did a couple of books that made using dinos in D&D really easy.

 

[Garnfellow]

Isle of Dread, baby.

 

[azmodean]

I don't understand the idea that dinosaurs don't fit in the setting because they are from the "past". You define what is the "past" in your campaign (unless you use an established setting, which I also don't understand). It doesn't make any less sense that the dinosaurs would be in their heyday than that dragons roam the land. Really they are just big reptiles, ditch the baggage of them being "dinosaurs" and they fit in any fantasy world.

 

[Klaus]

The first smart move towards using dinos in a D&D game is do what Eberron did: give 'em new names instead of the scientific ones.

Maybe "Run! A Tyrannosaurus Rex just ate our cleric!" doesn't ring well, but "Run! A Swordtooth Titan just ate our cleric!" works just fine.

 

[ShaggySpellsword]

It sounds like Victim's character had a disadvantage that appeared in a LARP I once played: Tasty. The disad? All monster prefer to eat you over other PCs.

 

[demiurge1138]

I've used dinosaurs a number of times, from one-shot monsters (I threw a few obscure ones into a dungeon a long time ago) to player mounts (in a recently-ended Eberron game, two players rode carvers [aka dinonychus]) to the major fauna of the world (a prehistoric setting I DMed for about 10 months).

My personal favorite use for dinosaurs is with lycanthropy. Nothing says "we're screwed" like a tribe of were-dilophosaur troglodytes.

Demiurge out.