d20 dinos

[Razz0putin]

Apparantly I'm outnumbered but I gotta agree with a few of my fellow posters. I just can't picture it good in my minds eye. If dinosaurs were around in any kind of numbers like we know them all of society would have to change to keep them away from towns. buildings would have to be stronger and tighter knit. Maybe that's part of the problem with dinosaurs compared to other big monsters. Dino's bring large numbers with them when you include the concept at least in my mind's eye. I do like the idea of renaming them though, it helps maintain the illusion. that's my two cents but then again I don't see what the monk is doing running around in pseudo medieval england and I'm a little fuzzy on the concept of the bard.

 

[Ibram]

Sure they fit IMC, though as has been pointed out keeping their scientific names can be strange... but thats why my players fear packs of Daggerfeet (Raptors). the bigger ones are far rarer IMC, as the intellegent races usualy act to reduce their numbers (big herbavores are exelent sources of food for developing civilizations, and if we have learned one thing from human history its that mankind likes being on top of the food chain).

 

[applenerd]

"Marshall, Will, and Holly on a routine expedition
Met the greatest earthquake ever known.
High on the rapids it struck their tiny raft.
And plunged them down a thousand feet below.
To the Land of the Lost."

Sorry. No dinos in my world. For whatever reason I could never get behind dinosaurs in a fantasy setting. It in some way that weirds me out connects the world to Earth's past which irks me. Just never felt right flavor wise.

 

[reanjr]

fantasy world with dinosaurs? always struck me as really wierd, two ideas that don't go together. I just had a dream with a 6 or 7 foot high t-rex in it, though, and I could see adding that to a d&d campaign. So how many of you use dinosaurs? do you use a lot of them, or a very few? Lastly, anyone make changes to them to fit them in thematically with d&d?

Interesting that you mention this right now. I used dinosaurs for the first time since 3e came out just tw days ago. The party was travelling through a jungle, following a slow running river. After a few days, one of them realized they were being stalked by someone or something. They only caught brief glimpses of a reptilian snout just after they crossed the river to avoid confrontation.

After hearing a small splash, one of the party members saw a creature disappearing into the murky water downstream. At this point, the party is assuming lizardmen, but when the attack comes from all sides at once, surrounding the party and surprising two of the characters (one creature leaped from the water, another burst through the thick jungle foliage), they realized it was something a bit more primal and animalistic.

Small pack of deinonychus. Worked really well.

 

[ColonelHardisson]

Apparantly I'm outnumbered but I gotta agree with a few of my fellow posters. I just can't picture it good in my minds eye. If dinosaurs were around in any kind of numbers like we know them all of society would have to change to keep them away from towns. buildings would have to be stronger and tighter knit. Maybe that's part of the problem with dinosaurs compared to other big monsters. Dino's bring large numbers with them when you include the concept at least in my mind's eye. I do like the idea of renaming them though, it helps maintain the illusion. that's my two cents but then again I don't see what the monk is doing running around in pseudo medieval england and I'm a little fuzzy on the concept of the bard.

I have a harder time seeing why dragons or any number of other powerful creatures like beholders haven't overtaken control of the world, or how commoners survive at all when there are trolls, goblinoids, and/or bulettes running around loose.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that dinos are filling the same niches worldwide as they did in their heyday, but rather are inhabiting isolated areas of the world that are largely unexplored. This could be for many reasons - for example, when you say that they bring with them large numbers, maybe this is a reason they are now found in increasingly isolated regions, as they basically eat themselves out of territory to live in. It would take a lotta territory to feed a herd of any given herbivorous dino, or just a couple of the carnivores - and that doesn't even take into account competition from fantasy milieu critters like the aforementioned dragons or bulettes.

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

Have it as a "Land of the Lost" area.

EVERYthing is better with dinosaurs...ahem..anyway...

I actually ran a special one shot game a few years ago where I had players from my then current game and former players all come to visit for a bbq and gaming weekend. I had 16 players with characters from several different game settings (converted to D&D 2e). It was the stereotypical "You all wake up and here you are with a bunch of strangers" setup, and I threw Sheens at them. And later, when they pieced together the clues JUST as the Sleestaks attacked, the shock and horror and downright "OH NO YOU DIDN'T!!!" from my players was too much...after the dice quit flying at me, they all got down to business, disarmed the Sheen Mother Node and freed Enoch so they could all get back to their own times and universes.

Ahh...Land of the Lost... Thank you, Sid and Marty Kroft....

 

[leegarv]

Anyone every read the comic book "The Warlord"?

A hollow-earth type fantasy world, just stupid with dinosaurs. One of my three favorite comics of all time.

In my fantasy campaign, dragons never existed, but when the evil emperor (an immensely powerful necromancer) came accross dino bones, he ressurected a few. He liked them, so now there are isolated farms producing dinos for beasts of burden and war beasts.

They have been very effective at generating terror: The PCs have seen a couple of triceratops, but they have never fought them - they live in terror of the day they must fight the dinos.

 

[Sargon the Kassadian]

For those of you who can't imagine dinos in colder climes, there's the cryosaur. Not verified, but believed to have lived near the poles (maybe even on the ice shelfs if I remember right) and not furry (maybe they were, who really knows). They have some crazy crest that helps keep them warm, but they were allosaurus-type predators...

Vikings on cryosaurs, anyone?

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

Cryosaurs lived on what is now Antarctica, though at the time the landmass was further north than it is now. While it's likely it did still experience a long dark and cold winter, the warm season would still have been quite comfortable.

 

[Aesmael]

I don't, personally, see any problem with using dinosaurs. As far as I am concerned they are just another set of animals and I have trouble understanding why people would feel them out of place due to their origins. They certainly are not (used by me as) holdovers from some distant past, usually because there is no such past. Of course, I would use the meanings of their names rather than the straight latin.