d20 dinos

[mythusmage]

In my case I sort of 'evolved' the critters. In 'standard' dinosaurs you have two groups. One descended from sauropods, the other from hadrosaurs. The first look much like their ancestors, while the others look more like the long extinct ceratopsians.

The other two groups are accounted among the avians. They are known respectively as basilisks and the cockatrice. The first are descended from dromaesaurids, while the latter are descended from an older lineage who's name I can't recall at the moment. I'll look it up and update this post.

No large dinosaur predators however. Though the larger basilisk species can get as big as a real world lion.

Update: The cockatrice is descended from the Saurornitholestes, a genus closely related to the Velociraptor. The basilisk (to get more precise about it) is descended from the Velociraptor. Obviously, the cockatrice and basilisks are diverged quite a bit in 60+ million years.

 

[Blackrat]

Well I gave my FR campaings a little Eberron-Treatment: Increased the Luiren to cover a bit of Eastern-Shaar plains and gave the halflings dino-mounts like those in the Talenta-plains in Eberron. Seems to work well and its kind of land before time area.

 

[Desdichado]

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...

So... many... corrections...

Cryolophosaurus (not cryosaur -- there is no dinosaur by that genera name) was found on Mt. Kilpatrick in Antarctica, but they certainly did not live on ice shelves and they certainly weren't furry. It's an early allosaur relative, essentially, and we have skin impressions of closely related creatures that are pebbly scales in composition. Also, Antarctica was not located over the pole at the time (the Pleinsbachian period of the early Jurrassic), and the climate was warmer globally. The coldest it could possibly be called is temperate. The "crazy crest" was a little piece of headgear, and it certainly couldn't have had much (if any at all) impact on warming the animal; it was almost certainly a display feature only.

Oh, and Sargon was an Akkadian.

 

[mythusmage]

Oh, and Sargon was an Akkadian.

Sargon was used as a name by a number of Mesopotamian cultures. The Assyrians for example. One of their kings was known as Sargon the Great (Sargon II)

 

[Desdichado]

Sargon was used as a name by a number of Mesopotamian cultures. The Assyrians for example. One of their kings was known as Sargon the Great (Sargon II)

Also known as Sargon the Akkadian. He was an Akkadian. All of the Assyrians were Akkadians. The Babylonians were essentially the same ethno-linguistic group as the Assyrians, just a different ruling group. Together they are called Akkadians. Their language is called Akkadian, and was the lingua-franka of the region long after the Assyrians and Babylonians had faded away. Sargon is an Akkadian name. No other non-Akkadian culture that I know of used the name, despite what you imply above.

My "ancient history fu" is matched only by my "paleontology fu."

 

[mythusmage]

Also known as Sargon the Akkadian. He was an Akkadian. All of the Assyrians were Akkadians. The Babylonians were essentially the same ethno-linguistic group as the Assyrians, just a different ruling group. Together they are called Akkadians. Their language is called Akkadian, and was the lingua-franka of the region long after the Assyrians and Babylonians had faded away. Sargon is an Akkadian name. No other non-Akkadian culture that I know of used the name, despite what you imply above.

Continuing the hijack: Actually the Assyrians were a Northern Mesopotamian group, the Akkadians a Central Mesopotamian. Both spoke an East Semitic language.

 

[Desdichado]

No, the language of the Assyrians was Akkadian, and since Akkadian is primarily a linguistic designation, the Assyrians, by definition, were Akkadians. Unless, of course, you use Akkadian to refer only to residents of the city of Agade/Akkad, which were still "proto-Assyrians" and located in the heart of Assyria proper. Either way, Sargon (the famous one, who created history's first recorded Empire by uniting what was soon to become Assyria with what was already Sumer) was from Akkad, and was an Akkadian in any sense of the word you could use. I had forgotten, until just now, that there were specifically Assyrian kings named Sargon too (two of them, IIRC) but that doesn't change the fact that there was an extremely high degree of cultural and ethnic continuity from the reign of Sargon of Akkad, through the Assyrian kings, and beyond until the Medes came in from north of Mesopotamia and changed that dynamic. One could argue that the relatively brief interlude of Kassite domination of a portion of the area was also an ethnic change in the region, but the Kassites seem to have been more or less absorbed into the already dominant Akkadian culture of the region.

You are correct in terms of where the center of power for the Assyrians vs. the Babylonians, and in the fact that both spoke an East Semitic language (in this case, the same East Semitic language: Akkadian) but both were essentially ethnically the same.

Uh... so, wouldn't it be cool of Sargon led armies of Assyrians on the backs of Triceratopses, and hunted with kennels of velociraptors?

 

[iwatt]

I could see them in a D20 modern campaign as from Jurrasic Park experimentation.

btw, the small t-rex took 8 shots from my pistol. I guess that's about 7 HD, eh?

I'd crafted a one-shot for D20 modern based on going back to Isla Nublar. Ther's a tom of ersources in the internet about the game (maps, etc..) so I had handouts prepaerd and all. Unfortunately, I haven't be able to run it.

 

[ThirdWizard]

I recently used two Shadow templated T. Rexes to great effect. They were followed by some shadow Bat Swarms as well... That Plane of Shadow is a dangerous place.

 

[woodelf]

Velociraptors (medium sized) - and Deinonychus for large variants - are used imc, they are given feathers and are the apex predator on most 'normal' islands.

Nitpick: in D&D3E terms, Velociraptor is probably Small, and Deinonychus merely Medium. We're talking ~35# and ~150#, respectively. Jurassic Park has almost perfectly-depicted Deinonychuses, it just called them Velociraptors for some reason. (Particularly baffling to me, since every book on dinosaurs i'd ever read had included Deinonychus, including fairly basic children's books that only listed a few-dozen most-archetypal dinos, while i'd never heard of a Velociraptor until that movie came out. Perhaps Crichton or one of the producers was more concerned about the fidelity of keeping the name the same as in the book than in keeping them the right size?)