D&D General Dinosaurs in your campaigns

[Paul Farquhar]

I use dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are cool. I even created a Ravenloft domain with dinosaurs.

 

[jdrakeh]

One of my favorite home-brewed RPGs (Vox Draconis by Ben Overmeyer) is basically D&D+Dinosaurs. I love it. I'd love to run a D&D game in that vein sometime. All dinos all the time.

 

[MarkB]

I really liked the way dinosaurs were integrated into the Eberron setting, and made sure to visit the Talenta Plains at least once or twice when running campaigns in the setting.

 

[Shiroiken]

Dinosaurs exist in my Greyhawk, to a limited extent. They're tropical creatures, so they're limited to the southern islands, Armedio Jungle, and Hepmonaland. Because of this, they're known by the Olman names (i.e. their scientific names), but are largely referred to as behemoths by everyone else. In theory there could be "lost lands" in isolated mountain regions and beyond the Land of Black Ice, but so far I've not used them.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Having a wider selection of higher-level beasts to choose from would solve that easily enough.

Yeah, they do kinda get funneled into using them, don't they? Still bothers me, though.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

Why do you feel the need to justify dinosaurs in your campaign worlds but no one bats an eye at pigeons, hawks and chickens?

 

[DarkCrisis]

I only use The Dinosaucers!

 

[J.Quondam]

Yeah, dinos have been pretty common in my experience, starting with Isle of Dread. Quite a few prehistoric jungle islands or subterranean lost worlds type adventures over the years. Also the odd one-off uses here and there (like when some miners accidentally released some undead velociraptor skeletons).

Also, I always found Dinotopia to be pretty inspirational, though I've never really used/encountered much of that sort of dino fantasy in-game.

 

[Lakesidefantasy]

I recently started playing an adventure from the Golden Vault series, which takes place in a museum with an interesting exhibit titled something like "Creatures of the Past." It features a huge Allosaurus skeleton. This caught my attention because, in other Forgotten Realms adventures, dinosaurs aren't just ancient creatures—they're alive and well, especially in places like Chult, where they roam as living, breathing animals, far from being relics of a bygone era. To me, this seems like a case of modern sensibilities being injected into a fantasy setting.

However, I feel that certain creatures come with expectations. As a rule, Dragons are synonymous with power and magic; mummies evoke ancient curses, while fairies bring to mind whimsy or mischief. Dinosaurs evoke the sense of a lost world—one that was destroyed in some ancient cataclysm.

In the games I play, dinosaurs don't often appear as part of the regular world. They're either pets, summoned creatures, or, as mentioned earlier, inhabitants of Chult. In my own homebrew fantasy world, I’ve placed dinosaurs on a separate continent—a "lost world" far removed from the civilization the players are familiar with. If my players ever decide to go on a "lost world" adventure, that’s where they’ll end up.

-aiLakesidefantasy

 

[MGibster]

I've always found it amusing that Dinosaurs have been ever present in D&D. But I'm wondering how common or rare are they in your campaigns, for something that's extinct in our world.

Exceedingly uncommon. I cannot remember the last time dinosaurs appeared in a game I was running. Though in the last Eberron campaign I participated in, the halfling barbarian had a dinosaur pet/mount.