D&D General Dinosaurs in your campaigns

[Crimson Longinus]

So my current setting Artra sorta has dinosaurs but not quite. It has giant terror birds that are basically feathered dinosaurs with beaks. Moara birds that are beaked deinonychuses, and massive tyrant birds that are effectively feathered tyrannosauruses with beaks. There are also giant snapping turtles with thagomisers on their tails, fulfilling the ecological niche of the ankylosauruses. The dragons and dragonic things are also very dinosaur-coded. The actual dragons are four limbed, and reseble more big carnivorous dinosaurs like tyrannosauruses and spinosauruses (they have no feathers) that classic fantasy dragons. Wyverns and pseudodragons are called dragonbirds, and basically look like archaeopteryxes with poison spikes on their tails.

This is part of my effort to make Artra's fauna low key weird.

 

[Turgenev]

I've always used dinosaurs in my D&D games, but they are usually limited to specific locations (lost continent, island, valley, etc). In my current 5e Greyhawk game, my players are investigating a mysterious island known as Gargantuan Island (named for the island sea cliffs that reach into the clouds and the huge wildlife that thrives there, aka dinosaurs). In the past, I've used tweaked dinosaurs that became mutated from a local magical source of some kind (it varies). Beware the pack of displacer deinonychus, or an ankylosaurus whose tail causes petrification, or a phase tyrannosaurus, etc.

Cheers,
Tim

 

[Kobold Avenger]

For the "Loc Ness Monster" should they be an Awakened Plesiosaurus or a Druid that just likes to be something like a Plesiosaurus.

 

[MarkB]

For the "Loc Ness Monster" should they be an Awakened Plesiosaurus or a Druid that just likes to be something like a Plesiosaurus.

A kraken that's drawn a cute face on the end of one of its tentacles, and occasionally sticks it up above water to lure in naturalists.

 

[Oofta]

I've always used dinosaurs in my D&D games, but they are usually limited to a specific locations (lost continent, island, valley, etc). In my current 5e Greyhawk game, my players are investigating a mysterious island known as Gargantuan Island (named for the island sea cliffs that reach into the clouds and the huge wildlife that thrives there, aka dinosaurs). In the past, I've used tweaked dinosaurs that became mutated from a local magical source of some kind (it varies). Beware the pack of displacer deinonychus, or an ankylosaurus whose tail causes petrification, or a phase tyrannosaurus, etc.

Cheers,
Tim

I may have to borrow some of those!

 

[J.Quondam]

A kraken that's drawn a cute face on the end of one of its tentacles, and occasionally sticks it up above water to lure in naturalists.

And now I'm wondering what this kraken might draw on another other tentacle to lure in naturists.

 

[Chaltab]

The main world of my homebrew setting was exploded with only fragments preserved by the gods. Dinosaurs are rare there and mostly found in wildlife sanctuaries & circuses.

However there is a moon in the same system where the main inhabitants are tabaxis & dinosaurs. The party encountered a T-Rex there & the druid used aminal friendship on it.

 

[Richards]

In my current 3.5 campaign, I've tried incorporating a lot of different monsters that haven't gotten a lot of play in my prior campaigns, and dinosaurs are among them. So the latter half of this campaign has the PCs, who come from an Australia-sized continent, trekking across an Asia-sized continent, the eastern half of which has dinosaurs aplenty. (The western half is predominantly populated by surface drow, the precursors to elves in this campaign.) The PCs each have a "bonehead" (pachycephalosaurus) riding mount as they make their way westward. They're already in the drow lands, but I got plenty of opportunities to throw a bunch of little-used dinosaurs against them while they crossed those lands (including a bunch of fiendish dinosaurs being mutated by a pair of tieflings).

Johnathan

 

[MuhVerisimilitude]

I've always despised the concept of dinosaurs in my fantasy. I don't really know why I feel like this, but to me dinosaurs are sci-fi. They are modern. I associate them with electrified fences, DNA manipulation and hackers (I blame Jurassic Park).

 

[aco175]

One would need to move closer to the equator to mind any in my games. Unless the axe-beak counts, the only dinosaur in the last 10 years has been a skeletal version imported into the town.