D&D General Dinosaurs in your campaigns

[Mind of tempest]

View attachment 387327

dude looks far too punk for dnd as punk is not a music genre at the present times of the dnd multiverse

 

[Tonguez]

Maybe. Except of course they'd still just have 4 limbs. But by that logic humans should be furry since we share an ancestor with apes.

I've met a few furry humans over the years

and yes Arakocra should only have four limbs (stupid eagle heads and extra wings)

 

[Demetrios1453]

I am fairly certain North America had no sauropods at the time vast herds of duckbills and co were likely the staple prey.
Yes, I said that about the conjecture, a Trex would struggle to deal with us as we smell wrong to it and are likely carrying fire.

A dromaeosaurid sapient would almost certainly have feathers unless derived from the most based version or forged in a place worse the the Florida Everglades on heat and humidity.

Apes tend to live in the shade of trees, we had to get big to see over the grass sea and move in the heat of the day as our night vision was terrible.
It more or less explains everything about us.
A sasquatch is a primarily forest animal and lives in cold to temperate areas meaning fur is still useful although it might grow and shed fur depending on the time of year.

North America lost its sauropods for awhile, but by the end of the Cretaceous the titanosaur Alamosaurus had moved up from South America and was pretty common in the southwestern areas of the continent.

Edit: looks like @Oofta beat me to it.

 

[MOSPalaeogames]

Just gonna leave this link to Dr Dhrolin's Dictionary of Dinosaurs riiiiiiiight here

palaeogames.com

 

[Mind of tempest]

Just gonna leave this link to Dr Dhrolin's Dictionary of Dinosaurs riiiiiiiight here

palaeogames.com

link broken?

 

[Frozen_Heart]

It would be fun to run something like Icewind Dale, but with the wildlife replaced by polar dinosaurs. It would really throw people who only associate dinosaurs with hot tropical or arid environments.

 

[Mecheon]

Of course I of all people have dinosaurs. Not even dinsoaurs, all sorts of extinct weirdos. They just, turn up in appropriate places, generally not jungles. The "What if I just, stuck the Western Interior Seaway back in the middle of North America" continent has a lot of 'em, but they can be found in other places. Canonical explanation? The world is near the bottom of various universe so dinosaurs and other things slipped through minor breaks in reality, creating a messy world that has anything I require at a time. Every time some crazy magic thing happens in another realm, that's a chance for something else to drop down in this one. The rare enviroment in my ridiculous land is the scale tree swamps, of "Here's some 100 foot tall 'trees' that are grouped way too close together in a swamp, let off spores at one time, and then die en-mass" very much extinct fame

Dinosaurs are feathered if appropriate, which is typically yes on maniraptorans, maybe on tyrannosaurs (See: Yutyrannus or Nanuqsaurus for the dino equivilent of polar bears), and quills on a few misc ones in Ornithischians (generally heterodontosaurians if they show up, or more likely ceratopsians). Pterosaurs, however, are always fuzzy

One day I gotta plug away at numbers and actually whip up some stats for a Rhizodus to inflict on other people aside from 'reskin a crocodile, make it stay in the water'. Worried about dinosaurs? Don't be, I can pull up much worse. I got pterosaurs for the sky, rausuchians for the land, all sorts of wonderful fish, molluscs, eurypterids and lobopodians for the water

 

[Frozen_Heart]

and quills on a few misc ones in Ornithischians (generally heterodontosaurians if they show up, or more likely ceratopsians).

We've actually got fossils of full fuzz on some basal ornithischians now! Both Kulindadromeus and Tianyulong have them preserved.

There was debate for ages that the quills on Psittacosaurus were just convergent evolution, and not actually feathers, but these fossils have shown floof to be the ancestral condition of all dinosaurs now.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

Mainly because it's the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs which allowed mammals to move into other niches and grow large as they've done today. If there are dinosaurs in the setting, people wonder how modern animals evolved without any differences at all alongside them. And if the dinosaurs had survived, they would have still evolved into new and different species over time, rather than just sticking as 't-rex' and 'triceratops' completely unchanged.

Even modern birds only exist because the dominant bird groups of the Cretaceous didn't survive the 'incident' 66mya.

Easiest solution is just to handwave with 'a wizard did it'.

We have ample evidence that evolution simply doesn't work in D&D; there's no relation between the clearly hominid dwarves and elves and gorillas, for instance. If we can accept the existence of gorillas, humans and grimlocks, can't we accept the existence of tyrannosauruses and galluses?

 

[Aurel Guthrie]

My DM uses dinosaurs on a kingdom/continent called the Dragonlands. It's normal to find wyverns and young dragons in the wild lands, but you also see all kinds of dinosaurs. I also have a couple places where I'll put dinosaurs on my own campaign.