D&D Ideas — Dinosaurs

D&D Ideas — Dinosaurs

January 7, 2023

Dungeons & Dragons/ Editorial/ Free Nerdy Things/ Game Master Tips

Welcome once again to the weekly newsletter.

It is also New Years Eve! So Happy New Years and be safe.

This week’s topic is dinosaurs, which we discussed in our weekly live chat. We hangout every Monday evening at 8 p.m. EST on Nerdarchy YouTube Channel to talk about D&D, RPGs, gaming, life and whatever nerdy stuff comes up. In Pay to Play adventures discover an unusual clockwork device and must decide if activating the device is worth the risk!

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Delving Dave’s Dungeon

We did our live chat on dinosaurs so now it’s time to write about dinos for the newsletter. I was kind of surprised to learn we hadn’t already done this topic already considering Nerdarchist Ted is a huge dinosaur fan and used to be a bit of a dino buff. The first thing I like to do when we’ve got a topic like this is to consult the oracle that is D&D Beyond to see what is already existing in official WotC Dungeons and Dragons content. I discovered there is a dinosaur tag to use for search. That brings up 19 entries with the dinosaur tag 15 Beasts, 3 undead dinosaurs, and 1 monstrosity that is a dinosaur. They range from Challenge ¼ – 8.

Dinosaurs have been around in D&D since the 1st edition of the game. I first remember seeing triceratops like dinosaurs being ridden by a barbarian chieftain leading a horde of barbarians in a charge on the box cover AD&D Battlesystem. It came out in 1985 when I would have been 10 yrs old. My next memory is from my teen years reading the Finder’s Stone Trilogy with the introduction surials. They were a race of humanoid dinosaur creatures. That trilogy came out in 1988. I haven’t read or play the Isle of Dread AD&D adventure but I was aware of it and the fact that it features dinosaurs. That adventure was published in 1981 and might have been the first appearance of dinos for Dungeons and Dragons.

I’ve used dinosaurs throughout my games in different ways. In the 3.5 D&D days I’d use them as the base of a creature and then add templates on top of it to make new horrific monsters to throw at my players.

Another use that kind of involved a template in 3.5 D&D was the lycanthrope template. It allowed you to turn any kind of animal into a werecreature. I had an island of weredinosaurs.

My latest use of dinos in my Court of Wyrms D&D game. The concept is a hidden vale where dragon emperors and dragon empresses ruled over it. Their subjects are dragonborn, kobolds, lizardfolk, tortles, grung, and other reptilian humanoids. In that vale dinosaurs roam and have been domesticated by the inhabitants. Most of the domesticated dinosaurs are of the pygmy variety.

5 Ideas for Dinosaurs Your Games:

Land of the Lost – A secluded region or location where prehistoric creatures roam hidden away from the rest of the world.
1. Lost World – Like Land of the Lost, but another dimension.
2. Hollow World – Like Land of the Lost, but it exists at the center of the world or in a region of the Underdark.
Prehistoric Campaign – Your campaign takes place in a prehistoric setting where dinosaurs and humanoid races exist at the same time. The technology will be set at the Stone Age level.
They’ve Always Been Here – In your world they are just a normal part of your world and live alongside all of the other weird stuff in a D&D world.
The Crazy Wizard Did It – A wizard, god, or some other magical force is warping creatures into dinosaurs.
Of the Feywild or Beastlands – Dinosaurs exist in the feywild or perhaps from the Beastlands in the Outer Planes. The players could find themselves there or portals keep bringing them into the prime material plane.

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From Ted’s Head

Dinosaurs are one of those things that I have loved since I was a child. I can still remember being in the 4th grade and wanting a dinosaur dictionary for Christmas to learn more about the many dinos out there.

As promised on our live chat, I would jump in the way-back machine and grant you links to the two articles I wrote about Saurials, which are humanoid dinosaurs. As I look, these are some of my earliest blog posts so while I stand by them, they might not be balanced against current writing patterns almost 8 years later.

Article 1 – Customized Races – The Saurials| Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition – Nerdarchy

Article 2 – Saurial Playable Race for 5E D&D – Nerdarchy

If you play them please let us know.what you think and how it goes.

If you are looking to play a game with dinosaurs as a main aspect of the game here are some great starters that I feel could give you a jumping off point.

Game 1 – Dino and people cooperation’

What if dinosaurs were used in everyday life? You could have anything from a low tech Flintstones world where the dinosaurs help in building excavation or anything really. You have to ask, do the dinosaurs help willingly or are they controlled? Are they awakened long ago by a druid and live in total cooperation with humans or are they forced? If you wanted to go high tech you could have a Dino Riders style game where control collars exist that make the dinosaurs obey their masters.

Game 2 – Living in a savage world

Technology does not exist, perhaps many of the trade skills are not even around yet, or are not as evolved as we know them to be. Paper could be scrolls written on hides, metal could be worked bronze or copper. The people have to fight with or learn to coexist with the savage dinosaur world. Dinos fight and control territory and if you want to pass through, you have to sneak or possibly pay tribute or get eaten. The things out there are fatal and more powerful than you and life is a fight to survive.

Game 3 – Somewhere in the middle

This game you could come from another place, be it another realm or merely another continent, and you are in a world you are not familiar with. Here the dinosaurs rule, maybe lizardfolk, saurials or dragonborn have a loosely civilized culture, but dinos clearly control the land and put up with the reptilian populace. How will you deal with this kind of world? WIll you stay and see what you can learn or flee back to the world with rules you understand?

As players in a savage realm it can be tough. Savage places tend to have harsher rules for survival and that style of game can have a higher mortality rate than the style of game that I tend to run, but without that high death rate the style does not always sell as real.

What if you want to play a primal style character even in a normal game? Well the aforementioned custom race article will give you a number of options and of course you can always go with other reptilian creatures if that works for you.

If that is not good enough, you can always tap into the existing mechanics and play the more primal classes. Barbarian, ranger and druid are classes that are tied very highly to the natural world and easily fit into most games, but exist as easily into a savage brutal lifestyle as the way dinosaurs live. Urchin, Outlander and Hermit are also ones where the ability to learn to live on your own and survive by your wits fits strongly into this style as well. If you play a spellcaster you could even work dinosaurs into the visuals of your spells if you wanted.

So however you want to add the flavor of dinosaurs, have fun with it.