Ok but for real, what’s your favorite dinosaur? Thanks so much to WorldAnvil for sponsoring this video! Visit www.worldanvil.com/supergeekmike and use the promo code SUPERGEEK to get 40% off any annual membership! www.worldanvil.com/supergeekmike
My favorite dinosaur is Dilophosaurus Wetherili, the Double Crested Lizard of the early to mid Jurassic, native to North America around what is now northern Arizona. It was popularized by Jurassic Park as a venomous spitter but in reality was more like a small allosaurus, being around 8 feet tall and 20 feet long. Yeah, I’m a dinosaur nerd.
That's a really tough one. Could I give you my 10 favorites dinosaurs instead? The challenge here is not deciding what to include in this list, but what to leave out: 1. Tyrannosaurus rex -- It's even more badass than its reputation. Eagle eyes, an olfactory equal to a pack of bloodhounds, and the greatest bite force of anything ever. 2. Triceratops horridus -- One of the most terrifying land animals that ever lived, and all of the JP films so far have grossly understated its lethal power. 3. Thescelosaurus negelctus -- We've actually glimpsed the heart of this one! And it's fully divided. 4. Deinonychus antirrhopus -- A wonderfully demonic creature, and the purest "raptor" to me. 5. Therizonsaurus cheloniformis -- The largest claws of anything ever, and uniquely bizarre anatomy to boot. 6. Stegosaurus stenops -- No sci-fi writers have dreamt up anything this crazy. 7. Microraptor gui -- A beautiful four-winged raptor with iridescent feathers 8. Leaellynasaura amicagraphica -- An impressive, cold-adapted herbivore with night vision! 9. Coelophysis bauri -- There's something aesthetically pleasing about the build of these animals. 10. Psittacosaurus mongoliensis -- We actually know what color it was. And what it's cloaca looked like. And that it had quills growing out of its tail. There's a heartbreaking fossil specimen of an immature Psittacosaurus clutched around his younger nestmates, which tells us a little something about their lives.
Luckily, everyone I game with knows me as "the dinosaur guy", so it's never too much of a surprise when they show up in my games. Plus, the homebrew world I'm working on revolves around dinosaurs
Yes! I play a wizard in my friend group's current campaign and will constantly polymorph into dinosaurs, though since the setting is based on Ptolemaic Egypt I elected to choose dinosaurs to match (Spinosaurus instead of Tyrannosaurus, Paralititan instead of Brontosaurus, etc). I'm also working our next campaign, a homebrew world which is going to be a "stonepunk" setting with cavemen and dinosaurs in the style of Primal or One Million Years BC.
@@Thagomizer While JP is my favorite movie, and the catalyst for my interest in dinosaurs, I definitely realize the faults with the movies and keep on top of the latest findings and studies.
I slightly change the appearance and names of dinosaurs. I find the scientific names of dinosaurs to be an element that pulls people out of the game. New more fantasy names and slightly altered appearance helps the fantasy of ancient creatures that have grown and changed with a living world
I really like how Ixalan from Magic the Gathering took this approach, giving their dinosaurs different names and also covering them with colorful feathers, whether their real counterparts had them or not. It perfectly handwaves any potential "inaccuracies" with how they're presented in favor of just being cool.
I just want to share this because it is relevant: I was in a campaign. We were on the cusp of leveling up to 7th level. I was a Sorcerer, with twinned spell, and was going to take Polymorph. The previous mishap we had made our way through just before had us come face-to-face with dinosaurs. MY DM LITERALLY SHOWED ME A TREX RIGHT BEFORE I WAS GONNA GET POLYMORPH. I don't think he even knew that I was gonna start wrecking his encounters by twinned Polymorph trex'ing my two melee companions and Mirror Imaging myself. Unfortunately the campaign ended early because my DM was arrested.
In my setting, there’s a series of volcanic tropical islands, where sea elves, Merfolk, and Lizardfolk live and dinosaurs, aka Behemoths, are around. They are used as beasts of burden, war mounts, siege beasts. Food. The Lizardfolk view a few particular ones as avatars for their gods. And the reason I don’t have them in “civilized” places is because it’s one illegal to import them. And then if they do get lose, most ppl not native to those islands, or the marshes and remote places in the world, have never seen them, think they’re monsters, and they are immediately killed.
I think that would be a really cool concept. Especially if some of the dinos still got magic abilities. Imagine a T-rex with rooting magic that can hold it's prey.
@@TheJulioTobosobirds are dinosaurs, specifically theropods the same group that include raptors and megateropods like rexes, spinosaurids, giganotosaurids and other giants
@@plfaproductions thanks for the explanation … but that was the point of the joke 😜 Also, feathered dinosaurs like in MTG seem to have been somehow accurate!
I am one of those DMs that has never felt that dinosaurs "fit" in a DnD game, but, never really put much thought into it. As you mentioned, though, it makes sense that the presence of dinosaurs in proximity to a humanoid civilization would significantly impact that civilization's development. Dragons would do the same, as you also mentioned, but there's a very significant difference between the two broad creature types: population. Dragons are very few and far between, especially compared to humanoid population centers. I can imagine a situation where there are some powerful "guardian" type creatures (giants, dragons, etc) that protect the humanoids from the dinosaurs. In that scenario, then the dinosaurs are clearly known about (to some degree). Definitely a good video as food for thought.
An argument towards people who do do the whole "How could humans exsist and make society with dinosaurs around?!?" I dont know, maybe the same way they survived in these settings against dragons, and giants, and literal abominations from beyond the stars! Dinosaurs are just ya know, in the end, animals.
Last campaign I played a moon druid and we had a "no dinosaur" GM rule. But for a reunion one-shot with those characters, the GM gave us a story of touring a rich merchant's "private menagerie"... and then the orb powering the shields broke, and monsters start running free... and we escaped out a door right into a massive park WITH GIANT APES AND DINOSAURS. 😃 It was amazing. One of our party was eaten by T-Rex.
DIRE LIZARDS!!!! Ok but seriously i had a problem with dinosaurs for a long time until i read some of the old Conan comics where they were called dragons. Then when Eberron came out and gave them non-scientific names, and that is when i realized that was the problem i had with them. The naming convention didnt fit with the rest of the fantasy.
I think this is a pretty simple problem to solve: use the translation of their latin names Example: instead of Tyrannosaurus, he is called Tyrant Lizard. Instead of Iguanodon, he is called Iguana Tooth, or some variation of this name.
In my opinion when I hear the question, "why are there dinosaurs in D&D" I hear, "Why are there dinosaurs in my flying dinosaur game." If you have a problem with dinosaurs then you should rightly have a problem with dragons, drakes, trrrasques, and any other abnormally large lizard thing, which we happen to have plenty of in-game.
I never really had a problem with dinosaurs in my games - I generally did what I would do with giants and other large dangerous and numerous creatures - have a region where people know they live and as a result tend to avoid going there except for expeditions to hunt them. Honestly, considering how often crashed spaceships containing energy weapon wielding aliens used to show up in old school modules - dinosaurs seemed quite reasonable by comparison.
I'm glad you mentioned the dragons. If humans in european medieval fantasy cities can live with giant fire breathing lizards attacking them every two weeks, any civilization can prosper with the occasional medium non-firebreathing lizard, and occasional T-Rex.
In the giants UA, there's a druid subclass dedicated to the ancient, primordial world, and nature as it existed before the influence of humanoid civilizations. I think that subclass is probably a good one to use for players who wanna be dinosaurs but their DM won't allow it in their setting. But, I think because dnd doesn't take place on earth, but instead in a fantasy world, I don't think there's any reason not to allow dinosaurs in that world. If there are not just dragons, but dragonborn, kobolds, lizardfolk, and other giant lizard creatures, logically there's no reason why a creature that looks like a dragon but has no wings or fire breath can't also exist. IIRC, the word dragon in medieval times was really a catch all for any giant serpent, lizard, or even fish anyway.
Oddly enough, my argument that birds are technically dinosaurs and therefore the PC's literally ate a dinosaur the last time they had chicken, did not go over well...
Aftee telling my players about a living spell that is corrupting the planes, I threw in a dinosaur combat encounter to tell them 'yeah, things are getting weird'
Been wanting to *have* dinosaurs in the world I'm home brewing. I'm thinking of having them pushed back far from civilization. Maybe the natives had a war with them and were able to drive them away so they could establish a country. Now the Wilds have roaming, "wingless dragons"
I run them pretty much the exact same way. True Dragons are basically just the dominant evolutionary pinnacle of a completely separate tree of life. Now there are “draconids” that fill all sorts of biological niches in nature, like large cats, wolves, horses, etc.
One thing that's never made sense to me is the disconnect between accepting dragons but not dinosaurs, especially since we're pretty sure dino bones were our basis for dragons in the first place. But more practically - if you have dragons and other huge monsters, why *not* have dinosaurs as their primary food source? They need lots of meat!
When one of my DMs put us in a valley that had a ton of prehistoric life I was SO THRILLED and the entire party was excited to fight them as we haven’t done so before.
As a DM who uses dinosaurs, both official and literally anything out of a Dino book (fun fact; not including creatures not scientifically classified as dinosaurs there’s over 700 species, and if I use all prehistoric animals, there’s so many it feels wrong for a fantasy world not to have some prehistoric animals, be it prehistoric fish, sea reptiles, oversized bugs, or other) My dinosaurs are clever creatures and stuff like Dianaraptors (renamed Utahraptors after the roman equivalent of Artemis, Diana, and modified Deinonychus stat blocks) can open doors. (Cue jurassic park scene where my level 1 players are hiding under a table as a raptor is walking past like the kitchen scene) My setting has several dinosaur gods which is why dinosaurs are everywhere. And although cities have arisen in a land full of dinosaurs, the dinosaurs proved super deadly so it took literally millions of years in setting for cities to be built, and dinosaurs live everywhere on every continent as far as the arctic with dinosaurs like Yutyrannus and Nannuqsaurus, to the tropics with Herrarasaurus and Brachiosaurus. And they have guns in this world too which were created using magic for those incapable of magical capabilities because it’s difficult to learn and use magic.
Coincidentally, I was catching up with Oxventure this past week or so, and their latest season, Extinction, kind of relates to this topic, since they were basically doing D&D Jurassic Park (Though without the theme park element, instead based around a scientist resurrecting extinct species via necromancy as a preservation method), and while it was mostly dinosaurs getting resurrected, and the clear expectation that mostly the extinct animals in Geth are the same as the extinct animals in our world, established that Giraffes are extinct in their campaign setting and Pterodactyls aren't.
1) Rule of Cool 2) What small toys does a family have on hand that could substitute for monsters... 3) "That still only counts as one!" 4) Nostalgia 5) People don't play D&D for the world, necessarily. They play it for the imagination, and dinosaurs are certainly that.
The other side of the same coin is robots and aliens. Sure they can be hand waved as magical robots and dimensional aliens but it is the same pulp stories as the source. It's interesting that Eberron has both the robots and the dinosaurs and yet the theme is more noir than pulp action.
Currently, I'm playing in a Tomb of Annihilation campaign! So, the dinosaurs honestly feel pretty great in our session. They always appear in the thick jungles, where you'd expect a towering primal behemoth to poke their head out. In our session too, Chult is a lot like that stereotypical 'Land of the Lost' that you mentioned. Tons of ancient ruins and dinos just hanging out.
I didn't expect there to be a huge chunk about it and colonialism! I have to admit, our GM has done a great job of detailing the native culture of Port Nyanzaru and the strifes of the city, dealing with the threats of colonialism and insurrection. It feels like a city that owes it's merits to the people, but that has been co-opted by colonial forces. We're currently working alongside a group of trade princes who seem to want to stomp out a lot of the colonial ties that some of the other enemy groups aligned with.
Also, check out "The Dinosaur Lords" by Victor Milan. It's a mostly low-fantasy book series where dinosaurs are a huge part of everyday, medieval life. Pretty good world building, very descriptive action and intrigue. Good stuff, and a massive inspiration for my world.
When I introduced dinosaurs to my players, I gave them in-universe rumors of a "massive land dragon" in the area, which was what the locals called the flightless dragons in the area. When they finally did encounter it in the nearby mountains, that was when I out of universe explained to my players they were face to face with a 'dire' tyrannosaurus. Gishath from ixalan. The fact that it filled the same "Apex" role as a dragon to this thriving, medieval town seemed a pretty easy sell that i'm grateful for.
Dinosaurs in jungles are a staple of classic sword and sorcery fiction. But most modern players have never read classic fantasy fiction so they wouldn't know.
I'm not sure of the episode but campaign 2 had at least one t-rex when the Mighty Nein were on Rumblecusp. I remember Liam being conflicted because HE wanted to fight it, but knew Caleb wouldn't
One of my DMs wanted to run Tomb of Anihilation once, but she hated Dinosaurs in DnD. The game never happened but I was truly flabbergasted. never experienced someone who wasn't down with Dinos in DnD before.
Instead of making "the natives" that live alongside dinosaurs a less developed civilization, I often choose either wood elves or one of the animalistic species. I do make it quite clear that (mostly through the use of magic) their civilization is very much developed. Although often with a smaller population (density) than other countries, to still sell that "wild men live with nature"-vibe.
17:42 I think the main reason for this discrepancy is the characterization of dragons vs dinosaurs. Typically depicted as relatively mindless apex predators, humans would be constantly under threat of being hunted by carnivorous dinos, and large-scale civilizations would be hindered by the territorial nature of the beasts. That is contrasted with dragons, who not only are vastly more intelligent, but also are known to be extremely narcissistic and avaricious. While dinosaurs are viewed as primal animals, dragons require the presence of advanced civilizations to produce the treasures that will satisfy their lust of gold and worship. Were humans still in the stone age, dragons would have to mine and create their own hoards rather than obtaining them through conquest and tithing.
I like the thunderbeast content were a Mayan Lohengrin civilization has domesticated dinosaurs and have alchemical musketeers and are debating the worth of conquering the cold continent
GM: "We don't allow dinosaurs" Me: "Okay. Then I want to be a magically mutated wingless dragon with short forearms and legs that look like I never skip leg day"
I would argue that dinosaurs are the original fantasy monsters - I seem to remember one story of table-top war games between Romans and Celts, and to balance the scale, the Celts could summon mastodons.
we never managed to get there but had a player character from there, but in one of my campaign worlds i had a large island with two warring factions, both lead by dragons, the humanoids on the island being lizardfolk, yuan-ti, and kobolds (maybe a few other types, but those were the big three) and the majority of the fauna were dinosaurs, or adjacent creatures. because the half-dragon template existed i was looking into making half-dragon dinosaurs as potential boss monsters if the party planned to visit after the kobold druid from the island joined them
I've always been in and run games where dinosaurs are on the table enjoyed by all. For us, it's never been a matter of why would they be there and instead a matter of why wouldn't they be there. It's not like there aren't weirder things. It also allows the beast/animal subtype to be relevant longer for our ranger friends.
In my last homebrew adventure the players were in an unexplored steppe that hadn’t been civilized in thousands of years. I decided when flipping through the monster manual to create a misty rainforest in a huge crevasse that had some dinosaurs for them to see and maybe fight. The most fun for me was describing the dinos without naming them directly, “you see a large bipedal reptilian creature…” etc
I've always kind of felt like it's weird to have this real creature in a fantasy setting, so thanks for helping me explore that :) and y'know what? Dinosaurs are cool, that's all the meta justification needed!
19:50 great video, although societies that use stone technology aren't necessarily small and simple. for example, mesoamerican civilizations used a mixture of stone and bronze tools but had large complex stratified societies
The really famous bits of Egyptian history fall into late Neolithic and early Bronze Age, and no one accuses them of being primitive (except when they say aliens built it all).
Love your hot, but very correct, take on the JP films! Anyway, I've been thinking of doing a 'Lost World' style island of dinos, but I feel like the way I'd go about it would be that its less 'turn of the century indigenous stereotypes' and more inspired by the great Mesoamerican nations had they not been destroyed by European plagues and colonialism. Folks tend to act like its all 'European/East Asian/Middle Eastern culture or bust' when it comes to having 'advanced and thriving' civilizations with even 'Lost Civilizations' being Atlantis inspired, IE, Greek, but prior to colonialism plenty of African, South and North American peoples had been doing pretty damn well for themselves. Toss in Dino's for flavor and you can have something allot more interesting and special then 'Generically Primitive Tribe 999999' riffing off old racist ideas that can come off as super distasteful to... Well I can only speak for myself, but I assume its not just Latinx people who feel weird having non European/non East Asian/non Middle Eastern history/fantasy condensed down into 'barbarians/tech-less tiny tribes/beneficiaries of an 'advanced race' who have 'justified' them being 'civilized''. Hmmm boy, didn't mean to just go into a rant there, just... Allot of fantasy tropes annoy me... Anyway dinos are rad as hell, so you know, racism aside, I just want to justify more of them! DINOTOPIA BABY!
In my games, no one has ever expressed surprise or confusion about a dinosaur appearing in my setting, because no one has expressed interest in a dinosaur appearing in my setting!
I'd like to mention two things: 1. WoTCy tried addressing the disconnect some people feel with dinosaurs in DnD in 4e. There all the carnivores got labeled as "drakes" and all the herbivores as "behemoths". They went back on that because people just called them by their dinosaur names anyway. The only exception are the elemental drakes from Dark Sun, which act as replacements for traditional dragons. The fire one looks like an early Spinosaurus reconstruction. 2. Despite being a paleonerd, I've cooled on their depictions in fantasy settings. Especially since most of what I've seen, takes the Warhammer Fantasy route and uses them to exoticize mezoamerica. Even wizards in MtG couldn't resist the trope and put dinosaur in their own central american themed set Ixalan, but adleast the natives there were humans instead of replacing them w lizard/serpentfolk.
My campaign is seafaring so I just have an island That Time Forgot Full of Dinosaurs. In the last session, a new character was introduced to the party by attacking them while polymorph as a dinosaur until her concentration was broken and she returned to having regular amount of intelligence and could recognize that the players are not affiliated with the people that were attacking her so we just running back for that at some point she wound up on that island briefly
As a big Dinotopia fan Dinosaurs are always part of my world , most of the time they are part of some lost island/continent. right now I'm doing a alt earth campaign set on a warm Antarctica and there are Dinosaurs there. I also have bought a lot of Sandy Petersons Cthulhu Mythos so theres a bit of At the Mountains of Madness inspiration in there.
Before even finishing the video, GOSH was Ella Enchanted a terrible, bad-faith adaptation of an actually excellent book. Wait, we're not talking about that? 😋 OKAY ON TO DINOS. As a certified dino-lover, I think I've been really lucky. Thankfully, all of my DMs have been aggressively pro-dinosaur, and as a DM I even have a homebrew world for my Isekai campaign where dinos are alive and well and even used as mounts and beasts of labor. 😂 We're all ignoring biological plausibility and my ranger constantly uses beast speech to chat with them. Everyone's having a great time.
8:48 How can you speak about what clearly inspired these original adventures, then completely space on them? Ray Harryhausen movies...know 'em? This is why you have Dinosaurs and Mythological creatures in the same setting...because people back then, would be inspired by the fantasy works of the time, and want to replicate that in their games... so you would have "Hydra's and Triceratops" in the same setting, without needing to be explained, because that was just the fantasy... I would wonder just how many old school DM's actually used/considered a Triceratops a herby, rather then a Carny, because they are commonly depicted in fantasy movies of the time as bloodthirsty...y'know, because of the big, killer horns. Why did we have Dinosaurs and Mythological creatures? Because Clash of the Titans, The Sinbad movies, Jason and the Argonauts, etc... had them. In just Jason and the Argonauts, you have a Minotaur, a Spinosaur-like creature, and a Talos construct... not including Harpies, Gods, and everything else... Sound familiar? Yeah, thats basically a D&D adventure! 17:10 The continent of Argonessen of Eberron is the land of the Dragons, and has generally allowed Dinosaurs to thrive there... its not uncommon for the peoples of other nations to regular get in close to snare some and bring them back. You generally dont stike around, because the Dragons dont take kindly to unwelcome visitors. But... I think your problem is less with... well, actually... I think your problem with D&D, is 5E and WotC... Your problem here is that WotC throws in Dinosaurs into an adventure, but they dont give context. Older editions of D&D use to provide blurbs of "what inspired us" reference guides, talking about Ray Harryhausen, talking about Jules Verne, and others... but 5E stuffs those references in small text, either among the beginning of the book that everyone skips over, or at the end of the book that nobody reads. WotC wants to make all the shortcuts that 1E and 2E did, but doesn't want to show off "how old it is to the kids", because it wants to be "kewl". But those same movies aren't the thematic basis for people anymore; and I would say most people who came into 5E have probably never seen a Ray Harryhausen movie. They dont know of adventures in lost lands, where ancient creatures still dwell... sure, they might have seen Godzilla V Kong movie, but thats it. Not much of a basis... So they used the old tropes, but got called out for being racist...which it was. But they then didnt explore ideas of how to improve it. They seem commited to the Forgettable Realms being their "one and only", that it affects everything they do. Because they dont employ Mystara, they fall back on this racist trope of Dinosaurs and "savage natives". Because they dont have Greyhawk, they have to come up with these silly rock-tower-thing for where Spelljammers are coming from. Because they didnt explain Eberron, you dont realise that an entire continent is untouched for over 100,000 years for dinosaurs to thrive. Because they didnt explain Dragonlance, you dont realise that playing a Dragonborn is like playing a DEVIL in that setting, and you'd be killed on the spot for being a Draconian (Minotaurs are the common race there, the Champion of Pallindine was a Minotaur Paladin). 5E is horrible at showing its work, and showing its references...and mechanics. Older Editions assumed you knew what things were based on, but just in case, TOLD YOU what inspired the adventure... 5E copies the adventure, but doesn't tell you what inspired it; so you wind up with this horrible, racist mess; usually that younger people have no context for, and have no nostalgia for...y'know, because they were a twinkle in their parents *******. So...its mostly WotC's fault... But its also these younger, newer peoples fault; go watch a Ray Harryhausen movie!!!
In the first proper campaign I ever ran, the premise was that the party all got shipwrecked on a mysterious cursed island. Since the reason the ship was there wasn't important, I told the players that I would base what it was doing on the PCs' backstories and a few character decisions later, it was a ship smuggling creatures from Dinosaur Island to the civilized lands. (The Druid PC had a sauropod companion, and the Witch had one of the little chicken dinosaurs as her familiar, from her time living on the island.) Our table's theory was that, honestly, dinosaurs aren't all that impressive to D&D characters. Yeah, some of them are big and dangerous, but they are just regular animals. They don't talk, or breathe fire or teleport or eat your soul or anything like that. And I feel like in many D&D-type settings, it doesn't really make sense to have a period in the past with animals that lived and mostly died out before humanoids evolved, since generally humanoids DIDN'T evolve, but were created by gods or whatever. And if there is a population of dinos today, then they aren't "remnants of a past age" - in-universe, they are as much a part of the present as anything else. I think it makes the most sense to cordon the dinosaurs off on one continent that they haven't really spread from and just have them be animals unique to that area. Think about all the weird stuff that only lives in Australia. You wouldn't expect a kangaroo to be hopping around in Rome, but if you saw one, you wouldn't immediately declare "that is impossible!". That way, dinosaurs exist and can be brought into the story (or the PCs brought to them) but aren't likely to be wandering around your pseudo-German medieval town. While the humanoids living alongside dinosaurs having primitive technology is a descendant of colonialist tropes, I think the in-universe justification might be less that "dinosaurs make it impossible to build up an advanced civilization" and more "humanoids with advanced technology are prone to exterminating unintelligent threats that live around them." And this is a D&D world, where a halfling who kills enough rats can develop the ability to simply punch a T-Rex to death. It's also possible that such a society leans into Druidic teachings and magic to control or at least divert the dangerous dinosaurs, rather than have to fight them all the time, which would discourage the development of metalworking either due to Druidic values or a lack of need. As a last note, I was playing in a campaign where the PCs went through a portal to the setting's sub-Saharan Africa-inspired region, and the GM had a lot of fun when an elephant popped up, informing us that our character have no idea what it is, but it's probably a violent carnivore - after all, it's huge and has knives sticking out of its face! There are plenty of present-day real-world animals that would seem just as bizarre to the average PCs as dinosaurs would.
I personally think the biggest issue many players have with dinosaurs in D&D is their names. We know, through pop-culture osmosis, that each dinosaur's name has a scientific basis - that it is a Latin-based description. It adds a "scientific" weight to dinosaurs that more conventional fantasy monsters lack. It's interesting to note that the D&D 4e core setting actively promoted dinosaurs as common-place domesticated and wild animals in itself, but it did so by calling them "drakes" and "behemoths".
Counter point to dinosaurs "keeping locals primative": to survive apex predators a group of people that lack natural weapons and armor would need to advance technologically. Also, "primative cultures" are only inferior because of the standards set by our western colonialist attitudes. Nazca, Mayan, Mesopotamian, ancient Egyptian and other ancient cultures might be considered primitive despite some advancements that rival the modern day.
4th edition did it best, herbivore dinos were called behemoth, and all the carnivores were drakes. So much more immersive than the scientific names and people could still recognize them for what they were at the table. Fighting a "Fang Titan Drake" is pretty epic.
I did an entire arc that ripped off Jurassic Park to explain dinosaurs. Just some arcane scientists using a modified clone spell. I loved it and players loved it because its peak childhood fantasy: "If I was stuck on jurassic park, I would just use magic to kill them"
The entire chivalric romance genre is built on anachronism. King Arthur died about 500 years before knights were ever a thing, which was about 500 years before plate armor was invented.
Not directly related to dinosaurs themselves, but when My players caused a accidental magical mishap outside Blackstaff Tower, I used the T-Rex slot verbatim to represent the massively enlarged chicken that had resulted from the experimental enlarged/reduce spell....
I'm a Warhammer fan, and I have to say making Lizardmen Aztec inspired dino riders was a piece of beauty. There is nothing more badass than a 6 ft tall dinosaur man riding on the back of a T-Rex both wearing Aztec inspired armor, wielding a tepoztopilli. It's slightly lesser cousins will ride on the back of raptors. It is a beautiful and terrifying sight.
On the colonialism angle, I would say while that's obviously a worry and they are technologically behind vs The empire and not China. They are, however arguably better masters of the arcane then even the elves. They are Savage but not unreasonable and it's more a territorial Savagery than like a primitive one. They are one of the most stalwart and true defenders against Chaos. While behind in tech versus the gunpowder wielding races, they are their superior in magic and certainly their match on the field of battle. Why build a gun when the magic spear thrower goes further? Why build a tank, when the not T-Rex can survive multiple shots from it and eat it?
My opinion is that a DnD setting is not Earth and you can include Dinosaurs in almost any form you want. For instance a homebrew setting I plan to use for a game just has Dinosaurs living in certain parts of the world. They aren't everywhere but are in a part of the world that has civilisation. Also while humans didn't share the world with dinosaurs humans did exist alongside other megafauna some of which humans contributed to the extinction of so a world where humans and the other races of DnD living with dinosaurs just being around isn't too far fetched in my eyes. Especially as you mentioned other monsters are a common thing in DnD and civilisations still exist.
My world has a lost continent that has dinosaurs. but, when it comes to wild shape, polymorph, etc, I make it clear tot he characters they are limited to tings their character would have seen. If you want to become a Triceratops, cross the ocean, do adventures on that continent, and see one first. And yes, there are primitive humanoids in the area, but they are lizardmen and Tabaxi
I'm not an expert on Eberron, even if it is one of my top three settings, but I remember a Keith Baker's article explaining that on Eberron there was no extinction event, so most species of dinosaurs survived up to the present. On Khorvaire (the usual PCs' continents), dinosaurs are more common in the Talenta Plains region, where Halflings use them as rides or beasts of burden. These are usually smaller dinosaurs (like velociraptors), but there are a few larger ones. Meanwhile, on the dragon-dominated continent of Argoness, dinosaurs of all sizes are a normal occurence. There are many species and a T-Rex is just the local equivalent of a lion or grizzly.
Heh. I first played DnD back at the start of the 80's.. (I was 10 in 1980). And sometime after Empire came out, we once fought waves of T-rex's with magic based AT-AT's basically.. lol.. walking platforms with magic cannons. And it was just the best.. we all had tons of fun! ALL the fun in fact.. every last drop. 😁
As a dungeon master: my world has dinosaurs as apart of everyday life and the world isn’t lost, it’s known. It’s a bit like a Dinotopia or a Kaimere for those who enjoy speculative evolution.
Dinosaurs belong in D&D Hell so do Aliens Greyhawk literally has a crashed UFO in it Gary's idea was "Genre, what's genre; put everything in the game" Mind you, you don't gotta follow the ideas of a random dead middle aged white dude just because he helped invent the roleplaying game in its entirety; hero worship is for suckers. But, I basically use Dinosaurs just like I do any other massive animal or otherwise fantasy creature. One setting I made had a resurgent Dwarven nation that had mastered taming the neighboring fauna and as such getting big ass Triceratops as the far superior beast of burden over Oxen, Pterandon as aerial scout mounts for the army and plate armored T-Rex for super Cavalry (rarely though for T-Rex; they don't actually have the type of general terrain that's key for ground cavalry; lots of cliff/mountainside or jungle/rainforest and coastal territory that they had to fight in) One of their highest grossing exports are the middle sized Dinos as purchasable exotic mounts or in bulk for cavalry mercenary companies that want an edge. I've never really fallen into that stereotype of the gross "lost city" mythos from colonialism, nor do I ever use the real world colonialism base for how my settings developed in its several thousand years histories. Like why would I want to include the gross horrible acts and attitudes of those empires in my games or the bias' they laid on the folk they "discovered" out there? Fucking disgusting.
I haven’t watched the video yet, but when you mentioned in a different video that this one was coming out, the first thing I thought was, “I hate dinosaurs in DnD.” I think that’s one of the few DnD opinions I have that I refuse to budge on. I don’t like dinosaurs in DnD, and I don’t want them in my games. Okay, now I’m going to watch the video. Edit for brief post-video thoughts: I think part of my issue is that I categorize “unexpected dinosaurs” as a sci fi trope. I strongly favor fantasy-based DnD games. Dinosaurs don’t feel anachronistic, they feel like the wrong genre entirely and break my suspension of disbelief (as silly as that might be to say). The only fantasy story I’ve ever seen dinosaurs work in is that one Dresden Files book (you know the one), because it was urban fantasy with a plot about necromancy. Temporarily raising a dinosaur from the dead in a world where long-extinct dinosaurs are already a known fact (aka, our world) doesn’t feel quite as genre-breaking as suddenly tossing them into a high fantasy setting.
As long as they aren't called by scientific names I feel they fit. A giant hungry bipedal lizard? Good! Some rando screaming "Help! a Spinosaurus!"? No thats a fin lizard
Since playing OSR games I have come to my conclusion to why dinosaurs fit in a D&D world. They are just Dragons. Really. Giant beastial lizard like creatures (some can even fly). That is all it takes to be a dragon in my book. If wyverns and wingless drake are dragons, so can dinosaurs.
"You can have all the dinosaurs you want, but they need the feathers, and proto-feathers that dinosaurs would have actually had according to more recent archeology"... "Wait, why you are turning them ALL in the pets, and mounts?!"
I'm really glad to see more people talking about dinosaurs in d&d, I feel like it's a whole world of possibilities to draw inspiration from, plus they work as a simple monster as well as animals that live somewhere, and the best thing is that they are real, they existed and yet we see them as something so far away, I love that kind of fantasy. To give an example, the setting I created for my campaign focuses on an archipelago full of dinosaurs that recently started to be populated by mainlanders, so that clash between ordinary people trying to survive and discovering these strange but familiar creatures is the vibe I want to give by including dinosaurs (technically in-world I don't call them dinosaurs, but obviously they are, I treat them more like magical beasts than ancient beings lost in time). Finally, I loved the video and thank you very much for bringing light to the subject, thank you!!
When I build a region, I make sure to place encounters that wouldn’t just break the ecosystem entirely; for example, if I’m building a rural countryside, I can’t put owlbears or even dire wolves because there would be no one believably strong enough to survive them. Instead, those creatures are usually designated to regions that are mostly uninhabited, and the people who live near it will even build their roads AROUND such areas so as to avoid them entirely. There may even be road signs warning travelers they are passing a known owlbear habitat, but as long as they stay on the road, they should be relatively safe. It would make sense that the population has gone thru some trial and error in setting up proper boundaries for safe passage around those places. The same rule of thumb could be said for dragons as well. No existing village would live within a country’s width of a known lair or roost, unless they were possibly subjugated by those dragons already. Making a believable world ecosystem is pretty basic DM design, and there’s a way to do it with every monster. For me personally, the idea of an isolated island known to be inhabited by “massive lizards” or an area in the underdark where huge ancient creatures live are all believable implementations for dinosaur habitats.
In my first campaign, the druid's player needed a little help establishing a narrative niche, so I introduced the idea that dinosaurs used to exist in their country, but "hero culture", the desire to go kill something big, claim its treasure, and never pay for a drink again, led to every animal resembling a dragon being hunted. The earth guided our druid to clutches of eggs it had protected since that day, so she could repopulate her island - empty after the Cult of the Dragon essentially turned a green dragon into a nuke - with baby dinosaurs, in hopes of one day building a land bridge and letting them migrate to the mainland. This also provided a nice pace for her to unlock dinosaur Wild Shapes That druid's player did end up ghosting the party for the end of the campaign, but in an epilogue I told the party that she succeeded, and now Evermeet is essentially Jurassic Park. However, this only applied to the main country. When dinosaurs come up in countries outside the one my stories center on, I remind my players, "your ancestors hunted them to extinction where you're from, but other countries didn't develop the same hero culture gung-ho on lizard murder".
I play a ton of pulp games so dinos make regular appearances. I love dinos in low fantasy, historical fantasy, or swords and sorcery type settings in addition to pulp. One my favorite NPC lines ever was from a hunter trying to get the party to help him hunt a triceratops.... "You ever hunt a triceratops? It's like a rhino only twice as big and three times as horny!"
I used dinosaurs in a game, west marches style, where the area was wild and uncharted. Giant lizard monster, only passing by them. And because they jad no expectation of dinos in their fantasy game: They shat bricks.
the game I play with folks has raptors that go "woosh" but then all bets were off after the DM introduced the "Cave clam" in response to an offhand comment I made about why were we finding pearls in a cave wall along with some other gems. (pretty sure he just rolled a random table) Now because of my smartass comments the whole campaign is Clams all the way down.
I always loved the idea of an Aztec or Maya-styled culture with dinosaurs. Because why wouldn't a native population reach that level of sophistication?
Basically dragons was the medieval word for dinosaurs, Introducing the Medieval Dragon is an interesting book for those who are interested in history. I personally view it as an either or for world building. I find the middle ages more interesting than the more renaissance period that is the standard of "fantasy land", or the early modern of pulp fiction. So I like to go with a more Ars Magica mythic European setting and have dragons, rather than the modern view of what creatures from those fossils were.
I think magic is often used to justify progress despite dragons. The real answer is probably still colonialism but I could see that being used to try and explain it.
I wanted to come back and say this, dinosaurs are a "fact of life" in eberron, but eberron is a setting with strong themes of "civilization" for lack of a better word... and dinosaurs being outside of places of civilization are meant to contribute to a sense of contrast between civilization and people outside it.
One of the reasons I absolutely LOVE Eberron as a setting is that you can have a gang of dinosaur-riding halflings pull a Wild West-style raid on a lightning rail train.
It's crazy how things can collide. I came across Cold Crash Pictures mere weeks ago! As for dinosaurs in DnD, I usually keep them to a separate area of the world, but not because of anachronism. It's because an ecosystem couldn't support both dragons and tyrannosaurs or giants and titanosaurs. So I tend to make them like a regional difference in fauna rather than a lost world.
I've never been a big fan of dinosaurs in D&D, but you've helped me rethink that position. I still believe in only wild shaping or polymorphing into creatures you've seen, though.
When I run a game, typically it is a homebrew worlds and it either a hard no or hard yes on dinosaurs. It depends on the mood I am wanting to set. The hard yes worlds I have ran will typically then not have some other monsters like dragons, but the dinosaurs maybe have some dragon like powers. sometimes I will do a version of "Hollow World" or the "Gazetteer" series.
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Ok but for real, what’s your favorite dinosaur?
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My favorite dinosaur is Dilophosaurus Wetherili, the Double Crested Lizard of the early to mid Jurassic, native to North America around what is now northern Arizona.
It was popularized by Jurassic Park as a venomous spitter but in reality was more like a small allosaurus, being around 8 feet tall and 20 feet long.
Yeah, I’m a dinosaur nerd.
Argentinosaurus.
Utahraptor
Ceratosaurus
That's a really tough one. Could I give you my 10 favorites dinosaurs instead? The challenge here is not deciding what to include in this list, but what to leave out:
1. Tyrannosaurus rex -- It's even more badass than its reputation. Eagle eyes, an olfactory equal to a pack of bloodhounds, and the greatest bite force of anything ever.
2. Triceratops horridus -- One of the most terrifying land animals that ever lived, and all of the JP films so far have grossly understated its lethal power.
3. Thescelosaurus negelctus -- We've actually glimpsed the heart of this one! And it's fully divided.
4. Deinonychus antirrhopus -- A wonderfully demonic creature, and the purest "raptor" to me.
5. Therizonsaurus cheloniformis -- The largest claws of anything ever, and uniquely bizarre anatomy to boot.
6. Stegosaurus stenops -- No sci-fi writers have dreamt up anything this crazy.
7. Microraptor gui -- A beautiful four-winged raptor with iridescent feathers
8. Leaellynasaura amicagraphica -- An impressive, cold-adapted herbivore with night vision!
9. Coelophysis bauri -- There's something aesthetically pleasing about the build of these animals.
10. Psittacosaurus mongoliensis -- We actually know what color it was. And what it's cloaca looked like. And that it had quills growing out of its tail. There's a heartbreaking fossil specimen of an immature Psittacosaurus clutched around his younger nestmates, which tells us a little something about their lives.
Luckily, everyone I game with knows me as "the dinosaur guy", so it's never too much of a surprise when they show up in my games. Plus, the homebrew world I'm working on revolves around dinosaurs
Yes, my players would be surprised if I ever passed a chance to include dinosaurs in anything! :D
Yes! I play a wizard in my friend group's current campaign and will constantly polymorph into dinosaurs, though since the setting is based on Ptolemaic Egypt I elected to choose dinosaurs to match (Spinosaurus instead of Tyrannosaurus, Paralititan instead of Brontosaurus, etc). I'm also working our next campaign, a homebrew world which is going to be a "stonepunk" setting with cavemen and dinosaurs in the style of Primal or One Million Years BC.
@@Primordial_Soup That's awesome! Man, that sounds like a lot of fun
I hope you're a real "dinosaur guy" and not a "Jurassic Park" guy.
@@Thagomizer While JP is my favorite movie, and the catalyst for my interest in dinosaurs, I definitely realize the faults with the movies and keep on top of the latest findings and studies.
I slightly change the appearance and names of dinosaurs.
I find the scientific names of dinosaurs to be an element that pulls people out of the game.
New more fantasy names and slightly altered appearance helps the fantasy of ancient creatures that have grown and changed with a living world
I really like how Ixalan from Magic the Gathering took this approach, giving their dinosaurs different names and also covering them with colorful feathers, whether their real counterparts had them or not. It perfectly handwaves any potential "inaccuracies" with how they're presented in favor of just being cool.
I just want to share this because it is relevant:
I was in a campaign. We were on the cusp of leveling up to 7th level. I was a Sorcerer, with twinned spell, and was going to take Polymorph.
The previous mishap we had made our way through just before had us come face-to-face with dinosaurs.
MY DM LITERALLY SHOWED ME A TREX RIGHT BEFORE I WAS GONNA GET POLYMORPH.
I don't think he even knew that I was gonna start wrecking his encounters by twinned Polymorph trex'ing my two melee companions and Mirror Imaging myself.
Unfortunately the campaign ended early because my DM was arrested.
"my DM was arrested"
If I had a dime..🙄
The man's strategy was so savage his DM committed crimes!
I take it no one told your DM that it's okay to murder player characters, but not players?
I imagine your DM wasn't aware of the limitations of Polymorph at 7th level pretty much excluding only the T. Rex lmao
and out of left field comes that last sentence!!
To me, if Conan can have dinosaurs, my setting can have dinosaurs.
In my setting, there’s a series of volcanic tropical islands, where sea elves, Merfolk, and Lizardfolk live and dinosaurs, aka Behemoths, are around. They are used as beasts of burden, war mounts, siege beasts. Food. The Lizardfolk view a few particular ones as avatars for their gods. And the reason I don’t have them in “civilized” places is because it’s one illegal to import them. And then if they do get lose, most ppl not native to those islands, or the marshes and remote places in the world, have never seen them, think they’re monsters, and they are immediately killed.
Eberron needs no explanation for dinosaurs OR robots AT THE SAME TIME. Eberron rules.
Dragons took the Wizard route when evolving from lizards and Dinosaurs took the Barbarian path.
DND CAMPAIGN WITH EVERYONE PLAYING GIANT LIZARD CREATURES!!
And birds took the monk route: fast and flashy, but fragile and with lots of extra useless abilities that sound very cool.
I think that would be a really cool concept. Especially if some of the dinos still got magic abilities. Imagine a T-rex with rooting magic that can hold it's prey.
@@TheJulioTobosobirds are dinosaurs, specifically theropods the same group that include raptors and megateropods like rexes, spinosaurids, giganotosaurids and other giants
@@plfaproductions thanks for the explanation … but that was the point of the joke 😜
Also, feathered dinosaurs like in MTG seem to have been somehow accurate!
I am one of those DMs that has never felt that dinosaurs "fit" in a DnD game, but, never really put much thought into it.
As you mentioned, though, it makes sense that the presence of dinosaurs in proximity to a humanoid civilization would significantly impact that civilization's development. Dragons would do the same, as you also mentioned, but there's a very significant difference between the two broad creature types: population. Dragons are very few and far between, especially compared to humanoid population centers.
I can imagine a situation where there are some powerful "guardian" type creatures (giants, dragons, etc) that protect the humanoids from the dinosaurs. In that scenario, then the dinosaurs are clearly known about (to some degree).
Definitely a good video as food for thought.
An argument towards people who do do the whole "How could humans exsist and make society with dinosaurs around?!?" I dont know, maybe the same way they survived in these settings against dragons, and giants, and literal abominations from beyond the stars! Dinosaurs are just ya know, in the end, animals.
Last campaign I played a moon druid and we had a "no dinosaur" GM rule. But for a reunion one-shot with those characters, the GM gave us a story of touring a rich merchant's "private menagerie"... and then the orb powering the shields broke, and monsters start running free... and we escaped out a door right into a massive park WITH GIANT APES AND DINOSAURS. 😃 It was amazing. One of our party was eaten by T-Rex.
I think they even made a movie out of this one shot!
DIRE LIZARDS!!!! Ok but seriously i had a problem with dinosaurs for a long time until i read some of the old Conan comics where they were called dragons. Then when Eberron came out and gave them non-scientific names, and that is when i realized that was the problem i had with them. The naming convention didnt fit with the rest of the fantasy.
I think that was always the case for me. Coming up with in-universe, non-scientific names for dinosaurs would definitely help.
I can see a bunch of haughty wizards using scientific names, but otherwise no one would use the latin names
I think this is a pretty simple problem to solve: use the translation of their latin names
Example: instead of Tyrannosaurus, he is called Tyrant Lizard. Instead of Iguanodon, he is called Iguana Tooth, or some variation of this name.
@@arealhumanbean3058 Or just Tyrants, since they were likely very birdlike in terms of behavior
In my opinion when I hear the question, "why are there dinosaurs in D&D" I hear, "Why are there dinosaurs in my flying dinosaur game." If you have a problem with dinosaurs then you should rightly have a problem with dragons, drakes, trrrasques, and any other abnormally large lizard thing, which we happen to have plenty of in-game.
Dinosaurs are much closer to birds, but you are correct
I never really had a problem with dinosaurs in my games - I generally did what I would do with giants and other large dangerous and numerous creatures - have a region where people know they live and as a result tend to avoid going there except for expeditions to hunt them. Honestly, considering how often crashed spaceships containing energy weapon wielding aliens used to show up in old school modules - dinosaurs seemed quite reasonable by comparison.
My dm had my druid visit a very rich person’s private collection of dinosaur fossils and that’s how I can wildshape into them.
I'm glad you mentioned the dragons. If humans in european medieval fantasy cities can live with giant fire breathing lizards attacking them every two weeks, any civilization can prosper with the occasional medium non-firebreathing lizard, and occasional T-Rex.
In the giants UA, there's a druid subclass dedicated to the ancient, primordial world, and nature as it existed before the influence of humanoid civilizations. I think that subclass is probably a good one to use for players who wanna be dinosaurs but their DM won't allow it in their setting.
But, I think because dnd doesn't take place on earth, but instead in a fantasy world, I don't think there's any reason not to allow dinosaurs in that world. If there are not just dragons, but dragonborn, kobolds, lizardfolk, and other giant lizard creatures, logically there's no reason why a creature that looks like a dragon but has no wings or fire breath can't also exist. IIRC, the word dragon in medieval times was really a catch all for any giant serpent, lizard, or even fish anyway.
You had me at Dire Iguana. Another good one. Thanks, SGM.
Oddly enough, my argument that birds are technically dinosaurs and therefore the PC's literally ate a dinosaur the last time they had chicken, did not go over well...
Aftee telling my players about a living spell that is corrupting the planes, I threw in a dinosaur combat encounter to tell them 'yeah, things are getting weird'
Been wanting to *have* dinosaurs in the world I'm home brewing. I'm thinking of having them pushed back far from civilization. Maybe the natives had a war with them and were able to drive them away so they could establish a country. Now the Wilds have roaming, "wingless dragons"
I run them pretty much the exact same way. True Dragons are basically just the dominant evolutionary pinnacle of a completely separate tree of life. Now there are “draconids” that fill all sorts of biological niches in nature, like large cats, wolves, horses, etc.
One thing that's never made sense to me is the disconnect between accepting dragons but not dinosaurs, especially since we're pretty sure dino bones were our basis for dragons in the first place. But more practically - if you have dragons and other huge monsters, why *not* have dinosaurs as their primary food source? They need lots of meat!
When one of my DMs put us in a valley that had a ton of prehistoric life I was SO THRILLED and the entire party was excited to fight them as we haven’t done so before.
As a DM who uses dinosaurs, both official and literally anything out of a Dino book (fun fact; not including creatures not scientifically classified as dinosaurs there’s over 700 species, and if I use all prehistoric animals, there’s so many it feels wrong for a fantasy world not to have some prehistoric animals, be it prehistoric fish, sea reptiles, oversized bugs, or other)
My dinosaurs are clever creatures and stuff like Dianaraptors (renamed Utahraptors after the roman equivalent of Artemis, Diana, and modified Deinonychus stat blocks) can open doors. (Cue jurassic park scene where my level 1 players are hiding under a table as a raptor is walking past like the kitchen scene)
My setting has several dinosaur gods which is why dinosaurs are everywhere. And although cities have arisen in a land full of dinosaurs, the dinosaurs proved super deadly so it took literally millions of years in setting for cities to be built, and dinosaurs live everywhere on every continent as far as the arctic with dinosaurs like Yutyrannus and Nannuqsaurus, to the tropics with Herrarasaurus and Brachiosaurus.
And they have guns in this world too which were created using magic for those incapable of magical capabilities because it’s difficult to learn and use magic.
Coincidentally, I was catching up with Oxventure this past week or so, and their latest season, Extinction, kind of relates to this topic, since they were basically doing D&D Jurassic Park (Though without the theme park element, instead based around a scientist resurrecting extinct species via necromancy as a preservation method), and while it was mostly dinosaurs getting resurrected, and the clear expectation that mostly the extinct animals in Geth are the same as the extinct animals in our world, established that Giraffes are extinct in their campaign setting and Pterodactyls aren't.
1) Rule of Cool
2) What small toys does a family have on hand that could substitute for monsters...
3) "That still only counts as one!"
4) Nostalgia
5) People don't play D&D for the world, necessarily. They play it for the imagination, and dinosaurs are certainly that.
The other side of the same coin is robots and aliens. Sure they can be hand waved as magical robots and dimensional aliens but it is the same pulp stories as the source. It's interesting that Eberron has both the robots and the dinosaurs and yet the theme is more noir than pulp action.
Currently, I'm playing in a Tomb of Annihilation campaign! So, the dinosaurs honestly feel pretty great in our session. They always appear in the thick jungles, where you'd expect a towering primal behemoth to poke their head out. In our session too, Chult is a lot like that stereotypical 'Land of the Lost' that you mentioned. Tons of ancient ruins and dinos just hanging out.
I didn't expect there to be a huge chunk about it and colonialism! I have to admit, our GM has done a great job of detailing the native culture of Port Nyanzaru and the strifes of the city, dealing with the threats of colonialism and insurrection. It feels like a city that owes it's merits to the people, but that has been co-opted by colonial forces. We're currently working alongside a group of trade princes who seem to want to stomp out a lot of the colonial ties that some of the other enemy groups aligned with.
Also, check out "The Dinosaur Lords" by Victor Milan. It's a mostly low-fantasy book series where dinosaurs are a huge part of everyday, medieval life. Pretty good world building, very descriptive action and intrigue. Good stuff, and a massive inspiration for my world.
They are a pretty good read, it's a major shame that the third one ends on a cliffhanger and the author passed before finishing the fourth book
When I introduced dinosaurs to my players, I gave them in-universe rumors of a "massive land dragon" in the area, which was what the locals called the flightless dragons in the area. When they finally did encounter it in the nearby mountains, that was when I out of universe explained to my players they were face to face with a 'dire' tyrannosaurus. Gishath from ixalan. The fact that it filled the same "Apex" role as a dragon to this thriving, medieval town seemed a pretty easy sell that i'm grateful for.
Dinosaurs in jungles are a staple of classic sword and sorcery fiction. But most modern players have never read classic fantasy fiction so they wouldn't know.
I'm not sure of the episode but campaign 2 had at least one t-rex when the Mighty Nein were on Rumblecusp. I remember Liam being conflicted because HE wanted to fight it, but knew Caleb wouldn't
One of my DMs wanted to run Tomb of Anihilation once, but she hated Dinosaurs in DnD. The game never happened but I was truly flabbergasted. never experienced someone who wasn't down with Dinos in DnD before.
Instead of making "the natives" that live alongside dinosaurs a less developed civilization, I often choose either wood elves or one of the animalistic species.
I do make it quite clear that (mostly through the use of magic) their civilization is very much developed. Although often with a smaller population (density) than other countries, to still sell that "wild men live with nature"-vibe.
17:42 I think the main reason for this discrepancy is the characterization of dragons vs dinosaurs. Typically depicted as relatively mindless apex predators, humans would be constantly under threat of being hunted by carnivorous dinos, and large-scale civilizations would be hindered by the territorial nature of the beasts. That is contrasted with dragons, who not only are vastly more intelligent, but also are known to be extremely narcissistic and avaricious.
While dinosaurs are viewed as primal animals, dragons require the presence of advanced civilizations to produce the treasures that will satisfy their lust of gold and worship. Were humans still in the stone age, dragons would have to mine and create their own hoards rather than obtaining them through conquest and tithing.
I like the thunderbeast content were a Mayan Lohengrin civilization has domesticated dinosaurs and have alchemical musketeers and are debating the worth of conquering the cold continent
GM: "We don't allow dinosaurs"
Me: "Okay. Then I want to be a magically mutated wingless dragon with short forearms and legs that look like I never skip leg day"
I would argue that dinosaurs are the original fantasy monsters - I seem to remember one story of table-top war games between Romans and Celts, and to balance the scale, the Celts could summon mastodons.
we never managed to get there but had a player character from there, but in one of my campaign worlds i had a large island with two warring factions, both lead by dragons, the humanoids on the island being lizardfolk, yuan-ti, and kobolds (maybe a few other types, but those were the big three) and the majority of the fauna were dinosaurs, or adjacent creatures. because the half-dragon template existed i was looking into making half-dragon dinosaurs as potential boss monsters if the party planned to visit after the kobold druid from the island joined them
I've always been in and run games where dinosaurs are on the table enjoyed by all. For us, it's never been a matter of why would they be there and instead a matter of why wouldn't they be there. It's not like there aren't weirder things. It also allows the beast/animal subtype to be relevant longer for our ranger friends.
In my last homebrew adventure the players were in an unexplored steppe that hadn’t been civilized in thousands of years. I decided when flipping through the monster manual to create a misty rainforest in a huge crevasse that had some dinosaurs for them to see and maybe fight. The most fun for me was describing the dinos without naming them directly, “you see a large bipedal reptilian creature…” etc
I've always kind of felt like it's weird to have this real creature in a fantasy setting, so thanks for helping me explore that :) and y'know what? Dinosaurs are cool, that's all the meta justification needed!
19:50 great video, although societies that use stone technology aren't necessarily small and simple. for example, mesoamerican civilizations used a mixture of stone and bronze tools but had large complex stratified societies
The really famous bits of Egyptian history fall into late Neolithic and early Bronze Age, and no one accuses them of being primitive (except when they say aliens built it all).
Love your hot, but very correct, take on the JP films!
Anyway, I've been thinking of doing a 'Lost World' style island of dinos, but I feel like the way I'd go about it would be that its less 'turn of the century indigenous stereotypes' and more inspired by the great Mesoamerican nations had they not been destroyed by European plagues and colonialism. Folks tend to act like its all 'European/East Asian/Middle Eastern culture or bust' when it comes to having 'advanced and thriving' civilizations with even 'Lost Civilizations' being Atlantis inspired, IE, Greek, but prior to colonialism plenty of African, South and North American peoples had been doing pretty damn well for themselves. Toss in Dino's for flavor and you can have something allot more interesting and special then 'Generically Primitive Tribe 999999' riffing off old racist ideas that can come off as super distasteful to... Well I can only speak for myself, but I assume its not just Latinx people who feel weird having non European/non East Asian/non Middle Eastern history/fantasy condensed down into 'barbarians/tech-less tiny tribes/beneficiaries of an 'advanced race' who have 'justified' them being 'civilized''.
Hmmm boy, didn't mean to just go into a rant there, just... Allot of fantasy tropes annoy me...
Anyway dinos are rad as hell, so you know, racism aside, I just want to justify more of them! DINOTOPIA BABY!
It’s kind of odd to have a universe with dragons, yet non-magical big lizards seem far fetched.
In my games, no one has ever expressed surprise or confusion about a dinosaur appearing in my setting, because no one has expressed interest in a dinosaur appearing in my setting!
I'd like to mention two things:
1. WoTCy tried addressing the disconnect some people feel with dinosaurs in DnD in 4e. There all the carnivores got labeled as "drakes" and all the herbivores as "behemoths". They went back on that because people just called them by their dinosaur names anyway. The only exception are the elemental drakes from Dark Sun, which act as replacements for traditional dragons. The fire one looks like an early Spinosaurus reconstruction.
2. Despite being a paleonerd, I've cooled on their depictions in fantasy settings. Especially since most of what I've seen, takes the Warhammer Fantasy route and uses them to exoticize mezoamerica. Even wizards in MtG couldn't resist the trope and put dinosaur in their own central american themed set Ixalan, but adleast the natives there were humans instead of replacing them w lizard/serpentfolk.
My campaign is seafaring so I just have an island That Time Forgot Full of Dinosaurs. In the last session, a new character was introduced to the party by attacking them while polymorph as a dinosaur until her concentration was broken and she returned to having regular amount of intelligence and could recognize that the players are not affiliated with the people that were attacking her so we just running back for that at some point she wound up on that island briefly
Haha! That was a really creative and funny ad for world anvil! Thoroughly enjoyed it!
As a big Dinotopia fan Dinosaurs are always part of my world , most of the time they are part of some lost island/continent. right now I'm doing a alt earth campaign set on a warm Antarctica and there are Dinosaurs there. I also have bought a lot of Sandy Petersons Cthulhu Mythos so theres a bit of At the Mountains of Madness inspiration in there.
Before even finishing the video, GOSH was Ella Enchanted a terrible, bad-faith adaptation of an actually excellent book. Wait, we're not talking about that? 😋 OKAY ON TO DINOS.
As a certified dino-lover, I think I've been really lucky. Thankfully, all of my DMs have been aggressively pro-dinosaur, and as a DM I even have a homebrew world for my Isekai campaign where dinos are alive and well and even used as mounts and beasts of labor. 😂 We're all ignoring biological plausibility and my ranger constantly uses beast speech to chat with them. Everyone's having a great time.
8:48 How can you speak about what clearly inspired these original adventures, then completely space on them?
Ray Harryhausen movies...know 'em?
This is why you have Dinosaurs and Mythological creatures in the same setting...because people back then, would be inspired by the fantasy works of the time, and want to replicate that in their games... so you would have "Hydra's and Triceratops" in the same setting, without needing to be explained, because that was just the fantasy... I would wonder just how many old school DM's actually used/considered a Triceratops a herby, rather then a Carny, because they are commonly depicted in fantasy movies of the time as bloodthirsty...y'know, because of the big, killer horns.
Why did we have Dinosaurs and Mythological creatures?
Because Clash of the Titans, The Sinbad movies, Jason and the Argonauts, etc... had them.
In just Jason and the Argonauts, you have a Minotaur, a Spinosaur-like creature, and a Talos construct... not including Harpies, Gods, and everything else... Sound familiar? Yeah, thats basically a D&D adventure!
17:10 The continent of Argonessen of Eberron is the land of the Dragons, and has generally allowed Dinosaurs to thrive there... its not uncommon for the peoples of other nations to regular get in close to snare some and bring them back. You generally dont stike around, because the Dragons dont take kindly to unwelcome visitors.
But... I think your problem is less with... well, actually...
I think your problem with D&D, is 5E and WotC...
Your problem here is that WotC throws in Dinosaurs into an adventure, but they dont give context. Older editions of D&D use to provide blurbs of "what inspired us" reference guides, talking about Ray Harryhausen, talking about Jules Verne, and others... but 5E stuffs those references in small text, either among the beginning of the book that everyone skips over, or at the end of the book that nobody reads.
WotC wants to make all the shortcuts that 1E and 2E did, but doesn't want to show off "how old it is to the kids", because it wants to be "kewl". But those same movies aren't the thematic basis for people anymore; and I would say most people who came into 5E have probably never seen a Ray Harryhausen movie. They dont know of adventures in lost lands, where ancient creatures still dwell... sure, they might have seen Godzilla V Kong movie, but thats it. Not much of a basis...
So they used the old tropes, but got called out for being racist...which it was.
But they then didnt explore ideas of how to improve it. They seem commited to the Forgettable Realms being their "one and only", that it affects everything they do. Because they dont employ Mystara, they fall back on this racist trope of Dinosaurs and "savage natives". Because they dont have Greyhawk, they have to come up with these silly rock-tower-thing for where Spelljammers are coming from. Because they didnt explain Eberron, you dont realise that an entire continent is untouched for over 100,000 years for dinosaurs to thrive. Because they didnt explain Dragonlance, you dont realise that playing a Dragonborn is like playing a DEVIL in that setting, and you'd be killed on the spot for being a Draconian (Minotaurs are the common race there, the Champion of Pallindine was a Minotaur Paladin).
5E is horrible at showing its work, and showing its references...and mechanics.
Older Editions assumed you knew what things were based on, but just in case, TOLD YOU what inspired the adventure...
5E copies the adventure, but doesn't tell you what inspired it; so you wind up with this horrible, racist mess; usually that younger people have no context for, and have no nostalgia for...y'know, because they were a twinkle in their parents *******.
So...its mostly WotC's fault...
But its also these younger, newer peoples fault; go watch a Ray Harryhausen movie!!!
In the first proper campaign I ever ran, the premise was that the party all got shipwrecked on a mysterious cursed island. Since the reason the ship was there wasn't important, I told the players that I would base what it was doing on the PCs' backstories and a few character decisions later, it was a ship smuggling creatures from Dinosaur Island to the civilized lands. (The Druid PC had a sauropod companion, and the Witch had one of the little chicken dinosaurs as her familiar, from her time living on the island.)
Our table's theory was that, honestly, dinosaurs aren't all that impressive to D&D characters. Yeah, some of them are big and dangerous, but they are just regular animals. They don't talk, or breathe fire or teleport or eat your soul or anything like that. And I feel like in many D&D-type settings, it doesn't really make sense to have a period in the past with animals that lived and mostly died out before humanoids evolved, since generally humanoids DIDN'T evolve, but were created by gods or whatever. And if there is a population of dinos today, then they aren't "remnants of a past age" - in-universe, they are as much a part of the present as anything else.
I think it makes the most sense to cordon the dinosaurs off on one continent that they haven't really spread from and just have them be animals unique to that area. Think about all the weird stuff that only lives in Australia. You wouldn't expect a kangaroo to be hopping around in Rome, but if you saw one, you wouldn't immediately declare "that is impossible!". That way, dinosaurs exist and can be brought into the story (or the PCs brought to them) but aren't likely to be wandering around your pseudo-German medieval town.
While the humanoids living alongside dinosaurs having primitive technology is a descendant of colonialist tropes, I think the in-universe justification might be less that "dinosaurs make it impossible to build up an advanced civilization" and more "humanoids with advanced technology are prone to exterminating unintelligent threats that live around them." And this is a D&D world, where a halfling who kills enough rats can develop the ability to simply punch a T-Rex to death. It's also possible that such a society leans into Druidic teachings and magic to control or at least divert the dangerous dinosaurs, rather than have to fight them all the time, which would discourage the development of metalworking either due to Druidic values or a lack of need.
As a last note, I was playing in a campaign where the PCs went through a portal to the setting's sub-Saharan Africa-inspired region, and the GM had a lot of fun when an elephant popped up, informing us that our character have no idea what it is, but it's probably a violent carnivore - after all, it's huge and has knives sticking out of its face! There are plenty of present-day real-world animals that would seem just as bizarre to the average PCs as dinosaurs would.
I personally think the biggest issue many players have with dinosaurs in D&D is their names. We know, through pop-culture osmosis, that each dinosaur's name has a scientific basis - that it is a Latin-based description. It adds a "scientific" weight to dinosaurs that more conventional fantasy monsters lack. It's interesting to note that the D&D 4e core setting actively promoted dinosaurs as common-place domesticated and wild animals in itself, but it did so by calling them "drakes" and "behemoths".
Counter point to dinosaurs "keeping locals primative": to survive apex predators a group of people that lack natural weapons and armor would need to advance technologically. Also, "primative cultures" are only inferior because of the standards set by our western colonialist attitudes. Nazca, Mayan, Mesopotamian, ancient Egyptian and other ancient cultures might be considered primitive despite some advancements that rival the modern day.
4th edition did it best, herbivore dinos were called behemoth, and all the carnivores were drakes. So much more immersive than the scientific names and people could still recognize them for what they were at the table.
Fighting a "Fang Titan Drake" is pretty epic.
I did an entire arc that ripped off Jurassic Park to explain dinosaurs. Just some arcane scientists using a modified clone spell. I loved it and players loved it because its peak childhood fantasy: "If I was stuck on jurassic park, I would just use magic to kill them"
The entire chivalric romance genre is built on anachronism. King Arthur died about 500 years before knights were ever a thing, which was about 500 years before plate armor was invented.
Not directly related to dinosaurs themselves, but when My players caused a accidental magical mishap outside Blackstaff Tower, I used the T-Rex slot verbatim to represent the massively enlarged chicken that had resulted from the experimental enlarged/reduce spell....
I haven't seen much of an issue with dinosaurs with the people I usually game with. I never knew people we this weird about them.
I like how critical role did it in season 2 where the dinos were pulled into their realm from vocodo
I love dinosaurs in my game. I have them as beasts of burden and mounts even in capital cities.
I'm a Warhammer fan, and I have to say making Lizardmen Aztec inspired dino riders was a piece of beauty.
There is nothing more badass than a 6 ft tall dinosaur man riding on the back of a T-Rex both wearing Aztec inspired armor, wielding a tepoztopilli. It's slightly lesser cousins will ride on the back of raptors. It is a beautiful and terrifying sight.
On the colonialism angle, I would say while that's obviously a worry and they are technologically behind vs The empire and not China. They are, however arguably better masters of the arcane then even the elves. They are Savage but not unreasonable and it's more a territorial Savagery than like a primitive one. They are one of the most stalwart and true defenders against Chaos.
While behind in tech versus the gunpowder wielding races, they are their superior in magic and certainly their match on the field of battle.
Why build a gun when the magic spear thrower goes further? Why build a tank, when the not T-Rex can survive multiple shots from it and eat it?
reminder that canonically all lustrian dragons were driven to extinction by carnosaurs lol
My opinion is that a DnD setting is not Earth and you can include Dinosaurs in almost any form you want. For instance a homebrew setting I plan to use for a game just has Dinosaurs living in certain parts of the world. They aren't everywhere but are in a part of the world that has civilisation.
Also while humans didn't share the world with dinosaurs humans did exist alongside other megafauna some of which humans contributed to the extinction of so a world where humans and the other races of DnD living with dinosaurs just being around isn't too far fetched in my eyes. Especially as you mentioned other monsters are a common thing in DnD and civilisations still exist.
Shouldn't the civilization taming dinosaurs in DND be lizardfook for lore reasons?
This is what they did in Warhammer, and it's a beautiful design choice, that creates gorgeous minis.
I personally feel that dinosaurs make sense in a fantasy setting.
My world has a lost continent that has dinosaurs.
but, when it comes to wild shape, polymorph, etc, I make it clear tot he characters they are limited to tings their character would have seen.
If you want to become a Triceratops, cross the ocean, do adventures on that continent, and see one first.
And yes,
there are primitive humanoids in the area, but they are lizardmen and Tabaxi
I'm not an expert on Eberron, even if it is one of my top three settings, but I remember a Keith Baker's article explaining that on Eberron there was no extinction event, so most species of dinosaurs survived up to the present.
On Khorvaire (the usual PCs' continents), dinosaurs are more common in the Talenta Plains region, where Halflings use them as rides or beasts of burden. These are usually smaller dinosaurs (like velociraptors), but there are a few larger ones.
Meanwhile, on the dragon-dominated continent of Argoness, dinosaurs of all sizes are a normal occurence. There are many species and a T-Rex is just the local equivalent of a lion or grizzly.
Heh. I first played DnD back at the start of the 80's.. (I was 10 in 1980).
And sometime after Empire came out, we once fought waves of T-rex's with magic based AT-AT's basically.. lol.. walking platforms with magic cannons.
And it was just the best.. we all had tons of fun! ALL the fun in fact.. every last drop. 😁
As a dungeon master: my world has dinosaurs as apart of everyday life and the world isn’t lost, it’s known. It’s a bit like a Dinotopia or a Kaimere for those who enjoy speculative evolution.
Dinosaurs belong in D&D
Hell so do Aliens
Greyhawk literally has a crashed UFO in it
Gary's idea was "Genre, what's genre; put everything in the game"
Mind you, you don't gotta follow the ideas of a random dead middle aged white dude just because he helped invent the roleplaying game in its entirety; hero worship is for suckers.
But, I basically use Dinosaurs just like I do any other massive animal or otherwise fantasy creature.
One setting I made had a resurgent Dwarven nation that had mastered taming the neighboring fauna and as such getting big ass Triceratops as the far superior beast of burden over Oxen, Pterandon as aerial scout mounts for the army and plate armored T-Rex for super Cavalry (rarely though for T-Rex; they don't actually have the type of general terrain that's key for ground cavalry; lots of cliff/mountainside or jungle/rainforest and coastal territory that they had to fight in)
One of their highest grossing exports are the middle sized Dinos as purchasable exotic mounts or in bulk for cavalry mercenary companies that want an edge.
I've never really fallen into that stereotype of the gross "lost city" mythos from colonialism, nor do I ever use the real world colonialism base for how my settings developed in its several thousand years histories.
Like why would I want to include the gross horrible acts and attitudes of those empires in my games or the bias' they laid on the folk they "discovered" out there?
Fucking disgusting.
I haven’t watched the video yet, but when you mentioned in a different video that this one was coming out, the first thing I thought was, “I hate dinosaurs in DnD.” I think that’s one of the few DnD opinions I have that I refuse to budge on. I don’t like dinosaurs in DnD, and I don’t want them in my games.
Okay, now I’m going to watch the video.
Edit for brief post-video thoughts: I think part of my issue is that I categorize “unexpected dinosaurs” as a sci fi trope. I strongly favor fantasy-based DnD games. Dinosaurs don’t feel anachronistic, they feel like the wrong genre entirely and break my suspension of disbelief (as silly as that might be to say). The only fantasy story I’ve ever seen dinosaurs work in is that one Dresden Files book (you know the one), because it was urban fantasy with a plot about necromancy. Temporarily raising a dinosaur from the dead in a world where long-extinct dinosaurs are already a known fact (aka, our world) doesn’t feel quite as genre-breaking as suddenly tossing them into a high fantasy setting.
As long as they aren't called by scientific names I feel they fit. A giant hungry bipedal lizard? Good! Some rando screaming "Help! a Spinosaurus!"? No thats a fin lizard
Since playing OSR games I have come to my conclusion to why dinosaurs fit in a D&D world. They are just Dragons. Really. Giant beastial lizard like creatures (some can even fly). That is all it takes to be a dragon in my book. If wyverns and wingless drake are dragons, so can dinosaurs.
I ran Isle of Dread when I was 12, so early 90s. As far as I recall nobody at mybtable had trouble with dinosaurs.
During 1E we didn't care. Dinosaurs appeared when the dm felt like it. During 5E I am tired of "Polymorph the barbarian into a T Rex" action.
"You can have all the dinosaurs you want, but they need the feathers, and proto-feathers that dinosaurs would have actually had according to more recent archeology"...
"Wait, why you are turning them ALL in the pets, and mounts?!"
I'm really glad to see more people talking about dinosaurs in d&d, I feel like it's a whole world of possibilities to draw inspiration from, plus they work as a simple monster as well as animals that live somewhere, and the best thing is that they are real, they existed and yet we see them as something so far away, I love that kind of fantasy.
To give an example, the setting I created for my campaign focuses on an archipelago full of dinosaurs that recently started to be populated by mainlanders, so that clash between ordinary people trying to survive and discovering these strange but familiar creatures is the vibe I want to give by including dinosaurs (technically in-world I don't call them dinosaurs, but obviously they are, I treat them more like magical beasts than ancient beings lost in time).
Finally, I loved the video and thank you very much for bringing light to the subject, thank you!!
When I build a region, I make sure to place encounters that wouldn’t just break the ecosystem entirely; for example, if I’m building a rural countryside, I can’t put owlbears or even dire wolves because there would be no one believably strong enough to survive them. Instead, those creatures are usually designated to regions that are mostly uninhabited, and the people who live near it will even build their roads AROUND such areas so as to avoid them entirely. There may even be road signs warning travelers they are passing a known owlbear habitat, but as long as they stay on the road, they should be relatively safe. It would make sense that the population has gone thru some trial and error in setting up proper boundaries for safe passage around those places. The same rule of thumb could be said for dragons as well. No existing village would live within a country’s width of a known lair or roost, unless they were possibly subjugated by those dragons already. Making a believable world ecosystem is pretty basic DM design, and there’s a way to do it with every monster. For me personally, the idea of an isolated island known to be inhabited by “massive lizards” or an area in the underdark where huge ancient creatures live are all believable implementations for dinosaur habitats.
Oh man, if y'all are here for dinosaurs, check out Planegea. Stone Age roleplaying and IT'S SO AWESOME.
In my first campaign, the druid's player needed a little help establishing a narrative niche, so I introduced the idea that dinosaurs used to exist in their country, but "hero culture", the desire to go kill something big, claim its treasure, and never pay for a drink again, led to every animal resembling a dragon being hunted. The earth guided our druid to clutches of eggs it had protected since that day, so she could repopulate her island - empty after the Cult of the Dragon essentially turned a green dragon into a nuke - with baby dinosaurs, in hopes of one day building a land bridge and letting them migrate to the mainland. This also provided a nice pace for her to unlock dinosaur Wild Shapes
That druid's player did end up ghosting the party for the end of the campaign, but in an epilogue I told the party that she succeeded, and now Evermeet is essentially Jurassic Park.
However, this only applied to the main country. When dinosaurs come up in countries outside the one my stories center on, I remind my players, "your ancestors hunted them to extinction where you're from, but other countries didn't develop the same hero culture gung-ho on lizard murder".
I play a ton of pulp games so dinos make regular appearances. I love dinos in low fantasy, historical fantasy, or swords and sorcery type settings in addition to pulp. One my favorite NPC lines ever was from a hunter trying to get the party to help him hunt a triceratops.... "You ever hunt a triceratops? It's like a rhino only twice as big and three times as horny!"
I used dinosaurs in a game, west marches style, where the area was wild and uncharted. Giant lizard monster, only passing by them. And because they jad no expectation of dinos in their fantasy game:
They shat bricks.
I also ran a game for my kids where a hapless wizard playing around with time travel magic summons some dinos.
the game I play with folks has raptors that go "woosh" but then all bets were off after the DM introduced the "Cave clam" in response to an offhand comment I made about why were we finding pearls in a cave wall along with some other gems. (pretty sure he just rolled a random table) Now because of my smartass comments the whole campaign is Clams all the way down.
I always loved the idea of an Aztec or Maya-styled culture with dinosaurs. Because why wouldn't a native population reach that level of sophistication?
Basically dragons was the medieval word for dinosaurs, Introducing the Medieval Dragon is an interesting book for those who are interested in history.
I personally view it as an either or for world building. I find the middle ages more interesting than the more renaissance period that is the standard of "fantasy land", or the early modern of pulp fiction. So I like to go with a more Ars Magica mythic European setting and have dragons, rather than the modern view of what creatures from those fossils were.
I think magic is often used to justify progress despite dragons. The real answer is probably still colonialism but I could see that being used to try and explain it.
I wanted to come back and say this, dinosaurs are a "fact of life" in eberron, but eberron is a setting with strong themes of "civilization" for lack of a better word... and dinosaurs being outside of places of civilization are meant to contribute to a sense of contrast between civilization and people outside it.
I think its hillarious that some people clump up "medieval civilization" and "progress" together
It's my Game and I'll do what I want to! I love dinosaurs more than dragons, so I will may call it Dungeons and Dinosaurs.
One of the reasons I absolutely LOVE Eberron as a setting is that you can have a gang of dinosaur-riding halflings pull a Wild West-style raid on a lightning rail train.
This is actually good and compelling scholarship, and I'm here for it!
Again Mike is dangling that Carrot of him learning about Eberron in front of us.... :D
Wait.
Aren't dragons non-feathered, flying dinosaurs?
It's crazy how things can collide. I came across Cold Crash Pictures mere weeks ago!
As for dinosaurs in DnD, I usually keep them to a separate area of the world, but not because of anachronism. It's because an ecosystem couldn't support both dragons and tyrannosaurs or giants and titanosaurs. So I tend to make them like a regional difference in fauna rather than a lost world.
I had a dungeon master have a melt down over dinosaurs in D&D once.
I've never been a big fan of dinosaurs in D&D, but you've helped me rethink that position. I still believe in only wild shaping or polymorphing into creatures you've seen, though.
When I run a game, typically it is a homebrew worlds and it either a hard no or hard yes on dinosaurs. It depends on the mood I am wanting to set. The hard yes worlds I have ran will typically then not have some other monsters like dragons, but the dinosaurs maybe have some dragon like powers. sometimes I will do a version of "Hollow World" or the "Gazetteer" series.
What if the Lost World is somewhere in the north and the natives are white?