The various and numerous beasts of the
Mesozoic, "The Age of
Dinosaurs," include some of the most spectacular
animals that ever
existed. It is not surprising, then, that
they have been included in
the AD&D®
game, which thrives on the spectacular. More than a
score of the better-known dinosaurs are
included in official
works, along with a fair selection of
their contemporaries. This is
far too many. It is also far too few.
This contradiction has its roots in the
fact that while the number of different animals that are listed is high,
the number of truly
different forms is small. Brachiosaurs
or brontosaurs, camarasaurs or cetiosaurs -- it?s all
very much the same from the point of
view of the typical player, since they
differ only in their hit dice
and the amount of damage they can do.
Nor do gorgosaurs, allosaurs, megalosaurs, and tyrannosaurs differ all
that much in the
nature of the challenge they present.
Since they aren?t really all
that much different from one another,
these monsters could be
presented in a more compact manner. Already,
they are described
a c c o r d i n g t o
t h e i r g e n u s n a m e s i n
o f f i c i a l w o r k s (Tyrannosaurus,
Triceratops,
etc.). This is like calling all of the big cats (jaguars,
lions, tigers, leopards, and the rest)
Panthera or all dogs and
wolves and jackals Canis.
The same concept can be carried further, as it has been with other entries
in the Monster Manual.
The entries "elephant"
and "mastodon" cover more than one
genus
apiece, for instance, while "shark"
covers every sort of predatory
shark that there is; the most extreme
case, "herd animal," describes hundreds
of different species at a single sweep. Mesozoic
animals can be adequately described in
a similar way.
If similar forms are ranked together, then
the other problem ?
the lack of variety ? becomes more obvious.
Official works barely
begin to explore the possibilities. After
all, the Mesozoic lasted a
long, long time. Even though only a fraction
of Mesozoic life has
been uncovered, and even though only a
fraction of it is of interest to typical AD&D
game players, that still leaves a great number
of animals ? hundreds of genera and perhaps
thousands of species. Among the missing are most of the small and medium-sized
dinosaurs, most of the plesiosaurs and
their relatives, the majority
of pterosaurs, and the mammal-like reptiles.
A keynote of the
AD&D game is variety (witness the
hundreds of magical items and
spells, the numerous combinations of character
class and race,
and three whole volumes of monsters),
and additional creatures
mean additional variety, particularly
since some of these animal
types have unique combinations of abilities
and provide new challenges for player characters.
There are other reasons as well for taking
a fresh look at Mesozoic animals in the AD&D
game. For one thing, the view has
grown over the past decade or so that
dinosaurs were not just big
reptiles. They were biologically comparable
to birds or mammals,
or at the very least belonged in a category
by themselves, unlike
other ?reptiles.? They may indeed have
been warm-blooded, as is
indicated by several lines of circumstantial
evidence. This makes
the animals themselves more useful and
interesting and, more
importantly, it makes them harder for
player characters to tackle,
since they now become faster and sometimes
even smarter than
equivalent giant lizards. With its inclusion
of dinosaurs and other
prehistoric animals, the AD&D
game contains an element of science fiction, in that it uses the findings
of the science of paleontology.
In science fiction, it?s always a good
idea to be up to date,
especially if the latest ideas make better
stories than the older
ones.
Another argument for redefining the Mesozoic
monsters in
AD&D
gaming is that the old information is not only out of date
but is occasionally inaccurate. For example,
the description of
Tanystropheus doesn?t correspond
that closely to the fossil animal,
and neither does the animal listed as
Nothosaurus. If the game is
to include material from paleontology,
why not get it right, if only
for the sake of consistency? Then, too,
there are inconsistencies
within the context of the game.
Monoclonius and Styracosaurus
are the same size and they are the same
sort of animal, but they
differ in their hit dice (8 and 10, respectively).
Again, Elasmosaurus and Plesiosaurus are quite
similar in form and are given the
same lengths (though the Plesiosaurus
known to paleontologists is
a lot smaller than Elasmosaurus),
yet Plesiosaurus gets five more
hit dice. It would be better to keep things
in proportion to one
another.
Finally, a Mesozoic setting is like any
other game setting in that
it is more interesting and colorful if
it is more complete, and the
DM has more detail and background than
is available from the
game rules. While it is possible to glean
material from various
popular books, many of them are out of
date and none of them
were written with DMs in mind. The effort
of finding the relevant
facts may be greater than it is worth,
since creatures from the
Age of Dinosaurs can only be part of an
ongoing campaign. It is
therefore useful to have the information
most relevant to an
AD&D
game campaign readily at hand.
For these reasons, a description and redescription
of Mesozoic
animals in AD&D
game terms is offered here. While it is entirely
unofficial and may contradict some official
material concerning
Mesozoic monsters, it is designed to fit
comfortably into the game
as a whole.
In describing animals from the Age of Dinosaurs,
it is necessary
to use large categories, for the reasons
mentioned earlier. For the
sake of convenience, it is best to use
the names provided by scientists who classify these animals. Just which
level of classification is
used here is a matter of convenience and
depends on how much a
group of animals varies in its AD&D
game characteristics. Typically, the names of orders, suborders, or infraorders
of animals
are used. This is something like putting
elephants, mammoths,
mastodons, and related animals under a
single name (proboscidean) and including in the description a table that
shows how the
AD&D
game characteristics of the animals vary with size. The
space thus saved is used to give a more
detailed description of the
animals and their habits, and to describe
a greater number of
different groups.
Despite this space-saving technique, it
is impractical to cover all
the Mesozoic animals. For the sake of
simplicity, aberrant members of a group are left out unless they were common
and widespread, in which case they get a separate listing. Small differences
within a group are simply glossed over.
A great many small or
otherwise inoffensive animals are left
out, unless they belong to
groups that include larger animals and
can be conveniently listed
under the same heading. Just as the Monster
Manual doesn't describe rabbits or songbirds, these listings
don't include animals
that are unlikely to interact with typical
AD&D
game adventurers.
Animals that are incompletely known (say,
from a couple of arm
bones, jawbones, or teeth) are also left
out, since a guess as to the
animal?s overall characteristics could
turn out to be wrong whenever a more complete specimen is dug up. Besides,
many such
animals can plausibly be fitted into established
groups. Minority
groups are discriminated against here;
if a type of animal doesn?t
have many representatives, then it is
usually ignored. Finally,
there are animals that are adequately
described in official works
and are not listed here, except in the
encounter tables following
the descriptions of the animals (Tables
Al, A2, and A3). Despite the
above omissions, just about any known
Mesozoic land animal that
grew bigger than a woodchuck can be found
somewhere in the
following descriptions.
Mesozoic animals have a number of features
in common, summarized here in Monster Manual statistics.
% IN LAIR: 5% (pelagic
marine animals = 0%)
TREASURE TYPE: Nil
ALIGNMENT: Neutral
MAGIC RESISTANCE: Standard
PSIONIC ABILITY: Nil
Some general comments apply to these and
other standard
characteristics.
FREQUENCY: The frequency given is for the
animal in its most
characteristic habitat; elsewhere, it
may be rarer or entirely absent. Larger animals within a classification
are usually less com
mon, but no specific guideline is given
since DMs usually choose a
level of challenge according to the powers
of the player characters
encountering the animals.
NUMBER APPEARING:
As stated in the Monster Manual, this is
only a rough guide. This is even more
so with extinct animals,
though where possible the range given
is based on fossil tracks or,
failing that, on the behavior of similar
modern animals.
ARMOR CLASS:
Dinosaurs and mammal-like reptiles are given
an armor class like that of a similar
mammal or bird, where such
comparisons are possible. Some dinosaurs
have bony plates under
the skin and are therefore better armored
than might be expected. Most of the other animals are given the armor class
of
some equivalent reptilian creature from
the Monster Manual. For
the sake of simplicity, animals are not
usually given different
armor classes for different body parts,
since this would complicate melee and other animals would logically require
the same
treatment. Again, for the sake of simplicity,
armor class does not
vary with size. Any advantage a creature
gains by being bigger
and thicker-skinned is considered to be
cancelled by decreased
mobility.
MOVE: As with armor classes, movement rates
are based on
those of comparable animals that have
already been defined in
AD&D game terms. Within a group, large
land animals are often
slower than their mid-sized relatives
because, although they have
a longer stride, their movements are proportionately
slower, since
a stumble is more serious for a larger
animal. In the water, increased size is not so much of a problem, and larger
individuals
may be faster than smaller ones.
It should be noted that quadrupeds get
a
larger bonus for outdoor charging <(x1.5)> movement than humanlike
creatures do (page 66,
Dungeon Masters Guide). This
means that a creature with a move
of 12" can still catch up with a running
human. Like elephants,
the larger dinosaurs only look
slow ? a deceptive characteristic
that can be used to advantage by the cunning
DM. Bipedal dinosaurs should get the charging bonus for a quadrupedal animal,
since they are not built like humans and
therefore deserve separate consideration.
Terrestrial animals of all sorts swim
at their land movement
rates, to a maximum of 9?, if a swimming
rate is not given in the
text. Finally, since many of the dinosaur
groups became more
efficient at moving themselves around
over time, a DM may opt to
reduce the movement rate of the earliest
members of a group by
3? where the group spans the whole of
the Mesozoic.
HIT DICE: Dinosaurs and mammal-like reptiles
are given the hit
dice of birds and mammals of equivalent
weight and diet. The
more reptilian animals are compared to
crocodiles
and giant lizards, which (to judge
from examples in the Monster Manual) are
to be granted fewer hit dice pound-for-pound
than livelier animals
get.
% IN LAIR: The lair varies with the kind
of creature and the
circumstances under which it is encountered.
Marine animals that
never come inshore (pelagic marine animals)
have no lair. Amphibious forms encountered in the lair are at a hauling-out
spot like a
place where a seal, penguin, or crocodile
spends its shore time.
Eggs or very young animals may be found
there in season. Terrestrial animals encountered in the lair may be at
a daily or nightly
resting place, a wallow, or a nest. Archosaurs
(see below) and
mammal-like reptiles tend nests and nestlings,
while the remaining
animals described here hide the eggs and
leave the offspring to
fend for themselves.
TREASURE TYPE: While none of the animals
listed here gather
treasure, they are not without monetary
value in themselves. The
hide, horns, feathers, fur, shell, or
teeth may have market value.
For instance, the tooth of a large carnosaur
such as Tyrannosaurus might weigh up to 2 lbs., and sell for
up to 12 gold pieces
(DMG, page
27) even if its novelty value is ignored (and carnosaurs
have a lot of teeth!). Horn similar to
cow horn might be gathered
from the beak or horns of a ceratopsian
such as Triceratops. Some
small dinosaurs may have decorative plumes,
while the fur of
mammal-like reptiles might also be valuable.
Hides of various sorts
might also be saleable, and the rapacity
of some player characters
is such that they might explore other
possibilities as well. DMs
may wish to curb this looting by considering
how the novelty of
these materials might be a barrier to
their sale.
NUMBER OF ATTACKS: The number of attacks
is kept to a minimum where possible, though some account is taken of the
tradition that grants AD&D game creatures an attack for each paw,
hoof, horn, and tusk. Typically, horned
animals are only allowed a
single goring attack because the number
of horns is quite variable
within a group, and because two or three
horns aren?t demonstrably better than one in combat. Small animals may
be given a single
attack representing all or part of an
attack routine, since rolling
dice for tiny amounts of damage can get
tedious.
SPECIAL ATTACKS: Large herbivores (those
of size L weighing
300 lbs. or morel may trample size S or
M creatures, as well as
any size L creature of less than half
their own weight. A roll ?to
hit? is made whether the trampling is
intentional or accidental,
and the damage done depends on the hit
dice of the trampler: 2
HD = 1-4 points of damage; 3 HD = 1-6;
4-7 HD = 1-8; 8-11 HD
= 2-16; 12-15 HD = 3-24; 16-19 HD = 4-32;
and every additional
4 HD equates to an extra 1-8 points of
damage.
Trampling can be avoided if the victim
has a superior movement
rate, but even this might prove impossible
if the herbivores are
advancing along a broad front. Once hit,
a trampled individual
may move no farther that round and takes
trampling damage
from any additional large creatures that
pass over the spot and hit
the victim (all rolls to hit are at +4,
as the victim is considered to
be knocked flat). Even the toughest fighter
is well advised to stay
away from a herd of panicky brontosaurs!
Trampling may take
place at the end of a charge and may be
combined with butting or
goring attacks, but not with kicks, bites,
and other attack forms.
Some very large carnivores can swallow
size S or M prey whole
on a successful ?to hit? roll of 18 or
better. Those who survive the
initial biting damage may attack from
the inside, but the exposed
portions of the innards are well protected
(these beasts are
adapted to swallowing things whole),
and the position of the swallowed individual is distinctly awkward, so
that the carnivore has
the same effective armor class inside
as it has outside. The situation gets worse as time goes on. There is a
cumulative penalty of
- 1 ?to hit? for each round spent inside.
In addition, all archosaurs (see below),
nothosaurs, plesiosaurs,
and pliosaurs have a gizzard, which serves
to pulverize food before it enters the stomach. The gizzard is hard and
muscular, and
contains rocks, just like a bird?s gizzard.
It inflicts damage equal to
a bite on each round following ingestion,
with no ?to hit? roll
required. The swallowed individual dies
in six rounds from suffocation regardless of other factors, but the body
can be recovered
(more or less whole) for 1-3 hours thereafter
unless the carnivore
has a gizzard. If the victim manages to
inflict damage for more
than one round in a row, the carnivore
spits it back up again and
can bite again at +4 ?to hit? while the
prey is still recovering from
being regurgitated.
Any large creature may overturn water craft
by rising up beneath them, attacking creatures in them, or thrashing about
nearby. This applies to habitually aquatic
creatures as well as to a
tyrannosaur or brontosaur that happens
to be taking a swim. The
weight of boat and animal are estimated
and compared, and the
chance that the water craft capsizes is
10% for each 10% of the
boat?s weight the animal has. The chance
is doubled if the water
craft is a canoe without an outrigger.
The chance of capsizing is
checked each round as appropriate.
SPECIAL DEFENSES: Large animals may be unaffected by poisons, as indicated on page 81 of the DMG.
MAGIC RESISTANCE: Note that non-intelligent
animals are particularly vulnerable to magical effects, as described
on page 79 of
the DMG.
INTELLIGENCE: Non-intelligent animals range
in mental ability
from the jellyfish, a colony of brainless
polyps, all the way up to
tropical fish, frogs, and lizards ? a
considerable range indeed.
Animal intelligence covers everything
from the brainiest reptilian
animals (such as crocodiles) up to the
ability of an herbivorous
mammal or bird. Most non-intelligent animals
can learn from
experience, and all the ones described
here can show complex
behavior such as herding, cooperative
hunting, and parental care,
though they may be in trouble if they
meet situations that don?t fit
their programmed repertoires. However,
these instincts are likely
to be quite adequate for dealing with
tropical human and demihuman adventurers. Brontosaurs know very well that
bothersome
small animals should be stepped on or
ignored, and if that doesn?t
work, the brontosaurs should run away.
Creatures of animal
intelligence are even cannier, and they
may even learn to avoid
such things as pits and deadfalls if they
can detect them.
SIZE: The measure given
here is usually the animal?s head-to-tail
length. Since this may include quite a
length of neck and tail (especially in the case of a dinosaur), the animal
may not be quite so big
overall as might be guessed from the figures
given. A 10?-long
dinosaur might not weigh any more than
a large man, and a 25?-
long dinosaur might not be any heavier
than a big rhinoceros.
Bipedal dinosaurs stand about half as
high as they are long, at
least when they are on the move, because
they lean forward when
they walk and stick out the tail behind
for balance. They can
probably reach heights equal to about
three-quarters of their total
length. This may turn out to be significant
if player characters
seek refuge in trees.
Every tenth animal encountered is a juvenile,
with 10% to 80%
of its adult hit dice and appropriately
reduced attacks and altered
movement rates. Smaller and younger individuals
are usually
nestlings with no effective attack, possibly
under parental care,
while individuals with over 80% growth
are effectively adults.
LEVEL/X.P. VALUE: These figures are not
included in the description.
Calculating the experience point value
of Mesozoic animals is not very time-consuming for the DM, since they have
few
special abilities. Additionally, a display
of the experience-point
value for each size and type of creature
in the following descriptions would consume a great deal of space. As for
the "level" of a
Mesozoic monster, any figure derived from
the tables <(here, and,
here)>
in the DMG
is likely to be deceptive, at least in
the case of the larger animals.
Since they are not particularly clever,
dinosaurs and the like are
not as dangerous as, say, demons or elementals
that are worth the
same number of experience points.
T h e p r o g r a m a n d t h e p l a y e r s
The Mesozoic era is divided into three
periods. From earliest to
latest, these periods are the Triassic,
the Jurassic, and the Cretaceous, each one of which is tens of millions
of years long.
Most of the prominent animals from the
Mesozoic are archosaurs, which include the dinosaurs and the crocodilians.
Birds are
descended from archosaurs, and it has
even been argued that they
are archosaurs, albeit of an unusual
type. From the middle of the
Triassic right up to the end of the Mesozoic
era, archosaurs of one
sort and another were very common. Of
the animals listed here,
aetosaurs, phytosaurs, proterosuchians,
and pseudosuchians form
a group of archosaurs from the Triassic,
while crocodilians and
pterosaurs are separate groups on their
own. The animals known
as dinosaurs are from two different groups
of archosaurs: the
ornithischians (ankylosaurs, ceratopsians,
ornithopods, scelido
saurs, and stegosaurs) and the saurischians
(carnosaurs, coelurosaurs, deinonychosaurs, ornithomimosaurs, prosauropods,
and
sauropods). All archosaurs have a gizzard
and a four-chambered
heart that permits an active mammal-like
or birdlike lifestyle.
They lay hard-shelled eggs and which they
tend and guard in
nests. Like crocodiles or birds, they
tend the young after hatching
time as well, and may even nest in colonies.
The eggs are as large
as an ostrich egg in the largest species.
Small, active, terrestrial
archosaurs may have feathers for insulation.
Large archosaurs, or
those that spend much time in the water,
have scaly or warty skin.
The mammal-like reptiles were prominent
in the Triassic, and
are represented here by cynodonts and
dicynodonts. They include
the ancestors of the mammals, and they
resemble some of the
more reptilian mammals such as the platypus
and echidna. They
suckle their young and may bear fur and
whiskers, but they lay
leathery eggs which they care for in a
nest or carry about in a
pouch. They are warm-blooded, if somewhat
less active than a
mammal or a dinosaur.
Except for the labyrinthodonts, which are
amphibians, the rest
of the animals described here are more
typically reptilian. They
are a mixed bag of generally unrelated
types and are more fully
described in their particular entries.
The animals listed under "Dinosaur"
in the Monster Manual and
its companion volume are shown in Table
B with their classification under the new system proposed here. All are
accounted for,
except for creatures which are not from
the Mesozoic and except
for Tanystropheus. As explained
in Table B, the Tanystropheus
known to paleontologists is much smaller
than the one described
in Monster Manual II
and has a somewhat different appearance.
Because it is small, aberrant in form,
and cannot be included in a
larger group, it is not further described
here.
In some cases, the suggested number of
hit dice for a creature is
different from the number given in official
works. This is usually
because of differing information concerning
the size of the beast,
but it may also be that the number differs
slightly because the hitdice estimate for the creature fits into a system
and must be balanced against the numbers given to similar creatures.
As well as the simplifications already
mentioned, there are other
alterations of the facts for the sake
of clarity. Each period of the
Mesozoic lasted a long, long time; saying
that a set of creatures
lived in the Cretaceous is like saying
that humans, three-toed
horses, and giant predatory birds all
appeared "sometime after the
dinosaurs." With such long spans of time,
it is convenient to drop
out fine details. If a small percentage
of a group was present during a period, it is left out entirely, and if
the group survived for
only part of a period, it is left out
as well. On the other hand, any
animal that existed in fair numbers through
a good part of the
Cretaceous is included in the list of
Cretaceous beasties, even if it
didn?t live at exactly the same time as
the rest of them. The upper
and lower size limits for the members
of a group are yet another
area of simplification, being less well
defined and certain than the
precise limits given would imply.
In addition to such simplifications, there
are extensions and
embellishments of the bare scientific
facts. Evidence for such
things as skin coverings and behavior
patterns is hard to find, but
such things may turn out to be important
in an AD&D game adventure, so a number
of plausible assumptions are passed off as
fact. These are usually the speculations
of paleontologists, with
some basis in fossil evidence, but in
some cases the only basis is
comparison with animals alive today. Where
there is more than
one possible interpretation of the evidence,
the one that makes the
best AD&D
game creatures is chosen. The result is not science but
science fantasy.
D i n o s a u r d
e s c r i p t i o n s
Of the various ways in which Mesozoic animals may be introduced into a campaign, the "lost world" theme is perhaps the best known, since it has become something of a tradition in fantasy: an island, valley, or (as in Arthur Conan Doyle's original) a plateau cut off from the rest of the world. This is a useful approach, if a somewhat limited one. It has the advantage that the Mesozoic animals can be used as a unit, as a single episode in the careers of the PC adventurers.
The DM designing such
a scenario must decide whether the lost
world contains animals from just one period
of the Mesozoic or
from more than one, and whether or not
there are any non-Mesozoic
inhabitants such as cavemen, mammoths,
modern creatures,
or fantastic creatures. It is also advisable
to apply some
thought to the question of how big the
area is. This is not a trivial
question for those who worry about plausibility,
since it takes a
large chunk of real estate to support
a few sauropods, and a large
number of sauropods to support a breeding
population of carnosaurs. The greater the number and variety of animals
in the lost world, the bigger it must be. It may be best to think in terms
of
thousands of square miles in setting up
the enclave.
Finally, some thought
might be devoted to the question of how
all of these animals are penned in and
how other animals are
excluded. Most large animals can be kept
in by steep terrain, and
even small ones can be stopped by extremely
hostile land such as
sand desert or permanent ice. The designer
may also wish to
experiment with the idea of poisonous
cloud-banks, which aren't
out of the question in a fantasy world.
Whatever barrier is used,
though, it's hard to see how it could
hold back a pterosaur, which
can sail along for days at high altitude
with hardly a flap of the wings. <check: WSG, Flying
Mounts>
The large aquatic animals so conveniently
placed around an undiscovered island are similarly hard to explain, though
deep waters and cold currents might just
possibly do the trick. The
whole lost-world concept seems to be based
on the questionable
idea that Mesozoic animals couldn't survive
in a world full of modern fauna, and that they therefore need protection.
Another approach, one
implied in the encounter tables at the
back of Monster Manual II, is that Mesozoic animals might be a
normal part of the campaign world wherever
the weather is
warm enough. Certainly this doesn't have
any of the problems of a
lost-world scenario, since there's plenty
of room and no need to
worry about such barriers. Most of the
Mesozoic fauna retain an exotic flavor with such an arrangement, since
most campaigns are set in a cool temperate area, and most Mesozoic animals
won't stray that far north. They wouldn't be all that far away, though.
If Mesozoic fauna were loose in the real modern world, they would probably
thrive as far north as the Gulf Coast states or California.
In any case, the larger
and more spectacular Mesozoic animals
are likely to be restricted to wilderness
areas, just like the larger
members of the modern fauna, since civilizations
are hard on
large animals. Small and medium-sized
Mesozoic animals might
well turn out to be significant even in
the more heavily settled
areas, though. In warm and mild areas,
the presence of such
animals as large sauropods could help
explain how dragons get by
when the supply of human meat runs low.
An idea worth exploring
is that the dinosaurs might visit the
adventurers, rather than the other way
around. Mesozoic creatures
were often spectacularly successful in
their own times, and
they might be all too successful in modern
settings as well. Imagine
the havoc a small band of sauropods could
wreak in local forests!
(The wreckage of torn turf and toppled
trees that elephants leave
behind only begins to approximate what
a hungry sauropod might
do.) Smaller dinosaurs and their Mesozoic
allies and rivals might
be an even bigger problem, since they
could be harder to find and
catch. Imagine ornithomimosaurs
gobbling down the year's crop
of grain, or deinonychosaurs ambushing
travelers in the woods.
Some of the animals could prove to be
prolific, aggravating the
problem. As for the aquatic animals, imagine
their effect on local
shipping: what sailor would go out on
waters where a snaky head
might pop up and snatch him off the deck
at any moment? In cool
climates, cowardly PCs might simply wait
for winter
(though in the meantime locals might be
eaten, or might starve to
death), but this won't work in tropical
or subtropical areas, and in
any case some Mesozoic animals might possess
the instincts for
seasonal migration, in which case they
could be back next year!
These scenarios allow
for a number of possibilities, including
freelance bounty-hunting and trouble-shooting
on the part of
PCs or organized crusades to eliminate
the monsters.
They work best of all, of course, if the
PCs
have acquired holdings or responsibilities
in an area. An invasion
of dinosaurs and their contemporaries
could be costly and
troublesome as an invasion from the neighboring
kingdoms. In
fact, the two might be combined if the
neighbors detect a weakness
caused by the first invasion, or if they
blame PCs
for the appearance of the monsters.
Now that time
elementals and a Plane of Time have
been introduced into the AD&D game
(in Monster Manual II), there is yet another opportunity for Mesozoic
madness: time travel. (This
might explain the above-mentioned invasion
of Mesozoic monsters -- a hostile time elemental? an uncontrolled time-gate?)
While
short-range travel would have to be ruled
out because of the
confusion caused by time paradoxes and
the like, long-range journeys needn't present such problems. PCs might
visit
the distant past through the agency of
cursed scrolls, deities (hostile, friendly, or just bored), gate
effects (one-way or otherwise),
the functioning or malfunctioning of new
magical items, or the
machinations of artifacts and relics.
(Perhaps some of the "relics"
in a campaign world were crafted so long
ago that they add a
whole new meaning to the word ?artifact?;
perhaps they?d like to
go ?home.?) However they get there, player
characters in Mesozoic
settings must face an alien and sometimes
hostile landscape in
addition to the animals that inhabit it.
They may also be worried
about how they might return home as something
other than fossils, though this varies according to the circumstances of
their
arrival. In many ways, the challenge is
comparable to that of visiting another plane, an alternate world, or an
alien planet. Clerics
are cut off from their not-yet-in-existence
deities (since AD&D
game deities are merely immortal, not
eternal), thieves are out of
contact with their familiar cities and
victims, fighters are far from
the nearest weaponsmiths, and magic-users
are cut off from the
magic that permeates most campaign worlds.
Finding food, shelter, and material components for spells is a whole new
exercise.
In designing and refereeing adventures
in ?unearthly,? environments such as this, it is well for the DM to have
relevant information ready at hand, concerning the various things adventurers
might notice about their prehistoric surroundings.
This sort of
local color can be applied to any of the
above concepts, though it
works best with the time-travel scenario.
Information on the climate, terrain, plant
life, and minor animal
life not only adds color to the adventure,
but also indicates some
of the challenges that player characters
must face if their stay in a
Mesozoic setting is prolonged ? most particularly
the problems of
supply and shelter. The surroundings,
at the same time alien and
hauntingly familiar, may prove as difficult
as the large animals
themselves.
The creator of a Mesozoic setting should
remember that each
period of the Mesozoic not only spans
a great deal of time, but
also that each era within the Mesozoic
offers its own new world,
The Mesozoic had its deserts, deep seas,
high mountains, arid
plains, and chilly northern forests, as
well as the better known
rain forests, swamps, and warm shallow
seas. Only a polar icecap
is implausible, and even that wouldn't
be entirely out of place in
some Triassic settings.
That said, it is noteworthy that Mesozoic
climates were milder
than those of earlier and later eras.
Tropical and subtropical conditions extended far north and south of the
equator, and warm
temperate climes sometimes reached to
the poles. Adventurers
might be treated to the sight of the midnight
sun in a land of palm
t r e e s a n d
t r o p i c a l r e e f s , o r t h
e w i n t e r d a r k n e s s i n
a f o r e s t f a r
n o r t h o f
t h e a r c t i c c i r c l e . F o
r m o s t o f t h e M e
s o z o i c , t h e o c e a n s
reached farther onto the continents, leaving
shallow seas over the
low-lying parts and giving most places
a mild coastal climate. This
doesn't rule out deserts, though. Some
of the most notable deserts
of today extend right down to the water.
Rain was seasonal in
many Mesozoic climates, so droughts and
forest fires are not at all
out of the question. Imagine trying to
evade a forest fire and
herds of fleeing dinosaurs at the same
time!
The plant life and minor animal life are
sketched in below for
each Mesozoic period. It would be impossible
to cover everything,
so the emphasis is on what might be immediately
relevant or
noticeable to AD&D
game adventurers. The information has been
simplified and padded out, since accurate
data on plants and small
animals is hard to find. Their fossil
records are poor, and such
data isn?t often featured in popular books.
The DM can decide on
the basis of the material here what components
are available for
spells (especially druidic ones) and which
of the giant animals in
t h e Monster
Manual might be added to the scene if a larger cast of creatures
is required.
Triassic:
The earliest part of the Mesozoic is the most alien to
the eyes of player characters. Conifers
are numerous, and yew
trees are present, too, along with cycads
(which look like palm
trees but bear cones), tree ferns, and
common ferns.
Other common plants are less familiar:
trees with plum-like fruit and fanshaped leaves, plants that look like
cycads but bear flowers on
their trunks, and plants that look like
ferns but bear seeds and
grow to tree size. In swampy areas, there
are giant lycopods,
which look like a cross between a palm
tree and a giant moss.
Large horsetails replace the reeds and
rushes of modern times.
None of the modern flowering plants ?
hardwood trees, wild
flowers, or grasses ? are present.
There are animals that look like lizards,
rodents, and salamanders, but the ?rodents? are mammal-like reptiles, the
?lizards? are
unrelated to modern ones, and the ?salamanders?
are small labyrinthodonts. No true frogs
and toads exist. The turtles bear teeth
and won't be able to pull into their shells,
and no sea turtles and
tortoises exist. Among insects, the ants,
bees, wasps, butterflies,
bloodsucking lice (unless a half-orc unwittingly
imports some), and
a great many sorts of flies are absent.
The rest of the arthropod
world is out in force, however, so spells
like creeping doom and
summon insects should work quite
well. Missing from the land are
birds, snakes, land snails, and slugs.
Many seashore animals
look familiar, but there are no crabs
scuttling about. (Incidentally, trilobites
are from a much earlier
time and are not present.) The coral reefs
look familiar, even if
some of their inhabitants are strange.
Sea lilies may be found
which are dozens of feet long from "stem"
to "petals." Ammonoids and nautiloids, looking like octopi in spiral shells,
are numerous,
and other cephalopods exist that resemble
squids, though true
squids and octopi are absent.
Many fishes resemble
modern types, but most are covered in thick scales like those of a modern
gar. Numerous lungfishes and
coelacanths
are found in fair numbers almost everywhere, as are
eel-like freshwater and marine sharks,
but no skates or rays are present.
T A B L E
A 1 : T r i a s s i c E n c o u n t e r s (animals
by terrain and frequency on that terrain)
| Mountains | Hills | Forest | Desert | Fresh water, surface | Fresh water, depths | Swamps | Plains | Salt water,
surface |
Salt water,
depths |
| Pseudosuchian (C) | Dicynodont (C) | Aetosaur (C) | Pseudosuchian (C) | Labyrinthodont (C) | Labyrinthodont (C) | Aetosaur (C) | Dicynodont (C) | Ichthyosaur (C) | Ichthyosaur (C) |
| Cynodont, carnivore (U) | Prosauropod (C) | Dicynodont (C) | Cynodont, carnivore (U) | Nothosaurus (C) | Nothosaur (U) | Dicynodont (C) | Prosauropod (C) | Nothosaur (C) | Placodont (C) |
| Cynodont, herbivore (U) | Pseudosuchian (C) | Prosauropod (C) | Cynodont, herbivore (U) | Dicynodont (U) (1) | Dicynodont (R) (1) | Phytosaur (C) | Pseudosuchian (C) | Placodont (C) | "Barracuda" (U) (3) |
| Dicynodont (U) | Rhyncosaur (C) | Pseudosuchian (C) | Prosauropod (U) | Phytosaur (U) | Phytosaur (R) | Prosaurapod (C) | Carnosaur (U) (1) | Portuguese man-o-war (U) | Nothosaur (U) |
| Prosauropod (U) | Aetosaur (U) | Rhynchosaur (C) | Carnosaur (R) (1) | Carnosaur (R) (1) | Shark (R) (4) | Pseudosuchian (C) | Cynodont, carnivore (U) | Shark (U) | Shark (U) |
| Aetosaur (R) | Carnosaur (U) (1) | Carnosaur (U) (1) | Dicynodont (R) | Proterosuchian (R) | Carnosaur (VR) (1) | Rhynchosaur (C) | Cynodont, herbivore (U) | "Barracuda" (R) (3) | - |
| Carnosaur (R) (1) | Cynodont, carnivore (U) | Cynodont, carnivore (U) | Proterosuchian (R) | Shark (R) (4) | - | Carnosaur (U) (1) | Proterosuchian (U) | - | - |
| Proterosuchian (R) | Cynodont, herbivore (U) | Cynodont, herbivore (U) | Rhynchosaur (R) | - | - | Cynodont, carnivore (U) | Rhynchosaur (U) | - | - |
| Rhynchosaur (R) | Proterosuchian (U) | Proterosuchian (U) | Aetosaur (VR) | - | - | Cynodont, herbivore (U) | Aetosaur (R) | - | - |
| - | - | - | - | - | - | Labyrinthodont (U) | - | - | - |
| - | - | - | - | - | - | Proterosuchian (U) | - | - | - |
(C): Common
(U): Uncommon
(R): Rare
(VR): Very rare
(1) Triassic carnosaurs do not exceed 10
HD.
(2) Semiaquatic form. <this does not
appear on the above table!>
(3) Similar but unrelated form, 3" slower.
(4) Triassic fresh-water sharks do not
exceed 4 HD.
Jurassic:
In many ways, Jurassic scenes are like Triassic ones.
The large lycopods and seed ferns are
gone, but little else in the
plant world is changed. Turtles are fully
toothless, the rodentlike
animals may be called true mammals, and
the lizards and salamanders are like modern ones. True frogs and toads
hop about the landscape. To the hordes of insects are added ants and wasps.
Birds, hardly to be distinguished from
small coelurosaurs, are
found in and around the trees. There are
numerous small rhamphorhynchoid
pterosaurs. Slugs and land snails have put in an
appearance. There are crabs at the seaside
(looking somewhat lobsterlike), and squids have joined the other cephalopods.
There
are fewer lungfish and coelacanths, but
more sharks.
T A B L E A 2 : J u r a s s i c E n c o u n t e r s (animals by terrain and frequency on that terrain)
| Mountains | Hills | Forest | Fresh water, surface | Fresh water, depths | Swamps | Plains | Desert | Salt water, surface | Salt water, depths |
| Coelurosaur (C) | Coelurosaur (C) | Coelurosaur (C) | Crocodilian (C) | Crocodilian (C) | Coelurosaur (C) | Coelurosaur (C) | Coelurosaur (C) | Crocodilian, marine (C) | Crocodilian, marine (C) |
| Ornithopod (U) (1) | Ornithopod (C) (1) | Ornithopod (C) (1) | Plesiosaur (U) | Plesiosaur (U) | Crocodilian (C) | Ornithopod (C) (1) | Ornithopod (U) (1) | Ichthyosaur (C) | Ichthyosaur (C) |
| Carnosaur (R) | Carnosaur (U) | Sauropod (C) | Sauropod (U) | Sauropod (R) | Ornithopod (C) | Carnosaur (U) | Carnosaur (R) | Plesiosaur (C) | Shark (C) |
| Scelidosaur (R) | Sauropod (U) | Carnosaur (U) | Carnosaur (R) | Carnosaur (VR) | Sauropod (C) | Scelidosaur (U) | Scelidosaur (R) | Shark (C) | "Barracuda" (U) (2) |
| Stegosaur (R) | Scelidosaur (U) | Scelidosaur (U) | - | - | Carnosaur (U) | Stegosaur (U) | Stegosaur (R) | Crocodilian (U) | Plesiosaur (U) |
| - | Stegosaur (U) | Stegosaur (U) | - | - | Scelidosaur (U) | Sauropod (R) | - | Pliosaur (U) | Pliosaur (U) |
| - | - | - | - | - | Stegosaur (U) | - | - | Portuguese man-of-war (U) | Crocodilian (R) |
| - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | "Barracuda" (R) (2) | Shark, giant (R) |
| - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | Shark, giant (R) | - |
(C): Common
(U): Uncommon
(R): Rare
(VR): Very rare
(1): Jurassic ornithopods do not exceed
8 HD.
(2): Similar but unrelated form, 3" slower.
<footnote 1 is missing in a few places
on the table>
<note that there are 2 crocodilian
entries under Salt water, depths>
Cretaceous:
The Cretaceous plant world is very different from
that of the rest of the Mesozoic. Conifers
continue and the rest of
the Jurassic plants are present, but the
flowering plants have
arrived: magnolia, walnut, poplar, and
willow, beech and maple,
and many more, along with palms, ivy and
poison ivy, grapevines,
elderberries, water lilies, cattails,
and others. The druid's oak,
mistletoe, and holly are present, though
not exactly the sorts one
is used to seeing. Only the grasses are
missing.
Small land animals bear a familiar aspect.
Modern types of lizards may be recognized,
and the small mammals include opossums and shrewlike forms.
The only insects missing are horseflies,
deerflies, and other types that attack large mammals. There are
birds in abundance: many modern types,
as well as other less
familiar birds that bear teeth. Still
missing are songbirds (including
ravens and crows), hummingbirds, and modern
birds of prey.
There are snakes, but only large
constrictors and small burrowers
without poison. The reefs include large
bivalve molluscs the size
and shape of drinking horns. Octopi join
the other cephalopods.
The older, heavy-scaled
fishes have been partly replaced by
modern types, including recognizable relatives
of the tarpon, eel,
herring, and cod. Still missing are the
spiny-finned fishes and their relatives such as swordfish, perch, flounder,
and sea horses. Gar
and sturgeon may be recognized. The coelacanths
and lungfish
are rare. Sharks flourish, and the rays
have appeared.
T A B L E A 3 : C r e t a c e o u s E n c o u n t e r s (animals by terrain and frequency on that terrain)
| Mountains | Hills | Forest | Desert | Fresh water, surface | Fresh water, depths | Swamps | Plains | Salt water, surface | Salt water, depths |
| Coelurosaur (C) | Ceratopsian (C) | Ceratopsian (C) | Coelurosaur (C) | Crocodilian (C) | Crocodilian (C) | Coelurosaur (C) | Ceratopsian (C) | Chelonian, marine (C) | Chelonian, marine (C) |
| Ceratopsian (U) | Coelurosaur (C) | Coelurosaur (C) | Ornithomimosaur (C) | Pterosaur (C) | Plesiosaur (U) | Crocodilian (C) | Coelurosaur (C) | Ichthyosaur (C) | Ichthyosaur (C) |
| Ornithomimosaur (U) | Ornithomimosaur (C) | Ornithomimosaur (C) | Pterosaur (C) | Ornithopod (U) (1) | Ornithopod (R) (4) | Ornithopod (C) | Ornithomimosaur (C) | Mosasaur (C) | Mosasaur (C) |
| Ornithopod (U) | Ornithopod (C) | Ornithopod (C) | Ceratopsian (U) | Plesiosaur (U) | Snake, constrictor (R) | Pterosaur (C) | Ornithopod (C) | Plesiosaur (C) | Ray, sting (C) |
| Pterosaur (U) | Ankylosaur (U) | Ankylosaur (U) | Deinonychosaur (U) | Carnosaur (R) | Carnosaur (VR) | Ankylosaur (U) | Pterosaur (C) | Pterosaur (C) | Shark (C) |
| Snake, constrictor (U) | Carnosaur (U) | Carnosaur (U) | Ornithopod (U) | Crocdilian, terrestrial (R) | Crocodilian, terrestrial (VR) | Carnosaur (U) | Ankylosaur (U) | Shark (C) | "Barracuda" (U) (2) |
| Ankylosaur (R) | Deinonychosaur (U) | Deinonychosaur (U) | Ankylosaur (R) | Sauropod (1) (R) | Sauropod (VR) (1) | Crocodilian, terrestrial (U) | Carnosaur (U) | Crocodilian (U) | Plesiosaur (U) |
| Carnosaur (R) | Pterosaur (U) | Sauropod (U) (1) | Carnosaur (R) | Snake, constrictor (R) | - | Sauropod (U) (1) | Deinonychosaur (U) | Pliosaur (U) | Pliosaur (U) |
| Deinonychosaur (R) | Snake, constrictor (U) | Snake, constrictor (U) | - | - | - | Snake, constrictor (U) | Crocodilian, terrestrial (R) | Portuguese man-o-war (U) | Ray, manta (U) (3) |
| - | Sauropod (R) (1) | Crocodilian, terrestrial (R) | - | - | - | Deinonychosaur (R) | Sauropod (VR) (1) | "Swordfish" (U) (2) | "Swordfish" (U) (2) |
| - | - | Pterosaur (R) | - | - | - | Ornithomimosaur (R) | - | "Barracuda" (R) (2) | Crocodilian (R) |
| - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | Ray, manta (R) (2) | Shark, giant (R) |
| - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | Shark, giant (R) |
(C): Common
(U): Uncommon
(R): Rare
(VR): Very rare
(1): Cretaceous sauropods do not exceed
24 HD.
(2): Similar but unrelated form, 3" slower.
(3): Harmless non-fantastic form (plankton
eater); no effective bite.
(4): Semiaquatic "duck-billed" dinosaur.
Tables Al, AZ, and
A3 provide lists of the larger fauna for each
Mesozoic period in the style of the
Monster Manual II encounter
tables. Animals with less than ½
HD are not included, since they
are not usually significant to adventurers.
If needed, lists can be
compiled from the animals described above
and from the smaller
representatives listed in the ?A? tables,
and the DM should allow
two encounter checks for every one with
larger animals. Otherwise, the lesser fauna can just be used to set the
scene. In creating
encounter tables from these lists, the
DM should choose a particular subtype and hit die size for each entry (for
example "ankylosaur, nodosaurid, 5 HD" or "ornithopod,
12 HD"). This saves time
when the animals are encountered randomly.
Some terrain types
have no listing for rare or very rare
animals. These slots can be
filled with the less-common members of
the larger groupings. For
instance, large carnosaurs are less common
than smaller ones.
There are a number of
other creatures from the Monster Manual and related
works that wouldn't be out of place in Mesozoic
settings. The most appropriate of these
are merely larger versions
of animal types present in the Mesozoic.
Giant
eels, giant octopi,
giant
sea turtles, giant "rats" (to
represent the small mammals),
giant
constricting snakes, giant lampreys,
and a number of others
could merely be larger versions of animals
found in one or another of the periods of the Mesozoic.
The feel of a particular Mesozoic period
can still be retained even if more fantastic creatures
such as giant insects, crabs, spiders,
and centipedes are added
(each in the appropriate period). Giant
frots and toads and other
magically supported or altered creatures
might also be added.
However, the Mesozoic has an abundance
of animal types already.
The more interesting additions are the
intelligent creatures.
The field of candidates for intelligent
Mesozoic races is large,
but it can be narrowed considerably if
all those that partake heavily of human characteristics, or are mammals,
or are common and
widespread in the campaign world are eliminated
from the onset.
After all, the Mesozoic is billed as the
Age of Reptiles, and there
are plenty of the more manlike species
at home in the adventurers? native settings. Of the remaining creatures,
there are two
main groups, though they overlap a bit:
those that can be represented as relatives of real Mesozoic animals, and
those that could
be immigrants from other times, assuming
the possibility of some
means of time travel.
Of the first group, lizard men are the
prime candidates. With
some minor modifications in their depiction,
they could be passed
off as the descendants of semiaquatic
coelurosaurs. With a world
to themselves, the lizard men might be
more diverse. There could
be exceptional individuals with magic-user
abilities. There could
be cities, towns, and nations. There could
be groups of different
alignments. There might even be different
species ? lighter,
swifter types, for instance, farther inland,
or aquatic varieties
farther out at sea. In part, the diversity
depends on how many
other intelligent species exist with which
the lizard men share
their world. For instance, troglodytes
might be included and given
the same sort of ancestry. The kuo-toa
or the locathah might be
depicted as bizarre descendants of labyrinthodonts
or lobe-finned
fishes, though there is more science fantasy
and less science fiction involved here. Perhaps the kuo-toa would still
be surface
dwellers in a Mesozoic world. Further
toward the fantastic, the
ixitxachitl might be included in Cretaceous
settings, since they
seem to be a sort of ray.
Other than the natives, there might be
a number of other intelli-
gent non-mammalian creatures that have
somehow arrived and
flourished in a Mesozoic setting: dragons,
bullywugs, grippli,
krakens, ophidians, and yuan-ti, to name
only a few. Since they
h a v e a c c e s s
t o t h e P l a n e o f
T i m e v i a probability travel, the illithids
(mind flayers) might also be included
in a Mesozoic setting, particularly if there are intelligent races on which
they may prey, In
such a setting, they might be merely nocturnal
rather than subterranean in nature.
Suppose that after they have traveled back
in time to the Mesozoic, some particularly adventurous player characters
choose to
explore the Inner or Outer Planes, It
is a fair bet they won?t find
genies, demons, and devils of manlike
form in the distant past, not
if the DM is an imaginative one. Perhaps
the residents of the other
planes are modeled on whatever intelligent
creature dominates
the Mesozoic Prime Material Plane (as
per the nonhuman deities
of Deities & Demigods),
or perhaps the Inner or Outer Planes are
uninhabited or even nonexistent. If player
characters spend a
significant amount of time exploring the
Mesozoic, the DM will
have to give at least some attention to
the problem. For instance,
what happens when elementals are summoned,
or when various
spells that contrast or conjure up creatures
from the Outer Planes
are used? The safest course is to rule
that these spells simply fail,
but brave and imaginative DMs may wish to try out a few interesting ideas of their own.
Even if Mesozoic animals are granted the
greater intelligence
and speed suggested here, smaller animals
are added to the mix,
and they are placed in a larger context
with environmental challenges, and even if a few appropriate intelligent
creatures are
included in the scenario, there is still
a problem that crops up
sooner or later: big-game hunting. While
it may be exciting the
first time some dull-witted fighter slugs
it out toe-to-toe with a
triceratops, it can hardly be interesting
the second time. The
sheer number of hit points and melee rounds
involved make repeated combats with large creatures tedious, since there
aren?t
many possibilities in the situation. The
largest creatures to walk
the earth, even the imaginary earth the
player characters live on,
become boring. Some further considerations
may prevent this,
however, if the DM takes them into account.
One problem with Mesozoic animals in the
game, or for that
matter with any animals in the AD&D
game, is that the DM may
forget to take the surroundings into account.
These beasts are
well adapted to their native haunts, and
have a "home advantage."
What is more, interactions with other
animals may turn out to be
important. Large sauropods are a good
example of this. On the
face of it, they shouldn't be any great
challenge to intelligent players,
since the characters are more mobile and
have distance weapons (if nothing else, they can simply shoot their victim
to death if
they have enough arrows). Sauropods are
most likely to be found
in marshes and forests, though -- hardly
the best places for a
running or even for a running man. While
the sauropodss
won't be greatly inconvenienced (they
belong there), humans or
horses are slowed by undergrowth (which
the sauropods ignore),
fallen trees (which the sauropods step
over), and boggy ground
(which sauropods simply wade through).
Though the rulebooks
provide no specific guidelines on this
point, it is clear enough that
the sauropods have the advantage of mobility,
not the PCs.
If they decide to trample their small
foes, they can probably
do it. If they choose to flee, they can
probably get away.
Sauropods might be seen, heard, and even
smelled from a considerable distance, but it could prove impossible to
keep up with them. Then, too, any herd of sauropods is likely to have a
few
predators and scavengers in attendance,
waiting for an easy meal.
The weakened or preoccupied hunter might
be the victim of
carnosaurs or coelurosaurs.
The sauropods are just
one example. Similar considerations
apply in other environments, particularly
aquatic ones. PCs
may find that it is unwise to attack a
large animal from
a small boat (that is, if they want to
keep the boat), and that melee
almost invariably attracts predators.
Even fairly small aquatic
animals might simply hold swimmers under
until the swimmers
drown. Such considerations may force players
to give more
thought to the actions and strategies
of the characters they play.
Another aspect of large
animals is that they have a unique place
in the game system from the DM's point
of view. The more HD
a creature has, the more special abilities
it tends to have, so
that monsters with a lot of HP tend to
have intelligence and
talents that make them more dangerous
than they would otherwise
be. Large animals are an exception to
the general rule; despite
their impressive HP totals and the large
amounts of
damage they can inflict, they have few
special abilities and limited
intelligence. The incautious DM may be
fooled into thinking that
they may be compared to demons or dragons
that are in the same
HD range, with the result that the Mesozoic
monsters enter hte
campaign too late, when the characters
have already reached high
experience levels.
A large animal presents
little challenge to characters of high
level, not so much because these characters
have good armor-class
ratings and high hit-point totals, but
because they tend to be
highly mobile and have a large number
of powerful distance
weapons. It is better to introduce these
animals when the characters are at a lower level of experience, when there
is less temptation to depend on sheer power and more incentive to use clever
strategies. Large animals are a good introduction
to the idea of
using brain rather than brawn, using indirect
and perhaps nonlethal approaches rather than frontal and violent attacks.
The rewards are high, in the form of experience points gained, and the
price of foolishness is also high, since
a direct confrontation is
likely to result in the destruction of
the player characters.
Numerous books have been written on the
dinosaurs and their
contemporaries. The DM in search of material
that might be used
to color descriptions may find an abundance
of information at any
library. Of the various popular books
on Mesozoic life, John C.
McLoughlin's Archosauria
and Synapsida both provide colorful
commentary and an abundance of excellent
illustrations. David
Lambert's A Field Guide
to Dinosaurs is also recommended. In
looking through a collection of books
on prehistoric animals, it is
well to remember that personal bias can
play a big part in popular
presentations. It is also a good idea
to take a look at the copyright
dates on some of the more tattered tomes
-- the book itself may
be a fossil.
T A B L E B :
" D i n o s a u r s "
f r o m t h e M o n s t e r M a n u a l
v o l u m e s r e d e s c r i b e d
| Species | New classification | HD* |
| Anatosaurus | ornithopod | 10-11 |
| Ankisaurus | prosauropod | 1/2 |
| Ankylosaurus | ankylosaur, ankylosaurid | 11 |
| Antrodemus | carnosaur | 14-16 |
| Apatosaurus | sauropod, diplodocid | 21-22 |
| Archelon | chelonian, marine | 7 |
| Brachiosaurus | sauropod, brachiosaurid | 31-36 |
| Camarasaurus | sauropod | 19-20 |
| Camptosaurus | ornithopod | to 7 |
| Ceratosaurus | carnosaur | 8-10 |
| Cetiosaurus | sauropod | 13-18 |
| Compsognathus | coelurosaur | 1 hp |
| Dacentrurus | stegosaur | 5 |
| Deinonychus | deinonychosaur | 3-7 |
| Dilophosaurus | carnosaur | 10 |
| Dimetrodon | Not Mesozoic; synapsid reptile from Permian | - |
| Dinichtys | Not Mesozoic; placoderm fish from Devonian | - |
| Diplodocus | sauropod, diplodocid | 23-24 |
| Elasmosaurus | plesiosaur | 10 |
| Euparkeria | pseudosuchian | 1 hp |
| Gorgosaurus | carnosaur, tyrannosaurid | 15-16 |
| Iguanodon | ornithopod | 10 |
| Kentrosaurus | stegosaur | 5 |
| Lambeosaurus | ornithopod | 12-13 |
| Mamenchisaurus | sauropod, diplodocid | 21-22 |
| Massopondylus | prosauropod | 3-4 |
| Megalosaurus | carnosaur | 13-14 |
| Monoclonius | ceratopsian (horned) | 8 |
| Mosasaurus | mosasaur | 12 |
| Nothosaurus | nothosaur | 2-4 |
| Ornitholestes | coelurosaur | 5 |
| Paleoscincus | ankylosaur, nodosaurid | 9 |
| Pentaceratops | ceratopsian (horned) | 9 |
| Phororhacos | Not Mesozoic; flightless bird from Miocene | - |
| Plateosaurus | proqauropod | 8 |
| Plesiosaurus | plesiosaur | 4-5 |
| Podokesaurus | coelurosaur | 5 |
| Pteranodon | pterosaur, pterodactyloid | 2 |
| Pterosaur, giant | pterosaur, pterodactyloid | 4 |
| Stegosaurus | stegosaur | 10 |
| Struthiomimus | ornithomimosaur | 3 |
| Styracosaurus | ceratopsian (horned) | 8 |
| Xmystropheus
<cf. Tanystropheus> |
Lizardlike animal from Triassic with long tail, long stiff neck, and small head: 13' in all, with a 2'-long body; no effective attack | - |
| Tennodontosaurus | ichthyosaur | 10 |
| Teratosaurus | carnosaur | 10 |
| Triceratops | ceratopsian (horned) | 12 |
| Tyrannosaurus | carnosaur, tyrannosaurid | 18 |
* Hit dice may differ from official number
either because of
this new system or because of newly discovered
information.
