I like them best in a weird sword-and-sorcery style setting, where random dinosaurs are cool and don't need to be explained. If you have a triceratops but say it's an Unholy Sacred Beast of Gruumsh, it's not exactly a triceratops, is it?

Oh, I give 'em 'local names', absolutely (spineback, fangface, giant blue-eyed horse-ripper, etc); but I wouldn't hesitate to tell the players they're dealing with some sort of allosaurus-type shape or whatever.

I called them dragons.

Dinosaurs are fucking cool. In any setting.

Quote from: Dan Davenport;533310Two questions:

(1) Do you like dinosaurs in your fantasy settings?

(2) If so, how do you like them presented? As just another sort of creature in the setting, or as temporal anomalies of some sort?

I think the approach used in Arrowflight is kinda cool, which presents dinosaurs as a primitive sort of dragon.

Quote from: Dan Davenport;533344On a related note, what do you call the dinosaurs in your fantasy settings, both as a group and as the various types? Do you just call them "dinosaurs," "velociraptors," etc., or do you have setting-specific names for them?

I like dinosaurs in fantasy settings if I'm doing an Edgar Rice Burroghs pulpy setting (like Dark Sun or Isle of Dread) and sometimes use them for random portal upset monsters. A lot depends on the group and what previous adventures have happened.

Usually the Players are the ones who get to name the critters, except when it is a Lost World thing where they have local names.

EDIT: Except now I'm thinking of what a setting would look like if it had a civilization of dragonkind that incorporated dinosaurs into its infrastructure. What would it look like at its height, after its downfall, would this be a Planet of the Apes scenario with the dragonkind as humans and the reptiles as the apes?

Good things to let roll around in my head while doing laundry.  

In the aforementioned Mexica-with-saurians campaign, we used setting-specific descriptive names.  "Red-crest-hunter", "Horn-face", etc.  The T-Rexes were "Grandfather Thunder", IIRC.  We were probably going a bit far with the heap-big-Injun etymology, but then I can't have much respect for an empire that got itself conquered by 12 guys with matchlocks.

I prefer dinosaurs over dragons anytime in any setting. Dragons to me are dinosaurs that have been reconstructed incorrectly.

Quote from: HombreLoboDomesticado;533549I prefer dinosaurs over dragons anytime in any setting. Dragons to me are dinosaurs that have been reconstructed incorrectly.

Well, you could always go the Land of the Lost route and turn one of your dinosaurs into a dragon.

I've never given it much thought.  Usually, I have dinosaurs in isolated wilderness/jungle areas.

RPGPundit

With a whole plethora of fantastic prehistoric fauna to choose from, who needs dragons? Dragons are boring.

Well, I had a great workup of encounter tables and new Dinosaurs for 0D&D done up using Inspiration Pad Pro. When I upgraded to Win 8 in early April, Windows automatically created a brand new Windows.old folder and simply deleted the existing Windows.old folder instead. Somehow during the whole process of creating a complete set of 0D&D encounter tables I neglected to make a backup copy and place it somewhere safe (like on a flash drive, for example). I lost a few other name generators as well, including my Egyptian Name Generator.

Net loss: 40-50 manhours of data entry and table generation work


Aaaarrrrggggg! &^%$^ Windows!!! So looking forward to getting a Linux Wildebeast with Ubuntu!

As a professional Windows system administrator, I have to admit I'm curious why any user data of any kind was stored in the Windows folder in the first place.

Quote from: daniel_ream;534430As a professional Windows system administrator, I have to admit I'm curious why any user data of any kind was stored in the Windows folder in the first place.

Hmmm? That's where the software was installed, and the default save location for data files is with the app in the c:\programfiles\x86 folder. Remember I didn't write the app that does it this way, I just use it. The newer version of IP Pro correctly writes all the data to the docs folder.

Normally I make at least one backup of anything and tuck that in another folder somewhere on the C:drive, on Cd, on DvD, or on an alternate backup drive. I'm not keen on saving everything in the documents folder as I have had the index crash more than once there and lost docs there as well. In addition some programs/apps are finicky and will delete and then reinstall only packaged app data files to the docs folder and will delete any other files it finds there as part of installation/re-install.

It was my bad for not ensuring that I had a backup of the data file prior to upgrading, but then again I have a couple dozen major apps I'm usually working with.

I like dinosaurs living in "certain areas", same as any other monsters, but it doesn't need to be remote by any means for my tastes.  Relevant to my current campaign, I love that N5 Under Illefarn has no compunctions throwing dinosaurs at a 1st-level party: as a result, my PCs are now terrified of ceratosaurs.  (They encountered one the same night that they had shared a campsite with a group of pilgrims, with the result that - what with my randomizing hits amongst available targets - it displayed a marked taste for pilgrims, which obligingly screamed and flagellated themselves and were neatly bit in half in turn.)  So, yeah: In the 1e Forgotten Realms as written, especially in The North (as well as Chult and other regions), dinosaurs are in.

Quote from: GameDaddy;534412Well, I had a great workup of encounter tables and new Dinosaurs for 0D&D done up using Inspiration Pad Pro. When I upgraded to Win 8 in early April, Windows automatically created a brand new Windows.old folder and simply deleted the existing Windows.old folder instead. Somehow during the whole process of creating a complete set of 0D&D encounter tables I neglected to make a backup copy and place it somewhere safe (like on a flash drive, for example). I lost a few other name generators as well, including my Egyptian Name Generator.

Net loss: 40-50 manhours of data entry and table generation work


Aaaarrrrggggg! &^%$^ Windows!!! So looking forward to getting a Linux Wildebeast with Ubuntu!

Sorry to hear that man, but christ, why in god's name did you upgrade with a Consumer Preview?