Giant sloth burrows, anyone?

If you grew up in the greater Los Angeles area, you probably took a school trip to the Page Museum and the La Brea Tar Pits, and so when I read entries in the 1e Monster Manual like Irish deer and mastodons and sabretooth cats and flightless birds and dire wolves, well fuck yes those were going in my game-world.

So did you include Pleistocene and Eocene megafauna in your D&D games?

That is an awesome article!!

I generally prefer monsters to animals, but when I've run Ice Age games, I've certainly used megafauna. For some reason, I feel better about them in those games. Or in RIFTS. Oddly, I've used them more in my Rifts games than my D&D games. Maybe because its Earth?

There are mastodons and hyenadons in my Wilderlands game. I should use Ice Age fauna more often, it fits the Conan feel.

Am I the only one who thinks it is poor form to publish on April 1st?

Great: Now I want to know how universal Fool's Day is in the Western World....

Quote from: Black Vulmea;956209So did you include Pleistocene and Eocene megafauna in your D&D games?

All the time, they're just so convenient and I get a little thrill out of 'bringing them back to life'. They generally have cool illustrations all over the internet too.

A personal favorite of mine is the thylacoleo, which combined the size and power of a small lion with better tree-climbing capabilities and an unusually strong bite. Even its name sounds kind of 'D&D'.

Terror birds!

Yeah, there's a shitload of weird ancient animals (besides dinosaurs) that can make good D&D monsters.

Had sabretooth cats but that's it. Still itching to do a full fledged jungle/pre-historic mini-campaign.

I've had friends who used ancient megafauna in some TFT and GURPS campaigns, but I didn't use them very much, though there are stats & rules & counters for them (in TFT mainly in the Silver Dragon and Unicorn Gold adventures).

I have a Pleistocene sub-continent in my campaign. It's isolated from the rest of the world by icy seas that only the most foolhardy sailors would try to cross. But every so often when there's an unusually harsh winter, the sea is covered with enough solid ice to allow giants riding mammoths, winter wolves, wingless ice dragons, woolly rhinos and other creatures to cross. The rest of the sub-continent is more or less what you'd see in Charles Knight's paintings.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;956248. . . I get a little thrill out of 'bringing them back to life'.

Quote from: Elfdart;957269

That painting is home for me - the low mountains under the condor's ass are today Griffith Park in the Hollywood Hills, the east-most end of the Santa Monica Mountains, while the promontory over the sloth's back is the Stone Quarry Hills, location of Chavez Ravine and Dodger Stadium. The background is the San Gabriel Mountains, and I grew up in the foothills near the left edge of the painting, roughly above the mastodons.

For me, megafauna tap into that powerful sense of place engendered by familiar landscapes. Growing up, dinosaurs came from Someplace Else but sabretooths and mastodons once prowled the ground I walked on my way to school. That was strong shit to me.

Quote from: Voros;957234Had sabretooth cats but that's it. Still itching to do a full fledged jungle/pre-historic mini-campaign.

Quote from: Elfdart;957269I have a Pleistocene sub-continent in my campaign.

I didn't have 'Pleistoceneland' - for me, there were just part of the wild lands of the campaign-world, a bit more remote than the 'civilized lands' perhaps, but certainly there was no reason a knight couldn't mount his Percheron, take up his lance, and go hunt mastodons if he wished.

Quote from: Elfdart;957269

Charles R Knight's painting is home for me - the low mountains under the condor's ass are today Griffith Park in the Hollywood Hills, the east-most end of the Santa Monica Mountains, while the promontory over the sloth's back is the Stone Quarry Hills, location of Chavez Ravine and Dodger Stadium. The background is the San Gabriel Mountains, and I grew up in the foothills near the left edge of the painting, to the left of the mastodons.

For me, megafauna tap into that powerful sense of place engendered by familiar landscapes. Growing up, dinosaurs came from Someplace Else but sabretooths and mastodons once prowled the ground I walked on my way to school. That was strong shit to this young buccaneer.

Yeah, I always got that sense of "lost time" when I visited the Lebrea Tar Pits as a kid. Neat article! Earthdawn has many paleocreatures in the setting. This will be a good fit. Oh, just saw this other article - atlatls allow casts of up to 80 mph, just the thing for megafauna: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/north-american-prehistoric-clovis-people-threw-darts-mammoths-nearly-80-miles-hour-1616021

Quote from: Voros;957234Had sabretooth cats but that's it. Still itching to do a full fledged jungle/pre-historic mini-campaign.

Yeah, I don't generally do "stone age"/"prehistoric"/"lost world" settings, but I do love dropping in smilodons just about anywhere.

Frequently.

Gorgonopsids are like awesome T-Rex Dogs....



Daeodons are basically boars the size of rhinos...




And the cruel Elven Riders of The Wyld Hunt in my games sit astride mighty Megaloceros...