RPGaDay 2019: 22 Lost

So, this is fun: Conan and Valeria encountering a dinosaur-like creature in the classic “Red Nails:”

Through the thicket was thrust a head of nightmare and lunacy. Grinning jaws bared rows of dripping yellow tusks; above the yawning mouth wrinkled a saurian-like snout. Huge eyes, like those of a python a thousand times magnified, stared unwinkingly at the petrified humans clinging to the rock above it. Blood smeared the scaly, flabby lips and dripped from the huge mouth. The head, bigger than that of a crocodile, was further extended on a long scaled neck on which stood up rows of serrated spikes, and after it, crushing down the briars and saplings, waddled the body of a titan, a gigantic, barrel-bellied torso on absurdly short legs. The whitish belly almost raked the ground, while the serrated backbone rose higher than Conan could have reached on tiptoe. A long spiked tail, like that of a gargantuan scorpion, trailed out behind. "Back up the crag, quick!" snapped Conan, thrusting the girl behind him. "I don't think he can climb, but he can stand on his hind legs and reach us—"

So, it’s basically a dinosaur, right? And if you can’t quite see it that way, Barry Windsor-Smith sure could. Here’s a page from his critically-acclaimed comic book adaptation of “Red Nails.”

click to enlarge

I told you that to tell you this: whenever I see the world “Lost” I assume that we’re going to be talking about dinosaurs. It’s inevitable and a little strange, but Lost, to me, is one half of the term “Lost World,” which means, in literary terms, Dinosaurs!

I love dinosaurs. If you don’t have a favorite dinosaur, you need to leave. I am serious. Dinosaurs are Monster Kid 101. They are a part and parcel of fantasy and science fiction both and stories of dinosaurs (from Lost Worlds) interacting with the humans that stumble across them are part of a sub-genre that is literally over a hundred years old.

Dungeons & Dragons understood this, and dutifully included stats for the most classic dinosaurs in the AD&D Monster Manual.  Here’s a very classic-looking T-Rex from Diesel for TSR’s Monster cards from 1982 (think flash cards for AD&D monsters with only slightly better color artwork than the black and white masterpieces in the Monster Manual).

TSR also published a classic module (by Zeb Cook and Tom Moldvay, no less), called The Isle of Dread, and it’s a classic Lost World wilderness hex crawl adventure on a strange island full of dinosaurs and other exotic creatures right out of Jules Verne and Arthur Conan Doyle by way of Ray Harryhausen.

Dinos in D&D. Boom. Done. Everything should be platinum. I should be happy, right? Right? Well I can't get happy. It's physically impossible for me to get happy.

Maybe it’s my weirdly Puritanical streak when it comes to high and low fantasy. If we’re talking knights and wizards, I think dragons, not dinosaurs. After all, the game is called Dungeons and Dragons, not Dungeons & Dinosaurs. Why, then, does it not bother me when we insert Dinosaurs into modern-day settings (Jurassic Park) or the wild west (The Valley of Gwangi) or the Pulp era (King Kong).

Two reasons come to mind. One is that those other examples above all make use of a Lost World, whether by natural accident or man-made engineering. Lost Worlds have dinos, and that’s all the explanation you need. Also, in every other instance listed above, Dinosaurs were the apex predator, the aberration, the monster in a monsterless world. This is not true in Dungeons and Dragons; it creates an ecology where you have to figure out why the dinos haven’t eaten all of the monsters or vice-versa. After all, aside from the treasure hoarding, a red dragon and a Tyrannosaurus Rex have more or less the same diet, the same habitat, the same mannerisms, and certainly the same pants-shitting size and scale to terrify players.

The T-Rex can’t fly, cast magic, or breathe fire. You know, so it’s like a dragon, only...not as cool. And dinosaurs should never be not cool. Ever. 

Tim Truman's cover art for The Isle of Dread reprint.

But…stay with me now…what if there were no dragons? If instead of dragons, your big bad was the T-Rex, that becomes your default for the “oh, shit” moment when you realize the necromancer you’re supposed to fight has a pet therapod.

I’m thinking of a heroic fantasy world, where sorcery is more uncommon, and the humanoids are out in full force. The monsters of the world have managed to tame the dinosaurs in this world to act as beasts of burden and war mounts. It’s Dinotopia, only with Goblins and Drow. Dwarves charging into battle on Triceratops. Orcs riding allosauruses. The Lizard folk use Pteranodons as winged mounts. Monster armies are bad enough, but when the monster armies have conscripted dinosaurs, they become the stuff of nightmares.

Humans have none of those advantages, but maybe they are more adept at psionic abilities, and they use massive dino-killing siege equipment, as well as clockwork automatons scavenged from the wreckage of the last great war. High magic has disappeared in the wake of the rise of chaos. One of the campaign goals may be to find the source and re-awaken it to jump-start the Age of Wonder. It would mean the death of the dinosaurs and bring magic (and dragons) back into the world.

But before that happens, you have twenty levels of characters periodically running afoul of a pissed-off Stegosaurus and running like hell to escape the spiked tail swinging in a deadly arc, smashing trees apart as it does.


I would play in that game. Hell, I may have to write it.