Greetings!

How would having various breeds of Dinosaurs running around in the campaign world effect human society and culture?

Assuming also that perhaps some kinds of Dinosaurs could be domesticated. Such an impact could be pretty interesting!

Dinosaur meats harvested and eaten?

Herds of domesticated and semi-domesticated Dinosaurs being raised for use as food as well as work animals.

Interesting!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

I think the realistic answer is our ancestors would have hunted them to extinction 10,000 years ago.

But a more fun answer might be to consider what happens in a world where the countryside is full of giant predators a single human has no chance against, and where massive herbivores can knock over trees and buildings. That pretty much rules out normal open settlements or farmland. I think walled cities would be the norm, with the walls extended far enough to allow enough crops to feed the populace. Humanity and demi-humanity would live in isolated pockets, and most people would live their entire lives inside the walls. Travel between the city-states would be restricted to caravans with extreme security (adventurers, ho!). If you want to steampunk it up a bit, the caravans might be trains or zeppelins.

People who live outside the city have a furtive existence, hiding in holes -- "dwarf lands" could be a dismissive phrase for the entire world outside the walls. There might be networks of tunnels connecting some of the cities, but I'd restrict that and make it dangerous, to encourage overland travel.

Since humanity isn't there to clear cut forests, the jungles and forests would be majestic, old-growth things. The fey would be powerful, and might not take on a human-seeming. Sequoias and other trees might reach to the skies, and elves might live a nomadic existence in the canopies above. Though perhaps not: The elephants cleared the forests and jungles of Africa and turned them into savannas, and sauropods would have an even easier job in reshaping the landscape. Trees might come in patches, though the elves might still have tiny forests fortified against the depredations of titanosaurs and diplodocoids.

The extreme difficulty of travel would mean each settlement is unique and insular, with its own peculiar customs. This would make for a great settlement-of-the-week campaign structure, where every couple of sessions the PCs would travel to a new city or stronghold, try to figure out the rules, not step on any toes, and probably intervene when the local customs offend their sensibilities. Borrow from Conan and Star Trek, from Traveller or Marco Polo's Travels, or any other media that has the protagonists meeting weird insular cultures and interacting with them on a regular basis.

Quote from: SHARK on July 12, 2022, 11:45:30 AMHerds of domesticated and semi-domesticated Dinosaurs being raised for use as food as well as work animals.

The cow is about the largest animal humans can domesticate for food. Anything larger would be too dangerous and much less efficient. So, I'd expect ranches in DinoWorld to be herding cow-sized dinosaurs instead groups of huge brontosaurus for the same reason that ranches in our world don't herd elephants.

The same is true of the carnivores. Would a pack of raptors be significantly more dangerous than a pack of wolves? Or bears? Or lions?

I suspect that a medieval DinoWorld to be very similar to our own world but with gladiators fighting dinosaurs rather than big cats.

Quote from: hedgehobbit on July 12, 2022, 12:44:28 PM
The cow is about the largest animal humans can domesticate. Anything larger would be too dangerous and much less efficient.

Don't Indian elephants qualify as domesticated? They are used for transportation and actual work in Southeast Asia. An elephant is about the largest land animal we've got so it's hard to say if larger ones couldn't be domesticated.

Quote from: SHARK on July 12, 2022, 11:45:30 AM
Greetings!

How would having various breeds of Dinosaurs running around in the campaign world effect human society and culture?

I hope you haven't seen "Jurassic World: Dominion". I did, and my friends had to physically restrain me and call a doctor.

Quote from: Ruprecht on July 12, 2022, 01:35:45 PMDon't Indian elephants qualify as domesticated? They are used for transportation and actual work in Southeast Asia. An elephant is about the largest land animal we've got so it's hard to say if larger ones couldn't be domesticated.

My statement was unclear as I was talking about animals raised for food. Elephants have been used for work for over 2,000 years. However, I'm not sure the exact number or how significant they were as in terms of being an important part of the economy of the region. I was just trying to discuss the relative cost of feeding huge animals verses the value of the product of those animal, whether the meat or the work. And how that economy would remain the same if you swap in dinosaurs for the mammals.

As far as imagining a world where humans and dinosaurs live together, in order to create a civilization you need a large amount of farmland that's relatively free of animals before you can afford to feed a city. So, the people living there would have figured out how to keep the dangerous animals out before they can even begin building their settlements. Whether that is a result of hunting the large predators to extinction or by some easy to build barrier is up to the imagination of the author.

Of course, there is also the DinoApocalypse but that's more of a sci-fi setting than a fantasy one.

Quote from: hedgehobbit on July 12, 2022, 12:44:28 PM

Quote from: SHARK on July 12, 2022, 11:45:30 AMHerds of domesticated and semi-domesticated Dinosaurs being raised for use as food as well as work animals.

The cow is about the largest animal humans can domesticate for food. Anything larger would be too dangerous and much less efficient. So, I'd expect ranches in DinoWorld to be herding cow-sized dinosaurs instead groups of huge brontosaurus for the same reason that ranches in our world don't herd elephants.

Is this just your opinion, or are you basing this on an analysis done somewhere?  I've no particular interest in arguing the issue, but if someone's done some real thinking about it it might make interesting reading.

The world of RIFTS in the original main book is quite different than the setting in its later incarnation via the many splatbooks and one of the main book concepts was the plethora of dinos running amuck in the setting.

The big question I have regarding dinos in settings is their level of intelligence. If they are easily spooked animals, then they aren't a big threat as they would fear Man like most other beasts. But if they're too stupid to back down and ignore Man's threat because he's a tasty meatsack, now there's high danger.

That's how I run them in RIFTS. Nigh-brainless eating machines.

Other than the question of how evolution works with niche partitioning, there isn't too much that would change. The giant dinosaurs might be a bit of a problem for agriculture, but with magic and good old barbed wire, it should be possible to deter the herbivores. The big carnivores would probably be hunted via adventurer bounties I'd imagine to keep em away from settlements. As has already been mentioned, it would probably also be possible to domesticate the small and medium sized ones. The real question and impediment to domestication would be intelligence and group behavior. Domesticated animals tend to be of mid level animal intelligence that also exhibit herd or pack behaviors. Yes, cats are more solitary and domesticated, but they are weird so anthropologists, archeologists, and historians are still arguing about how it happened.

Quote from: Hzilong on July 13, 2022, 04:29:17 AM
. Yes, cats are more solitary and domesticated, but they are weird so anthropologists, archeologists, and historians are still arguing about how it happened.

They carry a brain parasite which make the infected think they are adorable.  It made it much easier for them to domesticate humans.

Quote from: Hzilong on July 13, 2022, 04:29:17 AM
Other than the question of how evolution works with niche partitioning, there isn't too much that would change. The giant dinosaurs might be a bit of a problem for agriculture, but with magic and good old barbed wire, it should be possible to deter the herbivores. The big carnivores would probably be hunted via adventurer bounties I'd imagine to keep em away from settlements. As has already been mentioned, it would probably also be possible to domesticate the small and medium sized ones. The real question and impediment to domestication would be intelligence and group behavior. Domesticated animals tend to be of mid level animal intelligence that also exhibit herd or pack behaviors. Yes, cats are more solitary and domesticated, but they are weird so anthropologists, archeologists, and historians are still arguing about how it happened.

D&D and its spin-offs has never had a consistent approach to evolution. Most fantasy worlds are designed in accordance with Young Earth Creationism, then you have monsters and races whose backstories describe millions of years of evolution that couldn't possibly have happened.

I treat "1 Million B.C." as a distinct campaign setting and explain away dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts in other settings as the result of portals.

Ah Dinosaurs in the campaign!

The book "Guns, Germs, & Steel" has some interesting insights into anthropology as it occurred on our world.

Yeah, Elephants are definitely domesticated in India.  I'm not sure about in Africa, but I wouldn't be surprised if the African Elephants could be domesticated.  IIRC, American circuses used to ship in African Elephants for domestication purposes, but I'm not sure.

In theory, I can see herbivorous dinosaurs being able to be domesticated to a limited degree, so far as humanity can protect and feed them.


I think it goes without saying that the carnivorous raptors & T-Rex would be universally hazardous, but these creatures didn't overwhelm the herbivores of their day.  So they're probably rare enough so as to not be a constant threat.  But when a pack of Velociraptors DO show up, a tiny unprepared human civilization is going to take heavy losses.

I do disagree that agriculture would be impossible.  But that also assumes that carnivores aren't in sufficient numbers to slaughter every herbivore in existence.  Because then the carnivores just die out too.   But that said, humanity would need to adapt fortifications where they could seek refuge in times of emergency.

And lets not underestimate early human's three natural advantages: Color vision, big brains, and the opposable thumb.  The ability to manufacture sharp pointy sticks that can be thrown from a distance, helped our ancestors survive several nasty carnivorous mega fauna in the past.

There are even some researchers thinking that humans may actually have coincided with actual dinosaurs.  Maybe this idea isn't as outlandish as we seem to think?

I am reminded of the Komodo dragons located in Indonesia.  Locals obviously have a very nasty predator that they have to watch out for and part of their strategy is to offer up sacrificial goats and livestock that the Komodo monitors can eat so that the rest of the livestock and villagers aren't hunted down by these lizards.  I can see that being a viable tactic for larger Dinosaurs too.

In conclusion, I'm not sure that introducing Dinosaurs into a game environment is that outlandish.

However, as with our ancestors, any truly dangerous predator, that we can't sufficiently control, would eventually be isolated or completely eliminated as our technological capacity to do so becomes available.

Quote
Yeah, Elephants are definitely domesticated in India.  I'm not sure about in Africa, but I wouldn't be surprised if the African Elephants could be domesticated.  IIRC, American circuses used to ship in African Elephants for domestication purposes, but I'm not sure.

Domesticated means bread in captivity.   Elephants take 2 years to gestate and even longer to grow up. So when they need a new elephant in india they go into the jungle trap one and tame it.  Rather than going through the expense and time of a breading program. So while elephants have been part of indian culture of thousands of years no one has bothered to domesticate them. 

This is a technicality and may not be what you mean.

Dinosaurs might be a different thing.  I have read that every bird on earth gains full size in a year.  Even giants like ostriches.   They gain this incredibly fast growth from their dinosaur ancestry.  So people might domesticate them if they can grow them to size qickly.

I don't find dinosaurs frightening or thrilling anymore, but looking up the massive sea predators that used to exist gives me a frisson. Imagine a world where the seas are the domain of beasts so common, huge and predatory that no culture on the planet would entertain swimming in the ocean, and most avoid seagoing of any kind. In fact this seems to be hinted at in the world of Tekumel.

Quote from: TheShadow on July 14, 2022, 08:24:13 AM
I don't find dinosaurs frightening or thrilling anymore, but looking up the massive sea predators that used to exist gives me a frisson. Imagine a world where the seas are the domain of beasts so common, huge and predatory that no culture on the planet would entertain swimming in the ocean, and most avoid seagoing of any kind. In fact this seems to be hinted at in the world of Tekumel.

In Soulbound, one of the factions, the Idoneth Deepkin, uses such deep sea creatures and empowers them to swim/fly through the air. Several years ago, I remember seeing the Sea World commercial where orcas were flying over land and the people all looked up at them in wonder...and thinking that they should be very, very frightened instead. The creatures of the Idoneth are far worse.