Reptilian World [IW]

[ericthered]

For an upcoming game world-jumping characters will discover a world free of mammals. Not the age of the dinosaurs, as the forms are fairly modern, and not something fantasy driven, but a world where all the niches are filled with modern birds and reptiles or larger versions of them.

Yes, I'm aware there are some islands that historically had this sort of thing going on, but I want it on a big scale. You have the entire great plains to work with.

Questions:

• What animals are going to do really well?
• What animals (keep it semi-plausible please) would be really cool to have all over the place?
• What is your (and by extension, Infinity's) theory on what happened here?
• What is this world good for (economically)? What would you use it for?
• what unusual dangers are present here? right now I think the winter time will be very quiet and it may be very diffiuclt to find food., but there may be other possibilities ...
• What cool twists can you through on this world?

Thanks!

[Walrus]

There's actually official United States of Lizardia example even in Campaigns. Though I don't know if it's covered more extensively somewhere, but it should be/

[Flyndaran]

Theory for why: Mammal like reptiles were doing rather well until the Permian extinction event. With how close everything came to dying off, you could easily have all therapsids not hanging on leaving the world to other groups.

Really cool to have: There's some evidence that ancient crocodilians were "warm blooded". With some small fully bipedal forms staring to evolve before getting outcompeted by dinosaurs and squeezed into their more modern niche. Be funny to see them and try to explain to PCs that they are not dinosaurs.

Economically: same as all other human-free ones most likely. Ornithologist and herpetologist tourism?

[Dalillama]

The BoarCroc should totally be present. Possibly it's speciated into big bear-like ones and smaller hyena-sized ones.

[Anthony]

A lot of this depends on what you mean by 'reptile'. Also where you start.

If we look at the total body of dinosaurs, it's probably evolutionarily feasible to go from there to forms essentially indistinguishable from modern mammals (sure, any evolutionary biologist could tell they were weird, but not the casual person) -- 66 million years is a long time. If you're limited to just the things that actually survived the extinction of the dinosaurs, you're more limited -- it's apparently evolutionarily hard to restore features that have been lost (so it's hard to turn wings back into hands, or add teeth to beaks), and it might be tough to go from the reptiles that actually survived to large quadrupeds (it requires some improvements in the skeletal design, lizards hip and shoulder structure isn't well suited to truly large animals).

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Dalillama

The BoarCroc should totally be present. Possibly it's speciated into big bear-like ones and smaller hyena-sized ones.

The ones I mentioned were also rauisuchians. There was some mighty interesting variety among ancient archesaurs.

[Anthony]

Actually, a point about feathers: they seem to support considerably greater ranges of colors than hair. This might result in creatures that looked quite colorful compared to what we're used to.

[ericthered]

Interesting. I was not expecting such an overwhelming chorus of "crocs!"

I was actually thinking less of a long term "mammals were never here" and more of a "mammals seem to have been here, but aren't here anymore."

[Miles]

I'm going to approach this from a dinosaur-focused angle. I know that you're looking at reptilians more broadly, but dinosaur descendants are going to feature prominently in a world like this and I actually know a couple of interesting dinosaur facts.

[*]What is your (and by extension, Infinity's) theory on what happened here?

Simplest explanation is no K/T extinction event. That really was a catastrophic event, not a deathblow to a dying clade. It's not an inventive answer, but I imagine your players would like an explanation that requires minimum of exposition to understand.

[*]What is this world good for (economically)? What would you use it for?

Research. Unless you've got human replacements, in which case add in cultural artifacts. Most valuable good are human-produced and their are less interesting worlds to extract resources from, but Homeline scientists would love to get their mitts on this world.

[*]what unusual dangers are present here? right now I think the winter time will be very quiet and it may be very diffiuclt to find food., but there may be other possibilities ...

Keep in mind that the current paleontological opinion is that the dinosaurs were either warm-blooded or simulated warm-bloodedness by being freaking huge. Winters would be more active than your would think.

[*]What cool twists can you through on this world?

One way to distinguish your world from a Jurrassic Park rip-off is to break some assumptions inspired by generations of bad paleo-art (seriously, just check out that gallery).

If you wanted to throw the players for a loop, include furry reptiles. In this case the "fur" would actually be a thick pelt of down, without the quill and stem of of typical featers.

Another thing to consider is whether you want ridiculously over-sized animals. That's going to require an explanation for why the oxygen content is higher than today, and means that wildfires are going to be much more common.

[tantric]

There's a book about it: the New Dinosaurs.