Lost Prehistorica by Dark Quest Games (2004)

Cover blurb

Has your adventuring party ever wondered what was to be found on those parts of the map marked “Here there be monsters’?

Have you, as a GM, ever been at a loss as to what to do if they decide to explore these hitherto uncharted regions?

Have you, or your players, ever wanted to play something a little more primitive?

Lost Prehistorica could be the answer to your questions! An informative well presented tool-book for the GM who wants to try something that little bit different! Packed full of new playable races, information upon long lost cultures, lost continents, nomadic tribes and settings specific monsters, this book could be just what you need to spark a whole new range of adventures in a land untouched by time where dinosaurs still roam!

108 pages of tools to create a setting like no other.

Features include:

• 16 new diseases
• Over a dozen natural traps
• New weapons, armor, and equipment
• Nine new races
• Ten new divine entities
• Extensive beastiary
• Guidelines for creating tribes

My thoughts

Anyone who is thinking about turning their Dungeons & Dragons game into a “Dungeons & Dinosaurs” game will want to give this game supplement a look. (And given the last three posts all concerned D&D, I figured this was a good way to wrap up this week's theme.)

Lost Prehistorica is simply a guidebook for inserting “lost world” settings into traditional fantasy worlds. It is campaign neutral, meaning you can use it to add on to an existing world or create new one. And while it is an amateur effort – a fact reinforced by the subpar illustrations – the subject matter is well thought-out and the text is quite useful to any gamers wanting to get their adventurers out of the standard Medieval European setting of most roleplaying games.

The book provides everything from tips about how big to make your lost world to suggestions for creating primitive societies. There are sections about the environmental hazards found in stereotypical prehistoric settings, diseases your character could contract, how certain character types would react to the lost world and even how fossils may fit into local economies. It also has a sizable bestiary of both extinct animals and mythological creatures.

Lost Prehistorica is pretty closely tied to the J.R.R. Tolkien-inspired gameplay of most RPGs, and that diminishes its value for other types of game settings, like those inspired by pulp fiction. Still, there is enough here to keep most gamers satisfied. The supplement is available as a cheap PDF download on RPGnow.

Trivia

• The publisher also has produced Lost Creatures, a bestiary of fantasy creatures suited to lost world settings.

Reviews

• GameWyrd
• GamingReport.com
• Crothian
  

Son of Thunder by Murray J.D. Leeder (2006)

Paperback cover blurb

It was the best thing that ever happened to him.

It was his god’s blessing.

It was hell.

Vell was content to be a warrior in the Thunderbeast tribe who stayed behind on the hunt to guard the camp.

But then something alien awakened deep within him, the spirit of a behemoth that he could not control. With it came attacks from the sky, visitors from far lands, and a mysterious command from their ancestral totem: Find the living. And this time, no one was going to let him just stay behind.

My thoughts

I learned from reader reviews on Amazon.com that this Dungeons & Dragons novel somehow concerned dinosaurs. It turns out the prehistoric reptiles are central to the plot, although Son of Thunder is more standard fantasy fare than paleo-fiction. Ironically, the book reminded me of the 1985 movie Baby, Secret of the Lost Legend, which shares some similar plot elements.

Vell the Brown is a young barbarian who isn’t much of a barbarian – he would rather stay home and guard the children and the old folks rather than join the men when they’re out raping and pillaging or whatever. However, during a religious ceremony, the skeleton of the tribe’s totem animal – which is some kind of sauropod dinosaur – comes to life and gives Vell the ability to morph into a dinosaur whenever he is threatened or angry. The dead beast also cryptically tells the tribe to “find the living.” The tribe takes this to mean that they’re supposed to find the last living dinosaurs in their part of the world. (Dinosaurs still live in Chult, but that’s far away.) Meanwhile, a young sorceress in another part of the world gets the same message, and she sets out to join the barbarians in their quest.

Complicating things is an evil wizard and his pretty young assassin, who learn about the living dinosaurs and a powerful artifact that may be keeping them alive.

The main problem with Son of Thunder is it tries to cram too much story into a single novel. Readers follow not one but two quests to find the dinosaurs, and Leeder is much more interested in his villains than his heroes, with the former seemingly getting more screen time. In fact, the author spends very little time fleshing out the personalities of the good guys, having obviously put more effort into the bad guys. The epic quest to find the dinosaurs is a rushed effort, quickly skipping from scene to scene with no build up of mystery or suspense. And, as usual in these types of novels, the climax is a big battle between the forces of good and the armies of evil.

The book also is dripping with obscure Forgotten Realms history, so much so that anyone not already familiar with the campaign setting probably won’t have any idea what’s going on. Then again, I doubt anyone else would pick up this book.

The dinosaurs here are just another fantastic creature populating the setting of the novel, and despite the focus on them, Son of Thunder isn’t concerned about paleontology. I included the novel on this blog simply to be comprehensive.

Reviews

• None

The Ring of Winter by James Lowder (1992)

Paperback cover blurb

For centuries, adventurers have sought the fabled Ring of Winter, rumored to possess the magical might to make the wearer immortal and bring a second Ice Age down upon the Realms. Artus Cimber knows where it is.

After discovering the ring is hidden in the jungles of Chult, he sets off to fulfill the quest that has devoured a decade of his life. Knowing that the artifact is hidden somewhere in the danger-filled jungles and recovering it are two entirely different matters, however – especially when a lost city, rampaging dinosaurs, and the villainous Cult of Frost all stand between Artus and his goal.

My thoughts

The Ring of Winter is part Raiders of the Lost Ark, part The Lost World, and a lot of The Lord of the Rings all thrown together into one novel. While not a complete failure, it’s not very memorable either.

The novel is set in the Forgotten Realms, a campaign setting for Dungeons & Dragons. Artus Cimber is basically the Indiana Jones of Middle-Earth – an explorer and archaeologist who plunders ancient tombs for magical artifacts. He has spent a decade searching for the legendary Ring of Winter, an artifact that, as the cover blurb says, could bring about another Ice Age (and probably solve global warming in the process). During a stop at the explorer’s club in which he is a member, Artus meets a half-crazed explorer recently returned from Chult, a vast jungle where dinosaurs still live. The explorer tells Artus that the man who founded their club – a man who should have died hundreds of years ago – is still alive and in possession of the ring. Artus immediately sets off for Chult, but he is followed by the Cult of Frost, which wants the ring for its own evil plans.

The first thing that struck me after reading The Ring of Winter is that for a book set in a lost world of dinosaurs, it’s surprisingly lacking in dinosaurs. The terrible reptiles make a few cameos but Lowder mostly populates his setting with mythological creatures more traditional to the Dungeons & Dragons world, which is a shame. The characters themselves are stereotypical and the writing is simply serviceable, but tie-in novels have never been known for their literary merits.

That said, Lowder never takes the whole thing seriously, and there is a playfulness in the writing that reminded me very much of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels. When two characters are a talking wombat and a ghost stuck in the material world because of a bureaucratic blunder between gods, you get the idea. And I must admit I enjoyed the merging of the pulp fiction and high fantasy settings, if more in concept than in execution. The Ring of Winter didn’t feel like a chore to read, and while that may not sound like much of a compliment, it’s more than I can say than some novels reviewed here.

Trivia

• The author would later flesh out the world of the novel in the game supplement The Jungles of Chult.

Reviews

• None

The Jungles of Chult by James Lowder and Jean Rabe (1993)

Cover blurb

Come, all ye seekers after treasure beyond your ken and adventure greater than any you can dream!

Come, all ye mighty warriors, seekers after prey worthy of your peerless skills, and stalk the Children of Ubtao. Walk the streets of the city of Mezro, of the Maze of Life. Meet the barae, the holy warriors of Ubtao, those men and women who will live forever sustained by their wisdom and their faith.

Wizards, be prepared for new magical spells and new methods of magic use based on gemstones.

Search the jungles of Chult for the fabled emerald mines, for the Heart of the Jungle, a single gem as large as a man's heart.

Also within these pages are new monsters and new character kits: Mage hunters, specialty priests of Ubtao, and spiritlords.

My thoughts

This is the game supplement for anyone who has ever thought, “The Lord of the Rings would’ve been so much cooler if it had dinosaurs.”

The Jungles of Chult is set in the official Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting Forgotten Realms. The world is inspired – some would say ripped-off – from a dozen different works of fantasy fiction, most notably the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. Chances are if you ever played a Dungeons & Dragons computer game, it was set in the Forgotten Realms.

Chult itself is the most forgotten of the Forgotten Realms, usually just filling the role of a distant, little-known land that supplies magical items for the rest of the fantasy world. The Jungles of Chult was an attempt to flesh it out a little, but it’s a weak effort.

Chult, as portrayed in the book, is an African Congo setting with African natives, primitive dwarves, dinosaurs and “pteramen” – half-human, half-pterosaur creatures. The authors don’t bother going into any real detail about the setting, places to explore, or its wildlife, instead spending most of the book detailing a tribe of goblins who live in the jungle and a “lost city” that Chult’s human natives call home. Neither culture is particularly interesting, being made up of clichés. The only imaginative streak comes as a threat to the jungle in the form of a logging operation where all the employees are zombies – a fantasy parallel to the modern-day destruction of the rainforests.

The Jungles of Chult is simply a lazy effort considering the vast amount of real-world history and jungle-adventure fiction the authors could’ve drawn on when writing the book. In recent years, writers of the Dungeons & Dragons line of game supplements have been trying to redefine Chult as a base of operations for the villainous snake-people of the Forgotten Realms setting, the Yuan-ti. It would be nice to see them revisit Chult in a future supplement, but I doubt that will happen.

Trivia

• A couple stages of the Dungeons & Dragons video game, Demon Stone, are set in Chult, but no dinosaurs or other prehistoric wildlife make appearances.

• The game supplement Serpent Kingdoms provides a little more history about Chult and the snake-people of the setting.

• The Jungles of Chult was published the same year that the first Jurassic Park film was released, which I'm betting wasn't a coincidence.
  

Reviews

• None