Walking With Drakes

A Goliath Drake (Argentinosaurus)

Oddly enough, I happen to know quite a lot about dinosaurs.

Roughly a year ago, the company I work for was approached to pitch a dinosaur-based game. I didn't know much about dinosaurs beyond what I'd learned in school; in fact, I was a little worried by how sparse my knowledge actually was. Still, we managed to get the contract, and for the past twelve months or so I've been cramming my head full of facts while trying to turn our game into a reality.

It's actually turned out to be remarkably interesting. Did you know, for example, that palaeontologists have learned more about dinosaurs in the past decade than the entire century preceding it? We've all heard about the discovery of feathered dinosaurs, but did you know that a feathered cousin of T.rex has been found in China (or that, due to the incomplete nature of fossils, some scientists now believe all theropods may have been feathered?). Did you know that T.rex had South American and African cousins that were equally big and mean, such as Carcharodontosaurus or Giganotosaurus, but who hunted in packs? Or that there were sauropods so huge - like Argentinosaurus - that smaller dinosaurs actually drowned in their footprints?

It's been a fantastically fun game to work on. With my head so full of prehistoric thoughts, it's only natural that some of it should spill over into my RPG campaigns. So here, for your gaming pleasure, I present "Walking with Drakes" - four new reptilian monsters for use in your D&D 4th Edition games. Some are hybrids of existing monsters, but I've tried to include a few original tweaks in each - and provide some factual details about the dinosaurs they're based on. Hopefully each can find its place in your own lost worlds.

Enjoy!