Monsters are an important part of a Dungeons & Dragons session. There are multiple books devoted to finding the right monster to challenge your players during a climactic battle. So why not choose one devoted to the greatest real life monster that ever existed: the dinosaur?
A Time Traveler’s Guide To Dinosaur Hunting offers Dungeon Masters a catalog of primordial beasts to use in their D&D game world. The book takes inspiration from the multiversal trend in pop culture to give players a chance to battle these creatures great and small. The idea sprung from a pair of sources; a father working on fiction and a son who loved dinosaurs.
“I’d been writing a short story that went on to inspire my version of a multiverse,” said creator Daryl T. Jones. “It gave me the fuel and clarity I needed to dig into any genre I wanted and I was excited about that. And dinosaurs? Well, my son was a big part of that. He’s passionate about them so much that he’s planning to explore genetic engineering and jokes about becoming the real-life Dr. Hammond from Jurassic Park. I ran a few one-shots exploring the idea, combining time travel, dinosaurs, and saving the multiverse and I was hooked. I knew I needed to dive in fully!”
Jones brought together a great team of writers for the project. Designers include Jeff Grubb, Kat Kruger, Alex Kammer, Craig E. Sawyer, Zac Goins, Alan Patrick, Ginny Loveday and Ben Palmer. These writers are designing a versatile collection of stories that span space and time.
“A Time Traveler’s Guide to Dinosaur Hunting has multiple adventures that can be linked together to form a massive, multiversal story arc where the players eventually save all the verses there are to save,” said Jones.”Each adventure, thanks to time travel, can be fully self-contained. You can drop any one of the adventures into an existing campaign so your players can unexpectedly have to fight an undead giganotosaurus, then easily come back to the Forgotten Realms, or wherever they started. It’s a neat concept that really emphasizes flexibility.”
Their are plenty of creatures and adventures for Dungeon Masters to choose from but the books also provide toys for the player. Jones recognizes that some gaming groups want to befriend these beasts instead of mounting one on the wall of the tavern as a trophy. Players looking to emulate Owen Grady from Jurassic World will find tools they can use to bring dinosaurs to their side.
“It also has a ton of player options,” said Jones, “specifically flavored with prehistoric and dinosaur themes. One of the favorites is the playable lineages based on dinosaur families. We’re really excited about the Aggression and Taming rules. Each creature is assigned an Aggression rating. That, plus the creature’s CR is used to determine if the creature can be tamed. Additionally, aggression will be used by the Dungeon Master when encountering dinos in the wild. It gives a starting point for the creature’s behavior and how likely it is to attack when unprovoked. We also have the beastkin class, which is a creature-taming class. They are ‘kin’ with beasts, just to be on the nose.”
A Time Traveler’s Guide to Dinosaur Hunting is split into two books. One book includes the player options, adventures and more. The second book is the bestiary full of dinosuars of all sizes and shapes. Everybody knows abour T-Rexes and raptops bu some of the entries offer some obscure options.
“Yi Qi is a small micro raptor-like creature but has membrane wings instead of feathers and was only capable of gliding instead of powered flight,” said Jones. “The Razor-toothed compy is a cybernetically enhanced compsognathus with pack tactics and laser beams. The helicoprion is a shark-like creature with a set of teeth set in a spiral at the end of its jaw that can grip and pull prey into its mouth. The rehausaurus is a tyrannosaurid with an Intelligence of 16 and deadly mind powers! Oh, and we must not forget the squid-faced velociraptors, the deadly genetically altered minions of the Brain Gorgers aka the mind flayer.”
A Time Traveler’s Guide to Dinosaur Hunting is available on Kickstarter through Thursday, Fabruary 13th, 2025. The boks are currently aiming for a Q3 2026 release.