• Welcome to the new COTI server. We've moved the Citizens to a new server. Please let us know in the COTI Website issue forum if you find any problems.
  • We, the systems administration staff, apologize for this unexpected outage of the boards. We have resolved the root cause of the problem and there should be no further disruptions.

Dino-Crisis

Just curious if anyone has allowed the revival of 'extinct' species in their TU and what effect such has had on said settings.

I'm thumbs up on resurrecting a select few dinosaur species for obvious applications of sport (no-kill hunts), scientific research as well as private sector franchises.

Nothing like a pack of willey velociraptors to provide 'low tech' security for high tech facilities.
 
Just because they're extinct on Earth doesn't meant they're extinct on every world they arose on/were transplanted to. So yeah, I have 'em. Keeps players on their toes. :devil:
 
Here be Dragons

Rather than use extinct species, when on a world that has an existing bio-presence, a lot of my roled-up critters get named (formally or informally) with traditional names.

I'll always treasure the memory of the looks on the player's faces when an NPC casually mentioned the 'Dragons' that roamed in the wild areas of the planet (coincidentally right where the Players were heading).


"Uh, do they breathe fire and stuff?"

"Don't know. No ones ever come back to talk about it."
 
When I rolled up a hilands 44 ton flying pouncer for Wypoc/Lanth, what else could it be called, but the Wypoc Dragon.

Been a staple of Big Game hunting IMTU. I've killed a dozen PC's, and 4 air/rafts, with the thing.
 
Smart-saurs

Wondering if I should open the discussion to consider the intelligent saurians species of SF author Robert J Sawyer's books, FAR-SEER, FOSSIL HUNTER and FOREIGNER to join the other non-human races presented in Traveller.

Definitely think we might view the sheer scale of starships differently once said creatures are found traveling the spaceways of our respective TUs.


http://www.sfwriter.com/exq1.htm
 
I use pre-dinosaur (the bugs, amphibs, and reptiles) and post-dinosaur critters liberally, particularly some of the big Age of Mammals beasties. Some of them are quite nasty.

The way I figure it, the Ancients could have just as easily unlocked those DNA segments we still share with our extinct brethren as add new genes. If they were that advanced and that creative, they could conceivably, having found dinosaur fossil evidence, build their own dinosaurs from existing bird and reptile DNA.

One of the fun species I resurrected was Paranthropus Robustus, a species bantered around as a contender for Sasquatch. On their world, I had them be just as advanced as modern humans but completely in synch with their environment, kind of like Gorilla Grog meets the Wookies; my own little Planet of the Apes. ;)
 
Last edited:
Dinosaurs and Dragons

As I see the game, the universe is a very large place and life can evolve at various rates and in various directions. I have planets in my universe that are in the Jurassic period and a ship will visit for one of several reasons. A word of caution to the players is that the place can be very dangerous. I also have dragons in the universe. The game is limited only by the imagination of the GM and players.
 
I haven't been able to justify the introduction of dragons into MTU yet but I guess I just haven't tried hard enough ;)
 
Extinct species probably will be re-created somewhere, sometime in the Traveller universe.

IMTU, Tortuga, the campaign setting has dinosaurs. The originally scouts on the planet trained a species of carnivore (as a riding beast) & a horned herbivore (riding & transport)
as adjuncts to their operation. The pirate concern has continued the operation. Another planet I have synapsids ( more commonly known as mammal-like reptiles ) as the dominant lifeform. I also created a dinosaurian race, the Hsien descended from raptorlike dinosaurs. A minor race, they stole human jumpships, found Ancient tech & ran a pirate empire in the Vanguard Reaches until all their enemies smashed their empire. Some of their race migrated
to the Beyond sector calling themself the Toishan.

Haven't had dragons other than a few small flyers.

I haven't been able to justify the introduction of dragons into MTU yet but I guess I just haven't tried hard enough ;)
 
Given the atmo is nearly liquid... I used a 20m wingspan. They wouldn't fly on earth.

Eating: assuming typical predatory large bird, 10t/day, maybe less. I got a lot of large animals on that table, so it wasn't terribly hard to envision it.
 
Back
Top