Isla Sorna (3.5e Campaign Setting)/About

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This campaign is a required part of having a Winged Velociraptor character. I have worked as hard as I can to make it a complete campaign, and make it so it does not suck.

Background

As a huge Jurassic park and dinosaur fan from way back, I was disappointed to see the paucity of Dinosaurs in DnD. Five. Seriously? FIVE? Wikipedia has a list of dinosaurs more than 500 items long! Not kidding. And of course, while the planes get huge attention, I didn't even know about dinosaurs in the game till I happened to glance at a list of summons for summon monster. Then I was happy.

At least until I realized just how few dinosaurs are actually used. Again, seriously, 5?! So I took a moment to look up the five Dinosaur representatives. No fliers, one water (which could not go on land, yet has a land speed), two raptor types, a single herbivore, and T. Rex cause it would piss people off to have dinosaurs and no t. rex. That's it. So, in a fit of irritation, and Jurassic park fanboyism, and after examining the hombrew races page, I took it upon myself to really bring the dinosaurs into the light.

I started by thinking about a race of intelligent dinosaurs. I examined the idea of making all dinosaurs intelligent (a la Star Fox Adventures) but that was very difficult. Then, I though of only making the predators intelligent, but that prompted questions pertaining to how the hell prey surived when all the predators were as intelligent as humans. I couldn't answer those questions, so I began examining the individual animals in Jurassic Park to figure out which one was the most intelligent. Obviously it only took me ten seconds to pick the raptors.

I decided to give them full human intelligence through the efforts of certain less-than-sane scientists (which broke the story, but there were so many endorsed products breaking the story anyways that it didn't really bother me), and then started thinking about something else I could give them to make them hands down the dominant species. Then I had it. Wings. Flying raptors with minds like humans. So I built the race, then I started thinking about where they came from. Grabbing Isla Sorna was the most logical thing I could do, so I did it.

I immediately realized how little I knew about the island itself, so that began an all day search for a map. It is very hard to find maps for places that don't really exist, by the way. As soon as I found the map (which is huge, and was covered in kinds of extra information), I began building a campaign for the island. The result... Well, check it out and see for yourself.

The Dinosaurs of Isla Sorna

When I began building the Isla Sorna campaign, I knew the hardest part would be the dinosaurs. Seeing as almost none of the JP dinosaurs existed in DnD form, I had to start form scratch. I had to make them a challenge to players of high level characters without making it so that lower level players would get chomped five minutes into the campaign, which happens so very often in the books and movies. Most prey animals will not attack without provacative, and even then, most will run. Predators attack on site, but the DM should be able to keep things like the Spino and the T. Rex well away from level 5 players.

The Raptor Packs

Originally, I was going to have one single pack cover the whole island, but having measured it, I realized what a fantasy that was. So, I decided to have three seperate packs of about 20 to 30 individuals each. They each have their own territory, mostly situated around buildings. The packs each have their own level of friendliness towards humanoids, with the Village pack being the most freindly, and the Embryonics pack being the least. The High Point pack are somewhat in the middle, fascinated by new people, but not trusting them.