Semi- plausible plot devises

[TheThan]

Ok here’s the deal, recently I’ve gotten this wild hair to do a D20 modern campaign set in a prehistoric “Lost World”. With dinosaurs, prehistoric beasts, cave men (and women) the works.

I’ve gotten just about everything I need to create such a world. But I need a semi-plausible way of getting the heroes to said world. A lost plateau like in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, doesn’t fly in the face of modern technology with almost the entirety of the globe explored, not to mention satellites and the like. I don’t want to do clones because I don’t want it to feel like a cheap rip off of Jurassic Park. I'm a bit stumped, how does a group of modern adventurers end up fighting dinosaurs?

[Solo]

A billionaire extracts dinosaur DNA from fossilized mosquitoes and uses it to clone Dinosaurs on his own private island, turning it into a theme park.

Something goes wrong.

[The_Snark]

Time travel solves your problems if you feel up to using that.

Time travel and a willingness to disregard known prehistory, but oh well.

[clockwork warrior]

possible pulls:

lightning storm or some such thing creating a time votex throwing them into the literal past. need to survive and recreate the conditions to get back home maybe?

under ground in some mountains is an entire ecosystem where prehistoric monster still exist

a possible island that is in the middle of an ocean or something with massive steam vents that hide the entire area from any kind of view. area is surrounded by urban legend, much like the bermuda triangle ( only possible problem would be the lack of sun light...)

edit: hrmmmm semi ninja-ed

[Solo]

under ground in some mountains is an entire ecosystem where prehistoric monster still exist

Blind prehistoric monsters?


Perhaps the adventurers could descend into a volcano and enter a vast underground world lit by electrically charged gas at the ceiling, and filled with a very deep subterranean ocean, surrounded by a rocky coastline covered in petrified trees and giant mushrooms, with dinosaurs on the prowl.

[clockwork warrior]

maybe....


to cover that wouldnt be hard, possible flora that emits light, or volcanic vents that give off light. you wanna start going into heavy science fiction, you could have alien tech in the mountains that creates and sustains its own ecosystem, like a world within a world or some such thing. fun times fun times.

edit: curses, ninja'ed once more. need to learn to type faster

[RTGoodman]

Blind prehistoric monsters?

Not necessarily - Journey to the Center of the Earth had the same basic plot (dinosaurs, etc.), but was all underground. I haven't read it though, so I'm not sure of the details.

I would think that "underground hidden ecosystem" would be one of the best options - I'm no fan of time travel, and you've ruled out the Lost World and Land That Time Forgot style hidden islands.


EDIT: You might be able to get more information from some of the fiction works mentioned here.

[clockwork warrior]

if you want a rather silly game... you could have genetically recreated dinosaurs in the world (jp style) but instead of a park or something, they are part of..... a reality tv show!
who can survive dinosaur island? can the people last ( insert day limit here) without getting eaten and take home the prize?

it would be like epic surviver....

[Pronounceable]

Why bother? Anything you'll come up with will be a hackneyed plot device anyway. Just say dinosaurs mysteriously appeared simultaneously and in great numbers in the modern world. Let players think up the stuff for you.

After listening them speculate on and on, you take the one idea they like best and go with it as if that'd been your plan all along...

[Lemur]

Not necessarily - Journey to the Center of the Earth had the same basic plot (dinosaurs, etc.), but was all underground. I haven't read it though, so I'm not sure of the details.

I would think that "underground hidden ecosystem" would be one of the best options - I'm no fan of time travel, and you've ruled out the Lost World and Land That Time Forgot style hidden islands.


EDIT: You might be able to get more information from some of the fiction works mentioned here.

You could even combine the "hidden underground ecosystem" with a "hidden island"- just use copius amounts of bad science to say "recent seismic activity" has surfaced the ecosystem somewhere in the ocean, making a new island, full of dinosaurs. Better yet, have it surface at the San Andreas fault, filling California with hordes of ravenous prehistoric beasts.

Or, using even more flagrant pseudoscience techniques, orchestrate a world-altering event that starts with "a freak particle accelerator accident..." which reconfigures the modern world to suddenly have things from different parts from history.

The key is combing for scientific things that the average person doesn't understand very well, so you can make it do whatever you want with a little handwaving. Blind 'em with science.

[Solo]

Better yet, have it surface at the San Andreas fault, filling California with hordes of ravenous prehistoric beasts.

Too late.

[Voyager_I]

Fun Fact: Discover Channel is apparently running a special on nothing else but cloning dinosaurs with recovered DNA. "Why not?" the commercials ask. If you've ever read Jurassic Park, you know there are many reasons, but that won't stop them. Also, they're trying to start with Tyrannosaurus, because obviously the best first step with a new technology is recreating the biggest predator you can think of that will draw a large crowd and be incredibly expensive and difficult to build a terrarium for. I mean, not that they'll actually get that far, but still...

...I miss Wild Discovery...

[Solo]

You'd think they'd learn to start with herbavores for safety.


Zomg! What do we do about raptors! Time to consult XKCD!

[Rutee]

XKCD is actually a raptor-propaganda outlet, perpetuating the myth that Raptors are anything besides the pencil-necked wimps they really are. DON'T FALL FOR THEIR TRAP

[clockwork warrior]

when the raptors do come we are done for. if i have learned anything from Jurassic park, its that our highly advanced door technology is useless against them, and without doors are we nothing but animals?

though i must admit, watching a bear vs raptor fight would be pretty awesome...

[Solo]

XKCD is actually a raptor-propaganda outlet, perpetuating the myth that Raptors are anything besides the pencil-necked wimps they really are. DON'T FALL FOR THEIR TRAP

Oh really?

Try to imagine yourself in the Cretaceous Period. You get your first look at this raptor as you enter a clearing. He moves like a bird, lightly, bobbing his head. And you keep still because you think that maybe his visual acuity is based on movement like T-Rex, he'll lose you if you don't move. But no, not Velociraptor. You stare at him, and he just stares right back. And that's when the attack comes. Not from the front, but from the side, from the other two 'raptors you didn't even know were there. Because Velociraptor's a pack hunter, you see, he uses coordinated attack patterns and he is out in force today. And he slashes at you with this... a six-inch retractable claw, like a razor, on the the middle toe. He doesn't bother to bite your jugular like a lion, say... no no. He slashes at you here... or here... or maybe across the belly, spilling your intestines. The point is... you are alive when they start to eat you. So you know... try to show a little respect.

[averagejoe]

What about some sort of spacetime tear or wormhole? You could do the stargate thing where this device/anomoly caused some other world to be populated with life from Earth, but for some reason they never really developed much. Although, it sounds better if you call it an Einstein-Rozen bridge, so you might want to go with that.

The same device would let you do time travel, but I'd advise against it; you mentioned cavemen, and they're very anachonistic next to dinosaurs.

[Rimx]

Alternate histories colliding like in Sidewise in Time. A piece of the world could be replaced by a lost world.

[Darkantra]

Well, you could go with a random group of people chosen to be the first civilians to visit the International Space Station, but on route the ship was thrown off course by a solar flare, random comet, or you know, something that science can't actually predict at this point. Some kind of unknown phenomena.

The ship is flung through space and somehow ends up traveling through a wormhole/black hole/magic thing and manages to crash land on a prehistoric planet.

They could eventually learn that the world that they're on is a parallel earth where the dinosaurs never went extinct, somehow construct a dimensional portal through science or magic and escape back to their own world, or a similar one.

[TheThan]

I haven’t ruled out the idea of a hidden island, but I feel that I need a mostly believable reason why no-one else knows about it in order to run with it. I think clockwork warrior hit upon something by mentioning the devil’s triangle. It’ll explain why there are humans there, the descendants of all those lost ships and planes. It also gives the players a means to arrive on the island and a method of escape. Let’s see, airplanes go down by hitting Pterodactyls (also explains why no high flying jets crash there), and ships, hmm coral reefs maybe? I’ll have to work on that one.

The idea of having the place underground was suggested to me by a friend, but I can’t figure out why they would have guns. Eureka! One such dinosaur found its way out, local authorities had to kill it. When the government got wind of it they cover the whole thing up and send an exploratory team down to scout the place out and ascertain any threats and any potential uses for the creatures therein.

Hmm I’ll have to sleep on it. In the mean time keep the ideas coming.

[Starsinger]

After a freak <technobabble here> accident, the earth's tilt is thrown off balance, causing the polar ice caps to melt, revealing a dinosaur utopia beneath what used to be ice. Because the poles are now aimed at the sun due to <technobabble>, it's become the ideal climate for saurian life. Alas, the poor Penguins and Polar Bears were no match for the might of the Dinos..