What the title says. Have you, as a player, or as a DM, ever had any memorable encounters involving dinosaurs? If so, do you feel like sharing?

(Disclaimer: Collecting information for my blog, dragonencounters.com)

The ToA book is riddled with interesting dinosaur encounters, from Dino racing in Port Nyanzaru to the terrifying King of Feathers that wanders around Omu looking for new snacks. 

I ran a heavily modified Chult campaign for my group once and we had an absolute blast playing through all the different dinosaur sections. They only could have one player participate in the races, so while that one player races I had everyone else control the other NPC racers for a session. It was very fun.  

I made a mini mission for my campaign were the players were on the hunt for a giant 'bird' picking of cattle. Soon the party encountered a group of Kobolds and Lizard folk who worshiped a dragon called the Great Sky Terror. After traversing the caves, defeating lizard folk and convincing the kobolds to turn against the Lizards they heard the giant wingbeats and in came the sky terror, a Quetzalquatlas (to lazy to spell it correctly) and they could hear it talk to them with its mind "Food, consume, KILL!".

After they defeated the Sky Terror in a dramatic fight (finishing blow was by the battle master with a trip attack by arrow) they found a psi crystal in the creatures gizzards, thus giving the previously mute barbarian a way to communicate with the others, much to their displeasure...

I ran one just the other night in my Eberron campaign. The party had to fight a zombie titanosaur (suped up brontosaurus), with a necromancer riding atop its head, and a couple Karrnathi undead soldiers riding in a platform on its back to shoot arrows.

The zombie titanosaur definitely took some inspiration (and its token graphic) from the show Primal.

I also gave it a special attack called "vomit comet", based on a reddit post about a fossil that showed some small dino getting squashed by brontosaurus puke falling on it from 40ft up. It's basically a 10ft radius AoE that does 3d8 acid + 3d8 bludgeoning damage, and leaves difficult terrain.

This happened in the first campaign I ever played in; it's been a few years now so I'm fuzzy on some details, but it basically went down like this:

We'd gotten lost in the Feywild on account of an ill-advised confrontation with a wizard (which is a whole other story), and in our journey to find a way back we encountered a number of other displaced wanderers. Honestly, the campaign had gotten into a bit of a rut;  our DM was trying her best, but we'd broken her intended plot so thoroughly that I think she just had no idea what to do with us. For the last four or five sessions, our characters would walk through the enchanted woods for a while until they came to a clearing with some random monsters. We'd fight, we'd rest, and we'd all come back next week to do the same thing. Fortunately, this week the random encounter tables would deal us salvation. As we trudged into the clearing, what we found waiting for us was a lone, adult Stegosaurus. Our Barbarian immediately fell in love.

Here's a feature Path of the Totem Barbarians get that I think a lot of players forget about: they can cast Speak with Animals as a ritual. I say that I think a lot of players forget about it because, by that point, the rest of us had definitely forgotten about it. But our Barbarian remembered, and by her ancestors, she was going to talk to this Stegosaurus. Unfortunately, as is often the case with D&D, the dinosaur treated us with presumed hostility and rolled initiative as soon as we made eye contact. So the rest of us, two Monks and a Fighter, got drafted to try to distract this critter for ten entire gameplay minutes while the Barb cast her ritual.

I'll be real with you: I do not remember how we managed it. I do remember that by the time we were done, the three of us had burned basically every resource we had available to us, tried and failed multiple trapping attempts, and bent or broken probably half the rules in the core books. It was some of the most fun I've ever had playing D&D.

Eventually our DM conceded that we had probably stalled enough, and looked at our Barbarian player with the sheer terror of someone who absolutely did not anticipate having to roleplay a stegosaurus today. It was a very cute conversation. Our Barb apologized for scaring the dino, and the dino apologized for nearly turning her friends into mulch. The critter explained that he had been trapped in the Feywild for what felt like years, and had grown very cautious around humanoids in that time. Through a series of truly phenomenal skill checks, our Barb convinced the dino that we should team up and look for a way back to the Material Plane together. None of us had the lung capacity to pronounce our new friend's name, so we called him Toast.

Toast became a valued member of the party, remaining with us for the rest of the campaign. Together we escaped the Feywild, fought a dragon, and eventually undid an ancient curse binding a god in an unending maze (but that's another story). More importantly, recruiting Toast served as a turning point in a campaign that had grown aimless and stale. After that encounter, I think we all felt a weight lift. Our DM came back the next week with a new main plot that was much more light-hearted than her previous attempts. The group had a renewed enthusiasm that carried us through to a satisfying conclusion to our shared story. It was far from a perfect campaign, but it will always hold a special place in my heart. And it's wild to think it might have all gone completely differently, if not for a random Stegosaurus encounter.

I did a one shot with dinosaurs based on the old tv show Land of the Lost.  My players loved it, especially the two who are dinofanatics. 

"Skinless Turkeys" were harassing farmers and they requested the party stop them.  The turkeys were velociraptors.  There was a cave with a portal that took them to a large valley surrounded by steep mountains.  They had to collect gems from the slee staks to power the portal back to our realm as upon entering the cave in the dino realm, a fight broke the portal. Traveling across the valley they encountered several dinos.  There was a dungeon the players went into to steal gems.  The slee staks used stats of lizardfolk. 

Players had a blast, and honestly, I nailed some of the descriptions of the allosourus stalking the party.  They want a return trip which is in the early planning stages.

For what it's worth, I am also creating a short campaign based on the movie Cloudy with a change of meatballs 2 - with the veggie monsters.