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I've been running my homebrew setting for just over 20 years, now. During this whole time, I wanted to keep my world as Earth-like as possible (allowing for all the monster type things, of course). But when it came to populating the forests, plains, deserts, oceans, etc, I didn't want to just use the modern animals we take for granted. So in some cases, I substituted an extinct species or ancestral creature of the modern counterparts.
For instance, elephants. There are no Indian or African type species in my setting. I substituted them with Deinotheres and another extinct species call Stegatetrabelodon. This one has 4 tusks and was about as large as a modern Indian elephant. I don't use mammoths, but I do use mastodons.
Other animals include the sabercat Homotherium, the giant rhinoceros Elasmotherium, the giant rhino relative Baluchatherium (used as mobile archery platforms long before I saw the oliphants in LotR), and several species of extinct crocodilians. There are many others, but these might give you an idea of what I'm trying to accomplish, that is, a world very much like our own when it comes to the "natural" fauna, but just different enough to give it its own flavor.
OH, and I have a strict NO DINOSAURS policy.
Love dinosaurs!
Okay, non-magical beasts.
Plenty of bird types, pigeons, scrub-fowls, hawks, crows and vultures.
Ants, spiders, flies and bees.
Foxes (last game), prairie-dogs, watchdog breeds.
Sheep, goats (last game), cattle, horses (some which fly, but they are magical beasts).
Wolves, bears, pigs.
Snakes, lizards.
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Dropbears.
2nd ed had the stats for a combat Koala.
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I love the Pleistocene Epochs (Ice Age) mammalian mega fauna so I used it heavily to create an ecosystem that could also support large mythical predators as well.
Mammoths, Mastodons, and Wooly Rhinos form the real world extinct part of the great herds well away from civilized lands. Now toss in elk, moose, deer, oxen, bighorn sheep, and vast herds of bison. Damn dragons and a giants are eating well in my world.
For natural carnivores; wolves, various large cats, and bears.
In the rivers and lakes; pike and catfish are notables. Turtles, leeches, and beavers. Got to have some beavers.
For avians; prairy chicken, various doves, song birds, hawks, eagles, and vultures.
I'm also one of those DM's that try to keep the dinos out marginalized or out of the game.
Great idea. Stealing for my world. Make the players feel small in the face of the herds.
My world is an artificial world created during the heat death of the universe as a last bastion for life. As such, it is sort of an "ark" that has at least some form of the animal and plant lines from several hundred planets with an atmosphere similar to Earth.
Backward engineered into a single "seed" cell, the entire ecosystem has re-evolved from that seed and blended the DNA of hundreds of separate evolutionary lines into what is now considered the "natural" flora and fauna of "Cron".
As such, it contains just about every creature you could possibly think of that would survive on a planet roughly similar to earth.
Currently in a semi ice-age, large mammals are the most successful species, but arachnids have gone through recent evolutionary changes. They are now somewhat warm-blooded, have combined an internal and external skeletal structure, and have developed social hunting techniques, meaning arachnids are now larger, faster, and more dangerous than ever in Cronish history.
In the wilderness between cities, mega fauna is common of both predator and prey variety. Dire animals are the result of a mutation and are not their own species, so they're often found as the alphas of packs.
Every creature is potentially magical in my world as magic is the effect of sub-atomic nanites that can be found in every atom on the planet. Some creatures can instinctively tap into these nanites to do "impossible" things.
There are also the occasional invasive species that arrive on/in meteors, or even visitors from other planets that are still around.
Though in the "current" time period, most of Cron is in the late Arcano-Industrial Revolution, so mass extinctions are happening due to pollution, urban sprawl, and other such events.
Well in the main region, technically there is an entire globe, but so far I've only done one region really thoroughly. I've used a few extinct earth life just for flavor and invented a few exotic species.
There are Thylacines, Giant tree sized mushrooms.
If anything my homebrew world is more earthlike then most D20 fantasy settings. In that the intelligent races consist of mainly humans, variant humans. Most of the standard races like elves, dwarves, orcs, gnomes are non-existent.
In the more temperate regions, nonmagical life is pretty much restricted to the norm. You'll have the occasional outlier - the pride-king or alpha pack member might be a Dire variant of a local animal unit, for example - but otherwise you have the standards.
Megafauna - Dire animals primarily but also including dinosaurs - is more prevalent in the less-civilized portions of my world. The deserts and the more ancient parts of the mountains and forests have gigantic insects. Dinosaurs are uncommon on the mainlands, save in certain areas, but more prevalent on certain islands.
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Love dinosaurs!
Oh, I'm a complete maniac when it comes to dinosaurs. It's just that I feel they've been done to death in the fantasy rpg genre and I wanted to use ancient creatures other than them for a change.
@Fleshgrinder--I love the really creative way you've built your setting!
95% of the non-magical fauna is the same as what you would find here on Earth. I just wanted to replace certain iconic "real" creatures with similar species, just to add a bit of variety to the standard compliment of beasties. I prowl paleoartist sites for inspiration, and have many, many new and unusual creatures with which to populate my little corner of the universe. If anyone would like links to some of these artists, let me know. Many are extremely good.
For instance, rather than use dinosaurs in one particular desert type location I used therapsid mammal-like reptiles. On the open prairie you might find pronghorn antelope, just an extinct, ancestral form with slightly different looking horns. Oh, and jackelopes. Homotheres are my favorite of all the sabercats, so I placed them in places where you'd be more likely to find lions (which do exist in large numbers, but fill a different hunting niche). Bison herds can be staggering in size, but they're the long horned bison rather than the species that survived.
Some grassland areas contain moderate numbers of terror birds, as well.
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Love dinosaurs!Oh, I'm a complete maniac when it comes to dinosaurs. It's just that I feel they've been done to death in the fantasy rpg genre and I wanted to use ancient creatures other than them for a change.
Going to sit down and add them to certain parts of my world. Herds of a different type. Make them natural.
When I've used them, the players have not rolled their eyes. Course I put them in unexplored tropical islands and areas far from civilisation. Fight that T-rex!