Converting "Real World" Animals and Vermin

[Cleon]

solitary, pair or family 2-8 not thousands..

The AD&D entry says gophers "live in large colonies burrowed into the soil of the plains", which suggests they're using gopher for a general-purpose burrowing rodent. As such, I'd like to leave the "thousands" in to include the more social species (e.g. prairie dogs).

Besides, if there's multiple gopher families in an area you'd count them together - it's not like a human city is considered an encounter with a single "house", even though an adventuring party usually only enters them one household at a time.

However, since I've separated out the Prairie Dog from the regular gopher we could give them separate Organizations.

The family size of 2-20 seems a bit too wide at the top for regular gophers, but fine for prairie dogs. The original AD&D gopher had No Appearing 2-5, which seems closer to a pouched gopher's litter size.

Let's see what Freyar and Shade think.

 

[lordxaviar]

The AD&D entry says gophers "live in large colonies burrowed into the soil of the plains", which suggests they're using gopher for a general-purpose burrowing rodent. As such, I'd like to leave the "thousands" in to include the more social species (e.g. prairie dogs).

good point...though on the norm aminals their homework was rather shabby... they did tend to make up in dragon articles...love the one on dogs...


However, since I've separated out the Prairie Dog from the regular gopher we could give them separate Organizations.

The family size of 2-20 seems a bit too wide at the top for regular gophers, but fine for prairie dogs. The original AD&D gopher had No Appearing 2-5, which seems closer to a pouched gopher's litter size.


good here.

Hve you guys done dogs? I know you, well shade says that you dont want to do any that have official 3.5 stats...but I think now that they (hasbro) is done with it, we should fix their mistakes or just omissions... I posted acouple of monsters under homebrews that all I did was add back some of the colorful back ground and society information from the previous edition

 

[freyar]

Umm, lordxaviar's suggested solitary, pair or family 2-8 gopher org sounds fine. I'd like to keep that and just add a "town" for the prairie dog; wikipedia says their towns can have up to 25 or so family units over hundreds of acres. So up to 200 or 300 maybe?

 

[Shade]

Hve you guys done dogs? I know you, well shade says that you dont want to do any that have official 3.5 stats...but I think now that they (hasbro) is done with it, we should fix their mistakes or just omissions... I posted acouple of monsters under homebrews that all I did was add back some of the colorful back ground and society information from the previous edition

I'm not really interested in "fixing" anything that has official conversions at this time. I'm more interested in finishing up the remaining unconverted creatures (of which we still have quite a few). That said, I'm sure we'll eventually get around to some of the variant wild dogs from Dragon Magazine.

Umm, lordxaviar's suggested solitary, pair or family 2-8 gopher org sounds fine. I'd like to keep that and just add a "town" for the prairie dog; wikipedia says their towns can have up to 25 or so family units over hundreds of acres. So up to 200 or 300 maybe?

Works for me.

 

[Cleon]

Hve you guys done dogs? I know you, well shade says that you dont want to do any that have official 3.5 stats...but I think now that they (hasbro) is done with it, we should fix their mistakes or just omissions... I posted acouple of monsters under homebrews that all I did was add back some of the colorful back ground and society information from the previous edition

We've done a few "special breed" dogs, like Saluqis and St Cuthbert's hounds, but since regular dogs have official stats already reworking them is outside our remit.

Besides, the dogs aren't that bad compared to some of the SRD critters.

 

[lordxaviar]

I'm not really interested in "fixing" anything that has official conversions at this time. I'm more interested in finishing up the remaining unconverted creatures (of which we still have quite a few). That said, I'm sure we'll eventually get around to some of the variant wild dogs from Dragon Magazine.

I understand but since there is no more Official anything for 3.5 I think its open game to fix there screw ups... and put back the great information that was "official" once... but I agree there are plenty of yet to be converted critters.

 

[Cleon]

I understand but since there is no more Official anything for 3.5 I think its open game to fix there screw ups... and put back the great information that was "official" once... but I agree there are plenty of yet to be converted critters.

I prefer the old crunch too, and have restatted some of the 3E monsters to be more like their original incarnations (see my "Finishing off the Mimics" thread and and Building a Better Otyugh thread for examples). Still, that shouldn't be the focus of this forum if for no other reason that we shouldn't be trampling too hard on the OGL's toes.

Besides, we've got plenty of unconverted monsters to sort out.

 

[freyar]

Ok, I've lost track in all this conversation. Anything left for gophers and prairie dogs?

 

[Cleon]

Ok, I've lost track in all this conversation. Anything left for gophers and prairie dogs?

Well we were talking about tweaking the Gopher's organization in the Working Draft, e.g.:

Gopher: Solitary of family (2-5)
Prairie Dog: Solitary, family (2-20), town (20-2000), or city (2000+)

True gophers are solitary creatures, their burrow will only house more than one gopher when it is a mother and her immature offspring. Some "gopher" burrowing rodents are social, connecting their own burrows with those of neighbors to create extensive tunnel networks. The plains-dwelling prairie dogs (see below) lives in colonies known as towns or cities that can have populations in the hundreds or thousands.

 

[freyar]

Ok, I thought we'd settled that already. Is that all?