Why does D&D have bears?

[jdrakeh]

Really, a true D&D campaign should be against the evil, evil bears of the world that are the true evil in D&D.

I use Gelatinous Bears (yes, giant, animated Gummi Bears). The North American Brown Bear has nothing on my multi-colored gummis. The red ones are HELL.

 

[Hairfoot]

The question brings to mind something that irked me since childhood: why, in a galaxy far, far away, in an empire containing thousands of life-sustaining worlds, is the fastest smuggling ship around named after a bird of prey on the far, far away planet of earth?

 

[Hussar]

At the end of the day, there's nothing wrong with replacing standard animals with fantasy equivalents. If you want your riding/beast of burden standard to be a six legged reptile with purple scales, go for it.

Just make sure that it's a herbivore and not a whole lot stronger than a standard horse. A little goes a long way.

 

[Firebeetle]

Talislanta does it

I played Talislanta for years, and it has a full ecosystem of fantastic beasts. I once had a player who wanted to name his character "Bamboo Rat" and I had to explain to him that Talislanta had no rats, and probably no bamboo.

It does give Talislanta a far more alien feel than D&D, and there is no such thing as an elf, dwarf, or halfling either (and "men" all have different colored skins.) It didn't hurt believability at all, as many here have contended. In fact, since players would encounter the primary creatures in an ecology through an adventure, they would often put together how the ecosystem worked on their own which improved believability. Furthermore, it increased the "gee whiz" factor which is always Talislanta's strength.

So yes, you can do it, making fantastic creatures fill in niches of the ecosystem. You can make a completely fantastic ecosystem. If you were watching it as a TV show, people might get alienated, but in an RPG there is no problem with it.

 

[ml3]

alien campaign world

My game world is similar to Hobo's in that humans are the aliens and any familiar earth creatures were seeded from genetic stores in an attempt to "terraform", sort of like the British settlers bringing rabbits to Australia. Of course the modern humans have no memory of any of this, and the animals that survived the new world have just always been there as far as the humans are concerned.

I tried to set up an ecology in which there were no birds and a repto-mammal had evolved to fill the niche. But as fantasy creatures with bird wings that I wanted to use kept popping up and I had to figure out why they had feathers. Eventually I said screw it and put birds in as just another animal type competing with the flying repto-mammals. Nowhere near scientifically accurate, but I'm not trying to run Barlowe's Expedition.

 

[silentspace]

Why does D&D have bears?

I don't think anyone has mentioned it directly, but I think having the Druid as one of the archetypal base classes necessitates some kind of universal concept of nature. Bears and other identifiable creatures are a part of this natural world.

Admittedly, it's all a mish-mash. Why have druids at all? And why in that specific form? Why monks? Etc, etc.

 

[jdrakeh]

I played Talislanta for years, and it has a full ecosystem of fantastic beasts. I once had a player who wanted to name his character "Bamboo Rat" and I had to explain to him that Talislanta had no rats, and probably no bamboo.

It does give Talislanta a far more alien feel than D&D, and there is no such thing as an elf, dwarf, or halfling either (and "men" all have different colored skins.) It didn't hurt believability at all, as many here have contended. In fact, since players would encounter the primary creatures in an ecology through an adventure, they would often put together how the ecosystem worked on their own which improved believability. Furthermore, it increased the "gee whiz" factor which is always Talislanta's strength.

So yes, you can do it, making fantastic creatures fill in niches of the ecosystem. You can make a completely fantastic ecosystem. If you were watching it as a TV show, people might get alienated, but in an RPG there is no problem with it.

This is a big part of why I like Tekumel and Jorune, as well.

 

[demiurge1138]

I for one am waiting for someone to finally produce a fantasy RPG where you play sentient clouds of ammonia on your quest to zneru your jnaibnqa.

Dude. GURPS.

Demiurge out.

 

[jdrakeh]

No one advanced that argument before you brought it up.

Nobody had to. The many mundane animals in the MM are walking recreations of their real life counterparts on planet Earth. The proof is in the pudding, as they say. If you can illustrate how the standard entry for "bear" in the MM represents anything other than a bear, I'd love you to do so. Really. It would kill this whole issue for me.

Here're the basic, undeniable facts:

1. Good fantasy must provoke a reaction to the fantastic. It must make the experiencer sit up and say, "Oh my!"

2. Getting this reaction requires, at a minimum, lions, tigers, and bears.

Those are facts why? Because you say so? I'm not seeing any kind of objective proof that supports either of those statements. That said, I tend to agree with the first. That a heap of mundane animals ratchets up the 'fantasy' quotient of a setting, however. . . I fail to see that at all. I don't buy that excessive indulgence in mundane trappings makes a setting inherently more fantastic.

 

[Imaro]

I think that since DnD doesnt presuppose a world then it should include mundane animals. Some people might actually want to run monsters as...well...monsters.YMMV of course.