Why does D&D have bears?

[Archon of Light]

D&D has bears for the same reasons it has dogs, gnolls, goblins, drow, mind flayers, dwarves, dragons and demons: They're included if you want to use them. And like everything else, there's nothing that says you must include anything if it doesn't fit in your world.

 

[jdrakeh]

If for the sake of verisimilitude you remove all Earth animals (and plants?), you must also remove all humans...

Not really -- you could just call them something else and slightly redefine them. Much as I suggest doing with horses in my first post. Much as authors and directors have done for decades. My gripe with Earth animals in D&D isn't that they are similar to Earth animals, it's that they are Earth animals (no discernable difference whatsoever). I'd be fine with similar

 

[trancejeremy]

For the same reason there are humans. I mean, if someone made humans, then presumably they would make bears as well. Why just pick one Earth critter?

Or you could just say that pretty much every fantasy world is actually Earth, just either really far in the past or future. A lot of early fantasy authors actually took that tack. Conan, Elric, Frodo & company, the Dying Earth stuff, CAS's stuff.

It could also be a planet colonized by humans in the future. Or aliens who took humans and critters from Earth.

There are also gates to Earth in at least some of D&D worlds. IIRC, didn't Elminster used to exist in a column in Dragon as a character talking to Ed Greenwood in person? Some of the gods are the same, anyway, in the FR. That also applies to the Nehwon setting, I think, from Lieber.

 

[Arashi Ravenblade]

I see Monter manual monsters (excluding animal type) as more of an exotic type of creature. Animals are the norm. Monsters are rare. Mundane humanoids couldnt survive in a world with such hostilities, even with magic. To me monsters are rare. So rare in fact a normal person could go their entire lifes and never see anything other than a elf, dwarf, gnome, halfing and normal animals.

 

[Celebrim]

Not really -- you could just call them something else and slightly redefine them. Much as I suggest doing with horses in my first post. Much as authors and directors have done for decades. My gripe with Earth animals in D&D isn't that they are similar to Earth animals, it's that they are Earth animals (no discernable difference whatsoever). I'd be fine with similar

In which case, may I suggest that you've achieved nothing.

DM: "You see an Ursian."
PC: "What's it look like?"
DM: "Kinda like a bear."
PC: "Ok, so we see an X-ian bear.
DM: "Yeah, its eating... nectar from a ...wispian hive. You can hear the angry buzzing from here."

I'd actually be more annoyed with Trek-ish 'animals with bumps on thier head' and fauna which had a one to one correspondence with Earth animals - it's an X-ian bear, it's an X-ian horse, it's an X-ian dog - than I would be with simply having earth animals. I think if you go with 'these things are alien' then it forces me to consider the fauna as a thing of interest in and of itself, and that raises my standard of believability with regard to that thing. If you use an Earth ecology in a fantasy setting, it doesn't jar. If you use an all to similar ecology, then its very similarity is going to jar.

 

[jdrakeh]

In which case, may I suggest that you've achieved nothing.

DM: "You see an Ursian."
PC: "What's it look like?"
DM: "Kinda like a bear."
PC: "Ok, so we see an X-ian bear.
DM: "Yeah, its eating... nectar from a ...wispian hive. You can hear the angry buzzing from here."

Apparently you didn't read my first post (specifically the portion pertaining to horses). I'm not suggesting that you give animals a different name and change nothing else. I'm suggesting (again, as I illustrated with horses earlier) that one could grant such animals a remarkable ability or two but have them retain some semblance of normalacy. The horses mentioned can run distances of hundreds of miles in mere hours and their feet produce flames when they strike the ground -- noticeably alien, though still familiar enough to be conducive to gaming.

Owlbears and Dave Hargrave's flying sharks also serve as good examples of this design philosophy, actually. These animals aren't the totally alien weird of the Roper, though they're just weird enough to be markedly different from their Earth counterparts. This is a better approach than totally alien, I suspect. The drawback of totally alien creatures is that for ever person who finds them to be 20 kinds of cool, there's always another person who thinks that they're rediculously stupid (this seems to be the case with many "original" creatures in RPGs, anyhow).

So, I guess, what I'm advocating is neither wholesale alien natures or pure mundane but something of a middle ground. Just alien enough to not be a mundane North American Brown Bear. Not so alien that it's unrecognizeable as a bear at all.

 

[robberbaron]

Bears aren't bears. It is a familiar name used to describe a bear-like creature.

This trick was used to good effect in Runequest. The writers explained that they could have called Bronze and Iron 'Ze-metal' and 'Ga-metal' but it was an unnecessary complication (can't remember the exact words).

 

[00Machado]

Isn't there an old saying that a horse by any other name is still a horse? Aside from everyone needing a common frame of reference in which to imagine a fictional world, there is also the element of expediency...there is no sense explaining a creature that is a domesticated herd animal that we now use for battle, as a pack animal, and so on, when you can call it a horse. In fiction is wasted words, and in gaming it wastes memory power, which the players and GM need for those elements which can't be explained as simply as 'a horse'.

If you create everything, then there's nothing to latch onto. And of you don't create everything, then why recreate that which is unnecessary?

 

[Li Shenron]

Having only imaginary creatures would be over-egging the fantasy pudding.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Probably because baseline D&D started off as pseudo-medieval fantasy in a broadly pseudo-medieval europe / Lord of the Rings style setting.

Such a baseline setting expects earth animals.

An individuals personal campaign could use this or diverge from it as they see fit.

Eberron is an interesting example because they do diverge from the norm in that they allow for magebred animals and horrid animals alongside dire animals and standard animals.

Tekumel was a fantasy world with a sci-fi backstory. It didn't take place on earth, and although a few earth animals were successfully transported, many were not - which is why chlen are used as beasts of burden rather than oxen, and there are no riding animals (horses didn't survive there). Personally I always liked the alien ecology of Tekumel (much as I like the alien ecologies of sci-fi worlds).

Cheers