Why does D&D have bears?

[Kid Charlemagne]

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.

Like Dire Bears? Or Werebears? Or Pegasi? Or Hippogriffs? Or Owlbears? Or...

 

[WayneLigon]

There simply isn't (so far as I can tell) any good reason for why mundane animals in Faerun or Eberron should be mirror images of those that my neighbor keeps cooped up in his apartment all day.

Then there is no good reason there should be people there, either. Or things with bilateral symmetry. Life forms are the way they are for a very good reason. Any gene pool that's going to produce humans is also going to produce bears, spiders and humpback whales. If you're going for even the sem-scientific approach.

The other major reason is as mentioned: for fantasy to work, there needs to be a substancial groundwork of the familiar for people to grasp on to. There have been games (and books and movies) that have gone the other way, and they've stayed in their tiny niche for a very good reason.

It also saves you work as a GM. If you're going to populate your world with totally unfamiliar creatures, then be prepared to answer questions about them since you'd best be prepared to tell me what my PC knows about the world he lives in.

 

[Khuxan]

One thing I've had success with is swapping animals around - for example, using terror birds (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terror_Birds) as horses, and giant insects as mules and oxen. The players still know what you're talking about instantly, there isn't a bunch of names and animal-variants to remember, but you still get the sense it's an alien world.

 

[Piratecat]

Thank you for not titling this thread "Why does D&D have crabs?" All for the best, really.

 

[Desdichado]

For example, rather than Equus Caballus, the common horse, I will populate my setting with those cool wild horses from Krull that can run hundreds of miles in an hour and whose hooves produce flames when they strike the ground. That kind of thing. That just seems far more appropriate for fantasy.

Latin names for animals are always italicized, the generic name is always capitalized, the species name is not.

Uh... sorry. Pedantry aside, your assumption is incorrect; fantasy worlds---unless specifically defined as such---are not other planets millions of miles from earth. They are imaginary alternate earths. If you're going to go down that road, you have to also explain why you have humans Homo sapiens sapiens. And if you have humans, you have to explain how you have all the related animal family that lead up to humans. You're better off not imagining the question; that's coming at fantasy from a science fiction perspective, which doesn't really work. Fantasy---originally (and by this I mean from a Tolkien or a Robert E. Howard perspective) was either in a forgotten, mythological time of our own earth, or is basically an alternate earth. NOT another planet.

That being said, I see where you're coming from, and in my own setting, I've done much of that. Humans are not actually native to my campaign setting, and the only familiar animals are those that came with humans thousands of years ago. Many of which have gone feral and spread, but that's beside the point. The "native" fauna is all very alien. Kinda Barsoom-like, actually.

 

[Raven Crowking]

DM: The old man comes to you and says, "Beware the owlbear in the Mickle Wood."

Player 1: Wait a second, didn't you say that this world has no bears?

DM: It doesn't. This is an owlbear.

Player 2: I didn't think it had owls either.....?

DM: No. It doesn't.

Player 3: So why do they call this creature an owl-bear anyway?

 

[Desdichado]

2) Alien things and alien tropes don't really contribute to fantasy stories because that's not what fantasy is really about. Fantasy is about examining abstract concepts - particularly abstract normative concepts like good and evil - through the literary device of emboding these things as tangible entities. A 'non-bear' is only a useful device to a fantasy story if it stands for something that you want to talk about. Otherwise, it is just clutter. In this sense, the non-bear is probably less useful than bears precisely because bears at least already have been anthromorphicized and used to stand in for various abstract concepts that 'bearness' culturally and maybe instinctually arouse in us. We already 'know' the bear as the wise, affable, but slightly comic warrior-sage. It already has fantasy value. The 'non-bear' would have to work hard to obtain the same thing. Similarly, when golems and not-humans are used in fantasy, its rarely with the end of comparing them with humans so that we learn what it is to be human by contrasting with that which isn't. Rather, non-humans are usually stand ins for some philosophical idea - nature, violence, evil, or some bundle of these by appealing to a common cultural mythic narrative. Elves can stand in as symbols for alot of things, hense the fact that there are two sorts of fantasy settings: those that have them and those that consciously chose not to have them. To the extent that your setting abandoned this combination of familiar and ideas as tangible things, and went out its way to create truly alien things that weren't embodied ideas, it would feel more and more like science fiction (and would likely become recognizably science fiction at some point.)

Maybe for some, but I think it's somewhat presumptuous to give such motivation to all fantasy everywhere. What you've said here is not far removed from "all fantasy must be allegorical, or at least heavily fraught with symbolism."

 

[Fifth Element]

Dude, Firemares rule!

This, and the owl/bear comment above, illustrate the problem. They're called firemares, apparently. That's horse + fire. The frame of reference is the normal animal. If there were no normal horses, it would not be a firemare, it would be a horse (no need for the adjective when there's no need to differentiate).

It's like the heartbreaker games that don't have classes and levels, but have "paths" and "ranks" or whatever. Change for the simple sake of change only frustrates players who have all kinds of new, tiny little differences to learn that don't really add anything.

DM: "They're not bears, they're farfegnugs! They have five legs and a long tail!"

Players: "Five-legged bears with tails, got it. Can we play now?"

 

[Fifth Element]

Maybe for some, but I think it's somewhat presumptuous to give such motivation to all fantasy everywhere. What you've said here is not far removed from "all fantasy must be allegorical, or at least heavily fraught with symbolism."

I don't think that's fair at all. Basically the point is: why change if the only point is change? If you want to remove bears from your world entirely, fine. If you want to make bears sentient and make them a more significant part of the game world (for instance), also fine. But making slight changes only to make them slightly different just makes a player's 'job' harder, and generally reduces his/her fun. If a player needs to learn a fact about the game world, it should mean something to the game. Learning "bears are slightly different in this world" doesn't add anything to the fun for most people.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'm not certain why I never noticed this before (it could be a sign of forthcoming suspension of disbelief issues on my part). Why are imaginary worlds millions of miles removed from Earth populated with creatures native to our planet? It seems to me that, rather than North American Black Bears, straight-up Owlbears (or other creatures of pure fantasy) should fill the niches that mundane animals do in our own mundane world.

For me, it's an issue of how common a particular creature is. Bears are fairly common - you could see a few walking in the woods. OWLBEARS are fairly rare. You'd only see one in the deep, eerie woods.

Fantastic animals COULD fill the niches that mundane creatures do, but, again, it depends on how common such creatures are. And, largely, that's a consideration left up to individual GM's (which is as it should be).

I'd rather have both bears and owlbears than to JUST have owlbears myself, but there'd be nothing wrong in a world that removed them (and removed humans, for that matter. )