Why does D&D have bears?

[Dire Bare]

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.

Oh my!

 

[Dire Bare]

Why does most fantasy have bears? Most fantasy games, fantasy novels, fantasy movies? (bears or other earthly creatures)

Why are there so few exceptions to the rule such as Jorune or Talislanta?

If only we had seen the madness decades ago and removed bears from fantasy, it would all be so much more believable and immersive!

Ah, the blindness of majority preference and the weight of tradition . . . sigh . . .

 

[Thurbane]

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.

Heh, all this time I never picked up on the whole Gummi Bears thing with the sample from Savage Species!

 

[Mark Chance]

Oh my!

Well, at least you got it.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Of course the real answer is that costumes for 3 headed bugs with 8 legs were too difficult to make back in the 60s...

Ha! There were more "alien" aliens in TOS than there have been since. Everything from clouds to flying pancakes.

 

[Desdichado]

Are the 'no sniping' comments directed at me and/or Celebrim? Are we sniping? I didn't think we were sniping. Then again, I don't think anyone here's really sniping, so now I'm confused.

Am I being a bad Hobo again? I thought I was just playing around and talking about something that I think it interesting.

 

[pawsplay]

Well, to go O/T and geek out for a minute, that was actually explained in an episode of Next Gen - apparently some ancient race seeded planets all over the universe with DNA that eventually evolved into the various human-like races (Humans, Vulcans, Bajorans etc.).

Which means humans are still more closely related to a radish than a Vulcan.

 

[Mallus]

...to flying pancakes.

I always thought of them as flying omelettes, or made sunny-side up eggs. Definitely an egg-based life form.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Which means humans are still more closely related to a radish than a Vulcan.

Clearly not, because humans and Vulcans can produce offspring, as can humans and Klingons, and humans and Betazoids.

It seems likely that not only did aliens seed worlds with the same base DNA, but that that DNA either somehow carried a pattern in it, moving the various lifeforms toward the same basic shape and genome, or that the aliens (or other aliens) continued to muck about (and continue to do so even now) within the Star Trek universe. At least that might explain the Civil War Planet from TOS.

Or else, the Star Trek universe is one big holodeck for beings like Q, and the apparent breaks with physics and genetics occur because the holodeck determines the underlying rules of the program, and that can be changed at the user's whim.

RC

 

[Celebrim]

Are the 'no sniping' comments directed at me and/or Celebrim? Are we sniping?

Me. And I didn't think so.

I didn't think we were sniping.

No, we are definately not sniping. Me and you have been sniping at each other before, and it looked sort of Grozny, Staligrad, or Vicksburg had broken out on the boards. In a friendly way though, of course.

Then again, I don't think anyone here's really sniping, so now I'm confused.

As far as I can tell, no one got injured.

Am I being a bad Hobo again? I thought I was just playing around and talking about something that I think it interesting.

It was probably preemptive modding. They didn't want to wait for it to become an emmenent threat.