I mentioned blog discipline recently, and what I mostly meant was not discussing what I'm actually doing. Some of it is because it's behind the scenes stuff for Undercity Noir, so I can't very well talk about that, but there's a lot of bits that will certainly end up on the wiki at some point, so why not talk about those some?
In this case, I've been tinkering with animals.
The Problems with Space Animals
These are a bit of a bane for me. I've discussed them before, but in brief, and the rubber-to-the-road reality of beasties in Psi-Wars is tricky.
First, there's the fact that most of them are meaningless as encounters. A tiger is already a questionable threat to a starting DF character; they're not a threat at all to an average Action character... provided they have their gun on hand (Catch them unarmed in the jungle, and then we might talk). To a Psi-Wars commando, a tiger is a joke. The poor thing can't even hurt him.
Space Opera lets us get around that somewhat. After all, if there's a space tiger, you just assume it's about as much of a threat to you as a tiger would be to a fantasy character. This is, after all, a redress of tropes: a space knight is just a space opera reskin of a knight, and so a space tiger is just a space opera reskin of a tiger. But as noted before, the expectation in Psi-Wars is that we at least pay some lip service to physics, at least offer some technobabble as to why something works the way it does. For example, we expect that a 2 lb rat will not have ST 100. They might in Supers, or even Fantasy, but not in Space Opera, at least not without some excuse ("Their natural tactile TK"). If a serpent can deflect blaster fire with its scales, what the hell are those scales made out of? We have to have answers.
Once we have answered those questions, we need to stop and figure out how people ever got out of the stone-age. If an alien race developed on a world of giant, armored space mammoths that can go toe-to-toe with a tank, why would they also develop tanks? Either the mammoths would have killed them all or demolished their civilizations, or the race would have domesticated these space mammoths and use them as tanks. In a sense, Avatar is totally correct: if that's what your wildlife looks like, then you can have a TL 0+10 society based on your master of the planetary biosphere alone.
Once we feel we've answered that question well enough, then we must turn our eye to how did they get here? If I say that Moros has giant space centipedes of doom, that's fine and totally allowed. But what if you're not on Moros? Then you can't encounter one. And that's also fine, but that sharply limits the utility of a bestiary. If I create 20 neat critters for Moros, then when you got to Sarai or Samsara, then those 20 critters just disappear and I've wasted my time. Better would be to create creatures we can use in a variety of places. So, how do they move around?
In essence, these are questions of utility ("why do they matter?") and complexity ("I don't want to create or memorize an entire world's worth of critters per planet, no matter how realistic it is"). There are also questions of thematic integrity. Setting aside the realism of "several unique clades per planet," we would expect that when various races go to the stars, they bring something of their biosphere with them, so we can start to define the setting's animals in terms of specific ecosystems we want to explore. The Tamjaran (Keleni) Clade. The Stygian (Ranathim) Clade. The Glorian (Human) Clade and so on. Not everything necessarily needs to be bound to a specific race, of course: there are worlds or regions with sufficiently interesting creatures that they're worth of independent discussion: The Arcadian Clade; the Zirata Clade; the Leviathan clade; the Hekatombian clade. But how do we define these as distinct without either getting too far from the familiar and without crossing our wires too much. How many flavors of space dog and space cow can we have before it's too much?
The Sorts of Space Animals
So, now that we've outlined some of our problems, that of utility, complexity and theme, we can look at some rough lines we could draw around our space monsters. The first are what sorts of animals we're likely to see: Livestock, Companions, Mounts and Monsters. I'll also add Wildlife, but I'll only touch on it briefly.
Livestock
There are mostly color. They're unlikely to be anything other than something mentioned as in the background. We have a livestock that I've mentioned in Psi-Wars before: the Gheap, which is found on page 35 of Pyramid #3/12, which I see get tossed around the community as a fun thing to talk about, which is all Livestock can really be. They matter for the background, and may need stats ("Oh no, an angry gheap is on the loose!") but they're not really monsters or companions.
Livestock solves several of the above problems: You don't need to give them utility, because their utility is in how yummy they are, or how nice their hide is. You don't need to worry about how they get everywhere, because colonists brought them with them. You may need to worry about how they differ, but as long as they're visually different and offer different raw materials to people, it should be okay.
Mounts and Companions
These are critters that PCs will want to take as allies, or will buy from a market. The intention is typically to use them while adventuring in some fashion.
The Mount is a specialized example: it's a companion that you use for transportation. The main problem here is "Why not use a repulsorcar? Why not a spaceship?" The answer is typically that terrain is too rough, or the locals (including you) too poor to afford any. But they should still be usefully quick, or offer some other, real value to the characters that use them.
Broader animal companions need some utility that gadgetry will not provide. If they don't, they're Pets, which is fine. Pets are like livestock: they don't really need stats or special utility; they tend to be weak and small, and should be worth no more than a perk as an ally (like a cat). We just need to worry about thematic differences here.
When thinking about utility, it may help to think about how the critter would get along with its core members of its clade. Humans keep dogs to help track animals, and horses to carry our stuff, and hawks to help us hit remote prey. We've largely stopped using hawks, but not dogs, and we still get some use out of horses. What might Keleni use? Or the Ranathim?
Animal Companions definitely need stats and a point cost, as players will take them as allies. A dollar cost is also valuable. If they're expected to be useful in combat, we need to find some way to justify that combat utility.
Monsters
The last and most important is how do we attack PCs with space monsters. The easiest answer might be "we don't." The risk for a space marine is alien space marines, not the local wildlife. But in space opera, we expect that wildlife is a cool risk. We want to fight the Mudhorn with nothing but a vibroknife and psychic powers! We want to battle the Rancor or escape the Sarlacc. So we need to find some way to justify this dangerous space monster and why they're still a danger to ultra-tech combatants while explaining away how civilization survived with such a lethal critter around.
We also need to figure out how they got everywhere. Unless you want the Stygian Dragon to only be found on Stygia, then they need to get around. We see this often in Space Opera: Star Wars video games will drop a Rancor just about everywhere; they're native to Dathomir, apparently, but the first time we see one is on Tatooine. How did it get there? In that case, it was presumably brought their by the Hutt, but why are people carting around these wildly dangerous pets (especially since video games make Rancors tougher than tanks)? We can handwave it, of course, but it's worth thinking about. Perhaps a particular animal is only found on a single world, in which case, that's fine, but unless the players have a strong reason to go to that world, they won't know it exists or ever encounter it.
There's a few solutions I can think off of the top of my head. They may be space-faring. Either they travel directly in space, descend from a creature that does, or send out seeds/spores through space and "hatch" on planets. They might also have some other means of interstellar travel other than directly through space. There are creatures in the Labyrinths of labyrinthine worlds, and that allows them to journey from world to world, if they wish. Or perhaps people cart them around, either intentionally or unintentionally. People might like them as prestigious pets, or they might provide some utility when kept under careful circumstances, thus the "monsters" we find are just pets that have "gone feral." Or they may be the result of a disease or parasite: they hook onto the bottom of ships, or infect hapless lifestock or passengers, and then depart on another world somehow, thus infesting a new world. This is largely how rats conquered the world, so if a space monster as a portion of its life cycle as something like a ship rat, then this can work. Finally, the monster might not be born, but created: a genetic monstrosity, or a mutation, or something that arises from regions of Twisted Psionic Energy.4
Wildlife
Well, why do space monsters have to be monsters? What's wrong with just space tigers that are as strong as normal space tigers that fall quickly to some blaster fire, can't claw through carbide plates, and can only be found on a single world? Why does all animal life in space opera be lethal to everyone?
Well, they don't... but if they're not dangerous or useful, then they're wildlife, which means they're just color. Perhaps a golden-furred ice-wolves roam the autumnal forests of Arcadia. Cool. That's literally as much detail about them as you need: if you're in those forests, you can hear their dirge-like songs to the moon. We don't need to take them as companions, so we don't need a point cost, and we don't need to fight them, so we don't need stats: maybe some generic stats and a name would be enough for the opportunity of an encounter?
Major Clades
So, I can't tackle every monsters in the Psi-Wars Galaxy. What are some highlights I'd like to hit?
Glorian Rim
In "human space" there are two major ones I'd like to explore, though I find a third is cropping up as I work on things. First, I'd like to do the creatures of Earth, but these will be genetically engineered and upgraded to the point that they start to look somewhat different, to suggest some distance from humanity and their origins. I don't see space monsters here, just companions and livestock.
I have vision of the Arcadian Clade; it's a minor world but one with lush, beautiful forests and I keep name-checking it. A set of beautiful, fae creatures might be nice, but outside of some interesting animal companions, I'm not sure how much merit it has.
I also find myself discussing the creatures if Caliban a lot. Member of House Kain like to prove themselves by hunting or delving into the Labyrinth, so I can see them doing something like wrestling a stone shark, or some sort of Calibanian Dire Cave Bear or something. Thus, I definitely see Space Monsters there, but I'm not sure how much that matters outside of House Kain.
Finally, we definitely need creatures of the Labyrinth. I've actually got quite a few worked up, but they may need an edit pass. These are mostly space monsters, things you risk your life against when you delve into the labyrinth, and since the labyrinth is found in multiple star systems, it's not hard to use them in several locations. Of course, these also find their way into the Sylvan Spiral, but the Labyrinth is mostly a feature of the Glorian Rim.
The Umbral Rim
On the other side of the galaxy, we have the oriental planetary romance of the Umbral Rim. Space monsters will be rather important here.
The Keleni will likely have space animals associated with them, the Temjaran Clade. Their natural affinity to Telepathy could plausibly allow them to learn Animal Telepathy as well, or at least to invest in some Animalism techniques, which might give them a unique connection with their animals. These aren't likely to be space monsters, but as domesticated animals carried with them while they colonized the Hydrus constellation and arts of the galactic center. I imagine these animals to be beautiful and attractive, often in shades of blues like the Keleni themselves, and associated with wet terrain, such as water creatures, swamp creatures or possibly jungle creatures. They may share Keleni gentleness and use sensitivity to one another to create these delicate and charitable ecospheres.
The Ranathim almost certainly have a clade, the Stygian Clade. These likely share the brutish selfishness of the Ranathim themselves: they have jackals rather than dogs, riding cats rather than horses, and bats rather than birds, and they must have some sort of boa that they sensuously dance with. These creatures will tend to be associated with dry lands, the desert, plain or mountains, and they will tend to be monstrous, appropriate for the apocalyptic landscapes of Ranathim worlds.
This suggests monsters, but I'm not sure why the Ranathim would bring monsters with them. The three I have in mind are Ogres or Matra, which would be the Psi-Wars equivalent to a Rancor, but how does it get around? I imagine a manticore or venet, and I have some quite some interesting ideas for them, but I may associate them with Hekatomb rather than the Ranathim themselves. Finally, I'd like there to be dragons, but I'm not sure exactly what they'd look like. Like are they just literal dragons? Or are they a distinct, alien vision of them? Are they intelligent? Do they have secret psychic powers? Are they eldritch gods? Or are they ravenous, reptilian beasts?
One world, Hekatomb, has always called out for space monsters. It's an emerald hell, a planet that's trying to eat you. It's supposed to have all the goofy "deathworld" tropes, like carnivorous plants, quicksand, dinosaurs and so on. I also see it home to a Dathomir-like witch-cult and, of course, a special nobility, Mithna Galantim. Obviously, this is all space monsters all the time... but we're left with a problem: Hekatomb is a nasty like, on par with Dathomir or Dagobah, but if you're not there... who cares? If space dinosaurs roar, and no-one is around to hear it, does it even matter?
Another special case that should be discussed are the Gaunt. These are artifical creatures created from a synthetic flesh. The Gaunt themselves are but one application. I've created several Gaunt bestiaries over time, but I find myself refining it over and over again. In particular, I've come around to the idea that some synethic flesh has "gone bad" and become "cancerous" and is creating things it shouldn't. What does that look like?
The Sylvan Spiral
Ah, where Space Monsters live. Here, we can dispense with most of our issues regarding space monsters, because the lore of this are justifies just about anything we'd like to have.
The Leviathans are probably the most iconic of the life here. These are giant space "sea serpents" that roam the "Morass" of the Sylvan Spiral. As I've worked on more and more critters, the more room I've seen for related beasts, such as Arcturan Ogres, or the Orochi of the Orochi belt. These make for great and self-explanatory space monsters, as their space-faring nature explains why they're so powerful and ubiquitous, and their remoteness explains why they haven't destroyed civilizations (presumably, they would have).
The Zirata are another clade I'd very much like to look at. I compared them to Pokemon and got a big thumbs down, but they're actually Ruuk, but you don't know what Ruuk are. The idea here is to have a large possible design space that players are allowed to fill while following certain rules. The Zirata will be a design-your-own-space-monster race, with rules for breeding and very broad rules for animal handling that makes them very broadly useful for what you need them to be, within a particular ruleset. I should probably start with them, but I struggle with where to begin.
There are likely a few sub clades worth talking about, but they might be rather isolated. Nehud, Jotan and Basidium V might all have unique clades associated with them, but I'm not sure how they'd get around or be relevant off their worlds. Xen almost certainly has mutant monstrosities that bear a superficial resemblance to humanity, like the Moloch of Elex. But again, they're unlikely to get off-world.
The Arkhaian Spiral
On the other side of the galaxy, we have little in the way of space monsters. Robots, the Eldoth and various apocalyptic cataclysms have cleansed many worlds of life. What remains is more artificial and technological than "alive."
The Eldoth did create a technology of necrokinetic machines that blurred the line of living and machine. We call these the Arkhaian clade in the setting, and they include the Arkhaians themselves, and the Ash Crows and other "creatures" associated with Deep Engine sites.
The Scourge almost certainly left its mark on worlds, and creatures associated with that alien menace likely still exist. These, too, mix the elements of technological with living.
It might be nice to have some actual creatures out here, but I don't imagine much in the way of animal companions or space monsters. The few living creatures you'll find out here are more likely to be wildlife that should be protected from various technological menaces than direct threats to the group.
The Galactic Core
I haven't put much thought into the wildlife of the galactic core. I tend to see people as bringing their life with them when they go into the Galactic Core more than I see native life within the core. Kronos might have had life, before it was purged, but the Menhiri did colonize other worlds. Perhaps there are stony cows out there somewhere? Similarly, we have Traders, who are unlikely to have much native life remaining, after their homeworld was destroyed. However, their Arks almost certainly have insectile space rats. Trader-Roaches? And given that Traders go everywhere, they could bring their parasites with them.
The Galactic Fringe
I also haven't put much thought into the alien life of the Galactic Fringe either. Given how remote it is, it's unlikely players will interact with them unless a part of the fringe becomes central to the game, though I predict the Phoenix Cluster will change that some, and the Mug will likely bring some of their life with them too.
General Observations
The hardest part of all of this has been looking for good inspiration. I've dug through lots of sci-fi supplements, but most of them feel like the monsters you already know: the bug monster, the blob monster, the tentacle monsters, etc. I was hoping for some innovative takes on existing creatures, so I could take the familiar and twist it slightly. I've actually found the most interesting inspirations in concept art and, this probably won't come as a surprise to you, in GURPS, especially the Space Bestiary and Pyramid Articles for Dungeon Fantasy. I just thought I would mention that.
GURPS Action 5 has a section, Z is for Zoo, which has quite some details on animals, though much abbreviated. This might be worth doing for less important animals. Perhaps I'll talk about this again at a later point.
There's also a lot of value in having pre-written animals. I always used to dismiss the guys who wanted a Bestiary. Now I need one. DF 5 Allies, some of the monster books and Pizards tireless work at cataloging GURPS variations of animals, have been invaluable to me
What to do about Animal Handling
Ahhh, Animal Handling. I had originally intended to make each clade it's own specialization, but I'm not sure how much it would strain believability. It would mean that training a dog is the same as training a hawk and a horse and a dolphin, provided they all come from Earth. I did this on the premise that GURPS allowed "Equines" or "all sorts dogs" as a single animal handling, and I didn't want to run into a problem where your animal handling was completely useless off-planet.
As I look at my animals, though, I notice that you don't generally run into issues with that as much as I thought. If you have Animal Handling (Dog) it's only useful if people have dogs, and they usually won't, even on Earth. And in Psi-Wars, you'll probably have "dogs" on multiple planets. And while this will make behavioral biologists bristle, I think it's plausible to give generous defaults to people manipulating animals in the same clade or of similar function and purpose across clade. You can probably find some behavioral science to back that up ("Chasing carnivores will tend to think and behave in similar ways, whatever their underlying genetics"), but it's mostly because people will expect like to behave like like. If we can accept alien Ranathim girls being turned on by a human man, then I think we can expect that the sort of training methods that work on Earth dogs will work on Stygian Grave Hounds too, more or less. But this means I'll have to come up with a rather detailed default map (Animal Handling already has this, but sort of brushes it under a rug talking about orders and then leave is to you and confused taxonomists to sort out the details.
It turns out Animal Handling does a few things, most of which aren't so important to me:
- Breeding (interesting for people who want to mess around with genetic subgames, especially with the Zirata, but largely something in the background)
- Teaching tricks (similarly a background thing)
- Training up IQ (background)
- Getting your animal to do what it's supposed to (for example, using it to search people, per GURPS Action)
- Distract an animal or provoke it (GURPS Action and DF)
- Better defeating particular animals (very interesting! It's why I gave it to beast-hunting Bounty Hunters)
Bestial Intelligence
In my research, I came across several conflicting examples of what a wild beast should have, namely Dead Broke. I also did way more research into how low IQ works than I ever expected (in some ways, IQ 6 can be potentially cheaper than IQ 5, despite being absolutely better in terms of rolled dice). I also rediscovered the Presapient disadvantage from 3e, and created a modified metatrait version.
In brief, to recap what several books highlight:
IQ 1: Reflex-Guided animal, such as an insect or most invertebrates;
IQ 2: Fish and reptiles
IQ 3: Birds and low intelligence herbivorous mammals
IQ 4: More intelligent mammals and carnivores
IQ 5: Smart animals; monkeys, elephants, parrots, octopuses.
IQ 6+ characters are sapient or presentient and can gain a Native Language for free as well as learn other languages. They make take Dylsexia (B134) [-10], Innumerate (B140) [-5] and Non-Iconographic (B146) [-10].
Nothing new here, the last is just a careful collation of how certain mechanics work. For the new version of Wild and Domestic Animal as well as Presapient, I have:
Domestic Animal [-55]: Cannot Speak [-15]; Hidebound [-5]; Social Stigma (Valuable Property) [-10]; Taboo Trait (Fixed IQ) [0]; Wealth (Dead Broke) [-25]
Wild Animal [-55]: Bestial [-10]; Cannot Speak [-15]; Hidebound [-5]; Taboo Trait (Fixed IQ) [0]; Wealth (Dead Broke) [-25]
Presentient [-20]: IQ 6+; Protolinguistic [-5]; Taboo Traits (IQ skills harder than Easy) [0]; Dyslexia [-10]; Innumerate [-5]; They will often have low levels of wealth, but this should be separate.
So these are essentially the normal Domestic and Wild Animal template, with Wealth (Dead Broke) bolted on, as they cannot meaningfully own property. Not sure why that's not default in GURPS Basic, perhaps because it doesn't want to assume what you're doing with their wealth, but it's something to be mindful of when making your own animals.
Presentient is more of a worked trait that I find comes up often, and I need to be aware of if I give a critter IQ 6+. At IQ 6, by default, you get a language for free, and you can read, write, speak, do math, all that fun stuff. 3e had a trait called Presapient that... well, it's converted in the 4e conversion document, but that conversion has some issues. For example, you cannot ever learn a written language, but that's literally the Dyslexia disadvantage. Presentient also includes Innumerate (cannot do math) and Non-Iconographic, but I cut the latter. If you find some cave man primitive and try to talk to him or get him to count on more than his fingers, I imagine you'd not be surprised if he didn't understand, but if you drew an image on the ground, I imagine he'd get it. I mean, they can explicitly learn Gesture, so I'm not sure why they wouldn't be able to look at pictures; I think it's meant to capture Koko the Gorilla (who probably wasn't as good at signing as her handlers made her out to be), but I wanted something that felt more intuitive to players.
The Taboo Trait on anything harder than IQ/E is from the original disadvantage and it intrigues me. I have no idea how it would actually play (and it's not like I expect PCs to actually pick this up anyway). As I go through the list, I notice this limits them away from Acting (not good at lying, I guess), Artist (no cave paintings?), Cartography (I suppose they could get a map if you showed them one, but they'd have a hard time making it as exact as you did), Holdout (not very good at deception, these), Traps (!!?), or numerous (most) others, but they can learn Carpentry, Camouflage (and Make-Up, but not Disguise?), Computer Operation (monkeys with keyboards...), Current Affairs ("Wildman have juicy gossip!"), First-Aid, Games, Gardening, Gesture (of course) and Savoir-Faire. It's an interesting limitation, but I'm not 100% convinced it's the best idea. It does make you think about what goes into certain skills, though, and how nuanced they might actually be.
Protolinguistic is a new disadvantage: presentient characters couldn't learn to speak, yet somehow didn't get Cannot Speak for no reason I can understand. This is meant as a compromise: presentient characters have no "Free" native language, but may learn a language up to Broken. This gives you the grunting caveman who struggles to explain any particular concept, or the strange bird-alien that can slowly chirp out a few words as it struggles with abstract concepts, etc. This might be more accurately priced at -3 points, given that it's really just removing your native language and giving you a taboo trait on higher than Broken language, but on the other hand, it means you start what amounts to Cannot Speak and you have to spend additional points to "unlearn it" so -5 felt fairer... and more pentaphilic.
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