Generic Space Opera Bestiary: Space Dog

 

"It's not an animated movie without a thing that's not a dog acting like a dog." – Producer, Onward Pitch Meeting, via TV Tropes

Dogs are probably the most singularly defining “animal” for most people. They are close enough that we see them often, but alien enough that we understand how their bestial psychology differs from ours. It’s probable that many generic space animals will behave like dogs, simply because a GM and a group will assume it so, because it’s easy to assume that. If a slobbering horror charges you, show it a stick and then throw it to distract it, just try not to be around when it inevitably returns with it. This isn’t realistic, of course, but it’s easy, and that’s a lot of the point of this minimal-effort bestiary, so “the dog” needs some serious discussion.

"Easy. Nice monster dog." John Carter, John Carter of Mars

The point of this bestiary is also to think about useful animals for a space bestiary. A lot of these critters will be relegated to background color or space monsters, but some animal companions would be nice, and no animal is more likely to end up as a companion more often than something that resembles a dog.

The defining feature of the dog is, of course, that they are gregarious, pack-based, SM +0 chasing carnivores. They’re often defined by their great senses, solid endurance and strong bite. Dogs are probably up there with horses for “animal that we’ll need a million variations of” so we’ll definitely need to see how far we can push this one. 

 

Space Dogs in GURPS Space

When it comes to Terrain, we’re probably looking at plains, but I think woodland (for wolves) and deserts are also plausible as are arctic conditions. Naturally, space dogs are chasing carnivores, and they’re walkers, with no secondary forms of locomotion.

When it comes to size, we expect human-scale SM +0, which they clock in at 200 lbs which is SM 11 to 12, which is not impluasible for a dog. This is probably on the large end; the smallest they have is 80 lbs, which is ST 8 to 9, which is closer to the stats in the book.

When it comes to their Body Plan, obviously we’re looking at a bilateral creature with two sets of limbs per side, a simple tail, no manipulators and an internal skeleton. It’s hard for me to imagine much deviation from this design without changing what it means to be a dog.

For Skni we could have Hide (DR 1), Scales (DR 1), Fur, Feathers (+1 Temperature Tolerance) or a Tough Exoskeleton (DR 1). It’s probably a warm-blooded creature.

When it comes to Sex, normal dogs have two sexes, live-bearing and a median strategy, but it seems plausible to have egg-layers as well.

When it comes to Senses, we would expect alien dogs to have Normal Vision, Normal Hearing, Human Level Touch, and Discriminatory Smell. Of course, we can push towards Ultrahearing (a classic dog trait) and colorblindness, as those fall well within the real of a reasonable dice-roll. For Special Senses we might expect Nightvision, though given the terrain they move in, Peripheral Vision or Detect Heat is not implausible.

When it comes to Alien Minds, we probably expect alien to be “Low Intelligence” which is to say, no smarter than most animals. All their stats clock them as IQ 4, and that’s also plausible per space. Permanent pair bonds are plausible, as are temporary pair bonds. For Social Organization, a Solitary species is most likely, but we need at least a Pack. The only real value we can get to create that would be to go for Harem Mating (not a crazy approach if we think about how wolf packs supposedly work, but I understand this is contentious and may not reflect reality; one can also make the case that lions, who certainly have harem mating, engage in cooperative hunting strategies) or simply assume they’re outside of the bell curve a bit. Weird that Chasing Carnivores don’t get a +1 here...

This gives them a generic Psychological Profile of Chauvinism +2 (Chauvanistic), Concentration +1 (Attentive), Curiosity 0, Egoism +0, Empathy +2 (Sensitive), Gregariousness +1 (Congenial), Imagination +0 and Suspicion -1 (Fearlessness 1).

Generic Alien Cat Stats

See Large Guard Dog on B457

Variations

Bug Dog

There’s no real benefit to an exoskeleton for a chasing carnivore in that it doesn’t need a lot of defense, but they’re within the size range that an exoskeleton remains plausible. If we wanted “bug dogs” we might expect another set of limbs, though probably still no manipulator and we might lose our tail (What does Bug-Dog wag?). We’d probably go to full egg-laying. For senses, we might expect Bad Vision (low resolution) due to compound eyes and the fact that we tend to picture dogs as having senses better than sight anyway. This would give more weight behind Ultrahearing, but might justify a push into Acute Hearing. Touch diminishes to an average of -1 DX, which is fine. Taste and Smell remains the same. Note that insects often have a connection with pheremones, so Bug-Dogs might even coordinate based on scent, the way ants do; if so, rather than barking at intruders, these might exude a smelly gas, or even spray an intruder with stinky pheromones! We would probably also expect them to do dumber, but I wouldn’t take them much below IQ 3 (they still need to learn tricks). If we shift them to a Hive strategy, the case for pack tactics becomes even stronger, according to Space. But if they’re Hive then they can be Strong-K, which justifies higher intelligence! So we could even justify IQ 5, if we wanted.

This gives Bug Dogs a generic Psychological Profile of Chauvinism +2 (Chauvanistic), Concentration +2 (Single Minded), Curiosity +1 (Nosy), Egoism +0, Empathy +3 (Empathy, Charitable), Gregariousness +3 (Gregarious), Imagination +1 (Versatile) and Suspicion -1 (Fearlessness 1).

Lens (Bug Dog): DX -1; Acute Hearing +2; Bad Vision (Low Resolution), Extra Legs (6), Gregarious, Single-Minded, Ultrahearing; remove Hidebound.

Bat Dog

If we’re going to de-emphasize an alien dog’s sense of sight in favor of some other senses, what sort of senses could we use? What about sonar? After all, dogs typically have exceptional hearing anyway. If they live in an environment where sense of sight is largely unnecessary, or evolved from a creature with less than exceptional sight to begin with, they might replace it with Ultrahearing and Sonar (I would think Sonar included Ultrahearing, but I don’t see any confirmation of this).

Blindness has some implications. It suggest a superior sense of touch (averages at Acute Touch), so we might see more “whiskers” or a vibration sense, though that might not be necessary. Sense of smell remains pretty solid, but we’d want it to: we need some way to detecting rather distant prey, as Sonar only works out to about 20 yards, which means that while it can substitute for sight in short, close in spaces, it gives the Bat Dog away to anyone with ultrahearing, and it won’t spot prey near the horizon. This might imply that Bat Dogs are a subterranean species, or night hunters with some sort of sense that lets them pick up their targets at a distance: seismic senses or discriminatory hearing might be enough.

Blindness has some psychological implications. Their Curiosity drops to -1 (Staid) and their Suspicion improves to 0 (and they lose fearlessness)

Lens (Sonar Dog): Reduce Will -1; Add Blindness, Discriminatory Hearing, Sonar, Ultrahearing.

Seeing Eye Dogs

We tend to think of dogs as having weak sight and excellent smell and hearing, and there may be co-evolutionary reasons for this, with our species and theirs adapting to our shared cooperation. But an alien dog wouldn’t have to go this route. It is possible to contemplate cooperative persistence hunters that use sight instead of smell.

If we’re going to go deep into vision, we should just see what we can get. Telescopic Vision is possible if our dogs luck out on their roll (as carnivores, they’d need to roll a 13+ on 3d, which is unlikely, but possible). We might replace that with acute vision, but telescopic vision makes sense for spotting distant prey, but I’m not sure how much value it has if you have to deal with a horizon. It would make more sense for an upright or long-necked species, because being able to see clearly miles away only has value if you can see many miles. We might also expect nightvision, but we can do better.

But we can see “further” if we can look back in time. Discriminatory smell lets us do this. Detect (Heat) would too; it’s what certain snakes can do (in a very real way, certain snakes have four eyes, rather than two), but why not just go one better and give them Infravision? Space doesn’t actually give us this option (but does have Ultravision, likely a reference to some insects being able to see in the ultraviolet spectrum), but we can go ahead and add it in. This would let our dogs track by sight; it’s not as good as tracking by smell, as heat tracks last less than an hour while the scent lasts days, but if we’re deeply invested in “sight not smell” this will have to do.

Hearing gives us the ability to pick out things coming at us from any direction. Diminishing our sense of smell and hearing means we need other ways to know what’s behind us. Scanning Sense (Radar) is an option, according to GURPS Space, and that’s interesting, but I’m skeptical. Chances are, these alien dogs are probably in a “noisy” environment, like a mushroom forest or grasslands full of purple fennel stalks, etc. Their radar would have limited value. If, instead, we situate their head to pop up and it excels at going over the height of the grass, we might just go a head and give them peripheral vision. Sure, that’s more likely in prey than predators, but it’s not disallowed either. Of course, how do you get telescopic peripheral vision? Well, what if you had four eyes? We mention it with the snake IR pits, but we could just straight up give them two forward facing eyes, and two peripheral eyes. There are plenty of spiders with arrays of eyes; there may be some biological concerns here, but “the four eyed space dog” seems to me to be the sort of thing we might expect to see in space opera.

Note that while we don’t have to diminish their hearing or sense of smell, it fits the theme. We might say they, like snakes, “taste the air” (they “pant” and lick the air like a dog, but they’re actually smelling) and where there ears would normally be on a dog becomes the position for their secondary eyes, with small hearing pits elsewhere.

Finally, let’s return to this idea of needing to get some height to make use of your telescopic vision. Being a climber would help a lot, but I struggle to see how one can be an excellent climber and an excellent pursuit predator (though in an especially wooded environment, pursuit predators may have to take to the branches, but in a heavily wooded environment, telescopic vision runs into other problems). A long neck would help: they likely have horse-shaped faces anyway, why not horse-shaped necks too? Then they can lift their eyes to get a longer-range look. But what if they could stand? We could add semi-upright so they can rear on their hind legs to scan the horizon and if they see prey, pop back down and come at it low, under the cover of grass or underbrush, using their long neck to extend their ability to bite. Of course, I can’t find any rule on long necks, even among animals that should have them (dragons, horses, etc), so I presume it’s just a feature.

Lens (Seeing Eye Dog): Remove Discriminatory Smell, Quadruped, and Ultrahearing; add Extra Legs (4), Infravision, No Fine Manipulators, Peripheral Vision, Semi-Upright and Telescopic Vision 4. Note that the bite has reach C, 1.

Toad Dog

What about an amphibious dog? We associated dogs with their mouths and their bite strength, and we also associate amphibians (frogs especially) with their wide mouths: seems like an excellent match! But I’m not sure what a chaser strategy brings to an amphibious carnivore. In fact, I can’t find much in the way of amphibious carnivores.

Being able to move in and out of water strikes me as something more appropriate to ambush predators, as they can exploit the ability to hide in one environment to ambush prey in the other. Crocodiles do this: hiding in the water until the last second and then using a large burst of energy to snatch their prey. I would argue a lot of birds do this to: wading slowly and carefully into the water, and then suddenly spearing a fish that didn’t see it. A pursuit predator would need to spend a long period of time on land or in the sea, and if so, what benefit does it gain from adapting to both? Why not be an aquatic or a land-based pursuit predator? Well, the answer may have to do with the nature of the world (perhaps it has surprisingly extreme tides) or with their life cycle (perhaps they must breed and lay eggs in the water or on land, but primarily hunt elsewhere).

So what changes? Well, we’re probably going to move away from fur and towards scales or skin (a horny hide, like a toad, though dolphins are certainly pack-based pursuit predators), but either way, you’re looking at DR 1+, and even if we stick with fur (seals aren’t far off from an “amphibious pursuit predator”) they likely have a layer of hide or blubber, so either way, we get DR 1. For breathing, they might have either Oxygen Absorption (as frogs do) or Oxygen Storage.

What about senses? Discriminatory Smell makes less sense to an aquatic predator: they’d taste instead. We might borrow a page from shark senses, though (and note that they have Discriminatory Smell… for some reason). We might replace Discriminatory Smell with Discriminatory Taste, Ultrahearing with Subsonic Hearing, and add Vibration Sense (Water) (many fish have this). Detect (Electric Fields) might be nice too.

What about their build. If they’re “frog-dogs” wouldn’t they have great jumping power? Well, I’m skeptical. That suits a pouncing predator more. Instead, I would imagine them with more a salamander-like build, which suggests a reptilian gait (though note that this is an inefficient means of land travel) and a long tail that can be used for balance and to aid in swimming. This suggests a predator that mostly pursues in the water, but spends time on land and can supplement their diet on land.

Lens (Toad Dog): reduce basic move to 6; replace Ultrasonic Hearing with Subsonic Hearing; Replace Discriminatory Smell with Discriminatory Taste; add Amphibious, Doesn’t Breath (Oxygen Absorption) or (Gills);

Bad Dog!

We tend to define dogs in terms of cooperative hunters but, interestingly, dogs don’t have to be social do be a cooperative hunter. There are cases where loner predators have joined to defeat a single, larger prey, such as fossa dogs. There are also examples I found where separate species would join together on a hunt. Perhaps these dogs tend to prey on large creatures and tend to instinctively cooperate to defeat those larger creatures, or perhaps they’re willing to work with other species to get a kill. Such a creature might combine some scavenger behavior too. Such a creature would be solitary, which is totally plausible for a carnivore, and likely forms no pair bond, which implies a stronger R strategy, which tends to select away from live birth (though note that Fossa Dogs are, of course, mammals), so egg-laying becomes more likely. R-strategy creatures are less likely to be intelligent, but let’s skip that, because they coordinate well. Nothing else really needs to change.

This gives Bad Dogs a new generic Psychological Profile (this is largely the point of them) of Chauvinism -1 to -3 (Broad-minded), Concentration +1 (Attentive), Curiosity +0, Egoism -1 (Humble), Empathy +0 to -1 (Oblivious), Gregariousness -1 (Uncongenial), Imagination +0 and Suspicion +0.

But we might monkey with their psychology, which is allowed, of course. What stands out is such a species would need to have an intuitive grasp of cooperation, even if they were brutal creatures. Thus, they might have higher-than-normal Empathy (the equivalent of non-scavengers that group in packs, or +2 for Sensitive) and lower-than-normal Empathy (for scavenges and loners, or -2 Empathy for Callous). And Callous/Sensitive creatures are allowed. We might also give them reduced Suspicion if they regularly take on large predators, perhaps even a level of overconfidence, but we get into a fascinating interaction if we make them high on Empathy, low on Chauvanism and low on Suspicion: they get Xenophilia and Unfazeable. This makes sense: they’d be willing to “team up” with anything that would help them kill, and they regularly kill large, nasty things anyway. I’m just not sure how you’d stat up this level of tactical thinking.

Lens (Bad Dog): Add Callous, Empathy, Unfazeable and Xenophilia (12).

Velociraptor

Someone will inevitably point out that you could do a scaled, two-legged dog that engaged in coordinated persistence hunting that used claws instead of bite! That’s true! Get yourself a copy of GURPS: Lands Out of Time, flip to page 27, and use Velociraptors. Of course, these are more like Utahraptors. Actual velociraptors were much smaller, not much bigger than the size of… oh hey, a dog! And they certainly had feathers. But writing up the stats for actual velociraptors is beyond the scope of this post… because Pizard already did it for us!

http://www.panoptesv.com/RPGs/animalia/dinosauria/dromeosaurids/dromeosauridtemplate.php

Star Dog

Okay, look, it’s all been fun and games with these alternate symmetries, but “ball cats” barely make sense as it is, but at least bouncing makes some sense for a pouncing predator. What advantage could an alternate symmetry dog get? They’re a focused line of senses on the end of a highly streamlined pursuit chassis. What are they gonna do to save energy when pursuing, roll?

Well, actually maybe. In the Netflix Series “Alien Worlds,” the world of Atlas had blob-like pack predators that optimized for the world’s high gravity by find ways to move very easily. We could imagine some sort of alien pursuit predator with a starfish like geometry that was specialized for moving across high G worlds. This will get very weird, though.

If we assume a 2G world, an SM +0 star dog remains plausible, but it’s typical size will drop to about 120 lbs. We could probably justify a drop to SM -1, if we wanted. The ST will probably remain around ST 9 to 10, though. If we assume a low-to-the-ground predator, say a foot off the ground, we get a “walking” move of about 3. We could double that to 6 (which is still much reduced compared to a normal dog). It remains plausible that we have no manipulating limbs, but given the physiology, the mouth will probably be at its center and it will need claws to damage prey and manipulating limbs to draw meat to its mouth. A classic starfish would have an exoskeleton, but that might be too heavy for the environment. What if, instead, we went with a hydrostatic skeleton and a very tough hide? For senses, we can stick with what we have, but 360° Vision becomes much more likely.

Our Star Dog is effectively a new creature that looks something like this:

ST: 9	Basic Speed: 5.75	SM: -1
DX: 12	Basic Move: 6
IQ: 3	Perception: 12
HT: 12	Will: 10	DR: 4

Traits: 360° Vision, Asteroid Morphology, Bad Sight; Bad Grip; Chummy, Claws (Sharp), Double Jointed, Reduced Consumption (Iron Stomach) 2; Teeth (Sharp), Ultrahearing, Wild Animal.

Bite (12): 1d-3 cutting, Reach C

Claw (12): 1d-2 cutting, Reach C