Ancient Faith in the Far Future: A surprising (or obvious) Animal Encounter

Saturday, October 4, 2014

A surprising (or obvious) Animal Encounter

I've been thinking on the Encounters section of the Classic Traveller rules lately, so it only makes sense that I would take another look at the Animal Encounters section.

A Highlander Cow, from the planet Dumarque

The CT Animal Encounter rules are both flexible in execution, and clever in design. Instead of designing creatures based upon their appearance (body shape, number of limbs, color, skin covering, etc) the rules focus on describing an animal's behavior and place in the ecosystem.

Start with the assumption that animals, whatever planet they exist on, will fall into general categories based on their eating habits: herbivores, carnivores, omnivores and scavengers. Each of these categories has a number of sub-types which further define how the animal will behave. With that as a framework, the referee is able to create a nearly endless array of critters, limited only by the imagination necessary to describe what the critter looks like.

By defining its behavior first, the referee can make the animal's appearance make sense in the climate and within the story, so that animals are not just Random Encounters because your referee hates you.

Anyway, the reason I mention this is because it occurred to me that I can define any sort of creature that has appeared in other works. So, here we go - any roleplayer should recognize this one:

Flying Pouncer
Weight       Hits    Armor     Wounds    Weapons Attack      Flee            Speed
44,000 kg 102/54 Battle-4 2Dx6         Claws      If surprise If surprised 2 (4 in the air)
                                                           Teeth
                                                           Special (As PGMP-14)

Gentle Travellers, I present to you -
A Dragon.