Bestiary series

[troll]

What kind of new bestiary serious would you all like to see from GURPS.

[Proteus]

I once contemplated whether a real-world Bestiary might better end up as a back-door compilation of other products:

• GURPS Aerial Adventures — with rules for dragon vs. biplane dogfights, magic spells for cloud-castle construction, etc., but also stats for eagles, buzzards, falcons, owls, and so on? (And gryphons, hippogriffs, and pegasi, of course.)
  
  
• GURPS Fantasy: Familiars — with actual (not amped-up Dungeon Fantasy) versions of cats, ravens, toads, and so on, and perhaps a few oddities like hedgehogs, porcupines, or penguins?
  
  
• GURPS Fantasy: Lycanthropy — with stats for wolves, dingos, jackals, coyotes, maybe foxes, and assorted domestic canines, along with myths and mechanics?
  
  
• GURPS High-Tech: Safari — with rules for administering long lines of native bearers, etc., in Teddy-Roosevelt-style expeditions into deepest Africa or the Amazon, and information on exotic beasts like giraffes, rhinoceros, hippopotami, ostriches, hyenas, Komodo dragons, kangaroo, Tasmanian devils, and more?
  
  
• GURPS Horror: Cats — with myths and movies about malevolent felines, and stats for housecats, cheetahs, leopards, panthers, lions, tigers, sabertooths, etc.?
  
  
• GURPS Low-Tech: Beasts of Burden — with stats for oxen, camels, elephants, mammoths, donkeys, and various types of horses, along with amplifications for rules on barding, packing, and the like?
  
  
• GURPS Low-Tech: Farmers and Hunters — with some of the farming rules from Pyramid; stats for game animals from deer and elk to rabbits and snakes; stats for domesticated creatures like cattle, alpacas, sheep, goats, emus, pigs, turkeys, chickens, and other small fowl. Oh, and rules for Celtic cattle raids.
  
  
• GURPS Ultra-Tech: Uplifted Companions — with adaptations of the rules from 3E's licensed publication, and stats for original and variously modified gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, bears, dolphins, dogs (again?), raccoons, parrots, and octopodes?
  
  
• GURPS Underwater Adventures — an extension of the Pyramid article, with gear and so forth, but also with stats for otters, seals, sharks, stingrays, whales, barracudas, walruses, alligators, and the like?

[Dammann]

I like that approach, Proteus!

I think that breaking the bestiary into segments presents the best chance for actual publication. It also allows GMs to buy the section of a bestiary they need, without buying material they don't, while maximizing the amount SJG can make from a comprehensive menagerie.

I'd thought that breaking the bestiary up by survival specialities made a lot of sense, since a jungle campaign could be reasonably sure to get all they need in one supplement, an arctic campaign another, etc. But breaking up animals by function is appealing, too, for similar reasons. You buy the part of the zoo you need, and don't bother with the rest.

I run DF mostly, and my observation has been that conventional animals are not very threatening. Even when the party is split, a bear is fairly easy for a 250-300 point character to handle, as long as the character is a front liner. Maybe that is a function of DF characters being over the top effective at fighting, but animals as combat threats seem best scaled to a lower point total.