Is the Fourth Edition Bestiary ever going to happen?

[Sam Baughn]

I understand that at one point, there was a plan to release a book focusing on animals. While we've had a lot of books about *monsters* suitable for various genres, we haven't had one which just had a load of ordinary animals.

I guess it would be one of those projects like the Vehicle Design System which just needed too many resources to finish without any confidence that sales would be good enough to justify it. It would obviously need writers with comprehensive knowledge of GURPS and an unusually broad understanding of animals to really do it justice, which is a tall order. Masses of stat-blocks probably take up a lot of editor-time too.

However, unlike the Vehicle Design System, a bestiary could conceivably be split into smaller pieces to suit the current production model of small PDFs. However, there is no entry in the wish-list for such supplements, which would seem to indicate that whoever decides how to handle this kind of thing has either given up on the concept entirely, is still planning to release one big book of animals, or already has a lot of writing on the subject but is short of some other resource (I would guess Kromm-time) which would be needed to get it all published. (Of course, it's also possible that I am mistaken and there was never meant to be a big book of animals.)

While I understand that they may not care to explain the details, I thought it would be worth asking, since similar questions about the Vehicle Design System have had answers. So, is there likely to be a book or series about animals in the near-future and, if not, why not?

[Kalzazz]

DHC will be making a fabulous DFRPG Nordlond book to this end which you can see announcement for here just scroll down a bit

https://gamingballistic.com/2019/09/...keeps-growing/

[Phantasm]

As I understand it, at least part of the issue is finding a qualified and interested freelancer to write it.

I've thought about doing "Bestiary 1: Modern Megafauna" myself, but I'm not entirely sure yet how I'd go about it (or even if I'd be given a green light).

[Kromm]

The idea of a Bestiary series sat on the wish list from 2004 to 2010, and there was only one attempt at it . . . which didn't work out. Maybe word got out about that failed attempt, perhaps there were no writers who felt qualified, or possibly the best-qualified people weren't fond of the idea of splitting things up (the wish list even left that to the writer, though it proposed titles like Big Cats, Desert Creatures, Mounts and Working Beasts, and Pests, Swarms, and Vermin). I cannot say.

These days, the biggest issues are twofold:

1. I'd have to find time to be a very engaged editor, verging on coauthor. That's because whenever animals show up in GURPS supplements, they always end up making work for me. I have to recalculate attack damage to reflect ST, Claws, and Brawling skill; correct trait names; fix capitalization, list formatting, stats order, Word styles used in the stats block, etc.; and so on. More often than not, consistency between similar creatures needs tweaking, too: Why does this great cat have Night Vision and Stealth, but not that one? How can this animal prey upon something whose DR is too high for the predator to pierce even with an All-Out Attack?
   
   
2. The writer would absolutely have to be knowledgeable in the extreme about animals. I wouldn't even consider someone who wasn't some kind of naturalist or zoologist – or at least a veterinarian or zookeeper. Their grasp of GURPS rules and stats would have to be near-flawless, too. And they'd have to be conversant in our style and formatting. This would be to minimize the work I mentioned in the previous point. I'm not sure this person exists, never mind several such people willing to create a series . . . and my experience with "Person A handles research and descriptive text, Person B takes care of stats and formatting" teams has been too mixed for me to get behind such an approach here.

So that's the "why" of it.

Would I like such a series? Yes, of course! But I am pessimistic bordering on depressed about the odds of getting it done right. It simply must be near-perfectly researched, written, and formatted in its first draft; I can't spare the time it would consume otherwise.

[ericthered]

I suspect the existence of Gurps Animalia fills that niche. Its a fan work, true, and its incomplete, but its a really solid work that sets a high bar to clear, and gives us an informal bestiary for the time being.

[maximara]

You can do a really quick and dirty conversion of the Classic Bestiary:

* ST10+: Fourth Edition ST = square root of (10 x Third Edition ST)
* Dodge: Ignore PD and add 3 to score
* HT: read as HT/HP with the HP figured off of ST.

Sure it doesn't do the fine tuning but to quickly use what we have it gets the job done.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by Kromm

[*]The writer would absolutely have to be knowledgeable in the extreme about animals. I wouldn't even consider someone who wasn't some kind of naturalist or zoologist – or at least a veterinarian or zookeeper. Their grasp of GURPS rules and stats would have to be near-flawless, too. And they'd have to be conversant in our style and formatting.

*Looks at Venn diagram*
*cries*

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Anders

*Looks at Venn diagram*
*cries*

Same. Though I wonder if you could split it up some. Someone who knows GURPS and formatting and then someone who knows animals and zoology.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

Same. Though I wonder if you could split it up some. Someone who knows GURPS and formatting and then someone who knows animals and zoology.

Reread line @2 of Kromms post, Hes pretty sure that wont work well based on prior experience.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Refplace

Reread line @2 of Kromms post, Hes pretty sure that wont work well based on prior experience.

You are correct. I missed that part.