I have been thinking about replacing the default animal list for my Furry Fortress mod. Here are a few things I've been thinking about.
- Generic Animals with Biome Adjectives. So instead of leopards, cougars, tigers, there's one animal called a "panther". Instead of chimp, gorilla, gibbon, there's just an "ape". And so on for other groups of animals. Then, each of these base templates is combined with a biome, so you have say, snow panther, swamp panther, sand panther, mountain panther, savanna panther, glacier ape, marsh ape, desert ape, highland ape, lowland ape, etc. You could also have a few fantasy versions, like the gabbro man and plump helmet man could become gabbro panther, mushroom ape. Can apply to any of the following ideas as well.
- Cenozoic above ground, Mesozoic underground. The world is filled with various extinct animals, mammoths, saber cats, woolly rhinos, terror birds, terratorns, land crocs, etc, and the caverns are filled with dinosaurs.
- Mythology & Cryptids. Fill the world with mythical creatures and cryptids. Wyverns, kongamatos, sphinxes, chupacabras, etc.
- Pretend you're Pokemon. Combine real world animals (or extinct or mythical) with elemental powers, forces of nature, etc. Rocktopus, Thundhawk, Blazebra, whatever. Probably should be based on things you can actually do in DF, breath attacks, stats, body materials, etc.
- Stitch Creatures. Take the Owlbear idea and run with it, combine any two creatures into one creature. Bunnywolf, squidgorilla, ducktoise, tarantulelaphant, etc. One thought was that these are actually a combination of templates and modifiers, so for example, the X-bear base template could be a large omnivorous creature with claws, the owl-X modifier is a bird beak, nocturnal vision. So you could end up with owlbear, owlwolf, owlgorilla, owltoise, owlelephant, bunnybear, squidbear, duckbear, tarantulabear, and so on. In sorta the same vein, you could combine creatures with other mythical things, like an ogrebear, dracobear, merbear, beartaur, etc.
- Borrow. Just borrow creatures (or ideas) from a series like Final Fantasy or Dungeons and Dragons. It's easy to find great big lists of these online. Besides those guys, Edgar Rice Burroughs made extensive lists of creatures for his imaginary worlds, and is sort of public domain by now.
Here's a list from Barsoom. MagiNation was a cool cardgame that bankrupted itself, but
this website keeps lists of all their cards and creatures. I liked
Duel Masters creatures, though they can be a bit snarky (if you are new to Duel Masters, stick with the earlier sets, they get progressively crazier as they go).
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Topic: Total Creature Replacement (Read 833 times)