That's a very good question!
Sortof yes, sortof no.
Some of them are fairly big (king cobra, for example), but the idea here is that they have a relatively small "signature" on the map (in other words, they're camoflaged, or otherwise hard to see), and they both resemble-and operate in similar ways to-the other vermin in the game.
Some of them will eat your food, for example; and many will be hateable.
None of them are enormous, so you do have a point about the size. At some point there is a size limit that vermin fall under: Wild boars and wild dogs are sometimes considered "vermin" in the real world, but in that case, the size is one of several cutoff points for me. I don't consider size to always be the only decider, though, so it comes down to a matter of my own judgement and preferences, as to what's "vermin", and what isn't.
To give you some examples of the things I take into consideration:
Charisma is a minor factor, for instance: Dogs are never vermin, even if we're talking about a rabid chihuahua.
In the case of the king cobra, it's a pretty big animal (they can grow up to 10 feet long), but it's also solitary, tends to avoid humans when possible, and uses poison as it's main weapon. So it's much less likely that you'll notice them in your area, unless you happen to step on one.
Boars, on the other hand, are smart, powerful, dangerous animals, who are fairly social, so there's often more than one in an area where they are, and they'll happily wander into civilization to steal food. Too big, too noticeable, and too central to medieval life.
I'd also pick smaller mammals than other animals, when considering what's "vermin" and what isn't. The reason for that is there are plenty of well established "vermin" mammals already, and there's no reason to push the issue.
So the size scale also slides.
There's no one single thing that defines them as "vermin" in every single case. There's even the issue of food to consider, since vermin have their own special "foodsource" category.
It's just my mod and my call, in the end, and some of the choices I've made reflect things I want to tie in to an overall skein--This mod should stand alone, when it's complete, but it's not necessarily *meant* to.
Whether or not a particular critter qualifies for the vermin tag *is* something I put a lot of thought into, though-and I would like my choices to be fairly reasonable/understandable-but I'm just not out to please everyone, here.
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Topic: Multitudinous Vermin Mod (Read 7050 times)