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Originally shared by Jesse Cohoon
Top 8 Non-Enemy Ways to Use Animals in Your Game
By: Jesse C Cohoon
Animals are omnipresent in games, but their significance and potential roles in the game can be quite easily overlooked or missed. By the word animal, I mean basically anything non-human as well as, in most cases things that are not monsters. Animals can be used as food, work, companionship, a pest, spiritual purposes, as teachers, the dominant species and a means of protection and defense.
1) Animals as food: Unless a person (or group of people) is completely vegetarian, animals will either be domesticated or hunted for food. In some cases the animals that are hunted or domesticated are actually other sentient creatures or monsters that are enslaved for that purpose.
Don’t forget to include such things as insects, birds, fish, or things that might be normally considered monsters. I remember reading once that a person used “fireball” on a rust monster, and it smelled like a lobster. So people took and found them and domesticated them for food in this person’s world.
Even animals that may normally be inedible, some cultures may have figured out a way of eating because it is plentiful in their area, and so as not to waste a potential food source. Case in point: the puffer fish. If prepared wrongly, it leads to death within a few hours. Done by a master sushi chef, it is quite a delicacy (or so I’ve heard).
2) Animals Used for work. Animals have long been domesticated not only for food, but for work as well. Animals may be used for transportation, as in the case of horses and sled dogs. When considering forms of transportation, don’t forget about alternative methods of transportation, including flight, swimming, teleportation (blink dog), passing through various substances (fire, earth, woods) or swinging through trees on vines, or webs, such as what might happen with an animal having a prehensile tails or feet, long arms, or a web from a spider.
Other uses for animals are plowing, turning spits, digging, and guarding areas, as well as Police K-9 units for finding drugs or explosives. In India, elephants are used to help clear debris from roads. Dalmatians are well known as fire-fighting escorts and firehouse mascots because they are compatible with horses. The dogs were trained to run in front of the carriages to help clear a path and quickly guide the horses and firefighters to the fires.
There are also animals used for entertainment. There is a long-held tradition of animals being used for the entertainment industry. This includes everything from the dolphin and whale shows in places like Sea World, to animals who perform tricks in the circus such as the lion tamer act, people riding on elephants, dancing bears and more to animals carrying a hat to collect donations for a bum and more.
In a fantasy setting someone could have domesticated animals for digging tunnels, operating elevators, pumping water, or helping to build structures. If they are treated well, they can be seen as beloved members of the community who do important tasks. On the other hand, if they are poorly treated or enslaved, it may be up to the players to do something about them.
3) Animals Used for companionship: Pets are the broadest category of the types of animals that are used for companionship, but it doesn’t stop there. Companion pets can be used to help people with PTSD, as a Seeing Eye dog, tell if someone is about to have a seizure or low blood sugar, and help those who are wheelchair bound get things they otherwise could not reach.
In some worlds, every character might have their own animal companions. This is the idea behind anime series of Digimon and Pokémon. These companions can include such things as the Ranger’s and Druid’s animal companions.
4) Animals Used as Pests: Sometimes animals can be quite bothersome without even needing to fight them. Examples of this may be the everyday pests of various insects such as mosquitoes, flies, and ticks. But remember, historically in the time era of most fantasy games there is little in the way of hygiene, rats which carried fleas, were in abundance.
Animals also may specialize in stealing from the unwary, harassing those who pass through the areas where they reside (and are too numerous or dangerous to kill), or may inadvertently alert others of the party’s presence through their noises. They may also cause players interference by getting in the way of attacks, causing them to have to swerve away at the last minute to avoid hitting them or getting underfoot unintentionally.
5) Animals Used for Spiritual Purposes: In some settings animals themselves are the messengers of the gods. Their appearance is so significant that people gain some sort of spiritual insight by their visitation, but may not know or realize the full meaning of the visitation until much later. A real life example of this is the buffalo in Native American culture. This is also the case in the webcomic “Tales of the Questor” when Quentyn is visited by the white deer. In a fantasy setting an animal might be a deity in and of itself.
6) Animals at Teachers: Most people look at animals as these dumb things that can’t teach us much of anything. In classic literature, however, there is a thread running throughout which has animals as teachers. In Roman mythology, Romulus was raised by wolves. In the Jungle Book, Mowgli has a variety of animal companions. Tarzan was raised by apes, and is friends with a variety of different animals.
This idea can be taken a step further. Someone might learn how to fight by watching wolves, wrestling with bears, or seeing how a praying mantis decapitates it prey. Another person might know the secrets of poisons by studying snakes, spiders, or scorpions. A third person might become an expert at stealth by studying stalking cats, learn how to lift heavy objects by working with elephants, how to be an expert thief by living with monkeys, or how to build an impenetrable spiky shield by studying the quills of the porcupine. In each of these circumstances, the character is intimately familiar with the animal(s) in question and would obtain a bonus of some sort by their familiarity.
7) Animals as the Dominant Species: In some worlds there may not be anything humanoid to play. They are either not selectable as player characters, or you may not want to play them because of the challenges or disadvantages they would present to play in that world. If there are no humanoids, you need to determine what type of animals are allowed, what their strengths and weaknesses are, as well as how, how well (or even if) they can communicate with one another. You also may wish to develop a hierarchy of how the animals relate to each other (i.e. a “pecking order”).
8) Animals as a means of protection and defense: Sometimes animals might become so vital for the survival of another species, they might form a symbiotic relationship with that of a player character providing them with ways of protecting or defending themselves. In the series “Earth, Final Conflict,” the Skrill are animals that shoot beams of energy. Similarly, you might have a person wears a spider on their arm which would give a web ability, and the player’s part is to protect his living tool. In a fantasy setting, you might have an animal that a player character wears, the player giving the animal mobility, whereas the animal provides the player with protection.
