Fantasy Dog Breeds

Dog chad

 

Last year I went into the rabbit hole of reading about the history of hunting and dog breeding (fascinating topics, alongside a personal favorite being the domestication and integration of the horse in human life)

TLDR: 1. Medieval dogs breeds were radically different from today's and 2. There is no reason to think that in a made up world with monsters and magic there would be the exact dog breeds we have today. 

 Frequently I ponder on what would happen if I gave all good sighthounds in my world the ability to blink, as their species were breed out of blink dogs. The impact on the gameplay is minimum, but the impact on the world and its implications is sublime. It's got weight. It tells you straight away that this is not earth, this is something else. 

 At first I thought I would write some deep-thought dog breeds for trow fortress. Not today: I'd rather have you do it. 

Roll 1d6 to find the dogs HD. 1 HD is a purse dog, 6 HD is a scary dog. 

If you want, roll another 1d6 to see how well adapted is the dog to the current area or climate. If you don't have a game, use your real life location. On a one, is not suited to the place at all. On a six, it will struggle living anywhere else.

Interpret results alongside this table: roll 1 to 4 times and tell me what kind of dog you got. Do you think is it very popular in your world? rather unique or useless? you can roll separately for the breed traits and for those which are specific to a given animal.

 1. Sighthound: this dog is all speed and will pursue prey by visual tracking.

2.  Scenthound: this dog has a specially gifted smell sense, and can be trained to detect a specific one.

3. Pointer: this dog will subtly point towards his target without alerting it

4. Retriever: this dog is trained to retrieve and bring game or other objects

5. Water dog: this dog performs quite well on an aquatic medium.

6. Shepard: this dog is trained to drive and control cattle.

7.  Terrier: this dog is trained to find and storm burrows, of a size adequate to the dog.

8. Spaniel: this dog knows how to flush game out of his hideouts, towards the hunter at least.

9. Tough: This dog has increased attack rate for any reason, and +1 HD

10. Kawaii: This dog is considered cute by most, and/or has a unique beauty.

11. Strange: This dog is good at detecting the unseen, ghosts and other paranormal things, great empathy also.

12. Nervous: This dogs are very playful and seldom quiet; will bark for anything.

13. Guarding: This dog is naturally loyal and brave.

14. Obedient: It is very easy to teach tricks to this dogs.

15. Emo: this dog likes to be alone and is very hard to grab his attention.

16. Crazy: this dogs are very possessive with their master or their territory, normally very annoying otherwise.

17. Sickly: this dogs need specific care or diets in order to remain healthy, not suited to adventure. -2 HD, to a minimum of 1.

18. Clumsy: either short legged, too long, too heavy or any other thing that lowers their DEX.

19. Magical. they have one magical power proper of a spell, a monster, etc. This propierty is very patent.

20. Subtly magical: as the previous one, but the power is not obvious at first sight, or maybe ever. 

 

Lets do the first one to test it: This is the dog you see it's being sold at the equipment shop, 1d12 of them.

3 HD (as big and strong as a fox)

Adaptation to temperate spanish levant: 4. Probably a versatile race. 

10, 11 and 5: These are some Kawaii and empathic friends who also love to play on the multiple irrigation ditchs in the area. Their hair changes significantly from black to sky blue when wet. They lack an obvious utility but the seller says they can wake you up if they detect you are being target of a magical attack in your sleep. 

 

 

Artemis and her blink dog - A. Wurts

 

Four Styles of Hunting

Currently dropped the shadowrun campaign for the summer. I'm thinking again on old ideas as a GM, and into the Trow Fortress thing.

In the middle ages of our games, you can find 4 major types of hunting:

1. Traps

This one is perpetrated by kobold societies, mostly. This skillful little people play the role of peasantry in this universe. Trapping rabbits or even bigger stuff puts meat on their tables when there is game around. The noble Trow can put these too, of course, helped by their kobold courtesans. But they will only use this methods if there is some major necessity to exterminate a pest such as wargs, never for food or pelts. For example, in real life, wolves were lured with bait into merciless hooks tied to trees. 

 

 

2. Bow + Stealth, in any proportions. This is mainly used by elves, which more or less live for and by it. Of the three races, elves are the most prone to use poison. Kobolds can also practice this discipline by taking advantage of their stealth bonus, but with shorter range bows or slings and aiming for smaller game. They make for good poachers, too; though of course, hunting or even being caught with a bow in somebody's woods is a good way to get a ticket for being hung alongside the wolves (as an interesting note, 1/3 of all england was considered at a given time to be Royal Woods). Trow can, of course, hunt with bows and even crossbows; unless they want to hunt in a more "social" way (see below)

3. Trained Animals

Falconry, often combined with horses and or dogs, is a staple for Trow houses that settle the prairies. The type of bird used is a symbol of status: hawks for the lesser nobles, falcons of varying colors for the greater; rocs of different sizes make good gifts for Lords and Kings, even if they are unwieldy to use. The advantage of birds is that they have massive reach and speed, and can fetch prey who is already flying or swimming on the water.

Dogs are also appreciated for all their obvious skills. There is an upcoming post about dog breeds! I should write it at anytime, THIS YEAR. But lets not forget about ferrets and moongoses, used by kobolds mainly, but are also a favorite of Trow kids.

Elves never use animals for hunting. They embody the animal instead.

 4. Hunting Par Force 

 This is a great rite that can take one day or more. Only big game is hunted this way; deer, boars, bears or higher (its a fantasy world, go wild) 

The Lord of a land sends invitations to a group of nobles to participate into it from time to time. This serves many purposes: the first one is, of course, the social function: there was no Whassap groups or MSN in the middle ages, so this served to check on everybodys disposal and their overall strength: How well can X ride at his age? How strong are his sons? I wonder if he will bring that hot concubine from last year. Lets check on Y's loyalty; is he too flattering or on the contrary, is he disrespectful? let's propose Z an alliance to invade X's lands, and maybe arrange some matrimonies. 

Everybody could seize this chance to do the same, should they attend.

The second purpose was to train the green young warriors: for that day they would do for the first time many things that they would later do in war: tracking, chasing, riding in armor into a pack of unknown men. One or two groups of riders had to circle behind the selected prey and push it towards a third group using dogs and, sometimes, bows or javelins; so the third group would meet the animal tired and debilitated, with little HP. Then a man would battle the animal 1v1 in melee using a sword or a spear; and then blowing a horn in respect to the deceased beast (it was, however, considered disrespectful when killing female animals unless they were wolves)

The third function was obviously to display and test one's power. 

 I like to run genre-appropiate social situations and in the last campaign, the PCs killed a king in the middle of one hunt, after scanning the loyalties and gaining the favor of a group of nobles. 

 I want to run more huntings, of all four types when appropiate, as I want to focus from now on on the more boring parts of an adventure. I want to make slice of life interesting, if you want to put it that way. I have learned that is not hard to do with the right group, as the shadowrun campaing has taught me. Still, I want to make a list of things to do to spice up a hunting session. Of course, players that investigate correctly should know about the twist prior to the hunting; much more when I have habilitated scrying spells being somewhat common: it is easy to find somebody in this world to lend you a cryptic oath. (More on this on next entries)

1. The animal being tracked is actually a witch shapeshifting as an animal.

2. The animal is cursed by a demon and is very dangerous to tamper with

3. The animal is actually divine and will put a geas on one or more of its harrasers, probably the killer. 

4. Elves are angry about the whole hunt. They cannot fight the whole squads but will attack small groups or men that separate from the party.

5. Somebody's kobold is trying to sabotage somebody's performance subreptitiously, maybe YOURS. Drugging your horse, blunting your arrows or similar. Make up something based on the NPCs personalities. 

6. Something is dangerous at the forest and nobody told you. Quicksand, a deadful canyon, a river to be forded.

7. More monsters than the tracked one are nearby

8. Something magical is happening in the forest. Maybe there is a sleeping spell around a clearing and it makes your group to fail finding the prey on time.

 9. and more to be added.