... and more interesting.
Many european languages will have completely different names for creatures like wolves and bears, despite the fact that most of this languages share a common ancestor, a shared proto-language. This happens due to the fact that people back then were superstitious. They believed that saying the name of the animal would attract it, therefore, each tribe/community created “nicknames” for them, that ended up sticking. They were so afraid of this animals, that they refused to say their names. Imagine for a moment that you are a peasant, in the early middle ages. No electricity, no cell phones, no firearms, nada. What would mean to encounter a Wolf pack in the middle of the woods? Imagine that you are in a group of five knights in the middle of the woods now. Sure, you have weapons. Probably armor. How would you feel surrounded by, I don’t know, 30 wolves? Maybe just a couple of bears? Due to years playing in high fantasy settings, where killing a dragon is just another fun activity to do Wednesday nights, where Orks are not brutal pillagers, but just drunken ‘paper tigers’ who usually end up arm wrestling your drunk Half dwarf, Half Tiefling, Barbarian Ranger Hexblade, Thordr “The Tarrasque Slayer” in a tavern full of Half Elf, Half Naked, big breasted waitresses,*sigh*, players can easily become desensitized to things that, in a more realistic world setting would make, not only them, but even their characters, their brave adventurers, shit their pants. Literally. That’s problematic. Desensitization starts as a snowball, but Always ends up in an Avalanche. Town guards? No problem. Wolves? it’s ok. Goblins? Pff. Dragons*? well, maybe we should role play this, guys*... The Demilich? Wait guys, what? You wanna fart on his face? When players loose their ability to be in awe with the world you – all of you – created, they start loosing interest. It is just another die roll. Just another murder rampage. What are some ways to make wolves scary again?
tl;dr.
I'm sorry that happened. Or glad. Sum it up in a sentence or gtfo. No one has time to read your novella.
/thread
Then make them more scary and interesting in your campaign. No one's stopping you
Play D&D 5e and start surrounding and tripping people. That'll get people scared.
D&D 5e gets me scared, but not for the reasons you think.
How so?
>"Oh no, I may enjoy and then I won't be able to pretend I'm cool on /tg/"
Nah, D&D is just a shit game. Shit playerbase too.
What game does DnD's flavor of fantasy but better?
The real question is why you would even want to do "D&D's flavor". Their "flavor" is a random kitchen-sink clusterfrick of deviantart donut steels and nonsensicsl worldbuilding where you have magitech super cities next to tribes of primitive barbarians and they're somehow of comparable power. Where world-threatening catastrophes happen every weekend but the definitely real gods who give people literal magic do nothing to stop it. Where mud farming peasants toil away at subsistence farming when magic you can learn at level 1 can feed 10 grown men for a day.
Seriously, the only people who like D&D's "flavor" are moron normies who don't give anything even two seconds of critical thought. The kind of people who like Skyrim, but then shit their panties that games like Morrowind are "too complicated".
Okay, which fantasy game do you think is best.
13th age, aka "better d&d"
Sword World for weeb flavor
Like, 9001 OUR games if you want lethal dungeon crawling
It's not the "haha gotcha" question you think it is, it's admitting that you're a zombie homosexual.
Inb4
>um um um ummmmm but all those games are BAD! Haha I epically PwnEd you!
OSR*
13th age sucks ass. The whole 'even or odd' numbers trigger this or that completely takes me out of the game. The entire ICON system is cringe too. Sword World looks interesting. It wasn't a gotcha question anon I was legitimately curious as I'm looking for more systems for my group, but stay triggered, gay.
I agree with your points, gigantic Monsters are too normalized. But in real life, even roosters can be pretty scary when aggressive. Wolves can be pretty scary in game though, just need to make them deadlier.
It's hard to make wolves and bears scary again when we know and understand that they're just simple animals.
>Imagine that you are in a group of five knights in the middle of the woods now. Sure, you have weapons. Probably armor. How would you feel surrounded by, I don’t know, 30 wolves?
Fine? You are wearing armor, animals are - beyond something of insane size - literally not any kind of problem any more, the frick do you think a wolf is going to do, bite through your plate, mail and padding? Find the weak spot in your defences and slip a dagger in there? Hell, even unarmored a group of five armed men would be easily capable of killing (not to mention driving off) a wolf pack of 30.
Animals arent just inferior to man on the "fighting ability" side of things in terms of strength of weapons or defense, animals are not warriors. A wolf does not understand tactics or strategy, he does not duck and dodge and fight with skill, he knows blood and pain and his instinct, he knows to fear flame and loud noises, that the unfamiliar is dangerous and to be avoided, that prey that fights is not good prey.
Animals are not monsters, they will not fight to the death unless cornered or seek some kind of victory against a difficult opponent, they will retreat at the first sign of danger because they fight for food and therefore survival, not some strategic goal .
Wolves are b***h made, a danger to people not prepared for danger, but EVERYTHING is a danger to those people, wolves were just whats around.
I'm impressed that a moron can write so many words.
Wolves are famous and noted in scientific literature for all of those things, actually, you pathetic onanist.
no, they are not.
lmfao no they are not, unless you want to try and weasel "well pack hunters know to attack the weak of the herd or work together to surround a target" as actual military tactics, like a fricking moron
>What are some ways to make wolves scary again?
You do what a lot of these ancient people did implicitly and tolkien did explicitly, you make them evil.
Animals are not, as a rule, scary. Especially not when they actually act like animals. So dont make them animals.
These are not ordinary wolves, but foul beasts possessed by the souls of wicked men, unholy servants of evil wizards summoned from the darkest corners and driven by a malign intelligence. They do not fear death or fire or steel, they do not hunt to feed the pack. They hunt to kill and take sadistic glee in inflicting suffering and death, closer to demons in hounds flesh than any being of breathing flesh and blood. Their fur is black and matted and they are as large as horses, their great fanged maws will rend the armor off a knight and crumple steel shields.
However, what you now have is something which cannot in good conscience be called a "wolf", not really. It is a "dire wolf" or "hell hound" or "warg" or whatever other name you/your players will come up for this creature which is now only superficially (at best) similar to its original namesake.
Run a campaign where your players are cavemen.
How many times more mobile are wolves than humans? They can grapple+knock down fantastically AND swarm. Imagine that mechanically pronounced.
PS "torn apart by wolves" could be way more meaningful at your table lel, especially if you have some sort of gutting mechanic
If they are dangerous mechanically players will fear it.
Make them smart and then scale them to do terrible things. Terrible things for terrible reasons.
One way is to just linearly out-scale the characters in some way impactful and fundamental way.
If it's HP, chunk bigger damage, factors of x5+
If not HP, chunk stats, sap their strength, their intellect, their agility
If not stats, take what the characters care about; steal their gold, their treasures, their attatchments
If apathetic, take what they need; steal their base, their food, their water
If not their needs, take their beliefs; steal their god
Only brief confrontations, maybe not even a glimpse only a hint that something terrible has visited and left ones wanting.
A set of any creatures, even wolves, can become smart and avoid conflict to accomplish these. It's why some lions obtained serial killer status picking folks off one by one in the night, not for food, but because of slights.
first ed says that any random encounter with wolves is 75% likely that they will stalk the party indefinitely (unless you enter a town i suppose) waiting for a moment of weakness to pounce, so imagine that you are travelling through the woods, having spotted that a pack of 20 wolves are following you, just KNOWING that the first time you get in to a fricked up fight with a forest troll or something, they are going to sprint out of the woodline to frick up your backline casters/archers while your frontline is in hand to hand
so do something like that, an encounter doesnt have to mean the enemy suicides at you, it just means that they are now aware, watching, and waiting
>indefinitely
Getting into a final fight with the avatar of destruction in the plane of death, when suddenly 15 random encounters worth of backlogged wolfs appear because it's your first moment of weakness and they eat everyone
If you wanted to introduce a unicorn into your campaign, would you make it actually just be a literal real life rhino?
Chances are you wouldn't. Because you recognize that the mythical unicorn is a very different thing from the myths that it inspired.
Wolves and bears should be the same. Don't have your party encounter normal wolves and bears, but instead have them encounter the monsters that ancient people saw wolves and bears as.
>Wolves should be scary...
>10/23/23(Mon)05:22:49 No.90688926
>1015 KB JPG
>... and more interesting
So, make them in a manner that interests you.
This hobby is about making your games around your desires, not crybloggayging to a bunch of strangers who don't give a shit about your walls of text.
Animals can be cunning. Animals are good at sensing and attacking weakness. Social animals like wolves are good at planning traps, too. A pack of hungry wolves might shadow travelers for days waiting for one to go off to take a piss - and then they'll attack. This used to happen in Europe's oldest days, and it recurred in WW1 and 2 when they figured out during lean months that they could eat humans if they picked their targets right.
In a sufficiently pre-modern or wild setting, predators will not have been savaged with the selective lash of lasting human hatred that has taught our animal kingdom inferiors to tread lightly around us. Exploit that.
>wolves should be more realistic
>they should also be in packs of 30 (thirty)