Lives of the Predators, The Red Hourglass, by Gordon Grice

First, let me say that Gordon Grice writes with a smooth flow that is easy to appreciate regardless of why you might be interested in reading in the first place. His tone is easy on the inner ear and yet has its own pace, timing and black humor to it.

Having said that, I would recommend anyone interested in adding some more details to the 'mundane' animals in their role playing games, or in their fiction if writing, buy and read The Red Hourglass. It's entertaining and after watching some nature stuff on dangerous animals on the Nature Channel or the History Channel or one of those shows that has completely sold out, doesn't treat you like you were some brain dead dolt.

When last I left off, there were quite a few chapters to go. I'm going to try not to bore readers with a breakdown of each chapter, rather I'm going to hit a few things I thought were interesting and a few that even made me think in terms of where some of our belief systems come from as opposed to why we have them.

Looking at the Mantid, the thing I took from the author is that while we may attribute features to an insect based on our own lifestyles, such as needing a head to survive, they may not be true. Grice talks about roachs living for a month before dying or starvation. This would be a great thing to add to a role playing game where you still keep the villains fighting, perhaps minus an attack, to showcase the grizzly nature of combat against non-humanoid foes.

Another bit that Grice adds is that we don't know everything. The author captures some weird bug and throws it in with a Mantid, fully assuming that the Mantid, a very dangerous predator in its chain, will easily kill the creature. It retreats, it runs, it seemingly shows fear! Keep in mind that there may be some horrific monsters in a role playing game, but that doesn't mean they know no fear. Just because the players may not know what something fears, doesn't mean the creature is fearless. This could result in a separate quest in and of itself in which the players have to find a fierce predator that is fairly harmless to everything else but their chosen enemy. What if there is some weird type of deer in another reality that finds Mind Flayers taste just like deep fried squid?

Rattlesnake is a potent reminder that rules for poison should favor the players. This isn't to say that poison from snakes or other animals isn't potent or dangerous, but it isn't always fatal and may be the result of a 'dry' bite. Snakes have their own hunting mojo and methods and the interesting factor for many different types of snakes is in terms of their venom. If you're not throwing a huge snake at the party to crush them physically, be ready with a few different types of venomous effects. Does it cause the organs to fail? Does it cause internal bleeding through lack of clotting? Does it just really mess with the body causing other issues like heart attack and stroke, but not outright death?

I put the pic of a tarantula up front because the author makes a very strong point about tarantulas, sharks, and crocodiles. Sometimes, a simple predator that leaps on its enemy and rips it to pieces, a throwback in terms of evolution, is all you need. Sure, there are hundreds of templates, numerous bestiaries and manuals of monsters and other sources of creatures, but sometimes, simple is better and brute force is indeed the answer.

Pig and Canid, despite having little in common in Grice's words, do have one thing in common. They are both flesh eaters, both scavengers, and in the dark ages of humanity, ate dead human flesh. Grice contents that the Jewish prohibition in eating pig flesh is in part because of their diet of dead human flesh. The fear of cannibalism even through a third party so to speak.

He also brings up an interesting point in terms of how quickly some animals are able to be tamed and made into different things contrasting the wolf and the dog, contrasting the wild hog and the slaughtered pig. This isn't necessarily a bad thing though, because he points out that some domestic pigs are huge and only possible due to their specific breeding conditions. He also notes that there are several similarities, in terms of organs and placement, between pigs and humans. It's almost too easy to imagine a setting where orcs are the direct result of skin and organ grafting between humans and pigs as opposed to their own wholly original race.

Grice ends with the recluse spider. This is another example of giving players a break with poison. Some people die from the bits of the brown spider. Some develop a small necrotic piece of skin that falls off. Some suffer greatly and for years after as the venom effects them for the rest of their life. Some don't suffer any effects at all.



Lastly, as entertaining as Gordon Grice is, don't take any one source as the end all be all. I've paged through his next book a little and he has a huge section that provides a list of recommended reading. Don't be afraid to move beyond a single sourcebook if you feel that adding more details and options will make the material more entertaining.

On the other hand, if youre running a beer and pretzels game, save or die in the OSR is pretty standard and you should enjoy that horrible power while you have it!

The Red Hourglass: Lives of the predators by Gordon Grice

One of the great things about the web is how it allows you to communicate ideas and recommended reading with a few keystrokes. In this instance, Philip Athans, author of several books, on his blog, mentioned The Red Hourglass by Gordon Grice. I was a little disappointed at the ebook price as the print price was similar so went with the print book. While I enjoy e-format, the main benefit to me know still has to come in savings.

I have not read the whole book, only the first portion dealing with the Black Widow, but Gordon's writing is so breezy and entertaining, that I have ordered the 'sequel' if you will, written by Gordon that is in hard cover (and still almost the same price as the ebook.)

So what are some things you can learn about the black widow if you know nothing about them?

1. They coat themselves in a special secretion so that they do not stick to their own webbing.

2. They use their spider webs as ropes and binding on those entities that become stuck in them.

3. They can 'dry' bite, a bite with no venom, to try and scare away larger predators that may not feel the effects of venom anyway.

4. They are such voracious eaters that they can eat themselves to death.

5. Depending on their food supply, their spider brood can grow. May help explain when they'll eat themselves to death.

6. They do not always kill their mates. The mating, especially on the male side, if heavily ritualized.

7. They have a ton of names. This can be good for those wishing to move outside of the standard. Names range from cherry spider, black wolf, twenty-four hour spider, night stringer, shoe button spider, coal-black lady and others like sneaky bitter.

8. The spiders get darker as they get older with the traditional red hourglass coming in when they turn black. This can be a great way to showcase the age of mutant or giant spiders. "That spider wasn't really black... more like brown?" To prepare the party for ever larger creatures.

9. The venom of a black widow can vary in its intensity, but can take a grown man out for week and kill the elderly or the young. One thing to play with, is not making the venom fatal to full grown healthy men, but to make them sick and a liability to the party they travel with. They can't wield weapons, can't march, can't take guard. All they can do is suck up resources. Mind you I've been there as a player when you get hit by a ghoul or a carrion crawler so yeah, it sucks but it is an alternative to death and a cure poison or antivemon might take you out of it.

10. The webbing is almost invisible to the naked eye, requiring you to look at it from a certain angle or determine its whereabouts through the things captured within it.

11. They are invisible. Well, not quite, but if they're not biting you, chances are you won't notice them because they go after different prey. Most attacks used to occur in the outhouse because see, spiders love the hole shape of the toilet. It's wind proof and has a place for bugs to come get stuck in. Spiders have been taken around the world, like other vermin and beasts, around in boats and other travelling methods. Could be a great point of origin for an Island of Spiders where players once travelled to a dinosaur filled island only to discover that the new inhabitants have grown... very large and now run things.

There are all sorts of other neat facets to the Black Widow and based on that chapter alone, I'd give the book a recommended reading.

The Lincon Park Zoo

One of the nice things about living in Chicago, outside of having one of the most expensive set of taxes, parking tickets, public transportation, gas, and electricity, is there is a lot of free stuff to do and a lot of it is cool if you're willing to either take public transportation there or be gouged on 'public' parking.

I went with the later option knowing that I was going to be doing some further driving down the road and went to the Lincon Park Zoo. Turns out that after thirty years the zoo is going to be, in theory, temporarily removing the penguins due to the age of the machines in the park. They are some odd thirty years old.

Bad news? A few of the beasts were no where to be found. A lot of the cafes were closed. The price for a bottle of water or soda was $3.00. My girl friend smoked me in terms of walking. Sure, I've got a broken toe, but when we hit the gym I'm usually able to do the cardio far longer then her. The reality of walking up and down and moving in the outdoors came into play here. Embarrassing! I'm sure there are a few other petty annoyances I could think of but...

The good was that it was a fantastic day in Chicago. The crowd's weren't too bad. There were plenty of places to sit so that when my girlfriend was leaving me in the dust, I was able to gather my wits. My camera actually lasted most of the trip so I had opportunity to take a lot of pictures, or at least, my girlfriend did after I showed her how to work the thing and she stopped worrying about dropping it.

But why post this type of stuff here on Appendix N? What about it brought out any gaming inspiration?

Lots of things.

For one, despite it being a public and free zoo, it has a lot of variety there. Sure, you're typical fantasy campaign setting may not be appropriate to throw all of the animals that you can see gathered in one spot at a zoo, but it does allow you to get an idea of just how diverse animal life can be.

Differences in animals of the same type and the same breed can be vast. This one should be a no brainer. I'm six and a half feet tall and a fat bastich. I tower over a lot of my co workers and outweigh many of them. You'd think some of them were from pygmy tribes if you didn't know we were all human.

The same is true of animals but even more so. For example, one set of birds I saw had different lengths and colors of beaks. The sizes between male and female can be vast, and not always in the male's favor. The coloration of animals can vary by age. In one exhibit on fish, the smallest of the fist started off as yellow with blue stripes and grew to be blue as they grew larger. And the smallest of these fish were perhaps in the two to three inch range while the largest were over a foot in length and almost as wide.

Adding little details like that can either be boring or fascinating for your group, depending on the preference of the players. For example, knowing that an ape should be approximately so many pounds and knowing that whatever they're following appears to be an ape, but one much larger, is mostly background noise leading to a confrontation with a giant ape, but what if the nature sense people can tell that even at the giant size, it's still a young ape? Now you're setting up foreshadowing.

Animals also have their own needs and cares. One of the bears had surgery on its mouth so that its tongue slightly protruded. The animal would have died without it but thanks to modern science it was saved. These distinguishing marks can be the sign of a druid or other animal lover in the region or noticing issues with the animals in the first place, could be the start of a separate campaign dealing with plague.

The movie reviewer, Ebert, noted that the Hunted, wasn't some tricky fighting movie but that its characters looked like they had weight and that they felt ever blow and cut between each thrust and attack. When looking at some of the animals here, especially some of the lions or the rhino, its important to think about how weight can be an issue. A charging rhino may not have all that jazz of a demon or undead, but the sheer weight of it should be enough to ensure that all but the most heavily armed and armored character strive to remove themselves.

The important thing though, is that with all of the things animals can have going for them, in terms of superior senses, using the environment, pack tactics, and a host of other bits, that if the GM goes out of his way to make them 'realistic' and the players are feeling like they're in a slash fic remake of The Ghost and the Darkness, then what happens when the GM starts using supernatural elements like demons and devils or animals that are well, greater animals such as dire or legendary?

I'm not saying ditch all the cool elements that an animal can bring to the game, but don't become so bogged down in how much more dangerous hippos are than crocodiles that you make them tougher than stone giants. Respect the animals but in most fantasy games, know their place.