Talking to non intelligent animals in fantasy games
Moderator: Moderators
-
- Duke
- Posts: 2073
- Joined: Mon Nov 18, 2013 8:20 pm
Talking to non intelligent animals in fantasy games
There's many ways to talk to ordinary animals in DnD, but no guidelines that I've seen as to how they talk back. My guess would be, like this.
How have you guys typically had animals talk in games you ran? How did MCs in games you played in handle communication with animals?
How have you guys typically had animals talk in games you ran? How did MCs in games you played in handle communication with animals?
-
- Journeyman
- Posts: 161
- Joined: Tue Jun 28, 2011 6:44 pm
- Location: Some hotel somewhere in Germany
When I run a game, I usually let the animals only communicate basic emotions and/or recreate actual memories of sensory input.
The PC can provide real or imagined memories and/or feelings, and the animal can either react with an emotion or a memory that it is reminded of by the input.
Only the smarter ones get (simple) abilities of abstraction or imagination.
The PC can provide real or imagined memories and/or feelings, and the animal can either react with an emotion or a memory that it is reminded of by the input.
Only the smarter ones get (simple) abilities of abstraction or imagination.
Last edited by crasskris on Thu Jun 26, 2014 12:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I've always liked to portray animals as being dominated by a hardcoded instruction set of instincts, with their mind being more of a swap file than a decision making centre. It doesn't matter what thoughts you put into the mind of a wolf; it's going to go back to being a wolf a moment later anyway. When prevented from reverting to instinct in this manner they get extremely stressed and exhibit pathological reactions.
It's interesting to see how protective people get of their animal allies when they're confronted by the animal being miserable and emotionally exhausted by the sheer effort of overriding its own instincts.
It's interesting to see how protective people get of their animal allies when they're confronted by the animal being miserable and emotionally exhausted by the sheer effort of overriding its own instincts.
- angelfromanotherpin
- Overlord
- Posts: 9745
- Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
I tend to be pretty generous, on the grounds that these effects are intended to be actual useful divinations and not trolling exercises. So the magic allows you to speak with the animal as if they had reasonable intelligence, memory, vocabulary, attention span, and so on. I like to imply the nonhuman viewpoint through unusual turns of phrase, for which my go to is The Jungle Book. A wolf might refer to fire as 'the red flower,' but if asked to clarify would say 'y'know, fire.'
telepathy using very basic words or images.
have a rat follow someone then the rat can report back what it saw by jsut you seeing the place the person went into.
want to ask about the forest and get images of what you are asking about and maybe a simple word or two. "water, left" means there is a water source to the left of where you are.
it just happens so the information is conveyed, not like V talking to her raven. mostly it happens offscreen and the DM just gives the information dump from the animal to the player.
have a rat follow someone then the rat can report back what it saw by jsut you seeing the place the person went into.
want to ask about the forest and get images of what you are asking about and maybe a simple word or two. "water, left" means there is a water source to the left of where you are.
it just happens so the information is conveyed, not like V talking to her raven. mostly it happens offscreen and the DM just gives the information dump from the animal to the player.
Play the game, not the rules.
good read (Note to self Maxus sucks a barrel of cocks.)
Swordslinger wrote:Or fuck it... I'm just going to get weapon specialization in my cock and whip people to death with it. Given all the enemies are total pussies, it seems like the appropriate thing to do.
Lewis Black wrote:If the people of New Zealand want to be part of our world, I believe they should hop off their islands, and push 'em closer.
- Josh_Kablack
- King
- Posts: 5318
- Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
- Location: Online. duh
Well in reality, my cat is pretty good at communicating all of the following to me:
So I would assume that in the context of magical (or super-skilled) communication in a fantasy game, the communication is at least approximate to chimp sign language level of expressiveness, if not outright human.
- Hungry
- Tired
- Want to play
- Want out / want in
- Leave me alone, human
- Over there, need to kill it.
- Scared
- In pain
So I would assume that in the context of magical (or super-skilled) communication in a fantasy game, the communication is at least approximate to chimp sign language level of expressiveness, if not outright human.
"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."
- momothefiddler
- Knight-Baron
- Posts: 883
- Joined: Sat Feb 22, 2014 10:55 am
- Location: United States
If a talking-to-animals ability isn't a valid way to get information, it shouldn't be an ability that costs character resources.
If it is a valid way to get information, the magic (/whatever) should include suitable translation to make that possible.
Having a character take, prepare, and cast speak with animals and get rapid-fire, non-temporally-aware spam of instincts and smells that the player is supposed to decode (if, indeed, there's anything there at all) is kinda like responding to tongues with a stream of idioms and cultural references. Sure, it's 'realistic' and 'defensible', but....
If it is a valid way to get information, the magic (/whatever) should include suitable translation to make that possible.
Having a character take, prepare, and cast speak with animals and get rapid-fire, non-temporally-aware spam of instincts and smells that the player is supposed to decode (if, indeed, there's anything there at all) is kinda like responding to tongues with a stream of idioms and cultural references. Sure, it's 'realistic' and 'defensible', but....
-
- Duke
- Posts: 2073
- Joined: Mon Nov 18, 2013 8:20 pm
crasskris: So, they're usually best for 'what did you see/smell/taste/feel (could be useful for magical auras)'? That sounds usable.
angelfromanotherpin and momothefiddler: I'll make sure they provide useful information even if they talk in unusual ways.
shadzar: That kind of makes sense as I think animals might actually 'think' in terms of stimuli. However the caster shouldn't be able to get the 'exact' stimulus the animal experienced (that would be the domain of telepathy), but should still be able to recognize it if seen later (kind of like the way in which we can recognize faces despite not having an exact representation of them in our minds). But, I kinda like the 'feel' of actually talking to an animal.
Josh_Kablack: Pithy, but informative phrases sounds like a good way of handling it.
Thanks guys
Yeah, I feel sorry for my dog when I tell it to sit still and not jump on people and I can see it struggling to obey.Laertes wrote:I've always liked to portray animals as being dominated by a hardcoded instruction set of instincts, with their mind being more of a swap file than a decision making centre. It doesn't matter what thoughts you put into the mind of a wolf; it's going to go back to being a wolf a moment later anyway. When prevented from reverting to instinct in this manner they get extremely stressed and exhibit pathological reactions.
It's interesting to see how protective people get of their animal allies when they're confronted by the animal being miserable and emotionally exhausted by the sheer effort of overriding its own instincts.
angelfromanotherpin and momothefiddler: I'll make sure they provide useful information even if they talk in unusual ways.
shadzar: That kind of makes sense as I think animals might actually 'think' in terms of stimuli. However the caster shouldn't be able to get the 'exact' stimulus the animal experienced (that would be the domain of telepathy), but should still be able to recognize it if seen later (kind of like the way in which we can recognize faces despite not having an exact representation of them in our minds). But, I kinda like the 'feel' of actually talking to an animal.
Josh_Kablack: Pithy, but informative phrases sounds like a good way of handling it.
Thanks guys
- momothefiddler
- Knight-Baron
- Posts: 883
- Joined: Sat Feb 22, 2014 10:55 am
- Location: United States
http://xkcd.com/902momothefiddler wrote:I can't tell if this is an example or a reference (that I don't get) to an example.Pixels wrote:Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra?momothefiddler wrote:... like responding to tongues with a stream of idioms and cultural references.
Either way, yes, I think so.
- momothefiddler
- Knight-Baron
- Posts: 883
- Joined: Sat Feb 22, 2014 10:55 am
- Location: United States
- deaddmwalking
- Prince
- Posts: 3636
- Joined: Mon May 21, 2012 11:33 am
"feel" is a good concept, but i don't know about how the specific spell or ability would translate to senses other than just sights. maybe the smell is conveyed instead of an image. also not really sure how "non"-intelligent it is, thus why i suggested a few words. the more intelligent the more developed a language could be had where Radaghast is actually talking to the birds that live in his hair.radthemad4 wrote:shadzar: That kind of makes sense as I think animals might actually 'think' in terms of stimuli. However the caster shouldn't be able to get the 'exact' stimulus the animal experienced (that would be the domain of telepathy), but should still be able to recognize it if seen later (kind of like the way in which we can recognize faces despite not having an exact representation of them in our minds). But, I kinda like the 'feel' of actually talking to an animal.
when in doubt it went something like this for a squirrel i talked to once.
Me: find the X thing.
DM: squirrel returns later and you "communicate" about the location
Me: where is it then?
DM: You can't really tell where it is, but you will know it when you see it.
~later~
DM: hey this looks familiar to what the squirrel described to you.
it will really depend on how much info the players "require" and if they accept to trust the DM to remember that the player should have an "AHA!" moment later when the info is needed.
also gives the PC plausible deniability, if that is wanted, since they really don't know an exact location. of course as above. the more intelligent the critter, the more accurate the information given could be and more details the PC does get.
i am actually beginning to liek the concept of animalistic sense as information like smells, tastes, sounds, etc as being the information and catalyst to understanding that information. hell bees dance! the PC would have to dance back to the bee to talk to it!
Play the game, not the rules.
good read (Note to self Maxus sucks a barrel of cocks.)
Swordslinger wrote:Or fuck it... I'm just going to get weapon specialization in my cock and whip people to death with it. Given all the enemies are total pussies, it seems like the appropriate thing to do.
Lewis Black wrote:If the people of New Zealand want to be part of our world, I believe they should hop off their islands, and push 'em closer.
Not necessarily; you can talk to a dog just fine, and the dog will understand some of it, even though dogs don't talk themselves.shadzar wrote: the PC would have to dance back to the bee to talk to it!
You still might have to find a method that the animal understands though, even if it's not the same way the animal answers.
Vebyast wrote:Here's a fun target for Major Creation: hydrazine. One casting every six seconds at CL9 gives you a bit more than 40 liters per second, which is comparable to the flow rates of some small, but serious, rocket engines. Six items running at full blast through a well-engineered engine will put you, and something like 50 tons of cargo, into space. Alternatively, if you thrust sideways, you will briefly be a fireball screaming across the sky at mach 14 before you melt from atmospheric friction.
Most animals can speak just fine, they just have a tiny vocabulary and it's built from things people don't intuitively understand like ear or tail positioning and frequency of body movements. Simple sentence structure is limited to big primates. No one knows what the fuck whales are doing, but it's probably just music. Oh, someone taught dolphins to speak in verb-noun constructs but then they stumbled on give-fish and that was the end of that.
But Speak with Animals is magic and you just talk to them. Like how corpses can't talk and then you Speak with Dead and they can. Stop over-thinking it.
"Woof."
"What's that Lassie? Jeffie fell down the well?"
Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish. Give-fish.
"Woof."
"What's that Lassie? Jeffie fell down the well?"
PC, SJW, anti-fascist, not being a dick, or working on it, he/him.
yeah, yeah, magic because magic. but where is the fun in that. that is what the DM info dump is to just shortcut to the magic is magic. sometimes it is fun to figure out HOW in theory something could work and see if that could be used in practice.
Play the game, not the rules.
good read (Note to self Maxus sucks a barrel of cocks.)
Swordslinger wrote:Or fuck it... I'm just going to get weapon specialization in my cock and whip people to death with it. Given all the enemies are total pussies, it seems like the appropriate thing to do.
Lewis Black wrote:If the people of New Zealand want to be part of our world, I believe they should hop off their islands, and push 'em closer.
There's always the possibility that Speak With Animal includes translation of concept and vocabulary into words the caster would understand. I'm pretty sure we've had this discussion about Comprehend Languages and such with idioms.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.
You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
-
- Duke
- Posts: 2073
- Joined: Mon Nov 18, 2013 8:20 pm
-
- Knight-Baron
- Posts: 913
- Joined: Fri Apr 29, 2011 5:24 am
They should talk like the sparra from red wall. They should also be familiar with concepts from their point of view, they don't get the idea of a house or castle, and you would have to explain to a wild animal about that shit using terms they'd understand, but a door mouse would know that you're talking about the "giant's burrow" when you point at the villager's huts.
Last edited by darkmaster on Mon Jun 30, 2014 6:21 am, edited 1 time in total.
Kaelik wrote:Fuck you Haruhi is clearly the best moe anime, and we will argue about how Haruhi and Nagato are OP and um... that girl with blond hair? is for shitters.darkmaster wrote:Tgdmb.moe, like the gaming den, but we all yell at eachother about wich lucky star character is the cutest.
If you like Lucky Star then I will explain in great detail why Lucky Star is the a shitty shitty anime for shitty shitty people, and how the characters have no interesting abilities at all, and everything is poorly designed especially the skill challenges.
Animals would talk in such a way that it shows that they think with their own conceptual framework. For example, if you talk to a cat, an important part of their thought would be the concept of mine. If you talk to a dog, an important part of their thought would be the concept of in charge. If you talk to a rat, it might be family or a clear escape route. These things would be the basic measuring sticks by which they judge any new concept you show to them.radthemad4 wrote:I was asking about how animals should 'talk', not how the spell works. But, hey, it's always fun to speculate.
It's like talking to a mildly autistic but essentially honest libertarian. No matter what you say, they are going to translate it into terms of "community bad" and "individual profit good"; they are going to see certain types of coercion as "government" and others as "the free market." You cannot speak to them in any other terms, nor can you persuade them that their ideas are anything but the absolute foundation of all thought. If you try to tell them something that doesn't fit into their neat pigeonholes, they'll use thought-stopping to close down the line of inquiry. If you point out the inconsistencies in those ideas, they'll grow angry.
If you happen to be a libertarian yourself, then recast that paragraph above, substituting in the word "socialist" and your favourite socialist talking points. You know the ones I mean.
That's how I'd run them. It lets people explore mental gymnastics, which is fun; and it plays up the essential alienness and dogmatism of an instinctual mind.
Nice.Laertes wrote:If you happen to be a libertarian yourself, then recast that paragraph above, substituting in the word "socialist" and your favourite socialist talking points. You know the ones I mean.
Vebyast wrote:Here's a fun target for Major Creation: hydrazine. One casting every six seconds at CL9 gives you a bit more than 40 liters per second, which is comparable to the flow rates of some small, but serious, rocket engines. Six items running at full blast through a well-engineered engine will put you, and something like 50 tons of cargo, into space. Alternatively, if you thrust sideways, you will briefly be a fireball screaming across the sky at mach 14 before you melt from atmospheric friction.
Maybe there is a vocabulary but they talk in metaphor. "Temba, his arms open", "Shaka when the walls fell", "Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel".
the magic lets you here this, but also understand the metaphor. Gives the DM a chance to play with new ideas and to give crazy names to animals, and names that animals call things.
example: a squirrel talking about buried treasure "My nuts in the winter", or would this be a squirrel talking about some place really cold?
the magic lets you here this, but also understand the metaphor. Gives the DM a chance to play with new ideas and to give crazy names to animals, and names that animals call things.
example: a squirrel talking about buried treasure "My nuts in the winter", or would this be a squirrel talking about some place really cold?
Play the game, not the rules.
good read (Note to self Maxus sucks a barrel of cocks.)
Swordslinger wrote:Or fuck it... I'm just going to get weapon specialization in my cock and whip people to death with it. Given all the enemies are total pussies, it seems like the appropriate thing to do.
Lewis Black wrote:If the people of New Zealand want to be part of our world, I believe they should hop off their islands, and push 'em closer.