A Wretched Menagerie

General ACKS Forums General Discussion
1

I hope this isn’t spamming :-).

I’ve started self-publishing a small OSR supplement (8 pages, 3 dollars) called A Wretched Menagerie, and to kick the whole thing off, I started with the most boring monster available: Ungulates.

Goats, sheep, horses, rhinoceroses, elk, centaurs, triceratops, hippocamps . . . herd animals and ungulates of all stripes to fill out your OSR bestiary. Is Animal, Herd really sufficient for your trek across the savannah?

Contains 86 specific animals, a table for quickly estimating ungulate statistics based on animal weight, and a small selection of rules and conversion notes for using the book.

About A Wretched Menagerie: Written in a compact (some would say cramped) style with minimal fuss and no art, each manuscript in this series covers a narrow niche of creatures. Tools for estimating statistics based on size and ferocity, rationalized statistics for a wide variety of real world (and fantastical) creatures within the niche, and a small selection of extra rules will be standard for each.


The default rules I work from are unlabeled LL/ACKS, so the stat blocks are compatible; and if you just hang around on these forums but use a different flavor, there are some conversion notes at the end for the minimal work required.

The central conceit is based on some chart analysis I did of animals in the various bestiaries: except for a few outliers here and there, monsters within a given “type” tend to follow a power law of (apparent) mass and Hit Dice. That led to hunting through lists of animals and looking up their real-world masses and movement rates, plotting things out, and then developing a (hideous, utterly hideous) chart. Which led to noticing all of the gaps. Which led to trying to fill those gaps in . . . and because I love me some taxonomy, I ended up with pages and pages and pages of categorized stat block collections.

I took one of those collections, cleaned it up, and made Ungulates.

The next one, Furry Pests, will cover miacids, rodents, and a few miscellaneous-but-tiny families of animals. The one after that . . . I haven’t decided yet. I have a few dozen categories, and I’m not sure if I want to do all of the mundane sets first, or mix in the elementals, undead, oozes, and similar to break up the mundanity.

2

It's great to see you publishing, Thomas. That reminds me that I need to get back to you about the fanzine concept.

I just purchased the product - I love naturalistic products.

3

Woot!

I’d love to hear what you think of it (even if it’s not what you were hoping for).

4

The Primal Codex does something similar with prehistoric beasts. Also, you can find North American Mammals and South American Mammals (I forget the exact product names on Drivethrurpg. I’m glad to see someone taking a crack at it for ACKS!

5

I just bought it and took a quick look - you’ve saved me a LOT of time!

6

I already shared this with you on Skype, but I quite liked it! In several cases I thought your characteristics were more accurate than what I’d put into ACKS from legacy D&D rosters, and I liked the unified way you tackled the different species.

Everyone else, it’s definitely worth getting.

7

Thanks for all the kind words. Vermin continues to move along, though more slowly than I’d hoped.

8

To make up for my boring herd animal start, I went with a boring collection of furry little pests

Beavers, wombats, wolverines, rat kings, 100-foot-long rabbits, capybara . . . pests and pelts of all stripes to fill out your OSR bestiary. Is Rat, Giant really sufficient for your delve into the sewers?

Contains 73 specific animals, a table for quickly estimating furry pest statistics based on animal weight, and a small selection of rules and conversion notes for using the book.

About A Wretched Menagerie: Written in a compact (some would say cramped) style with minimal fuss and no art, each manuscript in this series covers a narrow niche of creatures. Tools for estimating statistics based on size and ferocity, rationalized statistics for a wide variety of real world (and fantastical) creatures within the niche, and a small selection of extra rules will be standard for each.


Again, these follow the power law for weight and HD, based on monsters present in existing bestiaries, with a pretty close (or identical) match in most cases.

I’m still deciding on the next one, although Reptiles has the most work already completed.

9

These both excite me and make me wish I weren’t poor.

10

Yeah, I’ve been there. $3 doesn’t seem like much, until you’re subtracting it from the food budget.

11

A special free item: <a href="http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/118394/A-Wretched-Catalogue-of-Gear>a Wretched Catalogue of Gear.

Note that this manuscript includes a small collection of adventurer-useful animals; a quick-and-dirty set of rules for estimating the cost of a tamed and trained animal (which, sadly, won’t match Domains at War very well, because “quick and dirty” does not mesh well with “carefully calculated”); and quick and dirty rules for fodder and water requirements (and a reasonably accurate non-quick-and-dirty version). All compatible with the Wretched Menagerie series, natch.

A free resource in the style of the Wretched Menagerie series.

Four-cubit pole, 1/2" rope, braziers, concealed vest pockets for a thief, bucket, hourglass, small hatchet . . . bits and bobs of gear useful to dungeoneers (and short wilderness jaunts) of all sorts, and more than you can reasonably carry.

Contains over 100 general types of gear, and lots of sub-types, arranged for ease of discovery and use. Note that most core rule books for OSR games have some portion of this list already (although there are extremely useful items like charcoal, flour, wheelbarrows, stools, umbrellas, and similar that have been foolishly ignored elsewhere). This manuscript is more useful for its brief descriptions and “all in one place” quality than gonzo equipment.

About a Wretched Miscellany: Written in a compact (some would say cramped) style with minimal fuss and no art, each manuscript in this series follows the basic style of the a Wretched Menagerie series, but for some other sort of item, such as spells, gear, or magic items. Unlike the menagerie, these are more often one-off dishes, offered to complete offerings found elsewhere.


The numbers vary slightly from ACKS (with a larger gear list, I ended up with a slightly different normalization point, and consistency was a bugbear), but are still highly usable (and they don’t vary enough to affect availability in markets, for example).

12

I must say I have all your publications so far and they are very helpful.

Any idea what you plan to release next?

13

I’m not completely certain. It’s a spare-time project, and I work on multiple concurrent manuscripts. Right now, avians and reptiles (covering bats, birds, lizards, snakes, toads, turtles, and worms) is looking like the one that will be done soonest.

14

Also, thank you. It’s always really good to hear that they’re useful to someone other than me :-).

15

In the “Wretched Catalogue of Gear” … off the top of my head I found the following very useful: -

Market Availability
Clothing Appearances modifiers
Multiple light source radius modifiers
Water Consumption

I look forward to Avians and Reptiles :slight_smile:

16

I hate using Markdown lite …

That should read …

In the “Wretched Catalogue of Gear” … off the top of my head I found the following very useful: -

Market Availability
Clothing Appearances modifiers
Multiple light source radius modifiers
Water Consumption

I look forward to Avians and Reptiles :slight_smile:

17

Glad to hear it!

I should note that Market Availability is a hack designed to achieve similar results to the ACKS’ Market Availability. ACKS takes more variables into account, and will generally be more realistic, but requires a lot of pre-calculated detail (averaged size of market, pre-calculated tiers of products with individual modifiers, and more).

Personally, I use ACKS for a market that is in the right size, and only use the Q&D equation for markets that are exceptionally large or small, or fall on the borderline between two market sizes.