Something that struck me about a lot of fantasy gaming settings is that it implicitly borrows the ecology of the real world. Any animals that do not occur in the real world are labeled as experiments of mad wizards, rather than naturally occurring animals as with real medieval bestiaries or something more recent like Avatar: The Last Airbender. In say, Greek mythologies and medieval bestiaries, various fictitious creatures like the "goose barnacle tree" and "vegetable lamb" were believed to be real and naturally occurring animals. A fantasy setting reflective of this would have griffins and pegasuses domesticated as beasts of burden, vegetable lambs and goose barnacle trees being harvested for fur and meat, etc.

Would you treat fantastical animals and plants as mundane parts of your setting? Does it violate your suspension of disbelief? Would you attempt to explain why these creatures exist or take it for granted?

For me, creatures like griffins, dragons, bugbears, hippogriffs, owlbears, and unicorns would just be naturally occurring animals living in areas that seem like what their natural habitats would be. Golems and such would be creations. Not sure why a hippogriff being natural rather than manmade should violate my suspension of disbelief in a world full of hobbits, orcs, spell scrolls, magic potions, and invisibility rings.

I would think magic or biotechnology in the past greatly altered normal creatures and gave them glands or organs to use magic and such to counteract the stuff the would likely be impossible.

The hippogriff is an interesting example, because there used to be an expression about a griffin and a horse mating being impossible, because griffins were well known for hating horses (or rather, loving to eat them). Thus the hippogriff was seen as an "impossible" animal, not because of its biology, but because it would never happen. But then the author of Orlando Furioso wanted an impossible creature for his hero's steed and came up with the hippogriff. (Dore illustrated this, has a lot of cool pictures which is why I'm familiar with it)
 
But then someone

Quote from: JeremyR;1002971I would think magic or biotechnology in the past greatly altered normal creatures and gave them glands or organs to use magic and such to counteract the stuff the would likely be impossible.

The hippogriff is an interesting example, because there used to be an expression about a griffin and a horse mating being impossible, because griffins were well known for hating horses (or rather, loving to eat them). Thus the hippogriff was seen as an "impossible" animal, not because of its biology, but because it would never happen. But then the author of Orlando Furioso wanted an impossible creature for his hero's steed and came up with the hippogriff. (Dore illustrated this, has a lot of cool pictures which is why I'm familiar with it)
 
But then someone

The suspense is killing me...and then someone what?!

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1002962Would you treat fantastical animals and plants as mundane parts of your setting?

Yes.  Could go either way with any particular animal, based on the setting.  Could easily flip in another setting.

QuoteDoes it violate your suspension of disbelief?

No, and I'm not sure why it would.

QuoteWould you attempt to explain why these creatures exist or take it for granted?

I rarely bother with an explanation.  the only time I would is when it is central to something happening in the campaign.  And maybe not even then, because I think some mystery should be left unsolved.

I use a mix of reasons in my fantasy campaigns. Some are "natural" creatures, some the gods made, some are the results of mad wizards, and some no-one knows.
The question of why doesn't really come up that often in play though.

Quote from: Dumarest;1002965For me, creatures like griffins, dragons, bugbears, hippogriffs, owlbears, and unicorns would just be naturally occurring animals living in areas that seem like what their natural habitats would be. Golems and such would be creations. Not sure why a hippogriff being natural rather than manmade should violate my suspension of disbelief in a world full of hobbits, orcs, spell scrolls, magic potions, and invisibility rings.

I thought so too.

I saw The Last Unicorn and Legend and read The Random House Book of Fairy Tales as a kid, so I prefer to treat unicorns as vicious nature deities. What I liked about the 5th edition MM is that it included more monsters that lacked a life cycle, such as sphinxes becoming celestial guardians in line with their Middle Eastern origins.

Sometimes I like to have golems spontaneously animate from stuff lying around. The animating force could be the residual emotion from some tragedy or disaster, or a wandering spirit out to cause mischief.

Quote from: JeremyR;1002971I would think magic or biotechnology in the past greatly altered normal creatures and gave them glands or organs to use magic and such to counteract the stuff the would likely be impossible.

The hippogriff is an interesting example, because there used to be an expression about a griffin and a horse mating being impossible, because griffins were well known for hating horses (or rather, loving to eat them). Thus the hippogriff was seen as an "impossible" animal, not because of its biology, but because it would never happen. But then the author of Orlando Furioso wanted an impossible creature for his hero's steed and came up with the hippogriff. (Dore illustrated this, has a lot of cool pictures which is why I'm familiar with it)
 
But then someone

That makes sense. If magic is everywhere then it would surely affect the development of all animals.

The hippogriff would make sense as a wizard trying to win a bet involving the idiom by fusing a griffin and a horse. Alternatively, WarCraft has hippogriffs as deer/raven hybrids seemingly unrelated to griffons.

I like the idea of griffins being generically avian/feline creatures rather than specifically lions and eagles.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1002991I rarely bother with an explanation.  the only time I would is when it is central to something happening in the campaign.  And maybe not even then, because I think some mystery should be left unsolved.

Spontaneous generation is my go-to explanation.

I entertained the idea of distinguishing between naturally occurring hybrids and artificial hybrids, with the former having contiguous features while the latter look like patchwork taxidermy, but never hammered out the details.

Quote from: DavetheLost;1003004I use a mix of reasons in my fantasy campaigns. Some are "natural" creatures, some the gods made, some are the results of mad wizards, and some no-one knows.
The question of why doesn't really come up that often in play though.

I suppose it does not.

I find the ecology sections of bestiaries to be pretty funny part of the time, particularly if the world building is poor. The Creature Collection series had fascinating creation myths for most of its monsters, whereas the Pathfinder bestiaries are often sillier than a typical "Ecology of" article from Dragon magazine.

In the very-soon-to-be-released Lion & Dragon, all the monsters in the bestiary are based on real medieval folklore. Some of these are therefore basically natural creatures (that just happen to have never existed) while others are magical creatures, most often of an origin in the fae/elven realms. Though there's also the living dead, and creatures like golems or homunculi created by wizards.

I use a mix of reasons as well. Some are experimentation by mages, some are divine creations and some are the result of magical 'pollution'. In a high fantasy setting I imagine there are places 'tainted' with magical energy. Some gets into the biological system and *bam* monster.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1002962Something that struck me about a lot of fantasy gaming settings is that it implicitly borrows the ecology of the real world. Any animals that do not occur in the real world are labeled as experiments of mad wizards, rather than naturally occurring animals as with real medieval bestiaries or something more recent like Avatar: The Last Airbender.

I have mostly avoided the "a mad wizard did it" as generic world explanations for things except maybe in my first campaigns where I had put stuff in without thinking about why, or in situations where there is a specific wizard who did something with a specific history.

The bestiaries I've used (e.g. TFT In The Labyrinth, GURPS Bestiary & mostly not GURPS Fantasy Bestiary) didn't say creatures were experiments of mad wizards (as far as I remember), and the more gonzo creatures (of which there were far fewer than e.g. D&D) I tended to just not have exist. Even somewhat-gonzo things tended to be quite rare.

QuoteIn say, Greek mythologies and medieval bestiaries, various fictitious creatures like the "goose barnacle tree" and "vegetable lamb" were believed to be real and naturally occurring animals. A fantasy setting reflective of this would have griffins and pegasuses domesticated as beasts of burden, vegetable lambs and goose barnacle trees being harvested for fur and meat, etc.

They wouldn't necessarily have domesticated them and/or cultivated them everyplace. Most wild animals aren't domesticated because there are problems with doing so, including that it takes a huge amount of time. And plants need the right conditions to grow. The medieval examples are generally of things that didn't exist or were misinterpreted and were wild and/or far-off creatures.

Also, from some Biblical literalist perspectives, the God/Gawd who created the animals is pretty close to saying they were made by a mad wizard.

QuoteWould you treat fantastical animals and plants as mundane parts of your setting?

It depends, and I think there are more than two approaches. Usually, the natural world of my fantasy/medieval worlds includes magic as a natural part of reality, and wizards are just human practitioners of it. It's thus natural that there is a spectrum of creatures that involve more or less magic in various ways, ranging from spirits and magical non-physical beings (e.g. elementals) to physical beings with no clearly magical aspects (though they may too have some more subtle magical aspects - e.g. spirits, spell components, etc.), and some that are in-between (e.g. dragons).

QuoteDoes it violate your suspension of disbelief? Would you attempt to explain why these creatures exist or take it for granted?

Depends on the specific example creatures and their explanations. Many fantasy creatures do have some level on unbelievability/silliness for me. Much of the bestiaries of D&D, Palladium, and similar are way beyond my deep end. They don't make sense to me and feel pretty silly and/or surreal, especially if I can't get a handle on how they would operate and continue to exist in the setting & situation. When there is gonzo, I want there to be some story or rationalization that is somewhat consistent or else I start relating to the setting as a dreamscape/hallucination, which isn't generally what I prefer.

Thinking back, there have been quite a few gonzo things in my games, from time to time, but they tend to be exceptions or unusual or peculiar to an environment (e.g. slimes in dungeons existed but were considered a natural/magical thing with an ecology) and do want some sort of explanation, although it could pass for explanation that result 77 on the spell failure table summoned a creature from another plane of existence, or someone invented a Wild Polymorph or Combine Creatures spell. The main thing is that it's not just that the world is full of frequent random gonzo stuff just because, and certainly not without effects.

I played in a TFT campaign where the GM had it that many years ago there was some horrible continent-scale magic mishap that resulted in random monsters teleporting in from time to time all around the wilderness, and I thought that was a bit silly but not too silly. The communities responded appropriately, and it was still pretty rare, and pretty limited to how gonzo it was. In fact, over several months of play, I only remember it actually striking our party once, and it was just a pair of manticores or gryffins or something.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1004228In the very-soon-to-be-released Lion & Dragon, all the monsters in the bestiary are based on real medieval folklore. Some of these are therefore basically natural creatures (that just happen to have never existed) while others are magical creatures, most often of an origin in the fae/elven realms. Though there's also the living dead, and creatures like golems or homunculi created by wizards.

Definitely going on my wishlist.

Quote from: Skarg;1004290Depends on the specific example creatures and their explanations. Many fantasy creatures do have some level on unbelievability/silliness for me. Much of the bestiaries of D&D, Palladium, and similar are way beyond my deep end. They don't make sense to me and feel pretty silly and/or surreal, especially if I can't get a handle on how they would operate and continue to exist in the setting & situation. When there is gonzo, I want there to be some story or rationalization that is somewhat consistent or else I start relating to the setting as a dreamscape/hallucination, which isn't generally what I prefer.

Thinking back, there have been quite a few gonzo things in my games, from time to time, but they tend to be exceptions or unusual or peculiar to an environment (e.g. slimes in dungeons existed but were considered a natural/magical thing with an ecology) and do want some sort of explanation, although it could pass for explanation that result 77 on the spell failure table summoned a creature from another plane of existence, or someone invented a Wild Polymorph or Combine Creatures spell. The main thing is that it's not just that the world is full of frequent random gonzo stuff just because, and certainly not without effects.

I played in a TFT campaign where the GM had it that many years ago there was some horrible continent-scale magic mishap that resulted in random monsters teleporting in from time to time all around the wilderness, and I thought that was a bit silly but not too silly. The communities responded appropriately, and it was still pretty rare, and pretty limited to how gonzo it was. In fact, over several months of play, I only remember it actually striking our party once, and it was just a pair of manticores or gryffins or something.

I used spontaneous generation and living dungeons as an explanation for some things. According to the hypothesis of spontaneous generation, creatures spontaneously arise according to various circumstances. If they find a niche and thrive, they become part of the ecology. If they don't, then they die off or only live long enough to be killed by adventurers.

There's an article at dmdavid discussing some of the problems of trying to give every monster a plausible ecology. In general, it simply does not make sense that the world could support so many of these highly destructive monsters.

Something like a mother of monsters, or father of monsters, or literal mythical monster, somewhere in the world spawning dangerous monsters that typically don't live very long (or become singular legends) actually feels more realistic to me than trying to force everything into a pseudo-scientific mold.

Something like the vegetable lamb or barnacle goose tree I found extremely easy to devise a plausible ecology for, despite their otherwise alien nature. Of course, that may also be due to my partial background in biology in college.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1004228In the very-soon-to-be-released Lion & Dragon, all the monsters in the bestiary are based on real medieval folklore. Some of these are therefore basically natural creatures (that just happen to have never existed) while others are magical creatures, most often of an origin in the fae/elven realms. Though there's also the living dead, and creatures like golems or homunculi created by wizards.

Real folklore is always better and weirder than anything people make up for RPGs so that should be interesting. Are you going to include conflicting accounts?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1004557I used spontaneous generation and living dungeons as an explanation for some things. According to the hypothesis of spontaneous generation, creatures spontaneously arise according to various circumstances. If they find a niche and thrive, they become part of the ecology. If they don't, then they die off or only live long enough to be killed by adventurers.

There's an article at dmdavid discussing some of the problems of trying to give every monster a plausible ecology. In general, it simply does not make sense that the world could support so many of these highly destructive monsters.

Yep, just what I mean. When I run a campaign, I regularly consider what powerful things are where, and what they're up to. If there are lots of high-powered monsters (and/or NPCs) around, then it can be complicated and hard to reconcile why the powerful ones aren't making power plays or running amok and slaughtering the weaker ones, etc.

A GM can of course use moderation and only include what he wants, but when a monster manual tries to present hundreds of dire monster types as if they all co-exist in abundance and most of them are massively more powerful than a village sheriff, and themselves have multiple tiers of domination, that's not something I know how to make sense of, keep in mind, or design or run a consistent campaign world about.

Quote from: Dumarest;1004572Real folklore is always better and weirder than anything people make up for RPGs so that should be interesting. Are you going to include conflicting accounts?

I frequently go back to folklore for more depth and background on monsters.  Even better is that many players are only aware of the RPG take on monsters, not the original folklore.

I like a low-key, low-fantasy sort of world where most of the "monsters" the players encounter, at least on the surface, are just hungry animals, but the real monsters out there are unique, as per Greek mythology: THE chimera, THE hydra, THE manticore.

Dungeons are the exception: the underworld just sort of spawns nasty shit from otherworldly ectoplasm.  The player characters will never encounter an entire flock of hippogriffs on the surface-world in one of my campaigns, but they might meet exactly that down on dungeon level four, with nary an explanation or a wizard-did-it to be found.