On Sun, Jul 17, 2016 at 01:17:42PM -0400, Freelance Traveller wrote:
> Animal encounters are a part of Traveller that don't seem to be used
> much. Part of that may be that it's just plain hard to come up with
> a memorable animal instead of just another run-of-the-mill "Capellan
> alligator" or "Arcturan leopard". Or maybe they're just too easy to
> overcome by PCs who are armed past the teeth, not just to them, with
> everything from 15mm machine guns to FGMPs.

Ambush predators can be pretty nasty even if you are armed with a
FGMP.  By the time you notice it, you're already being attacked - and
you're within the blast radius.  Or you have some unidentifiable
*thing* the size of a dog get in close quarters while answering a call
of nature.  Even some otherwise placid animals can get very nasty if
you disturb them or their young -- and in such a situation, it's often
right next to you already.

They don't even have to be serious threats to life or health - just
interesting enough to play out for a bit during a session.  Some small
part for a grav sled being repaired might go very inconveniently
missing because a local creature took a liking to it while someone
wasn't watching.  Who can track where it went?

Maybe some organism deposited some disgusting substance on their
clothing during the night -- or in their cooking equipment.  I'm sure
that ant analogs could also be suitably interesting for local flavour,
especially since spraying offworld insecticides or repellants probably
won't do much to a different biology.  Local inhabitants may have
found something that works, and isn't too poisonous to humans or other
less annoying lifeforms.  Or getting more exotic - after startling a
beast there's a sudden blast of noise in their comms as they fail
along with some other electrical equipment.  The creature uses
focussed EMP to disorient and injure predators common to this area
that sense magnetic fields.

None of this is anything like fleshed out enough for an article yet,
but maybe it might trigger a starting idea for a minor encounter.

- Tim