Do you have a process for inventing fantasy animals? Just google

>>53803079

>Not having a massive animal with a symbiotic plant species that grows on it trading the water it stores for the sugars the plants generate through photosynthesis in the desert sun

Gay.

>>53803079
Personally, I'm of the opinion that saying "it's magic" is fine, as long as you have an idea of what the magic is actually DOING.

I also care about things like this, so I try to make it a game where I think of ways that such a creature could exist, within the physics of the given universe that I run.

>>Personally, I'm of the opinion that saying "it's magic" is fine, as long as you have an idea of what the magic is actually DOING.
No. Go further and actually make a mystic ecosystem with shitloads of charm, where everything works off it's own logic.

Like that episode of Garo where they go to collect mystic beast pelts, and they activate spirit vision.

Or the spirit realms in Berserk.

Don't just say 'dragons are big because magic', that's lame.

Make them able to drink salt water.
>imagination intensifies

>>53803685
>Poopoo is hills of salt.
>Peepee is ponds of fresh water.
>they poo ritualistically always in same locations
>and pee in a away that it forms lakes

>>53803079
Migratory patterns, active hibernation, long gestation and lifetimes, etc.
Basically have them go to the totallynotnile and just filterfeed insects. That lets you not care about the desert ecosystem, and inscets are prolific enough that hundreds of tons being eaten in a single season is reasonable.

Two words: Okavango Delta.

just found a neat website for questions like this
https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/

>>53803079
Bio major here. I'm pretty sure a team of paraceratheriums like the ones in your picture could pull a 'sled' with a house on it, or a flatbed trailer. Each one was 5 metres high *at the shoulder*.
Does a savannah count as a flat, arid landscape?
If you're looking for pure desert environment, your mammals should migrate across an enormous desert with regular oases that harbour superfruit or some other calorically dense carbohydrate.
Look to camels for inspiration. Camel dissection:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHWtWZzfqaw
(Camels originated in north america and migrated to eurasia, no reason why your mammals couldn't do a similar switch)

Sahara used to be far less desert-y than it currently is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyP_IdqSnQM

>>53803079
When inventing fantasy animals, I typically take existing animals and "adapt" them to a world where magic is as real of a force as weather, climate, or gravity. As such, my animals and monsters often blur as creatures develop weak magical abilities, form natural interactions with fantasy creatures, or take advantage of previously unfilled niches. Perhaps dragons are parasitized by large, fire resistant lice. A species of snake could develop a tough carapace in order to survive being trampled by herd animals. An entire world of humidity loving, darkness loving creatures could inhabit the labyrinthine remains of a dungeon. Plants and Fungi follow suit in terms of the process of their creation.

>>53803079
Why does it have to be a mammal

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>>53806292
>Earth's wobble means every 20,000 years the Sahara greens up for a few thousand years

It would be cool to play in a future Earth setting where this was going on.

Any nerd friends who could post some other possible changes that would be taking place on Earth at the same time as a green Sahara in a world where manmade climate change started 10,000 years earlier?

>>53803079
>I wanted to have an enormous mammal that pulls a house sized building across a flat, arid landscape, but I'm getting caught up in things like there obviously wouldn't be enough food for an animal to get that big in that climate.
>I'm trying to play pretend but I'm having trouble playing pretend

>>53808222
Any good bit of fiction needs at least some internal logic or you have no reason why anything happens at all.

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>>53803120

>>53808133
>manmade climate change
>existing
You have to be 18 to post here.
>possible changes
Just look back at civilizations in human history 10,500 years ago when the Sahara was still green. Specifically look to Egypt and the Indus Valley.

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>>53813083

>>53803079

Maybe it has enormous stores of fat, like a super-camel?

Only it has dozens of humps, maybe all along its dorsal area.

It evolved to get from one side of the desert to the other and back again.

I've had a lot of success using the random critter generation rules from Traveller.

>>53803079
Make it an insectivore with massive mouth flaps predator style for capturing swarming locusts and flies and stuff. Think a literal land whale.

>>53813083
Fuck off back to /x/

>>53803685
Wild donkeys in India are capable of this. So it's not even magic.

>>53803079
Make them omnivores OP. Basically giant pigs. They can eat as much as they want because they are fed all of the leftovers from their human handlers. They are basically a garbage disposal system. And they can eat ANYTHING. Put all of your leftovers in one end, get a giant fresh steaming pile of moist fertilizer to continue growing food from the other end. Hell, make them even able to eat human waste.

>>53803079
Any animal you invent needs to be describable with no more than three facts. The first should be a base animal with color description, then you can add two features. People will not consistently grok more than that.

Examples:
>Giant black squid-like creature with the fur and face of an ape and a single glowing red eye.
>Stoney skinned serpent with the tusks of an elephant.
>A tiny white monkey with bird feet.

As you can see, you can get pretty crazy with these things and just keep the descriptions simple.

As for the ecology of these creatures: nobody fucking knows or cares. Having large creatures just eat large mouthfuls of flora (think taking whole bites out of the ground and just chewing through everything, ground-whale style) is usually a good ecological solution for players who wont let something go.

>>53815933
>As for the ecology of these creatures: nobody fucking knows or cares.
what's even the point if they have no interesting ecology. Might as well just use real animals and save yourself all the trouble

>>53815933
The problem with making an animal out of mad libs is that you are making things up on the fly if any of your players want to actually interact with it.
What if they're hunting the animal?
Where will it be found? What do they trap it with? How would they lure it? How would it react to the threat?
What if someone wants to tame it?
What will they feed it?
How will they keep it alive?
Is the creature even social?
Is there any power or ability which would make the creature an asset in a fight?

>>53803079
Take pme amo,a; amd cp,[omed ot wotj amptjer amo,a;/ Pr a;termocat;u cp,[opmde ot wotj ,utjp;pgu.

>>53815993
Because 'giant' animals on the order I assume OP is talking about dont exist.

>>53816321
Im not advocating making it up on the fly, Im just using the rubric described as a measure of appropriateness. If the creature cannot be described sufficiently in that format then players are not going to grok it and so wont find it interesting in the ways you would like them to. Its fine to know more about it yourself as the GM.

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>>53803079
What about giant elefants/mammoths?

About the food problem:
Just say there are very few wild ones, that are also smaller than the domesticated version.

And they could eat the leaves of very large trees, a ressource only avaible to them due to their seize

>>53816365
As a player I would not find an animal described as a bizarre mishmash of traits interesting. Ecology is the only reason I'd be interested in it in the first place

>>53803079
take a well known monster/mythic thing and try to find a reasonable way for it to exist.
Danjon Meshi has some great examples

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So, megafauna thread?
I realise that I lack fauna pic, jungle, marine, desert, anything go!

>>53816337
>Take one animal and compound it with another animal/ or alternately, compound it with ...

I can almost read this.

>>53816422
The examples were hastily assembled. The point is less that it must be a jumble, and more that it must be described in a simple way. Im sure there are players who love to learn about the ecology of strange creatures, but your first task as a GM is to make sure that what you describe is as close to what the player's imagine as possible. You can easily describe less outlandish animals and monsters that still fit the rubric. The aim is to reduce drift in the impressions of individual players, and having a simple core introductory explanation is helpful in that regard.

>>53816629
god dayum. yeah mix and animal with another animal or mix an animal with a myth.