Including Other Animals¶

What Animals to Include¶

Warrior cats canonically doesn't take place in a real setting, having both cougars and English woodland creatures
Embrace this! Such wild additions to the game in the past include such favorites as including kea and elephant seals from New Zealand, wolverines from North America, wolves from Definitely Not England, and having swift, kit, and fennec foxes available to find in the desert!
Some biomes may require further research in order to give them a diverse set of animals to encounter, such as wetlands and desert which are very different to the original warriors setting. So go wild finding cool animals from those biomes who you want to see in the game!
There are some restrictions here, however, such as:
- We use the European badger, not the American badger
- Red foxes are European red foxes, not North American. European red foxes are larger than North American
We encourage you to include interactions with megafauna, but see the following section for specific guidelines!

Megafauna, in the ClanGen context, is any creature that is so far out of a cat's size range as to make a contest between a cat and that creature fundamentally pointless.
A canon example would be Sharptooth, the mountain lion
Examples you might want to include in game are lions, tigers, wolves, bears, elephants, moose, cows, alligators, dolphins, etc.
What's important for ClanGen is that we want to make the game feel like these big creatures exist in the same world as the Clan, but that the Clan is not constantly interacting or in danger from them. So, for example, a plain patrol about scenting lion scat? Great. A plain patrol about being chased by a lion? That one better be rare (and very dangerous).
You're encouraged to think of interesting interactions with megafauna that increase their presence in the game without subjecting the player Clan to undue amounts of danger! For example, a mountain Clan scavenging and eating the discarded placenta of a moose in newleaf is a wonderful source of prey, that implies moose are present in the world without requiring the Clan to risk interacting with it. Or what myths might a plains Clan tell about elephant? The beach Clans swap herbs and prey with dolphins without risking getting eaten by them.
Basically, we want to feel like there are these massive creatures in the Clan's world, without having to solely focus gameplay on why the Clan isn't immediately getting eaten by a tiger.

Please try and keep animals behaving in a way that is realistic to how they behave in real life. For example, while there are many fox patrols, unfortunately it isn't very realistic to have them befriend the cats (nor is it canonical, with Hollyleaf's fox kit trying to attack her even though she saved its life)
If you want to include fun biological facts, this is encouraged! For example, the various fox patrols all have different success likelihoods and have the text explain that particular fox species' size compared to a warrior, so swift foxes are less dangerous than red ones.
For patrols:
- Keep in mind that it's absolutely okay and encouraged to make certain animal encounters restricted to certain seasons, but that if it's possible to encounter an animal, it should be possible to encounter it with any size of patrol - i.e if introducing a dangerous predator, make sure it can still be encountered by single cat patrols, even if those patrols are very lethal and difficult.
- Keep in mind that the size of a patrol should have a major impact on how difficult things are to accomplish. For example, while any size of patrol can encounter the maned wolf in the plains biome, only a full 6 cat patrol can try to fight the maned wolf
There is a difference between venom and poison: venom is if it bites you and you die, while poison is if you bite it and you die. It won't really matter, but if you want to spruce up your writing!

Some animals have multiple names that can refer to them, we want to keep our writing consistent by only using a single agreed upon name.

Use cougar for mountain lions/cougars
Use crayfish for crayfish/crawdads/koura
Use deathjaws for alligators, crocodiles, and any other crocodylomorphs!
Badgers live in setts, not sets
For groups of animals, please use the correct word for a group of those animals, i.e a group of crows is a murder, a group of vultures is a parliament, etc. The sillier the group name, the better, get creative with it and remember that google is your friend!
For water-focused biomes like beach and wetlands, please list the type of fish you find, not simply that it is a fish, otherwise text for those biomes will become repetitive. Get creative! There’s a lot of fish in the sea ;)