Animals and being Undying

General discussion about the world and lore of COGG.
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Onasaki
Posts: 90
Joined: Tue Jun 01, 2021 9:20 pm

Animals and being Undying

Post by Onasaki »

So, there seems to be lately a lot of people complaining about how many animals are slaughtered for that phat meatz, and skinz, and rilnz. This is all kind of an IC subject so I won't go into detail about that, but this is just a preface to the following question:

Are animals undying? Would that be the lore-appropriate conclusion one might be able to come to, as to why murdering say, a dozen deer in one day, doesn't really absolutely screw up the ecosystem, and cause an extinction process?

There have been discussions before in regards to how people strip-mine trees, and the like. This was essentially debunked as "There are so many trees people can't chop them all down, but please be reasonable with how many you do at a time."

So what's the official word on this?
I have two forces by my side,
One's the truth and one's a lie,
Which one's which I cannot tell,
This enigma is my hell.

Baako leads you over to the grass to graze.
Dennis
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Re: Animals and being Undying

Post by Dennis »

My gut reaction is to say "I don't know who's complaining about feeding the population of Shadgard", but that's IC stuff, I suppose. We're a population server density of a few dozen players, with possibly thousands of mouths to feed in one township alone.

This is a weird topic to me because it's looking at a microcosm of game activity where "everyone is doing strip-activities at mass extinction levels." It's a game! If we're looking at it from woe and weal, the quantity or going rate of activity would theoretically mean no regenerating resources. Then you'd be in a different situation. Considering mass murder of infested, or killing mobiles at all in general. Imagine chopping trees, mining copper, foraging berries. Berries don't grow every 15 minutes like they do in the game world. The game is not realism though it strives to emulate it in certain places.

On the topic of undying animals, it would honestly be weirder if the animals were undying. Not represented in room-scale is square footage or acreage to measure ecological density, so we can't exactly say "there are 4.6 deer per square meter in a granted area of 100 thousand square feet for about 460 thousand deer in the locale. Presettlement populations of white-tail deer in North America were estimated at anywhere from 41 million to 62 million deer based on conservative estimates. This is a largely abandoned land teeming with life, the twelve or so deer really are but a small bite of the population. Even on a daily scale, you would be hardpressed to beat the natural spawn rate (birthing rate) in real comparisons.
"Always remember that we are a community before anything else. Before being a 'game' or a 'world' we are a bunch of folk who get together to have fun."
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nobody
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Re: Animals and being Undying

Post by nobody »

Teri wrote: Fri Jan 28, 2022 9:05 pm Q: Can non-human elements be Undying? Horses, for example, or quasi-intelligent fungi?
A: Only been observed with humans
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Rias
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Re: Animals and being Undying

Post by Rias »

As Nobody pointed out, all signs point to the Undying phenomenon being limited to humankind.

And as Dennis talked about, we have to keep in mind that we're in a game, and logic is going to be stretched this way and that in order to strike a balance of feeling believable, but also giving allowances for this being a game and something that we all are doing for fun in our spare time. For this reason we should avoid diving too deep into efforts to come up with logical numbers and measurements and things like that, like how many animals live within a certain measurement of land or whatnot. I always point out the fact that people can walk vast distances across the wilderness that should take days if things were completely realistic, but it's a game and that would be awful (I mean, it could be cool in the right setup I'm sure, but no this one), so we just sort of all quietly agree that we're going to handwave that particular aspect of realism and roll with it and everyone's happy. Which is to say: I like the game world to feel grounded in reality and be believable, but I'm also making a game and not a carbon copy reality simulator, and I make allowances based on my personal preferences that will vary from mechanic to mechanic.

All the above said, I -do- think it's both fun and interesting to have characters with differing stances on things. Sure, have some argue that they feel we shouldn't be killing so many animals when we could be surviving more off forage and crops. Have some argue that eating meat is completely natural as we see it occur constantly in the natural world with animals (predators/prey). Have some be concerned that too much hunting is going on and others saying we're within perfectly acceptable levels. They're good conversations to have and help flesh out the stances and beliefs of characters (and I'd say it's good if this also helps us be a little more mindful of things in real life too, but that's just my inner environmentalist talking).

I will say that hunting and foraging and logging do have an effect on the areas they're done in. It's very subtle in some cases, but it's there. Putting that out there to squash any temptation to say "there's no mechanical effect, so people should just stop bugging me/my character about it." I know there are a good few druids who appear to be doing their best to keep the natural environment healthy, which is cool to see. Whether they're doing it out of more economic interests (more/better valuable resources) or a sense of altruism (save the environment) is interesting as well! (And of course all the spectrum in between.)
<Rias> PUT ON PANTS
<Fellborn> NO
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