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[IndigoFenix]

Eris: Greek goddess of discord, chaos, and strife.

Planet Eris (name subject to change) will be my first completely original total conversion mod.  The goal: to make Dwarf Fortress more 'gamey' and fun to play at the possible expense of simulation as well as general sense and logic.

It will take a great deal of inspiration from the more fun aspects of the Rise of the Mushroom Kingdom, such as a world filled with aggressive and challenging wild monsters that attack you as you wander, the ability to collect coins (or some other small object) from said monsters which can be exchanged for rewards, power-up foods, and mysterious floating boxes containing special items.  At the same time, it will focus on creatures that are specially designed to be interesting and fun to fight with Dwarf Fortress' existing mechanics, without having to worry about keeping them in line with any existing franchise, mythology, or real-world biology.

However, there is a method to the madness, and for this I need ideas and planning.  Creatures will come in 'types' associated with letters, and their colors will also convey meaning.  So if, for instance, a player who encounters a red 'B' having never seen one before, they will immediately know that it is a Fire Beast, will probably charge at them aggressively and shoot fire, and will be easy to damage.

I am looking for ideas for particular creature types.  Bonus points if the creature's body plan physically resembles the shape of the letter it is associated with.

Spoiler: Current plans/guidelines (very subject to change) (click to show/hide)

Color types:

Red->Dangerous, but easy to kill
Green->Defensive
Blue->Stealth/Speed/Cunning
Darker colors - more mundane, lighter colors - elemental/magical

Dark Blue:
Blue:
Teal: Zombie
Cyan: Crystal
Dark Green: Reptilian
Green: Plant
Brown: Mammalian
Yellow: Golden
Dark Red: Vampiric
Red: Fire
Purple: Poison
Pink: Magic

Letters:

(Capital letters should have roughly the same body plan as their small-letter equivalents.  Names do not actually have to make sense.)

a:
A: Alphas - Angel-like creatures, have powerful magic.
b: Bogeys -
B: Beasts - Brutish bull-bear-gorilla hybrid predators, pretty much straightforward monsters.
c: Chompies - Small creatures with prominent mouths, good at catching vermin and latching on to bigger creatures.
C: Chompers - Huge creatures with prominent mouths, effective guard monsters.
d:
D: Dociles - Slow and easygoing quadrupeds that will mess you up bad if you mess with them.
e:
E:
f:
F:
g:
G:
h:
H:
i:
I:
j:
J:
k:
K:
l:
L:
m:
M:
n:
N:
o: Oozes: Slime blobs.
O: Big Oozes: Bigger slime blobs.
p: Plants: Plant-like creatures with a head attached to a stalk
P: Big Plants
q:
Q:
r: Raptors: Small raptor-like predators that hunt in groups and use slashing talons to attack prey.
R: Rextors: Big theropods that hunt alone.
s: Snakes: Snakes.  Often venomous, even if not purple.
S: Serpents: Bigger snakes.
t:
T: Tentacly: Slow-moving creatures with two prominent tentacles they use to attack.
u:
U:
v:
V:
w:
W:
x:
X:
y: Thorns: Flying, stinging swarming creatures.
Y: Giant Thorns: Bigger versions of Thorns, tend to be solitary.
z:
Z:

It will be a total conversion mod, but will follow general guidelines to make it compatible with other compatibility-focused mods or vanilla DF.

[NW_Kohaku]

The goal: to make Dwarf Fortress more 'gamey' and fun to play at the possible expense of simulation as well as general sense and logic.

*stops making gravity-powered minecarts roll uphill to flood the world with magma for a second* 

Wait, DF had logic and general sense?!

So if, for instance, a player who encounters a red 'B' having never seen one before, they will immediately know that it is a Fire Beast, will probably charge at them aggressively and shoot fire, and will be easy to damage.

You do of course realize that if "B" stands for the "B" in "Beast", it could just as easily stand for literally any kind of beast, right? How would hey know that a red B wasn't just a Jungle Beast that goes three times faster?

[IndigoFenix]

The goal: to make Dwarf Fortress more 'gamey' and fun to play at the possible expense of simulation as well as general sense and logic.

*stops making gravity-powered minecarts roll uphill to flood the world with magma for a second* 

Wait, DF had logic and general sense?!

So if, for instance, a player who encounters a red 'B' having never seen one before, they will immediately know that it is a Fire Beast, will probably charge at them aggressively and shoot fire, and will be easy to damage.

You do of course realize that if "B" stands for the "B" in "Beast", it could just as easily stand for literally any kind of beast, right? How would hey know that a red B wasn't just a Jungle Beast that goes three times faster?

Basically the point is to create a completely new game.  Remove all vanilla creatures and instead focus on making new creatures that serve a specific gameplay role instead of worrying about a theme, plot, or setting.

So you'll have the little creatures that are easy to kill but can gang up on you, the slow creatures with a hard shell, a monster that can multiply, something heavily armored with a single obvious weak point, fast things that run away but are rewarding if you catch them, etc.

"Beast" is a specific creature type that basically serves as "large threatening predator" with a specific body type.  All Red colored creatures have fire abilities.  So if you see a red B you know it's a Fire Beast.

[Knight Otu]

What about white, light gray, and dark gray? I'd go for Ice for white and Woolly for light gray, but I'm unsure about dark gray (maybe move Zombie there? Breaks the association with the night creature color scheme though. Maybe Cavern? But that strikes me as too specific and limiting).

d: Dodgers - Small, fast, and agile quadrupeds
f: Small fins
F. Fins - Large amphibious predators that prefer to roam the oceans.
w: Wingborn - Small flying creatures that live in large flocks and with thieving tendencies.
k: Keratins - Creatures with strong horns used to deliver powerful attacks
W: Wyverns - Large flying monsters that tend to attack with a breath weapon.

I'm tempted to suggest (i)mps and (I)nfernals, but that probably is covered by (a)s and (A)lphas.

[pikachu17]

I suggest a bright red & demon that makes pacts with you(interaction that gives you the accept pact interaction). the pacts are numbered and have specific syn_classes(PACT1,PACT2) so you can't do the same pact twice. your side of the pacts lasts 2 weeks, and the demon's is permanent(is it possible to make interactions historical so A. legends will tell of people accepting pacts and B. the demon becomes historical)

[Meph]

Instead of making the color the type and the letter the specific creature, you could just make a few creatures, one for each color... and then use the letter for a difficulty rating.

Red A = Easy fire beast.
Red D = slightly harder fire beast.
Red P = Medium fire beast
Red Z = omg, run, horrible uber-fire beast

Start of the alphabet, easy, end of the alphabet hard.

Use capital letters for adults, low-case letters for child-version.

That would mean less work in creating monsters and is fairly self-explanatory for the player.

[pikachu17]

Three semimegabeasts all of which have an itemcorpse. you can combine the three items to make a weapon out of the only material able to kill the boss megabeast