First its bears. then dire bears, then werebears, giant bears, an hallucinating druid bear and the dreaded care bears. The implied arms race is inimical. Or maybe just 1d6 bear types, exclusive of the Owlbear(TM).
Each one has a story. I think the first one will eat the PCs rations, without aggression, right out of their backpacks. If the PCs react with violence, it is on them, not the bear. The dire bears are like Lassie to the werebears, faithful pets with a strange ability to communicate psionically in oddly specific impressions (Hey, Lassie! Oh no, did Timmy fall down the well? Let's go!). The giant bears are trained war beasts for Giants waging war against some non-bear foe. The dreaded care bears are a lead in to an entire TTRPG setting waiting to be sold to Mattel, and it's Swedish death-metal parody, "Care Borg".
I'll never understand the infatuation with point/node crawls. They take a large amount of shoehorning to fit into the mechanics of OSR and how the players and DM interact.
First its bears. then dire bears, then werebears, giant bears, an hallucinating druid bear and the dreaded care bears. The implied arms race is inimical. Or maybe just 1d6 bear types, exclusive of the Owlbear(TM).
Each one has a story. I think the first one will eat the PCs rations, without aggression, right out of their backpacks. If the PCs react with violence, it is on them, not the bear. The dire bears are like Lassie to the werebears, faithful pets with a strange ability to communicate psionically in oddly specific impressions (Hey, Lassie! Oh no, did Timmy fall down the well? Let's go!). The giant bears are trained war beasts for Giants waging war against some non-bear foe. The dreaded care bears are a lead in to an entire TTRPG setting waiting to be sold to Mattel, and it's Swedish death-metal parody, "Care Borg".
I'll never understand the infatuation with point/node crawls. They take a large amount of shoehorning to fit into the mechanics of OSR and how the players and DM interact.
As someone who's spent a ton of time walking in national parks ect., pointcrawls certainly feel familiar to how those experiences were