Anyone use alternate fauna for their fantasy campaigns...

Anyone use alternate fauna for their fantasy campaigns? Either domesticated versions of unusual animals or purely fictional animals. For example, I have a culture in my setting who keep a species of pack hunting giant river otter as pet/work animals to help them hunt gators and fight river mermaids

Yes, I tend to flavor outside areas with them and I also flavor towns with weird or gonzo races, like animal people or even stranger half metal golemn people and such.

If I can't be good, at least try to be original.

I'm gonna include my boy the tuatara in my next game. But it'll also get the saltwater crocodile's size and ferocity.

I absolutely adore shit like this. Even when they're not domesticated, tying in fantasy creatures and weird fauna into a setting's culture and ecology is great.

My particular favorite was a continent in the campaign setting for the game I ran in college, where the nations were all the result of an ancient empire fracturing in what was basically not!South America. Due to the empire's heraldry involving lots of birds, each country took a bird as their national symbol and crest during the fracturing. The oceanside trading nations took the heron, the inland former capitol took the kingfisher, the largest nation of common folk and farmers that would eventually reconquer the previous two nations took the harpy eagle, and the northernmost colony that made up not!mexico and furthest reach of the empire during its reign took the Dire Corby.

This was for two reasons. The first is that Dire Corbies are a populous animal there, and live up high in the mountains where they brutally murder travelers. This would come in handy when the lower nations came up for conquest, since quite a few raids through the mountains would run across nests and get murdered.

The second reason is that that entire country is made of bitter, spiteful people, doubly so after nearly thirty years of war, so they picked the bitterest, spitefulest, most dangerous bird they could get their hands on.

Oh yeah, of course.

A monster is just some animal or tribe that attacks your people, much like how barbarian was just anyone not from the inner roman empire.

Slimes, undead, tailless dog like creatures with fish scales and incredibly smooth, elongated human hands who howl in attempt to say "I replace you" as their neck goes for your head roll for initiative.

>Anyone use alternate fauna for their fantasy campaigns?

...Is there anyone who doesn't?

You'd be surprised how many people stick to the idea that Earth animals are normal and anything else is a monster to only be encountered or thought of in a combat/dungeon context regardless of how common, useful, or docile they are

Oh yes. Admittedly I was first inspired by the Forgotten Realms with its depictions of farmers who have domesticated the catoblepas, and bred a version which doesn't kill people with a stare, as well as its mentions of different animalistic monsters and their roles in the ecology.

As a result I tend to always think about what animals/monsters are in a region and how they impact near by settlements when world building or even adventure building.

And every so often I add random pokemon to my world.

>Spoiler #2
I mean there's so many of them and it's so easy, it'd be a crime not to

Most dont actually, you usually have normal animals chilling with humans or in their ecosystems and then suddenly the fantastical creatures come along sticking like a sore thumb