By way of National Geographic: "In an epic battle in northern Queensland, Australia, a 10-foot olive python got the best of a Johnson's crocodile, and a lucky passerby snapped photos."

This article is full of the kinds of interesting details - using the smell of saliva to locate a prey animal's head, digesting so slowly that the carcass inside a snake expands and kills it - that I love to incorporate into both mundane animals and fantasy and sci fi monsters.

I never really saw the ecology articles in Dragon until after I stopped playing for a number of years; were they any good?

And since I'm sure it will come up, no, I don't think taking an ecological view of monsters makes them less fantastic. I think that particular complaint is the excuse of lazy minds.

The Python clearly rolled a 20. The crocodile on the other hand, missed its save vs paralysis. That's a bad thing when you're being held underwater.

Fuck knows what the python rolled to open its gob wide enough to fit a croc in though.

Please! What kind of DM makes the python roll to do something mundane that it does all the time?

I usually try to figure out an ecology for animals I create.

I knew someone who was  CoyCo in Vietnam and he said they found a big python that looked like it had eaten a human, they cut it open because of body-count and found out it was a deer.

I'm on my wife's iPad but Google "otter vs. alligator". That story was going around last week.

I had no idea gators/crocs were still that far down the food chain after they got to 3-4 feet long. Sure birds pick off the young ones but dang....  

And yeah I like my worlds with a relatively comprehndible ecology. To that aim I hope WoTC re-does Nentir Vale monster book for Next, one of the good books from 4e.

The ecology articles in Dragon were hit and miss for actual value at the table, but I remember that most of them were interesting to read. The problem back in the day was dorkwads who took Dragon as canon to be whacked on their home DMs. Canon bitches aren't a modern invention.

Quote from: Bobloblah;735720Please! What kind of DM makes the python roll to do something mundane that it does all the time?

I can't imagine that kind of thing happens all the time.

For starters the python is sat with a great fat lump in the middle and can't move. Probably already hung up to dry out and be made into redneck boots, and the croc inside as a handbag.

Quote from: APN;735794I can't imagine that kind of thing happens all the time.

For starters the python is sat with a great fat lump in the middle and can't move. Probably already hung up to dry out and be made into redneck boots, and the croc inside as a handbag.

Well, your perfectly reasonable response certainly makes my quip even more un-funny than it apparently already was...