Critters & Companions

Critters & Companions is a system-neutral bestiary and guide to adding farm animals into your fantasy setting, using the diversity and depth of the natural world. Filled with 30 different animals that can be ridden, milked, declawed, worshipped, and eaten, it additionally showcases random tables, minigames, graphs, and hidden secrets!

Critters & Companions is a one-stop guide to fantastical rural life and creatures. But there’s more than just animalian lore!

60 pages of pure bestiary goodness!

Each animal gets a two-page spread, with 12 of 30 animals illustrated by Logan Stahl. The spreads are organized like so:

Representing a breadth of sky, land, and sea creatures as well as a variety of farms, these 30 animals can easily populate any setting or homebrew world—while each stands on its own and fills radically different niches in human life. From poles to steppe to desert oasis, this collection of rays, spiders, cats, frogs, moths, rabbits, manatees, snakes, and many, many creatures too alien to quickly describe have you covered.

•  Want to farm pollywog oil to light lamps in the philosophy libraries of an atheist cult? Open your bestiary to the Idolostahd to find out how.
•  Want to breed a better war elephant through special hybridization techniques? Open your bestiary to the Ethrest, just make sure you consult the Pachydermic Spermological Society!
•  Want to ensure your barren farm will be able to heat itself, and you want caffeinated moth pasta? Open your bestiary to the Lipsur to discover how, and some of the trade-offs in cocooning harvesting.

6 random tables

To generate special coops, animal medicines, and instant farms, this guidebook provides quick and easy help with the flip of a coin or roll of a die. Great for on-the-go worldbuilding as your players enter life-yachts to mothertrees to nomad wagons.

Vasha and Viv’s Chart-Busting Beasts

A zine-inside-a-zine featuring the realm’s most record-breaking farm animals: the dirtiest snoggoucht, the smartest tentapus, the most dastardly nzom to ever fight in the tax-day battles, and more! Doubles as a d66 table.

Charts galore!

From charts of migration schedules, breeding patterns, and seasonal changes, to graphs of the angriest animals, biome preferences, and a matrix for real and fantastical working animals.

90 story hooks

That feature violent, questionable, and cooperative problems to solve with farm animals. From stolen marijuana shipping lemurs to sportsball farmkid-snail bonding, these will inspire anyone to finish their story or start a new quest.

Essays

Both fictional and nonfictional! From Barnkeeper Abe’s letter to the reader to cowboy poet Claire Wineman’s tips on what storytellers forget about farm animals.

Pronunciation audio files and IPA transcription

To help you introduce new animals to your players. Don’t know how to say joyx choga, gulve sli, or xomke?Keerthi Sridharan wrote out each animal name using International Phonetic Alphabet notation. Refer to this for help, or input it to a phonetic transcription service to hear a correct pronunciation.

Critters & Companions is an 88-page bound paperback A5 book, perhaps too big to call a zine, but with all of the spirit of one!

Each creature in the book exists in an independent form detached from any unified setting or ecosystem, allowing players to simply encounter individual creatures in an existing world or even to rear animals of their choice on a ranch or farm - opening a way for players to run their own farm in-between dungeon delves and quests, á la Stardew Valley. (Read more here)

The art is suggestive of adventure in a new land, where the customs are as distinct as they are alien. Each animal is as plausible as it is fantastical, and the resources on hand can easily add some life to your table. (Read more here)

Fantasy Farm Animals Inspire Ag Innovation in New Bestiary - Pearse Anderson's new bestiary has it all. (Read more here)

I really like that, from a monster manual perspective, the idea of having migration patterns, locational charts, things that tell you more about the ecological form of the creatures as opposed to what they are and how they kill. (Watch our actual play here)

Somewhere out in the taiga of a fantasy world, there is a man with a lot of facial hair, time, and dog treats—that’s Barnkeeper Abe. You might see him at the treeline, fixing rock fences to keep his sperm camels from escaping, or singing to calm the quietest and most scared animals he works with.

Barnkeeper Abe is the narrator for the bestiary portion of Critters & Companions, walking readers through what he knows about farm animals and giving his opinions. He’s trustworthy as any crofter you can find, but he’s still human, and he’s made his fair share of mistakes and heard a pound and a half of strange rumors. Listen closely and you might learn something even Abe doesn’t realize.

Tabletop roleplaying is dominated by Dungeons & Dragons players, a game I’ve never really played. Although this bestiary will be an incredibly powerful tool for D&D players, I wanted to make sure it was still usable and fun for many types of gamers—and readers. That’s why it’s system neutral, compatible with Old-School Essentials, Knave, Fate, Into the Odd, Black Hack + White Hack, Mörk Borg, Pathfinder, 5e, and more, and why I wrote it for:

•  Cottagecore gamers who are drawn to TTRPGs by games like Mausritter or Wanderhome and want more animals or farm life in their games.
   
•  Busy gamers who don't want to dedicate time to designing ecology or rural life and could use a plug-and-play resource for those areas.
   
•  Fantasy authors or those who are looking for prompts to tell stories and use the Story Hooks and lore to think about new iterations.
   
•  Fantasy readers who like the almanacs and appendixes of books more than the slow plots and want a quick 500-word entry on various kooky beings.
   
•  Anyone who is drawn in by the colorful art and vibrancy of the book and wants to see more!
   

If you’ve ever enjoyed Dragonology, The Codex Seraphinianus, A Bestiary of the Anthropocene, The Farmer’s Almanac, Guinness Book of World Records, Charlotte’s Web, cryptozoology guides, and naturalist diaries or sketches (talking to you, Linnaeus!), then Critters & Companions is for you!

Thanks to all backers, buyers, supporters.

These amazing people helped produce this book.

Logan Stahl illustrated many of the animals

Keerthi Sridharan copyedited the bestiary and developed IPA pronunciations.

Claire Wineman wrote an essay about her animal-human relationship.

Kenny Webb copyedited portions of the book.

James Mendez Hodes consulted on cultural elements of the bestiary.

This is the first release of Critters & Companions, but I'd like to work towards future editions including more art and being more usable. My priority here will be plain text & accessible versions of the book. Stay tuned and thank you for reading!