The Tavern

I'm just nit picking here, but this is one of those things that has always bugged me a little. This is almost so small (heh) of an issue it's not even worth posting, but whatever.

Crawl has an unusual proliferation of monsters with "giant" prefixed to their names. I pulled this list from the crawl.chaosforge.org wiki but it looks like it's mostly still up to date. Most of these are animals.

Giant amoeba
Giant ant
Giant bat
Giant beetle
Giant blowfly
Giant centipede
Giant cockroach
Giant eyeball
Giant firefly
Giant frog
Giant gecko
Giant goldfish
Giant iguana
Giant leech
Giant mite
Giant mosquito
Giant newt
Giant orange brain
Giant slug
Giant snail
Giant spore
Giant toad

The trend seems to be for unoriginal monster names to be changed (or for the monsters themselves to be replaced). For example, giant lizards were replaced, the boring coloured snakes all got names, and there are no giant iguanas (making the list I copied at least a bit outdated).

I've always found this "giant" thing to be a bit odd, partially because there are so many "giant" enemies, and partially because most of them aren't actually giant (giant bats are actually tiny). Plus, there's the fact that a lot of enemies aren't named "giant" and yet aren't any smaller.

A couple of these are appropriate - giant eyes, giant orange brains, giant amoebas, gaint spores, and giant mites. The first two because they are weird and interesting, the latter three because they are microscopic. As for the rest, I don't think "giant" is really necessary - some of these animals are normally quite small, but we can all assume that if they are in a fantasy dungeon and they are rabidly attacking you, they probably aren't ordinary animals.

Is this just some quirky crawl-ism that causes animals to be named like this (if so, there's nothing wrong with that, but it would be interesting to know if that's an actual reason)? Or otherwise, is there a reason "giant bats" aren't simply renamed "bats" besides them always being called that, going back to pre-SS days?

http://crawl.chaosforge.org/index.php?title=Iguana
http://crawl.chaosforge.org/index.php?title=Crocodile
http://crawl.chaosforge.org/index.php?title=Agate_snail

I renamed those articles awhile ago, but I forgot to update the list. All the various snake articles were also renamed.

Giant fireflies have a good bit of reason, as well: spriggan riders ride them.

Big Fish and Giant Goldfish could easily be replaced with actual species of fish.

I was just about to post that a few minutes ago >.>

I'd roll with some felidfish.

I concur. So when I stab them I can shout out, "Holy carp!"

just make sure they don't end up being too hardcore.

So in the Dwarven Mines branch, if a fortress vault gets generated, any carp in the moat get insanely buffed?

Rename giant beetle to goliath beetle

Yes, they're not really *that* huge irl, but neither are emperor scorpions and they're giant monsters in DCSS too.

EDIT: Seconding that carps should replace giant goldfish.

well technically a carp IS a giant goldfish.

or rather a goldfish is a particular breed of carp that generally doesn't get too big because it's put in a tiny living space and growth based on living space is just how carp roll.

but yeah.

Giant carp.

Death carp.

Blink carp.

Carptaur.

Orange crystal carp.

27-headed oklob carp.

Blink carp would be awesome. He blinks over to an adventurer and bites him, then suffocates in the waterless environment.

Dire Carp.

I just want to see <player>, killed by carp on the highscore table.

We listen to the demands of our players and Jude acted swiftly.

Giant bat --> Megabat

Lest the complaints can be heard all of the jungle, rest assured that megabat is the appropriate term, as the Crawl HQ zoology department assures: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megabat

Of distortion.

I suggest we simply call them bats.

Megabat sounds a bit extraordinary for such a mundane creature, it's what I'd expect a unique bat monster to be called more than anything

From the wiki: "The megabat, contrary to its name, is not always large: the smallest species is 6 centimetres (2.4 in) long and thus smaller than some microbats."

wolf spiders are as big as ogres
so are emperor scorpions
I don't think crawl is worried about matching up with real life on sizing issues

Fix Giant ant so that it's in line with the other ants.
Preferably: Worker Ant ( / Soldier Ant / Queen Ant ) , not Worker Giant Ant / Giant Worker Ant or something stupid.

Alternatively, call them mega-ants.

This is one of the topics without end, because everyone is entitled to an opinion. I am not saying that your opinion is inferior, but there'll be folks who want to keep "giant bat" because they're used to it. Then there are sensible people who point out that "bat" would just do fine. And then there's someone looking for a little fun and introducing "megabat".
I have tried to make it my habit to not worry so much about matters like these (I can also adopt quickly to new key commands, monsters colours/glyphs and names). If you think that "megabat" is a genuinely bad idea, please take it to the c-r-d mailing list. Eventually, we may have a quick poll among developers, but I trust that everyone will be okay with the terminology once the novelty has worn off.

I suggest keeping 'small snakes', because it generally insinuates a transition from a lesser snake to a more tough opponent in the regular 'snake', because it's not as small. It's easy to identify, even for people new to the game. If they were just lyres and asps, we could -assume- that because you see lyres first, they are weaker, but you wouldn't be certain unless you asked someone.

Well everyone knows hobgoblins are tougher than regular goblins. That's just common fantasy knowledge. And it takes more than a few encounters; considering the range at which the early game damage can go from doing nothing and missing all the time to the RNG loving you and killing the snake almost immediately. Takes a while to mentally average it out.

Not generally. If it doesn't look imposing or out of the ordinary, I don't tend to look at its description. And I certainly wouldn't look there expecting the game to tell me how difficult it would be to kill in relation to another monster.

*shrugs* I'm just telling you how it was for me when I started playing. Unless I needed to figure out what weapon they were holding or what level of MR they had, I didn't take the time to read the description of every monster.

I fully support the transition from 'Giant' to more meaningful names so long as it doesn't involve: 'Mega', 'Super', 'Enormous', 'Gigantic', 'Extreme', or 'Bieber'.