So does anyone remember these? When you could hunt rabbits on the world map, and wolves were dangerous? With four seasons, at least three weather patterns (I've only seen rain, snow, and clear days), and at least a dozen different terrain types it seems like a whole ecosystem could be planned and executed.
Everyone's taken Biology 101, so I'll spare you the basics, but with a system to track what season it is already in place, those seasons could easily alter spawn rates. With a weather system already in place, different weathers could both alter spawn rates or entirely shift the types of creatures spawned. Making mini-ecosystems would be no more difficult than deciding what the creatures available are, and putting them into predator and prey classes.
You could go further and have the predator classes ratchet up in levels as the prey spawns become more common (apex predators can hunt anything, so more of anything means better times for them). There are so many possibilities that while they wouldn't necessarily provide anything useful to the mud do give it a unique flavor and resource to fan the flames of roleplaying.
A sample environmental type could be as follows:
Swamp
=====
Prey Level W S U F Predator Level W S U F
----------- ----- - - - - ---------------- ----- - - - -
Raccoon 1-3 - + + = Water Snake 3-5 - = + +
Turtle 1 - = + - Constrictor 4-6 - - + =
Crane 2 + = - + Aligator 8 - = + =
Raven 3 + = = + Will-o'-the-Wisp 8-12 + - - +
Catfish 2 = = + -
Anyway, just a quick belting out of an idea. Not really well thought out at all, but I'm curious if anyone thinks that this might be fun. Some creatures would be agressive, but this could be determined by season and relative scarcity of prey mobs in the area...
