dog boy breeds not in the books

[hawkepuk]

Does anyone have the character stats for a akita dog boy... Trying to get my character set up and want have the akita dog breed for it... Any information would be appreciated.

[Pepsi Jedi]

I'd just look in the book and at the closest speices. For Akita you could use chow or something to get close. Maybe bump a number or two, take one down a bit. Just working with a GM to get from A to B on it.

For Akita, you might wanna go kill hound with um.

[drewkitty ~..~]

As I see it.....A breed that is not in the books would be ether a experimental test subject or a special breed meant as house 'pets'.

[ShadowLogan]

Does anyone have the character stats for a akita dog boy... Trying to get my character set up and want have the akita dog breed for it... Any information would be appreciated.

Off hand. No. In addition to the two previous responses.

What you might be able to do is use the mutant animal tables in After the Bomb books (or HU or TMNT). They might be in there (I haven't looked, I know canines in general are, but not specific breeds, so I don't know what book if any it might be in). If it is there (or close enough relative) you could then compare it against known dog boy breeds that are also on the table to workout what translates to the new breed (or just mutate it via BIO-E rules to get an approximation of a dogboy).

[guardiandashi]

Does anyone have the character stats for a akita dog boy... Trying to get my character set up and want have the akita dog breed for it... Any information would be appreciated.

Off hand. No. In addition to the two previous responses.

What you might be able to do is use the mutant animal tables in After the Bomb books (or HU or TMNT). They might be in there (I haven't looked, I know canines in general are, but not specific breeds, so I don't know what book if any it might be in). If it is there (or close enough relative) you could then compare it against known dog boy breeds that are also on the table to workout what translates to the new breed (or just mutate it via BIO-E rules to get an approximation of a dogboy).

as others mentioned I would start with a "best fit" match for an akita and work from there.
when I did some basic research, my results indicate the breeds that are similar to an akita are: Kuvasz, Bernese mountain dog, great Pyrenees, st Bernard, and Newfoundland. which is convenient, because a newfoundland happens to be the breed they used as the "base" for the sea dog in lone star.

[Pepsi Jedi]

Ehh but they really focused on the swimming aspect of the Newfie, and Newfies are huge and bear -looking- but are cream puffs. They don't have a mean bone in their bodies. We have one next door that has to be taken for walks through the back door, because he's too scared to walk on hard wood floors to go to the front door, and he's the size of a small car.

Akita's aren't renown for their overall friendliness are they?

[Tor]

However rare by comparison certain dog breeds could be, I'd hedge a bet that Bradford has at least one of each at Lone Star seeing's how he's done all sorts of weirdness like lions/chimps/bears/bats/rats.

Would also use the rules for mutant spiders in mutants in orbit based on that spider artwork that inspired the rifter story. Same with goats and snakes. Billy Norr Friend

[Nox Equites]

Take German shepherd as a base but reduce IQ bonus and give bite similar to wolf.

[Pepsi Jedi]

I still say Chow as the base Maybe malamute. Akita's aren't shaped like GS's at all.

[ShadowLogan]

Something else to consider is that genetically a given breed may have gone extinct during the GC/dark ages. It is also possible that Lone Star might not even have the genetic information on file, and if the breed is extinct, it just wouldn't be possible for them to bring it back (not w/o the help of magic).

[Tor]

I can buy some going extinct, some of the purely-for-asthetics ones wouldn't be too competetive. Whereas while lions from zoos could've been less common, if some escaped during the cataclysm they could've replicated in the wild, perhaps hunting humans. Anyone watching that 'Zoo' TV series currently airing?

That said, if Lone Star didn't have the DNA on file, that'd be a fun campaign, Bradford hires you to excavate a pre-Rifts mansion where the owner kept dozens of poodles so that you can find a corpse with DNA so he can make Psi-Poodles.

[ShadowLogan]

Finding a corpse with DNA after 300 years will be tough IINM. DNA does degrade, fossils typically don't have DNA in them. Even fossil remains require conditions to form.

[guardiandashi]

Finding a corpse with DNA after 300 years will be tough IINM. DNA does degrade, fossils typically don't have DNA in them. Even fossil remains require conditions to form.

while this is true to an extent, its also misleading.

I believe that you can find and reconstruct dna from sufficient samples. I will use a "bad" example from the first Jurassic Park movie. they claimed they got the DNA sample they used from an insect trapped in amber for millions of years that apparently had dna (blood) from multiple dinosaurs. While there are lots of issues with that the principle remains reasonable.

lets say you found a 300 year old corpse of a poodle, you are unlikely to find any viable cells in the corpse, what you are more likely to find is large numbers of dead cells with the DNA damaged in slightly different places, by comparing multiple samples and only accepting the ones that have multiple "same" sections across the sample set, you eventually could reconstruct the "base" DNA string.

on the other hand fossils not having DNA is an artifact of how fossils are created, they are usually one of several examples, but they really come down to 2 major types. 1 type is "impressions" these are essentially "casts" of the remains that have since rotted (decomposed) away. the other major type is what I am going to use "petrified wood" as an example of, these are where stony chemicals over time replaced the organic structures until all that is left is a rock that resembles the original object. what makes this one somewhat difficult for reconstruction is that only the "hard" structures get preserved that way so no flesh, just bones /wood, or similar.

[Tor]

Finding a corpse with DNA after 300 years will be tough IINM. DNA does degrade, fossils typically don't have DNA in them. Even fossil remains require conditions to form.

There's gotta be a mosquito that bit a poodle and fell into some tree sap somewhere.

[drewkitty ~..~]

Left in the wild dog would de-breed (the selective breeding that humans have placed the dog breeds would come undone) and would end up with about the size of a wolf. This would happen in just a few generations.

I would expect the smaller breeds of dogs to be eaten out of existence within a couple of years after the disappearance of humans from the scene.
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The DNA would have to have been gotten from an animal from a deep freeze situation for the DNA not to have degenerated from a viable form. Fossilizing involves rock replacing the organic materials. Whatever DNA was there when the animal died is not there now.
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Finding a corpse with DNA after 300 years will be tough IINM. DNA does degrade, fossils typically don't have DNA in them. Even fossil remains require conditions to form.

There's gotta be a mosquito that bit a poodle and fell into some tree sap somewhere.

Is s much a bunch of artistic license as it was in the JP movies.

[Tor]

*does not want to question Spielburg*

I think it's possible some poodles could've survived, maybe not in the wild, but as human companions. A major advantage being their sensitivity to the supernatural, to serve as a warning system.

[ikillbugsdead]

I don't have my books in front of me, but if memory serves, aren't Akita's one of the breeds mentioned under the kill hound entry?

[Pepsi Jedi]

Lone Star had all the stuff on file when they found it. The CS didn't go running around cities picking up dog breeds and having them... er.... 'contrubte' into jars or anything. The dog boy program, including all of the science. It was 98% done. Desmond pretty much picked it up, dusted it off. Changed some fuses and hit the go button. The breeds in the book are just a hand full of standard popular breeds.

Lone Star has access to others. They might not use them as often (Though one has to wonder how many poodle or yorkie dog boys are out there), but yeah, they can make batches of ______ breed to test them out. Just for giggles or just for veriety.

As per Kill Hounds, yeah I'd mentioned them before and you're right bug killer.

"The most common breeds include Mastiff, Rottweiler, Wolfhound, Elkhound, Rhodesian Ridgeback, Akita, Bouvier Des Flandres, Wolves and mixed combinations of these breeds, sometimes with terriers.

[Tor]

The CS didn't go running around cities picking up dog breeds and having them... er.... 'contrubte' into jars or anything.

I suppose there's no indication that they do this in the initial stages.

However, if they allow natural procreation as preferred to tube-growth due to lower resource consumption..

Yet they don't want pair-bonding problems to compromise Psi-Hound loyalty to humans...

Artificial insemination actually seems super-likely.

[Wooly]

Pepsi is correct on his lore but I think looking for DNA is an interesting plot hook.

[Boethermsbrukan]

Something else to consider is that genetically a given breed may have gone extinct during the GC/dark ages. It is also possible that Lone Star might not even have the genetic information on file, and if the breed is extinct, it just wouldn't be possible for them to bring it back (not w/o the help of magic).

ShadowLogan brought up an excellent point: most wild dogs who weren't wolves (and might be part wolf, depending on parentage) by time the the Dark Ages ended were more than often ex-domesticated 'mutts'; finding a purebred Alsatian (German Shepherd), or one that had enough pure DNA for Dog Boy genetic jumping, for example would be more likely because they were both very common in North America before the Coming Of The Rifts and the Lone Star databases because of that availability as a breed would probably have some or all of that breed's genetic sequencing on file or frozen/preserved tissue samples. As much as Akitas are a neat breed, at least today they would still fit into the 'exotic' category, and I suspect would be difficult to find (purebred) during or after the Dark Ages as living specimens and much less likely to find in Lone Star's or another gene bank.

Newfoundlands (or dogs with Newfoundland blood) would have physical characteristics that would stand out before any blood or tissue samples were taken; big huge black or black with white parts dogs, the webbing between the toes, thick, water-resistant fur, etc. And they would be useful enough working dogs that it wouldn't be unlikely that said breed would be preserved by breeding a family stock well outside of any technical desire to harvest their DNA. I don't know if an Akita (to use that example again) was intended as a working dog but if it was, I assume that in its 'home' environment there might be similar preservation of the breed through husbandry. But that's assuming the Coalition could get a scientific team there (I believe the Akita breed is East Asian in origin; please correct me if I'm wrong) in the first place.

Lone Star's gene banks, both mapped DNA in computer storage and frozen/preserved tissue samples were of course, their primary source for engineering mutant dogs. I will suggest that the Coalition (or at least Desmond Bradford) might not have as many qualms as one might think to creating mutant dogs from ex-domesticated mutts, but I think this was mentioned in World Book 13: Lone Star, that like wolves and wild canines, wild dogs might be harder to control than purebreds. But I'm not sure one way or the other.

-Boe.