Road Runner Master Sheet
Key Visual Features:
- Speciality Creature (Speedy escape)
- Classic Progression\Power (3 tiers)
- Elemental Progression
- Exotic Progression
Road Runner General Description:
The Road Runner can be found on many worlds, but is a rare and skittish creature. He is a flamboyant cocky bird who runs away at the first sight of danger and is always alone. When idle they wander and peck at the floor, but when they become aware of any player they will run away as quickly as possible. Most of the time the player will have only a small opportunity to kill them and get their valuable drops. Very rare variants will charge at the player and may hit them before running away.
Speciality, Ranged and Melee
So you wouldnât be alone to initially think that creature progression of any sort visually speaking would result in âbigger + more armour = badderâ (the most difficult version of that creature). And in the traditional sense that is true⌠however in Boundless, weâre striving to make more than a full set of creatures that can be killed only by means of melee or ranged combat. (More on melee, ranged and armour in later posts)
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In recognising this, weâve created a category of creatures called âSpeciality Creaturesâ and they embrace the sandbox more.
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By nature they are more inclined to be personality driven and are more puzzle based creatures where hitting them is not often the best way to take them down.
The Roadrunner is a perfect example of this, where the most difficult progressional form of this creature makes no visual sense have the fastest escaping creature to be the biggest or have more armour. It is however a unique Solo Behaviour based creature therefore Classic Progression is applied - but unlike the Spitter thereâs only so many ways to run away quicker therefore only 3 tiers are needed in this case for the gameplay specifics.
Progression therefore for the Roadrunner (and Wildstock) takes itâs a lot of itâs visual aesthetics primarily from itâs Speciality category at the top of the âKey Visual Featuresâ. From these, the visual aesthetics lean either towards their nature (what they are) or their combat (what they do).
In the case of our Roadrunner - like a Peacock or a Swan - the âbest and most difficultâ classic progression levels results in âFlamboyancyâ rather than âArmourâ.
Flamboyancy also takes into account that his main identity and personality (animation sets) which has traits of being a bit of a âshow-boaterâ as he struts around the landscape, almost teasing the player to try and catch him. (Without Amour/Protection - he is likely to go down like a bag of spanners⌠but our Road Runner is so very sure of himself!) 
He is the therefore emboidied visually as the most glorious creature in 
!
