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Question: For your Animal Purview, how do you determine what counts as a specific enough category? For example, when it comes to fish and some birds, would you require that the player choose, I don't know, Animal (Piranha or Flounder etc,) or Animal (Sparrow or Blackbird, etc.), or would Animal (Fish) and Animal (Smaller Birds) be enough as long as the player didn't go nuts with it?

Your question sparked heated debate between John and myself during a long car ride, which came to verbal fisticuffs and declarations of war. The landscape trembled at our passing; the vehicle went faster in the hopes that we would get out of it sooner. You contributed to the epicness of our day.

But, anyway, the most important rule for Animal is this: is the animal being chosen specific enough to actually be a mythic totem animal? The Animal purview is designed to allow you to choose a totem animal that you identify with or that represents you, so if your chosen Animal specialty isn't doing that or is doing it poorly, you may need to rethink it.

For example, Animal (Piranha) and Animal (Sparrow) both sound awesome, because they show a player choosing a specific creature as their totem; they're choosing something because it has a certain feel to it, whether it's the piranha representing their small size but ferocious might or the sparrow representing their quick thinking and light-wingedness. A player doesn't necessarily have to be that specific, but neither do they want to be too general; Animal (Fish), for example, includes a huge range of other fish who really don't resemble the piranha and its symbolism at all, so I'd rule that it wouldn't work to try to use it as an umbrella there. Animal (Fish) would cover any fish that was just a general sort of fish: flounders, trout, perch, anything that in a myth would easily be reduced to "you know, a fish". Piranhas, on the other hand, are quite specifically about teeth and scariness, not about the normal qualities of fish, so I'd rule that if you want piranhas, you'd need Animal (Piranha). Similarly, someone with Animal (Fish) wouldn't have any power over sharks in our games; sure, science may know that sharks are a kind of very big, very toothy fish, but as a totem they're a distinctly different creature with distinctly different associations, so they're really not the same for purposes of the Animal purview.

Birds are trickier, because while there are umpteen bazillion kinds of birds, they aren't all easily distinguishable and don't all need to be their own animal (unless a player wants them to be, in which case I salute them). It's important to be clear with the player what exactly their purview does and does not cover - for example, I'd sit down with a player taking something like Animal (Small Birds) and point out that while it would cover sparrows and finches and robins and so forth (because for purposes of storytelling, they really aren't particularly functionally different), it would not cover other birds with distinctly different symbolic connotations, like crows or parrots, no matter what size those other birds might be. The important thing is the animal's function as a totem; if it's too general to be a reasonable totem, then you probably need to narrow it down. If it's trying to include several things that are obviously distinct totems on their own, it's trying to do too much.

Some examples from our games:

Eztli has Animal (Bat), which allows her control not only over the bloodthirsty American vampire bats, but also over the gigantic fruit-eating bats of Asia. It doesn't matter that they don't share the same general behavior or come from the same part of the world; anyone who sees either is going to know it's a bat, because bats are universally recognizable and are perfect for a totemic symbol. Bats are bats are bats, whether they have fuzzy orange fur or gigantic echolocation ears.

Jioni and Chicahua both have Animal (Spider). They tend to express it very differently - Jioni usually takes on the aspects of the myriad tiny black spiders of her swampy homeland, while Chicahua is all about the bright colors and rigid fur of tarantulas. They can both use (Spider) as a general Animal without needing to specialize, because spiders are another symbol that anybody can look at and immediately recognize - we all know what spiders are, and what they usually represent, and it doesn't matter if they're big and orange or small and brown. If Chicahua had wanted to specialize into just Animal (Tarantula), he'd definitely have been welcome to; it would be a matter of flavor, but not a requirement.

Saki has Animal (Fox), which she needs to communicate and misbehave with her little fox Kawaii. She needs the specificity of (Fox); we wouldn't allow something more general like (Canine), because different kinds of canines - wolves, dogs, foxes and jackals - all have very different symbols and ideas attached, so they can't be under that same umbrella. Saki can, however, talk to tiny desert fennec foxes just as easily as to the large red northern foxes.

Sowiljr has Animal (Bear); it applies to all bears everywhere, unless they are specifically different creatures (like pandas or koalas). While there are a bunch of different kinds of bears in the world, in mythic terms humanity basically always treats them the same (usually some variant of "oh shit, a bear"), so he's equally as at home with the spectacled bears of South America as he is with the brown bears of northern Europe. There's no need to lock him to a specific species of bear; the bear is a powerful totem that doesn't need to be narrowed that way.

Vala has Animal (Blackbirds), which includes things like ravens, crows, magpies and rooks. Those are birds with very similar traits and similar symbolism, so they fall under the same umbrella. She can't just use Animal (Corvids), however, because that symbolism does not include all members of the scientific family of corvids, however - for example, bluejays are corvids, too, but they are obviously a different bird for totemic purposes, so Vala has nothing to do with them.

Zwazo Fou Fou has some Animal (Lobster), incidentally one of the most entertaining animal totems ever, and it specifically applies only to lobsters. The fact that lobsters are technically arthropods does not mean that he also gets to talk to cockroaches, since those are completely different creatures, symbolically speaking; he also doesn't get to hang out with shrimp or mussels or crabs, which are noticeably different from lobsters. We would not have allowed Animal (Shellfish) or similar, simply because there are too many varieties within that that can represent or symbolize too many things. It wouldn't be a totem, but rather a category, so it's out.

Yoloxochitl is buying Animal (Axolotl). Axolotls are so specific and unique as creatures that she can't get away with just Animal (Salamander) - one of these things is just not like the other.

You're right that it is always a concern that players aren't trying to game the system by choosing the broadest category they can get away with; things like Animal (Hoofed Animals) or Animal (All Birds) are usually obvious attempts by players to get more versatility out of the purview by sacrificing the intent to provide them a totemic animal association. It's not hard to spot those attempts, and it's usually pretty easy to say, "That's a little too general; what did you have in mind more specifically?", or maybe just sit down and explain the mythic concept of a totem animal and why it's cooler to have one that's unique to you than to try to cheat yourself out of it. And, of course, you don't want to have your player with the super-cool Animal (Scarab) feeling gypped because someone else has Animal (Insects) and is running roughshod across the entire bug kingdom.

If you'd like a general rule, we usually recommend keeping Animal at Family (or lower - Genus and Species as necessary) level of scientific classification, which usually gives you a good idea of similar and related animals but doesn't give you too much of a huge umbrella that might include obviously different creatures. It's not a hard-and-fast rule, though; there'll always be exceptions (families that are too specific, or that contain too many things that are clearly different totems), and each player's idea for an Animal specialization is considered on a case by case basis in our games. The last thing we want, after all, is a rule that screws someone's really cool idea, or enables someone else to cheat on a technicality.

Watching people come up with cool Animal totems is one of my favorite things about Scion. Other personal favorite greatest hits from our game have included Gila Monster, Hummingbird, Jellyfish and Wasp.