And here I'm pushing up against the limits of my own understanding about how the game system works.  :)  I don't mean to be contrary, but I did warn you that this type of game was way outside my levels of experience and thus comfort.<br/><br/>Animals do have a natural fear of fire, but then fire also operates on its own natural principles.  Would an animal the size of a wolf have a natural fear of a fire about the size of a blaze on a matchstick -- or even a dime-size fire?  I have my doubts.  :)  I would also venture that animals have as much curiosity (at least at a safe distance) to even a larger size fire as they have fear.<br/><br/>Sustaining a small size blaze would not be easy, if only because you're dealing with the fiber size of the materials fed into it.  It seems to me that it's not so simple, unless you just scale down the physics -- which I can go with, more or less, but then that creeps back into the 'humans who just happen to be mice' philosophy that you mentioned you wanted to avoid.<br/><br/>So I'm kind of looking for an understanding of how this operates ... and how I should direct my thinking.<br/><br/>