A lookout is important whenever you spend time camped in the wilderness. Someone needs to keep watch to make sure the group isn't ambushed by enemies or monsters. Usually a character with high perception skills is a sensible choice. But this can be rendered moot by finding a good vantage point - so make sure to take full advantage of anything suitable in the area.
In the real world of the Marmosets & Meerkats universe, of course, David Attenborough's The Life of Mammals doesn't exist. That's the premise of this entire comic, after all. But most of the other things we know and love (such as the eternal struggle for existence) do, albeit modified by the lack of The Life of Mammals:
- Mammalballs is an animated romantic comedy about anthropomorphic pangolins.
- David Attenborough is known (barely) for doing voiceovers for poorly selling computer games, but gains widespread fame after his appearance in the first Futurama movie.
- Meerkat 1 is known primarily for his role in The Lion King.
- Nerdy guys make YouTube videos of themselves recreating scenes from popular fictional films instead of running off cliffs like lemmings.
- Without the success of The Life of Mammals to spark interest in nature documentaries, The Crocodile Hunter was never revisited with numerous movies and series, and remains an obscure short-running TV series.
- Walking With Dinosaurs was never made into a movie. Fans of dinosaurs never had it so good.
- The major science documentary background that pervades all of Western culture is Carl Sagan's Cosmos, despite it never being much good. The original series was adapted recently into a new, updated series with a bigger budget, high-tech computerised special effects, and edgy writing. And it sucked.
- Throughout the 2000s, all the greatest non-fiction TV series were reality lifestyle programs.
- The Comic Irregulars exist and are making a screencap comic based on National Lampoon's Vacation.
Transcript
GM: Dawn on the African savannah. A group of meerkats ventures out warily to greet the day.
Meerkat 2: Great. We're going to get attacked by eagles again. Or jackals.
Meerkat 1: We'll post a lookout.
Meerkat 5: Who?
Meerkat 6: It doesn't matter who. We're meerkats. We're all specialised as scouts.
Meerkat 4: Okay, simples. No need to compare the meerkats.
GM: And so these small carnivorous mammals go about the business of protecting themselves from danger.
Meerkat 3: Right, I need some better elevation.
David Attenborough: Oy! Get off!
Meerkat 3: Hey, if you're going to insert yourself as a GMPC, you can at least make yourself useful.