09-15-2019, 12:43 PM | #11 | ||
Join Date: Sep 2019
Location: UK
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Re: Animal PCs
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It was the "Skills for TL 0 Aliens" thread that put it into my head to start with, I think. It made me remember how many of the important parts apply even below TL 0, or alternatively TL 0 extends beyond humans, one or the other. And their "world" is an entirely different set of challenges. That's probably why I didn't mention talking, because I've been thinking mainly in terms of parties that are all animals, rather than animals in parties of humans. Anything is interesting, though. I sometimes think about a game in a supers setting in which our heroes are super animals - after all, if there are superhumans why wouldn't there be superanimals? :-) And if the human subjects are always managing to escape from the evil lab and cut loose with their new powers, probably there are evil labs so incompetent that this even happened at the mouse stage... The animals may be extra intelligent, but give or take a few superpowers are mainly just dogs and so on, and must deal with the evil plan by themselves unless they can find a telepath with enough sense to know what "Wuff wuff wuff wuff wuff" means. :-) I didn't necessarily say entirely SERIOUS games. Last edited by Inky; 09-15-2019 at 12:47 PM. |
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09-15-2019, 07:25 PM | #12 |
Banned
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: 100 hurricane swamp
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Re: Animal PCs
Not in GURPS. And sure, I'd do so again.
Inability to communicate. They should probably have said "sapient animals capable of communicating with each other". |
09-15-2019, 09:34 PM | #14 | |
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
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Re: Animal PCs
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09-15-2019, 09:55 PM | #15 |
Join Date: Jan 2017
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Re: Animal PCs
I loved playing the TMNT RPG as a kid. Does that count?
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09-16-2019, 02:58 AM | #16 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: U.K.
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Re: Animal PCs
Roleplaying is pretty much by definition about playing sapient beings. A non-sapient animal, by definition, doesn’t work through the kind of conscious decision-making processes that make RPGs interesting.
You could study up on the psychology and behaviour of a given species, and set to work representing that in play — “What would a real cat do in these circumstances?” — but that’d be rather a dry, mechanical process, and frustrating when it leads to what a human can see are obviously bad decisions. Players like their characters to survive and succeed, so there’d be a perpetual temptation to apply their own, human-level capacity for planning and analytical thought to the animal’s behaviour. At which point, they aren’t playing a realistic animal any more, they’re playing a fantasy sapient creature. (Which is fine, in a fantasy game, but they shouldn’t be getting the points back for animal-level IQ.) You appear to be thinking of a game with sapient animals, though, which is perfectly feasible, though the GM needs to be alert to things that the characters can’t do. “There’s a closed door between you and your objective. With a doorknob. You’re stuck.” I have run a couple of demo games where one member of the party was human, and the rest (four fantasy cats in one case, an uplifted dog and a couple of AIs in minimal computer hardware in the other) had to rely on the human for complicated tasks like opening doors...
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09-16-2019, 03:51 AM | #17 |
Join Date: Nov 2015
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Re: Animal PCs
Yep. Basically what I wanted to say, but couldn't find the right words
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09-16-2019, 05:02 AM | #18 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ronkonkoma, NY
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Re: Animal PCs
I think it could be done. It would rely on the GM describing the world in terms animals would understand and letting the players describe their actions out of the earshot of other players. When the GM describes the world in terms an animal would understand, it couldn't be something the players could figure out easily, e.g., you couldn't describe a road as a hard strip of ground that metal boxes zoom along; players would figure that out right away.
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09-16-2019, 06:10 AM | #19 |
Join Date: Nov 2012
Location: Australia WA
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Re: Animal PCs
I've played in a supers campaign where my character's power permanently had them stuck in a giant wolf-like monster form. The rest of the party (in character) assumed I was just a super powered and well trained wolf sent to assist the party. It was pretty fun.
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09-16-2019, 06:30 AM | #20 |
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
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Re: Animal PCs
Bunnies and Burrows needs a supplement for cats and dogs.
Canines and Cats?
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“When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love ...” Marcus Aurelius |
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