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Old 09-15-2019, 10:38 AM   #1
Inky
 
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Default Animal PCs

Anyone ever played as animals? Or would like to?
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Old 09-15-2019, 11:51 AM   #2
Phil Masters
 
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Default Re: Animal PCs

Animal-animals or sapient probably-talking fictional animals?

(The former, I don’t regard as feasible. The latter... I haven’t played, but I’ve run in demo games quite a bit. Mostly on the Discworld. One thing I’d observe is that you should insist on them being talking animals. Few players can handle playing mute characters.)
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Old 09-15-2019, 11:56 AM   #3
Aldric
 
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I want a cat!

But I don't think there would be much of a campaign, unless you're talking sapient and talking animals...
There should be an RPG with mice or some other small animal that I don't remember out there, not my kind of game however!
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Old 09-15-2019, 11:59 AM   #4
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Default Re: Animal PCs

Mouse Guard Roleplaying Game.
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Old 09-15-2019, 12:07 PM   #5
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Default Re: Animal PCs

The classic Bunnies and Burrows is still available as a pdf, too.
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Old 09-15-2019, 12:12 PM   #6
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Default Re: Animal PCs

Wasn't there a GURPS conversion of Bunnies and Burrows?
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Old 09-15-2019, 12:43 PM   #7
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Default Re: Animal PCs

Quote:
Originally Posted by Phil Masters View Post
Animal-animals or sapient probably-talking fictional animals?

(The former, I don’t regard as feasible. [...] )
Quote:
Originally Posted by Aldric View Post
I want a cat!

But I don't think there would be much of a campaign, unless you're talking sapient and talking animals...
Can either of you enlarge on why not? Answer might give clues to exactly what IS needed to be feasible.

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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Old 09-15-2019, 07:25 PM   #8
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Default Re: Animal PCs

Quote:
Originally Posted by Inky View Post
Anyone ever played as animals? Or would like to?
Not in GURPS. And sure, I'd do so again.



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Can either of you enlarge on why not?
Inability to communicate.

They should probably have said "sapient animals capable of communicating with each other".
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Old 09-15-2019, 09:14 PM   #9
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Default Re: Animal PCs

I run a GURPS Bunnies and Burrows game a my local gaming con. I plan on doing it again this year.
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Old 09-16-2019, 02:58 AM   #10
Phil Masters
 
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Quote:
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Can either of you enlarge on why not?
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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