The Morality of Playing Sapient Animals

[Vaevictis Asmadi]

To the OP's question, there are a few additional solutions I can think of. In all three cases I think the key is that all the PCs are prey, or all the PCs are predators. Mixing them would provoke the kind of problems your players seem to want to avoid.

1. Only the carnivores are actually sapient. This is similar to the Narnia-esque talking animal/witless animal divide. Everybody plays a predator.

2. The different sorts of animals (divided by taxonomic family or carnivore/omnivore vs. herbivore, or some other division) are alien enough from each other that they can't tell if the other group(s) is/are sapient. The players of predators would not have any real reason to suspect their prey are intelligent. Not sure your players would be OK with this, though.

3. Go the Watership Down route: everyone plays a prey animal, and getting eaten is recognized as a common occurance but nobody wants it to happen to them, personally.

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I don't see why. Just because you define sapience as the dividing line between what can and can not be eaten, doesn't make it a fact of the universe.
Many cultures define "us" much more tightly.
I define it much more loosely.

Right, swing by my house, Flyn. I AM FAMISHED.
Make sure you bring enough butter and garlic sauce to cover your body.

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by Anthony

It's a game. What matters is what squicks out the players.

Yep.


'Squick' could be part of a horror game, but it may not work so well in other genres/modes of play.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Brett

Warthog? 10 character limit!

Oops. Right.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Irish Wolf

That's actually a potential solution there. Herd Thinners Inc. is employed to keep the herbivorous animals from out-reproducing their food supply; it's considered perfectly ethical from their point of view, as without that the herbivores would begin to starve.

Wouldn't work. That just changes the players from cannibals into would-be ubermench James Bond villains.

A better way is to say that the carnivores are gallant warriors defending the innocent photosynthetic peasantry from THEIR predators.

And an even better way is to go the normal route and Don't Think About It To Much.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

Right, swing by my house, Flyn. I AM FAMISHED.
Make sure you bring enough butter and garlic sauce to cover your body.

Nah, I don't think he tastes all that good. Now papist, jacobite loving, paleoconservative military-medic; that is a feast for the ages.

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Nah, I don't think he tastes all that good. Now papist, jacobite loving, paleoconservative military-medic; that is a feast for the ages.

Naw, I'm too skinny. Stringy, even. And too much Scotch has passed my lips. I'd taste like a starving jackrabbit unearthed from a peat bog.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

Naw, I'm too skinny. Stringy, even. And too much Scotch has passed my lips. I'd taste like a starving jackrabbit unearthed from a peat bog.

I need to eat comparatively low-fat meat for health reasons, actually.

Bill Stoddard

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I need to eat comparatively low-fat meat for health reasons, actually.

Bill Stoddard

Uh, oh...

:()

[Seneschal]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Wouldn't work. That just changes the players from cannibals into would-be ubermench James Bond villains.

A better way is to say that the carnivores are gallant warriors defending the innocent photosynthetic peasantry from THEIR predators.

Hmm, I see this has been suggested many times - simply dividing the animals into prey and predator species, and having them be opposed to each other. Our party was omnivore/carnivore (an eagle, a raccoon, a dog and a fox), so it would have worked, too, provided herbivores were portrayed as antagonistic enough (otherwise the players would feel like roleplaying a mass-murderer party). A druidic carnivore society that protects the plants would do the trick, though it's a bit silly.

Alternatively, the herbivores need not be antagonistic, just that the conflict is so old and so necessary for the carnivores' survival, and perhaps the two groups speak different languages, that peace is completely impossible.

I really liked the idea of contextualizing predation so it feels as something other than cannibalism, and eliminating all human parallels, but it's really just too much work, and not that easy to immerse oneself in a world that operates under such alien rules. I can understand why someone wanting a light-hearted fantasy romp would be put off; it's like yearning for Dungeon Fantasy, and your GM serves you Transhuman Space.