Creating a Medieval Animal World (Animal Racial Templates and More)

[Gavynn]

I am trying to create a medieval animal world where the players are almost always rabbits, but beavers, mice, and squirrels are player "animal races" as well. Non-player "bag guy" races would be badgers, raccoons, rats, and weasels. I'll call these the "sapient" races. My first step is to come up with good racial templates for them and set up the mechanical structure of the world. I would love to hear your thoughts.

This is a medieval world, with a similar feel to Disney's classic Robin Hood cartoon (where Robin Hood was the fox), except for 1) it is less campy, 2) there are far fewer sapient races than there were in that movie, and 3) I want to invoke a greater feeling of "being" that animal and the differences between them. (In that movie, being a different kind of animal was basically a 0 point feature). There are no dragons or fantasy creatures, but there are the non-sapient races out there. For instance, a rabbit fighting a rattle snake would be like a human fighting a dragon, basilisk, or equivalent. This is why a rabbit would need to put on some armor and pick up a sword

Of course, I have Bunnies & Burrows and have used it as a jumping off point, but it goes too far in the "animal" direction. The rabbits are much closer to "real" rabbits than in this case. The book has a section about "rabbits with fingers" but intentionally say they are not going into that. Bummer.

I've reviewed the racial templates in Dungeon Fantasy as well. I kind of feel like they are good racial templates for this because they are not overly detailed, but are still trying to capture the feel of the race in big bold strokes. That is what I am trying to do, capture the flavor of the animal race. Using behavioral stereotypes is okay. Players can buy them off if they want. In other words, I think its best to wash over similarities between the animals and emphasize their classic differences.

Here are some assumptions, observations, and thoughts of the world:

1) The world should be centered mechanically around the rabbits (so an average rabbit is ST 10, DX 10, IQ 10, and HT 10).

2) The fact that these different animals do not have thumbs is ignored. Their paws are like human hands for the purposes of grasping and manipulating tools and weapons.

3) There will be no racial IQ penalty or bonus accross of the sapient animal races. They are all "human" level intelligent with the range of human variation.

4) There are no humans in the world, so there is no need to incorporate them into the system.

5) The animals will walk in an upright and bipedal fashion most all, if not all, of the time.

Questions I am thinking through:

1) How to handle rabbit vision? Rabbit vision is a tough one. They have peripheral vision, but no depth perception in a lot of areas. Bunnies & Burrows says they do have depth vision in some areas in front of them. I am trying to decide if something like that is interesting, or not what I want. I could have a difference in vision between animal races, but I could also just say that all the sapient races have human-like binocular vision and leave it at that. That is certainly the simple way, and I think it would be the most playable for the goal here. The same goes with night vision and so forth. Maybe all of these animal races should have night vision, so maybe it is just ignored.

2) What to do about size modifiers? All of the sapient races would likely be the same size category in GURPS, but I'd like to express some variation between them. For instance, mice and rats are smaller than rabbits, squirrels might be somewhere in between. But, I don't want to get bogged down. Rabbits, weasels, and raccoons are roughly the same size. I guess the thing to do here is just re-center Size 0 on the rabbits. They can encounter large animals though. Horses, bears, cougars, etc would be huge.

3) What to do about general distances, speed, and even weight? Bunnies & Burrows uses more rabbit-like speed and distances, but develops rabbit-pounds and rabbit-ounces. I think that having "rabbit yards" might be a good idea - call them r-yards. Then a rabbit takes up one hex on the grid like a human and you go from there. Horses, bears, cougars, etc. if they are encountered would just take up a lot more r-hexes than they would if you are using human yards.

So what would have for the racial templates for these animals. Here is my starting draft starting point:

Rabbit

Rabbits are the dominate creature in the land - that is, since they mastered fire.

Attribute Modifiers: None
Secondary Characteristic Modifiers: None
Size Modifier: 0
Advantages: Acute Hearing (+2) [4]; Peripheral Vision [15 points]; Temperature Tolerance (1 with increased cold tolerance) [1]
Perks: Fur [1]
Disadvantages: Phobia - Loud Noises (9) [10]*;
Quirks: None
Features: None
Racial Skills: Jumping (+2); Running** (+2)

Mouse

The mice can often be found working the fields outside of Rabbit burrows. They are some of the closest allies of the rabbits and enjoy the protection the rabbits provide.

Attribute Modifiers: ST-7 [-70]; DX+1 [20]
Secondary Characteristic Modifiers:
Size Modifier: -2
Advantages:
Perks: Fur [1]
Disadvantages: Cowardice (12) [-10]*
Quirks:
Features:
Racial Skills:

Squirrel

Attribute Modifiers: ST-3 [-30]; DX+3 [60]
Secondary Characteristic Modifiers: Increased Speed?
Size Modifier: -1
Advantages:
Perks: Fur [1]
Disadvantages: Hyperactive?
Quirks:
Features:
Racial Skills: Acrobatics +5; Climbing +5

Beaver

Beavers are always building something, and often are the lead architects and engineers for rabbit fortifications. The best engineering faculty at the universities are beavers.

Attribute Modifiers: ST+5 [50]
Secondary Characteristic Modifiers:
Advantages:
Perks: Fur [1]
Disadvantages: Some kind of compulsiveness about always "doing something"?
Quirks:
Features:
Racial Skills: Engineer (TL/3 - Civil +3); Swim +2

What do you think and what recommendations do you have for these or the other races?

[Apollonian]

All I can say is that you should include hedgehogs. And maybe frogs or toads as these weird water creatures. Are you thinking of sapient birds as well, or are those going to be strictly non-sapient (or at least NPCS)?

And, of course, have you looked at Mouse Guard? I don't know as the RPG, which is excellent, would be all that much help, but the comic is loads of inspiration for this sort of thing.

[Roidh]

I've actually toyed with a setting of this sort many times, although never have gone through with a campaign due to a lack of interest in the setting for my players. Still I'll give my thoughts.

I think the first thing that strikes me as a bit odd is having rabbits be the baseline for stats. While I see wanting to do that from a perspective of them being the primary race I've always seen rabbits as being more dexterous and faster than than average. While I can see utilizing them as the size, and thus ST, baseline having them be the DX baseline feels just a little strange in my opinion. Personally I've always seen the Mouse as the natural baseline for this type of setting although that is probably just due to me growing up with the Redwall books.

For the racial templates overall I feel it depends how gritty you want to go into them. For example, I had a template for some rabbit type people in a game that I ran where I gave them extra leg strength (this was just arm st with no fine manipulators) and extra long feet (this was a modification on the long legs advantage to give them extra kick length but not mobility on maneuvering obstacles). On the other hand I do tend to go a bit to far when it comes to placing all of the minor physical traits that a race has.

As for your specific questions.
1. For creating more non-human races and their senses I've been leaning very heavily on enhanced senses. I would definitely take a look as it'll open up new options to define the senses. For a setting like this though I would probably lean more to the playing though. Having rabbits have peripheral vision (especially if you don't give it to other races) feels good and let's them be distinct. Giving them no depth perception probably will make them feel bad unless you give them another way of hitting their targets.

2. I feel that the strength values here are totally off for the SM that you used, but that is besides the problem. Personally I feel that how much you want size to vary depends on the campaign's style. High variance of SM and base ST will end up leading to very different characters if it is going to end up being a campaign with an average amount of combat. On the other hand a combat light campaign might not have as many issues with the size dependency. Personally I would go for more normalization with say the Mouse being SM-1 at ST8 as the smallest. It'll also help the world feel more cohesive between the different critters in terms of things like building size (unless you want to emphasize massive size differences).

3. I would just hand wave it all away and say it is all rabbit units or whatever.

[Gavynn]

Originally Posted by Apollonian

Are you thinking of sapient birds as well, or are those going to be strictly non-sapient (or at least NPCS)?

I have not thought about having birds be sapient. I wonder how having flying sapients would impact the world.

Originally Posted by Apollonian

And, of course, have you looked at Mouse Guard? I don't know as the RPG, which is excellent, would be all that much help, but the comic is loads of inspiration for this sort of thing.

I think someone has told me about Mouse Guard in the past, but I have never looked into it. I might need to though.

[Gavynn]

Originally Posted by Roidh

I think the first thing that strikes me as a bit odd is having rabbits be the baseline for stats. While I see wanting to do that from a perspective of them being the primary race I've always seen rabbits as being more dexterous and faster than than average. While I can see utilizing them as the size, and thus ST, baseline having them be the DX baseline feels just a little strange in my opinion. Personally I've always seen the Mouse as the natural baseline for this type of setting although that is probably just due to me growing up with the Redwall books.

Maybe it would make sense to move the rabbits upward in the DX area. I was thinking that racial skills in Running (only applicable to sprinting) and Jumping might emphasize their dexterous abilities in those areas without the general DX increase which would help them out in sword swinging too and maybe should not.

Edit: I could also increase rabbit speed. I thought about that.

Originally Posted by Roidh

For the racial templates overall I feel it depends how gritty you want to go into them. For example, I had a template for some rabbit type people in a game that I ran where I gave them extra leg strength (this was just arm st with no fine manipulators) and extra long feet (this was a modification on the long legs advantage to give them extra kick length but not mobility on maneuvering obstacles).

Extra leg strength could be used to compute jumping distance and height, and also might help them out with kicking.

Originally Posted by Roidh

1. For creating more non-human races and their senses I've been leaning very heavily on enhanced senses. I would definitely take a look as it'll open up new options to define the senses. For a setting like this though I would probably lean more to the playing though.

I do not have that book. I may need to get it.

Originally Posted by Roidh

2. I feel that the strength values here are totally off for the SM that you used, but that is besides the problem. Personally I feel that how much you want size to vary depends on the campaign's style. High variance of SM and base ST will end up leading to very different characters if it is going to end up being a campaign with an average amount of combat. On the other hand a combat light campaign might not have as many issues with the size dependency. Personally I would go for more normalization with say the Mouse being SM-1 at ST8 as the smallest. It'll also help the world feel more cohesive between the different critters in terms of things like building size (unless you want to emphasize massive size differences).

Normalizing it more might make the world more cohesive. My first pass here was made with the Bunnies & Burrows as a reference. Its strength differences are massive. Badgers are ST 25 to 35, Beavers are ST 20 to 25, Ferrets ST 20 to 25, and mice down at ST 2 to 4. It puts human ST at 50 to 80. It must have been expecting rabbits to get pummeled by a badger or a ferret. So, I reduced what they had considerably. It may need to go even further though.

Edit: Also, maybe the mice should be shy rather than cowardly.

[naloth]

Originally Posted by Gavynn

Normalizing it more might make the world more cohesive. My first pass here was made with the Bunnies & Burrows as a reference. Its strength differences are massive. Badgers are ST 25 to 35, Beavers are ST 20 to 25, Ferrets ST 20 to 25, and mice down at ST 2 to 4. It puts human ST at 50 to 80. It must have been expecting rabbits to get pummeled by a badger or a ferret. So, I reduced what they had considerably. It may need to go even further though.

Stats went down in between 3e and 4e, in general, and ST especially. 3e lift was linear while HP was based of HT rather than ST.

If you use a formula that allows quadratic or even log lifting, you won't need such differences between the scores for impressive differences.

I'd make a conversion number (divide human ST by 5?) then figure things out from there based on weight and examples (Campaigns, netbooks, etc).

[Gavynn]

Originally Posted by naloth

Stats went down in between 3e and 4e, in general, and ST especially. 3e lift was linear while HP was based of HT rather than ST

I remember that when 4th edition had come out. I did not think ST was a linear progression in 4th edition.

[naloth]

Originally Posted by Gavynn

I remember that when 4th edition had come out. I did not think ST was a linear progression in 4th edition.

It is not in 4e, but it was in 3e.

new ST = sqr [ old ST * 10 ].

That gives an new ST 16 (~15.8 rounded up) for and old ST 25 on the human scale... You would have to figure out how you want it to be on your animal scale.

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=13196

[Culture20]

If you want to be realistic about weapons and armor, the rabbits, beavers, squirrels, and mice are too small to work steel except cold or cast. Copper or bronze would be a better option for them since working it cold (until it work hardens) is normal. This is one of the few things I disliked about Mouse Guard. It’s an excellent series. The mice use sapient hares as mounts (some treaty involved), and there are many other sapient animals, but few aligned with the mice.

[Gavynn]

Originally Posted by naloth

new ST = sqr [ old ST * 10 ]

I think I will put together a spreadsheet to run the Bunnies & Burrows numbers through that.

Originally Posted by Culture20

If you want to be realistic about weapons and armor, the rabbits, beavers, squirrels, and mice are too small to work steel except cold or cast. Copper or bronze would be a better option for them since working it cold (until it work hardens) is normal. This is one of the few things I disliked about Mouse Guard. It’s an excellent series.

That is interesting, but the rabbits do have a mythological character who brought them fire. But, you are right that there is a lot armor that was made in the Middle Ages cold anyway.