The reason it perked my interest is fourfold

1. My kids have a kind of loving for Redwall and stuff like that - for kids like them its not a huge step between Sylvanian Families and battling rodents in fantasy struggles for supremacy. (One of their SF games was a detective game about who had chewed the leg off one of the Badger family... the cat was looking churlish in the corner)

2. Theres a vast body of work as mental reference for historically based anthropomorphic animal based drama - Dreamworks, Disnet et al churn out a new one every year it would seem. 'Valiant' (WW2 Pigeons) is an awesome adaptation, for example.

3. I have a big loving for a short comic series called Arrowsmith. The premise is a world where magic never ceased existing but WW1 is happening. The title character is an American Volunteer in the flying corps. He flies on winged sandals powered by his own dragon and fires a crossbow with magical plasma bolts. Thats just the tip of some amazingly imaginative work that I would really love to bring to the table at some point in time.

4. I also love the idea of things happening under the floorboards and between the walls of the real world. I'm a sucker for films like Cats and Dogs where the animals protect the humans without the humans realising.

So, basically, it presses all of my wonderfully diverse array of buttons!

Neil

Take the King's shilling at http://www.omnihedron.co.uk/dutyandhonour/

I think there is some interest in this kind of thing. Now, you don't have to make it a "story game" either as I recall it worked pretty well for you as you played it. The question is "what was the system you used" and make sure that comes across. (And system =/= just rules.)

So, what would make it fly is if you can distill what it is you did around the table to make it work. What procedures you had. Why you made decisions certain ways, etc.

Anyway, as a hook I think it's nice.

This puts me a little in mind of the much-awaited and never-forthcoming RPG Hyperborean Mice, by Frank Sronce. Occasionally we get to hear mass updates about it, then it vanishes again without a trace. A pity. Anyway, it certainly sounds like an interesting/workable game to me. I'm guessing it's going to be more rats vs cockroaches than hamsters vs gerbils, right?

Useless fact, although cockroaches are seen as revolting household pests, in fact only 25 species are. Since the other 4,000 odd species rarely come into contact with man at all, that's around 0.5% of all cockroach species. Seems a bit unfair, really. For all we know, the rest of the cockroaches might be thinking "Those human-loving Blatta Germanica, what a bunch of bottom-sucking lowlives they are! Oh hold on, we suck each others' bottoms too... er... HUMAN bottom-sucking lowlives!"

Ash

Gregor

I think you may have crossed wires slightly Gregor, in that this is not a game I have run in the past. The one I ran in the past (far far in the past) was Termite, where the character races were insects in a world made of dead Gods held together with gigantic trees whose leaves were the sky. That had a hybrid percentile / D20 based system that evolved heavily over the years and isn't all written down (though much of it is).

The game I am working on is Inbetween, which is about tiny hamster-like creatures living in the walls, floors, ceilings, and cavity spaces of modern homes (though any human period from the 9th century would do, with no alteration to the setting), living in the remains of their once unified hamster empire and fighting off invading hordes of insect people. It has a D12 based fairly crunchy system I am still working on.

Neil

Rodents collecting seeds and fighting spiders - CHECK

Chase scenes involving cats - CHECK

Life lived in the hidden spaces of our houses - CHECK

Hamster cities made from crumbling foam and wires, defended by downtrodden Hamster soliders in trenches - CHECK

Glad to hear it pushes some buttons for you, I really like the setting :)

Did you add Furries to Termite then? Bear in mind my tales of it have been through a trusty (?) Wilson-filter!

Oh, you really should work on publishing this by the way (once we have Solipsist out there :wink:).

David,

Rock.

Graham

I had a notion that this might appeal so I pitched the game to my girls. They are veterans of an 'A Faery's Tale' campaign and they are looking forward to the Dr Who RPG with rather disturbing fervour.

They both said that it was a game that they would love to play BUT the rodents should be trying to protect the humans that they live around as well. I know it sounds a bit like Cats but it was their honest first reaction. They really riffed off the idea of the tiny hamsters saving the big humans.

So if you ever feel like this game should be targetted at kids, they're up for it!

Neil

Take the King's shilling at http://www.omnihedron.co.uk/dutyandhonour/

There were some furries in Termite yes, some players were insect averse for reasons that always bemused me (we had such *cute* ants!). John played a water vole, as I remember, and we had a Gerbil barbarian too. There was also a version of Termite set in an Athas like world and that was all rodents.

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

Well the Hylin (that's the hamster-like dudes) have a totally inverted view of the world. To them the tiny spaces of the Between are normality, they are terrified of open spaces and avoid them where possible. As far as they are concerned the whole world was once solid, but then the Eaters (their name for humans) came along and ate spaces out of the between, leaving horrible emptinesses, the worst of which are so open they can't even see the roof!

However their religion teaches that the Hylin Gods fought a war (or came to an accommodation with) the Eaters, so that the Eaters stopped eating the Between and started leaving gifts (food, strange items like spears of indestructible metal with holes in one end and the like) for the Hylin instead.

So their attitude to humans is ambivalent. They see us as dangerous godlike forces of nature, but also ones at peace with themselves.

Ahhh to have kids that would RP something that didn't have Pokemon in it :)

Although if I release a kids oriented RPG it almost has to be based on Grophland.

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

Incidentally if you need any information regarding insects and invertebrates, I have quite a decent library here, feel free to drop me a line.

Ash

Thanks Ash, I have plenty though.

I've not defined the Aranid invaders heavily, just that they are an alliance of many insectoid races

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

This rather reminds me of the Mouse Guard and the brilliant little Tiny Triangles game by Clinton Nixon.
http://open.crngames.com/src/tiny_triangles.html

TT is unfortunately on hold because Mouse Guard artist David Petersen has hired a certain Luke Crane to develop the Mouse Guard RPG based on Burning Wheel.

Hamsters sounds good!

Per
http://darkplaces.squarespace.com

Thanks Per, that sounds like a charming little system, mine is far less elegant, but then its in its early stages.

Here are some images of Hylin

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/

Thanks Per, that sounds like a charming little system, mine is far less elegant, but then its in its early stages.

Here are some images of Hylin figures I made ages ago

http://www.teuton.org/~stranger/cms/page.php?p=inbetween

I think I must be one of the few people who really doesn't like Burning Wheel at all. I expect there's still a gap in the market regardless of this.

Ash

Oh I reckon there's quite a few people who don't like Burning Wheel, even some of the Forge old-guard are Lukewarm to it. He he.

+++
JoE
+++

Prince of Darkness Games
Rock N' Role-Play....

Never played it, though I'd like to try it :)

Burning Wheel inspired me to try having a conflict system that could handle social conflict and physical combat using exactly the same rule set, though its easier said than done in a skill based task resolving system.

http://www.solipsist-rpg.com/