"I can haz advenjur?"

Animals have fascinated tale-tellers and audiences for thousands of years. They have been major characters in both children's and adult's literature for as long as stories have been told, but they have rarely been the focus of a role-playing game. Until now.

Great & Small: The Roleplaying Game Of Animal Fantasy gives you the opportunity to spin your own animal epics in the style of classic stories like Watership Down, Tailchaser's Song, The Book Of The Dun Cow, or The Guardians Of Ga'Hoole. In a game of G&S, you can be a rabbit, a cat, an owl, or even some more exotic creature like a unicorn. Or, you can take the role of Beast Master, the game's referee, who guides and challenges the other player's characters. The whole animal kingdom is at your fingertips with just the roll of a few dice.

Great & Small uses a classic, easy, and familiar set of rules to give you the ability to play animal characters in a variety of contexts. Whether you want to mix and match with humans, dwarfs, and elves, or leave the long-paws out of the action entirely, you can use these rules, based on the original fantasy role-playing game, to re-tell the great animal epics, or create brand new stories of your very own.

Primp your claws. Unfurl your feathers and take flight. Or dive to the deepest depths. It's all possible with Great & Small.

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New Beast, Common Ancestry:

Great & Small does not emulate any particular edition of the world's original roleplaying game.  Instead, it splices the genome of that game to that of another old-school RPG about rabbits, and builds an organism on its own terms.  Most of the rules will feel familiar to anyone who has played basic editions of the classic fantasy RPG, and will be broadly compatible with such rules.  Nonetheless, G&S is its own beast, with several distinct traits that make it classifiable not as a retro-clone so much as a new clade born of common ancestry.

Its key rules features are:

   

• A unified dice mechanic: 2d10 +/- modifiers vs. target number of 20+
•    "Modifiers" include Armor Class, lore check Difficulty Ratings, and saving throw Threat Levels, and are all rated from 9 (the easiest) to -9 (epic); these modifiers are added to or subtracted from your 2d10 roll, thus affecting your chances of hitting or exceeding 20.
•    Game mechanics that emphasize non-lethal combat
•    Scaling rules, so mice and elephants can adventure together, if they wish
•    Diceless character creation; no ability scores!
•    Classes-as-skills: instead of a class, characters have a species and a skill niche, which both advance as level goes up
•    Level advancement by skill checks, instead of experience points
•    Extensive use of "Zocchi dice," especially d3s, d5s, and d7s ; give them something to do other than take up space in Crown Royal bags!

You can download your copy of the Great & Small Quick Start rules today!  Just click on the page link at the top of the blog, and start your animal epic right away.

So, that's my pitch.  There's a lot more development material on the blog itself, so I won't bother repeating any of it here.

I will post updates to this thread whenever new blog posts go up, though.

This concept is intriguing. Have you run sessions of it yet? I would be interested in live play reports, since I am curious of the campaign possibilities.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;815678This concept is intriguing. Have you run sessions of it yet? I would be interested in live play reports, since I am curious of the campaign possibilities.

I'm planning on some playtesting next month and my FLGS, and with a private group.

There are already some rules I think I'd like to change, but the playtest will be with the Quick Start RAW.

I do plan to post reports here when they're ready.

cool

Take a good look at Bunnies and Burrows definitely a system well ahead of its time.

Quote from: jibbajibba;815922Take a good look at Bunnies and Burrows definitely a system well ahead of its time.

B&B is a major influence on G&S.  Many of the concepts from the original B&B -- both game-mechanical and thematic -- made their way into my game.  This project actually started as my effort to convert Bunnies & Burrows to a familiar game engine that could support a wider range of animal PCs, not just rabbits.

But I agree, the original B&B was ahead of its time in many ways.  Far as I  know, it was the first RPG to offer unrestricted multi-classing and percentile-based skill-check character advancement.

Quote from: King Truffle IV;815942B&B is a major influence on G&S.  Many of the concepts from the original B&B -- both game-mechanical and thematic -- made their way into my game.  This project actually started as my effort to convert Bunnies & Burrows to a familiar game engine that could support a wider range of animal PCs, not just rabbits.

But I agree, the original B&B was ahead of its time in many ways.  Far as I  know, it was the first RPG to offer unrestricted multi-classing and percentile-based skill-check character advancement.

Yup and it has the scaling thing you mention as well.

B&B easily converts to other animals as our old Duncton Wood campaign attests

When was it first released 76?

Today on the blog, I added the character stats for four new Featured Creatures: skunks, snakes (constrictor), squirrels, and tortoises (gopher). This rounds out the playable species detailed in the Quick Start rules.

Quote from: jibbajibba;815949Yup and it has the scaling thing you mention as well.

B&B easily converts to other animals as our old Duncton Wood campaign attests

When was it first released 76?

The original game is copyrighted in 76, yeah.

Speaking of Duncton Wood, I have playable game stats for mole PCs in my sample adventure, "Secret Of The Spooky Old Warren."  SPOILERS:  The adventure is about an abandoned rabbit warren that's been taken over by a cult of mole religious fanatics in league with a vengeful jackalope.  So it's basically Duncton Wood invading Watership Down.

Quote from: King Truffle IV;815993The original game is copyrighted in 76, yeah.

Speaking of Duncton Wood, I have playable game stats for mole PCs in my sample adventure, "Secret Of The Spooky Old Warren."  SPOILERS:  The adventure is about an abandoned rabbit warren that's been taken over by a cult of mole religious fanatics in league with a vengeful jackalope.  So it's basically Duncton Wood invading Watership Down.

Do your Moles know kung fu?

Quote from: jibbajibba;816021Do your Moles know kung fu?

LOL. Funny you should ask that, because one of them -- the mole cult leader -- has learned a few fighting tricks from his jackalope ally.

I'm working on a system called "spandrels," which allow animals of one species to learn or "absorb" the abilities of another.  So, this mole cult leader, though smaller than rabbits, can jump and kick like one, inflicting damage as though he were of the same Size category.

I haven't formalized this system yet, but assigning the ability to a NPC was functional enough for a starter adventure.

Today on the blog, I analyze the impact of the classic novel "Watership Down" on the genre of animal fantasy, and at the lessons it offers GMs on how to design and run campaigns for animal characters.
http://greatandsmallrpg.blogspot.com/2015/02/a-sandbox-hex-crawl-with-rabbits.html

Good news for anyone who's been feeling nostalgic for the "ultravision" ability!  I found a way to bring it back.
http://greatandsmallrpg.blogspot.com/2015/02/on-beyond-purple-taking-back-ultravision.html

Small amount of new stuff today: expanded the range of species with Ultravision, based on further reading about UV eyesight in non-human animals.

Plan to re-write the Herbalism rules this week, and base them more on OGL and OSR material than on the original Bunnies & Burrows.