I got my significant other excited about playing an RPG by showing her the Pugmire series and saying we could create our dogs and cats as fantasy characters and play them, but when we actually went to do that she was overwhelmed by the rules.  I am wondering if anyone knows of a fantasy RPG where you can play animal characters that is simple enough for a gaming newbie.  I know of Mouseguard but what's attracted her is being able to characterize our pets, so the game needs to have dogs and cats as race options.

Thanks for any ideas!

Isn't Pugmire just 5e D&D with canine paneling?

Hard to say what could be simpler, but depending on your tolerance for narrative games you could go for Fate.

I think you'd be stuck picking a system you like and playing it in a setting you have fun in.  What sort of things do you normally play?

I like the original TMNT, and I recall that it wasn't crazy complex.  "Too complex" is pretty subjective though.

It's a simple game, called "Everything's a 10".  Or else, use the 2d6 success mechanic from Dungeon World.

You came to the right place! You need Return of the Woodland Warriors. It's also on Drivethru in pdf. Uses heavily modified Swords & Wizardry - uses only d6 plus a bunch of other changes. There aren't dogs and cats as player characters - but it would be easy to adapt wildcats and foxes/wolves into player character types. If you didn't imagine your animals having swords and tools and stuff then there's Tales from the Wood or It's a Dog's Life. As they aren't exactly what you are looking for (no dog and cat pcs) tell me which one takes your fancy and PM me your email address and I'll send you a comp copy of the pdf from Drivethru.

Quote from: Manic Modron;1145569Hard to say what could be simpler, but depending on your tolerance for narrative games you could go for Fate.

There are literally hundreds of RPGs out there with simpler rules than 5e.

Quote from: kidkaos2;1145563Thanks for any ideas!

Simon W is ultimately responsible for my suggestion too...

My personal preference would be to use Everywhen, or it's Sword & Sorcery parent Barbarians of Lemuria, along with the supplement Manimals. Manimals has templates for all kinds of creatures, including cats and dogs. It's a simple system that takes about 5-10 minutes to teach and about the same to make an interesting character. A character has 4 regular abilities, 4 combat abilities, a selection of careers (broad replacements for skills), some Boons (a bit like Feats), and the equivalent of hit points. There are other things as well but those are the key parts. Everything is done with D6 and the basic task resolution is 2D6 + Ability + Career vs Target Number (usually 9). There's nothing flashy about the system, it's just a fun, simple, solid system and it's versatile enough to do just about anything you want. Between Barbarians of Lemuria, Everywhen, and a couple of other games that are built on the same system, it is fairly well supported too.

Alternatively, The Black Hack is a super simple old school D&D derived system (and you can get the 1st edition SRD rules for free) that's easy to learn and run. There is a mutant animal supplement out there but it's not free.

FUDGE is a great generic system to use with not-yet gamers. It's super easy and doesn't get in the way of the roleplay. You could easily do Doggies & Dragons with it!

But don't call it Yiffquest!

Metamorphosis Alpha  and especially 2e Gamma World are pretty easy to get into and get rolling.
Same really for Palladium's TMNT series which later spun off into its own thing called After the Bomb.

I'd love to suggest Albedo or Justifiers. But both are more complex games in one way or another.

And Im sure as hell not suggestion to anyone the new Albedo or Ironclaw.

Theres others out there of varying degrees of complex vs not. Really depends on what you want from the system and the setting?

Return of the Woodland Warriors is awesome. There is also James V. West's Rabbits and Rangers and the ROOT board game is getting an rpg with free basics released on Free Rpg Day this year.

Familiars from Ganesha Games.
Buggin' from Deep7.
Mausritter: Sword-and-Whiskers Role Playing from Losing Games.

Maybe:
Terra Primate from Eden Studios.
Hyperborean Mice from Kiz and Jen Press.