There have been a number of such games in the last decade like Pugmire, Mouseguard and Root. Just wondering if anyone here has played them, and curious as to what the experience was like. I'm pretty big on role-playing my character appropriately, and because I'm quite a big, gruff guy, I can't imagine playing as a cutesy creature. What has your experience been like?

The only one was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Well worth it. And don't go for cutesy, as desired. Imagine Rocket Raccoon with a scaling mutation, as big as you like. Or go for the woodland theme like Root, but be an oversized vulture (etc). There are ways to get comfortable in light of player interests.

A lot's in the roleplaying too. There was nothing cutesy about Bigwig, despite being a rabbit.

Quote from: soundchaser on June 10, 2022, 06:29:21 AM
The only one was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

That was one of the first non-D&D RPGs I played back in the early 90s. Still have a copy of it (with the original mental illness chart) on my shelf.

Quote from: mudbanks on June 10, 2022, 05:41:10 AM
There have been a number of such games in the last decade like Pugmire...

I've never actually played/ran Pugmire, but I got in on the Kickstarter to get one of my passed doggo's names in the credits. Brandi was the goodest girl.

Mouseguard is cute right up until the moment a big snake eats you or one of your companions, while the rest flee in terror.  Assuming something else doesn't happen to you first.  The game was too dark for some of my usual players. 

My friends once tried playing a session of Iron Claw (basically anthropomorphic D&D). Only thing I remember is that I leaned hard into it with dog paladin named "Dominic St. Bernard."

Funny, while I like the genre (especially smart comics like Dalgoda or Albedo Anthropomorphics) and I own several anthro games, I have never run one.  There are only two anthro characters that I can recall in over 40 years of gaming; one was a ursine armsman from Space Opera and just recently a 'Strange' from the beta for Once More into the Void (think Grunt from Mass Effect 2, but this character is more like a panther from The Island of Dr. Moreau.)

Back in the day, TMNT... and its cousins, like the Road Hogs thing in After the Bomb, as I recall. Back then, it was about killing things and taking their stuff... and less about mutant identity and gender transformation and whatever.

Mouseguard is solidly about mice, not as mice-standing-in-as-some-minority-group. It's based on comics/graphic novels, and the conflicts don't really focus on "furry" modern things. It's not really a cute setting even though you can find the graphic novels in the children's section of the library. Mice get eaten by snakes. The mice fight against predatory weasels who invade their territories. Mice die of starvation if they don't get supplies. It can be a dark setting, with ample room for sacrifice and heroism.

Quote from: mudbanks on June 10, 2022, 05:41:10 AM
There have been a number of such games in the last decade like Pugmire, Mouseguard and Root. Just wondering if anyone here has played them, and curious as to what the experience was like. I'm pretty big on role-playing my character appropriately, and because I'm quite a big, gruff guy, I can't imagine playing as a cutesy creature. What has your experience been like?

Depends on the setting totally.

Gritty hard to near-hard fiction settings like Albedo, Justifiers, Mouse Guard and Furry Outlaws/Pirates are going to have a very different tone and playstyle than Iron Claw, After the Bomb or TMNT for example which lean lean often heavily into the fantasy side and can swing between hard and soft quite a bit. And all those are going to play radically different from lighter games like Big Ears-Small Mouse, Crushed, Toon and other games where the threat level tends to be low or in some cases nil.

At the end of the day though anthros has little to no impact on this. It is the tone of the setting that will. Albedo is a 95% hard fiction setting with a very lethal combat system set in effectively WWII in space fought with mostly modern NATO level tech on the ground. Compare that to say Furry Outlaws/Pirates which is a historically accurate setting with a little magic and supernatural mixed in. And at the far end of the spectrum you have things like Crushed which is both lethal and played for laughs, or BESMouse which covers settings like The Rescuers or NIMH and other animal themed cartoons that can be rough, but lean more to less lethal. Depending on what you want to emulate with the system.

Then there are the non-anthro animal themed RPGs like Bunnies & Burrows, Tales from the Wood, and s few others where you play more-or-less straight up animals that can talk. Fairly often these are fairly rough settings as well and tend to lean often to the harder end of hard fiction.

Let's just go ahead and address the "elephant" (hah) in the room:  RQ ducks.  This reinforces that it is more about setting and how the group approaches it than the type of character.  You can play RQ ducks for laughs.  Or you can play them straight, and then they really aren't funny.  If anything, they are more tragic.  I think the thing I like about them the most is that they are tragic-comic.

In my own game, alongside the (more or less) standard humans, elves, dwarves, I've got hobbit-sized cat people, human-sized wolf-people, and a race of inherent shapechangers (based more on certain Slavic myths than the typical fantasy shapechangers).  The cat and wolf people do have a humorous slant in that they are notably like the animals.  But there's a serious side to that, too.  For one thing, I've slanted the game a little more than the D&D standard to what being hobbit-sized means in reality, which can put a cat character in a bind pretty darn quick.  They need some of those cat-like traits just to have a shot at survival.  So yeah, a little bit of Puss and Boots for laughs, but with side of Puss and Boots bleeding out on the highway.   But then, my elves can't use much iron equipment, either.

Meanwhile, there are social constraints and reputation for these characters partially based on race.  That's again how you play it, same as it would be with humans from various groups.  If you gloss over all that, then the game could be a bit lighter. 

I'm a bit fascinated by the weird fairy-tale world of Disney's Pinocchio (never read the original book), complete with anthropomorphic animals, fairies etc. Honest John Foulfellow is the best villain ever 😄 Not sure how I would run this though.

I played TMNT a few times many years ago, but it was never my thing.

Frankly, playing an animal or anthropomorphic animal holds no appeal for me. I like playing humans. Heck, I don't even go in for playing elves, dwarves, halflings, etc. Human is where it's at, for me. Just a personal taste thing.

Quote from: Trond on June 11, 2022, 12:33:31 AM
I'm a bit fascinated by the weird fairy-tale world of Disney's Pinocchio (never read the original book), complete with anthropomorphic animals, fairies etc. Honest John Foulfellow is the best villain ever 😄 Not sure how I would run this though.

Those pop up fairly often in faerie tales all over. Some going back quite a ways. And covering a fair range from the benign to the malicious and everything in between. Quite a few border the line between anthro and plain talking animal. Half the time its treated as nothing special. Like its an everyday thing.

Iron Kingdoms Unleashed gave us the awesome Farrow (hog-people) and Gatormen (take a guess). Neither were 'cutesy critters' in the least, but this is game with "eat what you kill" as a tagline, so I wouldn't expect fluffy bunnies.

I was dissatisfied with the anthro games available so I made my own. Anthropomorphic USR https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/187271/Anthropomorphic-USR?term=anthropomorphic+usr
I ran my game tied into a greater superhero world yet to be played. My experience was one of the stranger in a strange land kind of game. How to make allies and maintain character agency became the PCs predominate occupation. I recommend never shy away from highlighting the impact such weird creatures would have to the cultural conscious of the globe. Personal problems with a powerful world looking into their business.

Only ran 3 sessions so not much more was discovered, for me. Except it felt a lot like a straight up super hero game, which was cool!