Campaign Toybox
The Story: When the aliens came, they weren’t foolish. They took the primary species first, the tool builders and tool users. Then they came for the carnivores and super-predators – nobody wants dangerous things running around a mining operation, slowing down production. But they forgot to check the hedgerows and the copses. They forgot the hollow logs and the river banks.
Big. Mistake.
Of course, at first it seemed like paradise to the mustelids, rodentia and lapinae of the green hills of (New) England: everything larger than a cat was now either dead or enslaved in the mines. Once again could the hare run for miles on open plains, and the green hills were empty except for dandelions and clover all the way to the blue horizon. Many of the animals believed it should stay that way. Many certainly believed that the humans deserved the punishment they got for their crimes against the earth and their fellow creatures. But some felt they should show mercy, that whatever happened to the smallest link, happened to the entire web of life. When they discovered the enormous alien mines were pumping the atmosphere full of deadly sulphur biproducts, it became a moot point. The aliens were a bigger threat, and it was save the humans, or die. Get ready to cheer for the little (furry) guy.
Style and Structure: You don’t have to turn this into a parody of children’s stories from the Beatrix Potter genre, but it’s good for a few laughs and it’ll probably happen eventually anyway. In the meantime, focus on good old fashioned David-and-Goliath resistance stories, only with the odds even worse, since our heroes are now bunnies and squirrels (add gophers and groundhogs if you live in the US) and the bad guys are all-powerful aliens who defeated the human military with ease. If that’s going to be believable, the best idea is to give humans a weakness – no doubt the aliens instantly countermanded all our high tech information technology, destroying our computers and communication systems. Perhaps they even have access to mind control, but it only works on brains of a certain size or wavelength. Most importantly though, they think in simple terms, seeing size and tool use as the only real threat to their supremacy. Which means they aren’t expecting attacks from the small and the apparently harmless – not realizing that your average rat can bite through barbed wire and can produce an army of a hundred offspring in a few weeks.
The aliens could have even more weaknesses. Poor eyesight might render creatures smaller than a cat completely invisible to them. They may depend too much on technology, just like humans, so one chew threw a power cord can shut down their whole establishment. Heck, maybe they have terrible nut allergies. Don’t go all War of the Worlds or it’ll be too easy but with just a few small nudges you can create an enemy that can believably conquer humanity but have a lot of problems dealing with squirrels. You know, like Doctor Doom
PCs and NPCs: Don’t settle for one species; players will get more cool powers out of multiple ones, and you get built in drama as the fox and the hawk must team up with the bunny and the fieldmouse. Of course, if you do focus on just a few species, you can flesh out their culture, really dig into what makes one bunny not like the rest, and that solves the “well, why don’t I just eat my team-mate” problem. A middle ground is focusing on just a few species or one group (like rodents, or just insectivores say). Use the weaknesses the aliens as your guide to their best enemy and foil.
Bigger, scarier animals make good NPCs, and keep the drama of predator vs prey outside the team. Rescuing some cats and dogs is good strategy but bad for morale amongst troops that resemble snausages. Rescuing humans is even worse, but may be absolutely vital to the cause, because they’re the ones that can work the guns. A Ratatouille-esque solution might need to be worked out. Yes, human, you can help – but we remain in control.
Your only other question is how to scale things. You’ll want a system that can model human and squirrel strength at the same time, without falling over. And it’s not just strength: you want the squirrels to have some chance of operating a hand gun or a computer while still letting the players feel out of their depth and wishing they had a human around – oh the irony! Once you handle that, however, the rest is easy.
Plots and Villains: Rebellion plots tend to following a very familiar arc, one which appears in half a hundred genre films and novels, from Star Wars to the Matrix. Note that you don’t even have to figure it out in advance, or make the players figure it out, you can just frame each adventure with why it’s important to the overall mission to the continuing rebellion. And there are so many, many things that could be important for that – getting supplies or protecting supply lines, going into enemy territory to get intelligence, maintaining intelligence lines, destroying the enemy’s supplies, arms or even just his morale, assassinations, prison breaks, sappings, full scale attacks or just plain old recon. Watch any war movie ever made and steal steal steal.
When it comes to your aliens, steal too. A bit of theft goes a long way, as long as you steal from good sources and then add just enough variety to make them feel different. Greys, reptoids, tripods, prawns, cybermen, cyclos or cylons – all make good starting points. Combine a few if need be. Take a gritty, terrifying one and make it less deadly, or vice versa. Pick your favourite bad guy from an SF game you never got to run, like the Aborigines in Blue Planet, the Qin from Trinity, the Builders from Wild Talents or the weird guys from Eclipse Phase to name but a few. It’s Christmas, and Christmas is a time for giving – that is, games giving ideas to you.
Sources: For visions of an alien-conquered earth, you could read or watch Battlefield Earth or you could ram knives into your eyes – tough call. Better options in fiction are John Wyndham’s Tripods series while on TV we have V (old or new) and several episodes of recent Doctor Who (whether it be the Master, the Cybermen, the Daleks or whomever running the show). Computer game Half Life 2 also has the aliens winning before the start. Alien infiltration is more common (covering everything from Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters to John Carpenter’s The Thing) or things never quite getting to complete occupation (War of the Worlds, Independence Day, etc). For fluffy critters besides he books we’ve mentioned, there’s Redwall, the Duncton Sound books, many works by Disney (particularly the Rescuers and the Rescue Rangers), the beautiful comic Mouse Guard and of course, Ring of Bright Water (bring tissues).
RPGs: Well, Mouse Guard. Only with more guns. For indie insanity, combine it with 3:16, I’m sure Luke will approve! Alternatively, Burning Wheel has sci-fi settings to provide you with gun rules for your mice. There are more animal RPGs of course: GURPS Bunnies and Burrows, It’s a Dog’s Life (Prairie Dogs), John Wick’s Cat and the classic Creeks and Crawdads. More anthropomorphic but still useful are TMNT and the Changing Breed book for new Werewolf, or Ratkin for old Werewolf. If you want to play up the terror of having predator and prey team up, try Cold City, and for rebellion arcs against occupiers, try Midnight, Starchildren or Star Wars. Despite their misleading names, Kill Puppies for Satan or Dogs in the Vinyard would not be appropriate. Merry Christmas.
