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[Aleksev]

More seriously, whether non-mammals can be intelligent would probably depend more on whether anyone wanted to be one or not than on the setting. It wouldn't be losing that much consistency if Snakes or Turtles or whatever were intelligent "just because" would it?

[SteveLaw]

No, that's mostly true, but we could still make some interesting NPCs, even if no PCs wanted to play a chameleon thief or a butterfly courtesan.  It would mostly just impact on the "beast" aspect (i.e. food more than anything).

I can equally warm to the image of a little goat girl skipping down the street with her butterfly pet fluttering along behind on a string.

[Aleksev]

Option 2 would allow you to have any animal as a character without losing than from the set of normal animals too, whereas in Option 1, if I understand it right, there wouldn't be any "normal" animals of a type if that type were also intelligent? So if there was a chameleon thief, then there wouldn't be any "normal" chameleons?

[SteveLaw]

in Option 1, if I understand it right, there wouldn't be any "normal" animals of a type if that type were also intelligent? So if there was a chameleon thief, then there wouldn't be any "normal chameleons?

Yes, basically, which is why we would have to reduce the "intelligence" pool - or introduce new animal types - to give us some non-intelligent animals for food and other uses - e.g. birds, reptiles, insects, dinosaurs, or trolls.

Or maybe Option 3 - all animals are intelligent and you just eat other sentients.  (A bit darker/more chaotic than I was planning.)

[Aleksev]

Option 3a: All animals are intelligent and eat other sentients, but the players are all herbivores

[wiglaf]

In the story, Ratkin would eat other intelligent species and we all pretty much accepted this as the way things were.  If we wanted to be realistic - or as realistic as you can be with talking animals - then they really didn't advertise the fact that they would eat others.  Society as a whole would be much more fragmented if each race knew that another race was out to get them.  To some extent we all played it that way, acting surprised that we were on the menu.

On the other hand, there did seem to be a bit of general worry that Ms. Cat was going to eat Ms. Mouse, which would seem to indicate that this sort of thing was more commonly known about.  This could be explained somewhat with option one, there are non-sentient felines that eat non-sentient rodents and the sentient animals have built up their own bigoted views of each other based on this despite it not being a really common thing that happens among the anthropomorphics.

How do sentients treat non-sentients in the option one world? In a similar way that humans see other primates; for some point in history.  In modern society some people want to experiment on chimps while others practically want to give them human rights.  A hundred years ago they'd be treated as pests in some parts of the world.  At some point in history there were people who would eat monkey and not be concerned that it looked somewhat human.  Basically, the SC decides where we are in our view of non-sentient animals and the players more or less accept it.  A player may have a character that respects life in all its forms and will not eat anything that breathes (etc etc) but that character is still aware that the rest of the world is going to treat animals the way they do if the SC decides that meat is eaten.

One question I thought of but never asked when the original story was run is what do anthropomorphic animals eat? It sounds a lot like the issue we've been covering, but what I mean is would a character based on an animal that is normally vegetarian eat meat in the game? It's like Donald Duck eating chicken; normally ducks don't eat large quantities of meat, but Donald has been known to eat a drumstick or two, or at least fight over one with Chip and Dale.  During the original game I could sort of picture the Steed in large banquet halls eating meat and wondered if that was what the SC intended to happen at any point.

[SteveLaw]

In the story, Ratkin would eat other intelligent species and we all pretty much accepted this as the way things were.  If we wanted to be realistic - or as realistic as you can be with talking animals - then they really didn't advertise the fact that they would eat others.  Society as a whole would be much more fragmented if each race knew that another race was out to get them.  To some extent we all played it that way, acting surprised that we were on the menu.

Yes, although the SC sort of hinted that it did go on quite commonly (and mentioned the ducklings) I still thought this area was particulary vague and is, I think, quite central to the whole feel of the setting.

As you sort of suggest, if the sentients are going to be eating each other, single species settlements are going to be much more common and there will be a lot of "war".  Yet the original prologue stated (or suggested?) that there had been a time of peace. 

We played it with some racial predudice but no real fear for our lives (why else would a mouse team up with a cat willingly?).  I saw the behaviour of the Ratkin and similar to be that sort of black-market food trade (much as there is a trade for endangered animal meat/eggs in our world) and an exeption to the rule.

Your secondary question is also a good one.  That large banquet doesn't work quite as well with huge piles of straw on the table.  But then a follow-up question would be that if we avoid that, or make them all more or less the same culturally, what's the point of playing different animal species?

BTW, I thought that setting the game at a less enlightened period of history would help with some of the moral issues, but then I suspect that "animal rights" would come up a lot earlier in this setting.

Or, are we thinking too deeply about this? 

[Aleksev]

Are we thinking to deeply about this?

Well, how much did the fact that this wasn't at all clear in the original story bother you? Would a story like this be better if it just glossed over exactly how things like this worked, or is this issue to central to the setting?

[SteveLaw]

Are we thinking to deeply about this?

Well, how much did the fact that this wasn't at all clear in the original story bother you?

For me?  It bothered me a little that it wasn't entirely clear even after the question was asked.  It didn't bother me more because I was playing a herbivorous tortoise.

Personally I feel it is quite central as it more or less defines the different species' views and opinions of each other and their daily struggle, or not.  It leans more towards a civilised or a savage society in general (once we introduce option 3 that is - the first two are mostly about flavour).

[wiglaf]

I wasn't concerned about things not being clear in the original story until after the story got started.  Honestly, I didn't think about some of these issues until they were raised by the players.  In some ways this was a good thing though.  The SC allowed us to make our own races which was possible because he didn't fill in too many details on the world. 

It was probably the OOC turtle soup jokes that ran before the story got started that got some of us thinking about what are (non-sentient) animals like in this world.

[SteveLaw]

Honestly, I didn't think about some of these issues until they were raised by the players.

I agree with that, but now I am thinking about them, and it's the biggest sticking point for the genre for me.  I can more or less work with it in any way, but I really need/want to know before I start even roughing out a world or story in my head.

I am very much leaning towards option 2 from a non-restrictive to player characters point of view, but I also like the "alienness" of riding giant lizards or getting ambushed in the woods by velociraptors (and having the potential threat of being eaten as food)!

[wiglaf]

I am very much leaning towards option 2 from a non-restrictive to player characters point of view, but I also like the "alienness" of riding giant lizards or getting ambushed in the woods by velociraptors (and having the potential threat of being eaten as food)!

I was half-expecting dragons to appear in the original, so having a few extinct animals still around wouldn't be a problem to me.

[SteveLaw]

*nods*

Another problem that I probably shouldn't be thinking about would be that of population.  We need an effective way to keep the population down otherwise a world of giant rabbits and mice with more or less human lifespans would get pretty full pretty quickly.

Of course, let's not forget the real question I'm asking is what would be most fun for the players?

[Aleksev]

and having the potential threat of being eaten as food

Just because eating another sentient is seen as cannibalism doesn't mean in could never happen. Killing someone in cold blood isn't socially acceptable in the real world, and doesn't happen that often, but the fear of it happening is still there. I imagine it would be even greater in "prey" animals.
Even if Mr. Cat is perfectly nice gentleman who would never think of eating her, Ms. Mouse is still going to have a instinctual fear of being toyed with then devoured

[SteveLaw]

But would it be "instinctive" if Mr. and Mrs Cat never eat Mr. or Mrs Mouse?  And if it is then it comes back to why would different species (or pray/predator species at least) live and work together? 

Or I would have to come up with a really good reason for them to be in this case.