Those of you who have followed this blog for a while know that occasionally I try to feature bundles and the games in them. Today will follow that trend with the TTRPG Animals Bundle! This bundle professes to contain all sort of adventures where you and your players either play animals, interact with animals, or do activities heavily inspired by the lives of animals.
In today’s article, we will review a couple of the games from the bundle! If you want to learn more about them, you can click the name
For full disclosure, I have a game in this bundle in this form of Carcinauts!, so I will profit (a little bit) from any sales of this bundle.
Animals Game #1 – FISHT – Fishing Intel: Sinker, Hook & Tackle
FISHT – Fishing Intel: Sinker, Hook & Tackle is a a combination serious and humorous supplement created by Paper Key Games for the FIST RPG. It plays into FIST’s focus on late 20th century supernatural spy drama by providing a number of moves and equipment that will improve your game’s ability to act in the water. This include moves that allow you agent to summon marine animals that help you out and a Sharkjumper trait that requires you to one-up yourself throughout the entire mission.
It also includes a minigame that encourages you go to fishing and a mission that partly revolves around it! That might sound a bit silly, but something you need to know is that some of these fish can give you special powers when paired with items like hypnosis, radiation resistance, venomous claws, and bursts of speed.
Animals Game #2 – A Familiar Frenzy
A Familiar Frenzy by Britney May (AKA Friendly Non-Binary Dungeon Mom) is a one-page RPG. The premise of this one is the players are the animal familiars of a group of wizards. The game itself seems to be based on 2-stat, 1d6 games like Lasers and Feelings. Here you two stats are Animal, representing your embrace of your physical form and Familiar that you use when doing magical actions. The player also picks or rolls on four tables that contain a choice of animal, school of magic, your Familiar’s rank at using said magic, and a magical item like a never-ending rope or magical beans.
The game also comes with three different basic scenarios for quick, one-shot play. The original one has you rescuing your wizards from the “Big Bad Guy.” The other two are slightly different styles of fetch quests that your group does for the fictional Familiar Agency Retention Training Senter (F.A.R.T.S). For example, A Familiar Valentine has you retrieve Cupid’s Bow that has been stolen by a child who will undoubtedly unleash all kinds of mischief on the world unless you stop them.
Animals Game #3 – ANTological Theory
ANTological Theory is a comedic RPG for 3-5 invertebrates where you play ants in a hive philosophizing on a wide number of age-old questions from “Does Food go away when you eat it?” to “Is a Queen with no Drones a Colony?” This game is almost entirely roleplay as the game has no stats. Instead, you fill out a quick questionnaire with 9 binary questions that help determine your ant’s basic character and philosophy. Topics that are debated are determined at random with a roll of a 2 six-sided dice and referencing a d66 table.
If you think this might be amusing, but still are not sure about it, you can also find a one-shot of this game on the One-shot Podcast Network. Take a listen to see if it appeals to you!
Animals Game #4 – The Bloody Burrows
Now for a much darker item, we will explore The Bloody Burrows by Ross Burton. This adventure location was designed for use with the Mausritter system. While during the day this location appears to be a normal abandoned home in the countryside, at night it becomes clear this is a haunted place. The booklet contains magical items, two adventure hooks, a map, and new antagonist in the form of the dreaded Washervoles. It also comes with a set of printable cards quite useful for the Game-master to describe and run the antagonists!
Again, you can find the bundle on itch.io with 65 games starting at only $20! A video about some more games from this bundle will also be coming to the Hessan’s County Youtube channel, so subscribe there and turn on notifications to see it as soon as it goes live!
Speaking of which, here is that video!