Following on from my short interview with Uri earlier in the week, let us now move on to the game itself: RATS! A Game of Furry Fun.

Rats! is a role-playing game based on a streamlined version of the d20 system, with a few differences, some of which I shall get to later. In the game you take on the role of rats, of different cultures. Rather than simply paraphrase what the Funding Campaign site says, I’ll just copy part of it below:

RATS! uses streamlined mechanics based on third edition d20. This system allows the rapid creation and decimation of rat characters. Starting characters can be created within minutes. A good thing, since if you’re not very careful, this will be your lifespan.

There are thirteen diverse cultures, three elite cultures, six races, twenty starting habitats, and a gazillion feats, skills and mutations (inspired by a hundred years of misunderstanding radiation) to customize characters. Thus, while characters are very simple to create and play, they are highly diverse.

There are no classes or levels. Rat characters advance by gaining new abilities and mutations, which are bought directly with XP, and by growing in size. A sufficiently experienced character is a right proper ratzilla. There are no hit points, either. Every time your character is hit, a consequence is rolled. These range from the embarrassing (you make an undignified sound) to the horrifying (you blow up like a watermelon in a Gallagher show).

Players can take on the roles of heroic rats on a grand quest to make the world a rattier place, or manage packs for many litters, placing the good of the collective before their your own (yeah right!).

An Example

The absence of Hit Points and the replacement in the form of a Death & Dismemberment or Mortal Wounds styled table is a nifty idea, and I can preview a snippet of this, courtesy of Uri: when a character is hit, instead of deducting hit points, you make a roll on a table, which has results such as the following:

• The Jaw That Snaps! You sever one of your victim’s fingers, imposing a -2 penalty to attack rolls and 1 continuous Con damage.
• Reveal Thy True Face! You work through large portions of your victim’s face, inflicting 1d6 Cha damage and a -4 penalty to all rolls.
• Make Them Humble! You gnaw through your target’s spine, inflicting 3d6 Dexterity damage. If this reduces the target to 0 hp, it’s permanently paralyzed from the neck down.
• I Did Not Brush My Teeth! Target contracts a random disease (see page XX).
• Thy Last Vision Be a Rat! Target is permanently blinded.
• From Ear to Ear! You chew on the target’s jugular veins, causing continuous 2d6 continuous Con damage. Everyone in a ten foot radius must save on a DC 15 check or be blinded by blood spray.
• Teeth to Toes! You annihilate the target’s toes, inflicting 1d6 Dexterity damage and causing it to move at half speed and be unable to run.
• Agony Victorious! Your bite is superficial but incredibly painful. Target is stunned while you’re empowered by his agony, gaining a +2 Sadism bonus to all melee damage rolls until the end of the encounter.
• The Foulest Gluttony! You eat into the target’s body, inflicting automatic double damage each turn until it, the target, not the damage, removes you via an opposed Dexterity check in which you gain a +8 bonus (full round action).
• Make an Example! You ravage the target something fierce. Roll five times on the hit locations table. Also, every enemy seeing the attack must make a save opposed by your Intimidation or rout for 1d3 rounds. Those who succeed on the roll are shaken instead.
• I Strike Thee in Thy Holy Place! The target is unable to do anything but whimper and moan in girly voices for 1d3 rounds. All its subsequent actions suffer a -4 OMG penalty.
• I Am Thy Weakness! Normal damage and the target counts as nauseated due to uncontrollable sneezing and a sudden rash.
• I’ll Make Thee a Modern Art Masterpiece! The target loses its next 1d6 actions, suffers 1d6 points of damage to each ability and its Charisma is reduced to 1. The Charisma damage can only be healed by many months of plastic surgery and therapy.
• One in a million! Your furious toothy assault messes up the target’s system so bad that it dies on the spot. Everyone, animal or human, must succeed on a DC 20 check or become nauseated for 1d4 rounds.

And here is just one example of the excellent artwork for the game, showcasing one of the Rat cultures you can play:

Horrats
Horrats are creepy Central European rats who live in dark places and go *bump* in the night. These revolting rodents have perfected mental warfare and mastery of the Dreaming to such a degree, that they can now proudly say that even they are afraid of their own shadows.

Uri Kurlianchik is, according to his G+ profile, a “Game writer, translator, humanist, twitterist and storyteller from Israel”, and also designer of a new RPG called RATS! that he is using Indiegogo to fund, which he also used for his Tales from an Israeli Storyteller book. He also has a Facebook page for RATS! that has a bunch of pictures up.

I added my support to this campaign because I had heard of it via his web-site, D&DKids, ages ago and was interested. He recently asked if anyone wanted to post about RATS! to help promote it, and I jumped on board because I would like to see this game get its funding and come to fruition. I also asked him if he was ok with me throwing a few questions at him, a small interview, just to get the ball rolling. He said yes.

Here then is my short interview with Uri, and this is a preliminary post before I post more about RATS! later in the week.

Q. First off, just to start the ball rolling: when did you first get involved in role-playing games?

 A. Wow, that’s not an easy question to answer. I first heard about D&D in first grade where an American boy showed me some pictures of dark elves and orcs he cut from an old magazine and said that this was D&D (back then, D&D was synonymous with any RPG). I was instantly hooked. The first full-length book I ever read was Salvatore’s amazing Homeland and one of my first computer games was the classic Eye of the Beholder. Fantasy wasalways on my mind.

But when did I actually start role-playing? That’s hard to say. We always did something we referred to as D&D. This something sucked less and less each year until it eventually became real role-playing. I guess we were about thirteen or fourteen at the time. I remember that the first game we ran that actually had rules and sheets was AD&D and that the opposition consisted of quaggoths.

 Q. What is your favourite system?

A. It’s difficult to decide. It’s either d20 (3e) or nWoD. I guess in recent years, as my games got more mature, I leaned more toward the latter, but the d20 still has many undeniable advantages. I also love Over the Edge. It’s great for introducing RPGs to new players of all ages.

That’s how it all began, more than two years ago.

Q. What makes RATS! different from other RPGs, i.e, what would you say are it’s selling points?

A.  This game bites. Games are getting tamer and tamer every year, even horror games are nicer than the children’s shows I watched as a kid (Aliens is for kids, right?). RATS!, on the other hand is a vicious satire of humanity, hopefully leaving no segment of the population unhurt. In fact, I guarantee that this game will offend you, or you’ll get your money back, in which case you will be offended by not getting your money back.

From a mechanical point of view, RATS! has lots and lots of my favorite thing in the world – random generation tables. This includes major tables like the Mutilations table, in my opinion a much more entertaining (and gruesome) alternative to hp, to the Random Items That Fall On Your Head From Spontaneous Dream Portals table. And trust me, these tables are random!

I think the mutilations table is especially cool because what DM didn’t ever look at a character sheet and thought, “hmm… death is just too good for this one.” And speaking of things worse than death, RATS! features hundreds of mutations, both good and bad, that can be applied to any character. As the old saying goes, “That which does not kill us, makes us stranger.” If you stick with one character with long enough, trust me, it will become strange!

The second innovation of RATS is the option to play an entire pack in addition to playing heroic rats. Playing a pack introduces a new dimension of management and diplomacy usually only available in board games. At the same time, it maintains the chaos and flexibility of role-playing. To the best of my knowledge, this has never been done before.

Lastly, RATS! has, in my opinion, beautiful and very original art… and lots and lots of it. Every page is going to have at least on illustration in the style of the artwork in the gallery.

At least, that’s my experience. Your experience may differ.

My thanks to Uri.