Orwell's Animal Farm in D&D

[Vraille Darkfang]

Well, having had more time to put my thoughts together,

The thread Title: Need NPC Cow & Chickens (around April 1st) didn't get a lot of responses (not surprised).

So here is a second, more articulate request;

How would you run a game with any amount of serious intent when the primary opponents are listed in the PHB Equipment list under 'Livestock'.

Orwell's novel of what happens when the lunatics start running the asylum is a classic story & shows just how nasty intelligent farm creatures can get.

Ever since I started playing second edition & one of my wizards had a chicken for a familiar, I've wanted to do a "Paybacks a B*****" storyline centered around Animal Farm meets PETA via D&D. With the 3rd edition spell Awaken, I have easy access to the tools needed to create farm animals with human intelligence.

I mean, how would animals react if suddenly they were as smart as we were? Not happy with the butcher I'd suspect.

The basic plotline is a CN (Insane) druid is going around Awakening farm animals, so they can lead a "Revolution to return things to the natural way". Basically he's trying to destroy civilization to return things to the way they should be (completely natural). His current plans revolves around getting an army of Awakened Farm Animals to spearhead his attempts to set all the domesticated animals free "Back into the Wild where they belong".

What I need help with is how to run this so my PC's take it seriously. Sure a 12th level chicken-monk could kill them. But they'd die in disbelief. How to you convince a players that a force of awakened animals is a threat. (a 1st level commoner can easily be terrorized by anything that gains +2 HD, but what about the seasoned adventurer?)

Any ideas? Particularly those who have read Animal Farm, or perhaps Sinclair's the Jungle?

P.S. One of the funnies things that happened in this regard was when a player was playing a 3.0 Paladin and insisted his Bonded Mount has to be a Gelding. (I think he though Gelding defined breed of horse, like a palomino, not what had been DONE to the horse. But he insisted, so I gave him what he wanted. Needless to say the horse had attitude problems. It may have been the first time a paladin had to atone for the actions of his horse. Halfling thief joked once too much about "Hey ain't that a nice looking philly, Oh wait, you don't care!" and "Don't you wish you had a foal of you own. Oh, wait sorry, that'll never happen." Eventually the horse snapped & brought the can of whup-a** on the halfling.

 

[diaglo]

this was exactly the inspiration for how i ran the Giant series back in the day.

spoilers ahead





one of the modules has a bunch of escaped orc slaves.

and throughout there are potential contacts with orcs.

in ye olde D&D... orcs were very porcine. when i read Animal Farm ... all i could picture were orcs.

so i tied the two together. the orcs ally with the PCs and then rebel against them after they help defeat the Giants. Giants were very human in nature. Just bigger and badder.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

First off, I think that's a really cool idea.

I don't think there's anyway to get your PCs to take a monk-chicken seriously. Now, a bull barbarian or rat assassin is a different story. The pigs would make for great sinister diplomats.

I'm not sure that The Jungle would be applicable, though. The conditions that Sinclair spoke out against were a distinct product of industrialized society. If you did want to include something, maybe a climactic battle in a slaughterhouse where the combatants have to make balance checks to avoid slipping in the blood, as well as disease checks. Maybe even include ghosts of the slaughtered animals.

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

Good grief...that's a brilliant concept!

 

[Warehouse23]

Taking a page from the Cows with Guns school, I'd suggest that while an army of <insert awakened farm animals here> (e.g., cows with guns) might not be too scary, a coordinated ambush/counter attack from a supporting member of the barnyard community (e.g., Chickens in Choppers) might send even the most experienced party into a frantic state of disarray.

 

[diaglo]

also use Lord of the Flies. for the mental state of Awakened animals.

sure they are smart now. but do they really know how to run a kingdom. barnyard kingdom and all.

 

[jerichothebard]

A long time ago, in a super hero / TMNT game, we faced a villian called Colonel Sanders. He was a 9' tall chicken with a flame thrower, out for revenge against the humans for the damage caused to his kind by the KFC chain. We took him seriously, let me tell you. Until the mutated weasel character killed and ate him.

Uncle Tom, the 8' tall turkey with a rocket launcher, was just redundant.

 

[Vraille Darkfang]

also use Lord of the Flies. for the mental state of Awakened animals.

sure they are smart now. but do they really know how to run a kingdom. barnyard kingdom and all.

That's a big element of what I want to explore (not have my PC's kil everything that goes cluck, moo, baaa, oink). The animals aren't all evil (mnost are nuetral as per the spell). They are just being misled by a charismatic preacher/druid. He's very suavve & I mean how hard would it be to convince a Steer of Chicken people are evil? That whole they're raising you just to eat you is realll easy to give an evil motivation too.

I want the party to make attempts to figure out WHAT is going on, not just what do we need to kill now.

Slaughterhouse good idea though.

 

[MarauderX]

And here I thought the book was about the Russian revolution to teach us how 'evil' communism was.

I guess if you take the exact animals it could be fun, but I'd rather use the story line behind it. Let different factions/races play the part of each animal, and carry the events out with the PCs as they help trash a kingdom or empire. Even worse, cast the PCs as the pigs and let them wreck the place when dealing with the others.

 

[Nareau]

In a campaign I ran last year, there was an organization of intelligent animals. It consisted of the Baleful Polymorphed, Reincarnated, and Awakened creatures of the realm. They were part support group, part spies-for-the-druids.

If you want the PC's to take them seriously, maybe you should consider having them be more sinister than violent. Introduce them by having an entire city fall victim to a plague that's been orchestrated by the farm animals poisoning the food supply. Or let the PC's meet the 7-year-old daughter of a local farmer who was murdered in his sleep by his own livestock.

Chickens and ducks are pretty goofy. But rats, swine, horses, bulls, and dogs can be pretty scary. I'd make the chickens wizards, rats rogues, swine druids, horses fighters, and bulls barbarians. Oh, and an Awakened field of corn has Steven King written all over it.

Spider

ETA: Oh yeah--the consumption of human flesh is always a great way to make them take your bad guys seriously. The animals should be butchering and eating people left and right. Take it a step further, and you've got horses walking around in human-skin cloaks, and chickens wearing polished-bone armor.