A friend pointed this out to us — and just in time too, as it just hit the shelves! It’s Campaigns & Companions, a new hard-cover book by Andi Ewington,  Rhianna Pratchett, and Alex De Campi, with illustrations by Calum Alexander Watt. “If there are two things all geeks love, it’s roleplaying games, and their pets. So why not fuse the two? It’s time to grab your dice, dust off that character sheet, and let your cat or dog (or guinea pig, or iguana, or budgie) accompany you on an epic adventure! It’ll be great! … unless you have pets like these.” Distributed by Simon & Schuster, it’s available everywhere now.

image c. 2021 Rebellion Publishing

In the far-off time of 2003, Wizards of the Coast published an expansion to the rules of its popular Advanced Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game known as Savage Species. It’s purpose was to allow players to choose one of the many monsters the game featured as a playable race and still allow them to play with players sticking with one of the Player’s Handbook pre-approved playable races, who were either human or basically humans, just with pointy ears or a shorter build than normal.

The appeal to furries is obvious. The Monster Manual contained various anthropomorphic animal races, including minotaurs, gnolls, kobolds and many others that furries would almost rather certainly play than just vanilla humans and the human adjacent. In addition, tucked into the third appendix of Savage Species was added a new “creature template”, which could be added to existing creatures, specifically animals. That template was known as “anthropomorphic animal.”

Unfortunately, this was the far off time of 2003, and the reputation of the furry fandom among other geek cultures was not good. Wizards of the Coast didn’t mind if furries wanted to buy their expensive add-on books, but they also wanted to make sure to signal to all the other non-furry geeks this wasn’t a furry book and also they didn’t really like furries either. They did this with the selection of the example animal that the template was applied to: a donkey, which we’ve covered the symbolism of elsewhere.

This article was written by someone who worked on the game described.

Update (23 Dec): Crimestrikers has been released.

Crimestrikers, a furry role playing game supplement, is scheduled to be published in November by Spectrum Games.

The game is set on Creaturia, a world of anthropomorphic animals with futuristic technology. The colorful, highly skilled heroes are the best agents of CIPO (Creaturian International Police Organization), who are called into action after the world's most dangerous super-villains escape from the Quarry, a maximum security prison. The Crimestrikers pursue the escapees, including several cunning evildoers who work for the a variety of nefarious groups.

• Outrage - An international crime syndicate whose leader, Vance Coffin, is the Crimestrikers' major enemy.
• PARCH - A terrorist organization that wants to destroy the amphibious humanoid species known as the Hydrerans.
• Emperor Rasavanto - A Hydreran "Warlord of the Seas" who seeks to conquer the surface world.
• The Time Terror Team - Three legendary criminals from Creaturian history brought into the present.
• The Righteous One - A costumed vigilante with sinister motives.
• Steelwing - A bat with cyborg wings who seeks to retake the nation he once ruled as a dictator.

They do such a fine job, we’ll let Starline do the talking, since they were kind enough to publish this game in English: “Originally released in Japan as Yuuyake Koyake, Golden Sky Stories is a heartwarming, non-violent role-playing game that’s great fun for all ages. It takes place in a small town in rural Japan, and players take on the role of henge (pronounced hen-gay, like a chicken that’s happy), animals with just a little magical power, including the ability to temporarily take human form. They do not fight great battles or unearth valuable treasures though; Golden Sky Stories adventures are all about helping others and becoming friends.” At the Starline web site you’ll find they’ve also published a downloadable supplement called The Colors of the Sky, which features several new character types (mouse, wolf, pony, fish, and witch) and play scenarios.

image c. 2015 Starline Publishing

A new science-fiction role-playing game has appeared on the scene, called HC SVNT DRACONES (a variation on hic sunt dracones, or “here be dragons” in Latin). “HC SVNT DRACONES puts you in the body of a human experiment that outlived its creator, and has gone on expanding into the galaxy while trying to heed the lessons of a race that fell to ruin. It’s about exploration and fear, expansion and conquest, intrigue and subterfuge, and ultimately, it’s about you, learning to be you, when all the trappings of humanity you define yourself with are dead and gone. A unique character generation system allows you to assemble you Vector layer by layer, from their family to their species to the unique anatomy that defines their appearance. Interact with your story on two legs or four, from six feet up, or less than one. Explore new character interactions and problem solving possibilities when your party can range dramatically in size and shape from person to person.” After a (very!) successful Kickstarter campaign by HSD creator Pierce Fraser, the game manual is available now as a download at Drive Thru RPG — with the hardcover edition soon to follow. Also, make sure to check out HSD’s official page at Tumblr for updates.

Noted furry author Paul Kidd has a new post-apocalypse RPG in the works: the "GeneStorm" Role Playing Game.

A tabletop RPG set in "a gloriously weird, wild post-apocalypse", its Indiegogo campaign had, as of Tuesday night, raised just over $1000 of its $6500 goal. Contribution rewards include PDF and hardcopy editions, as well as "adorable stuffy toys". Funding closes December 15.

Adult text-based furry roleplaying environment Tapestries MUCK has revoked its policy against human characters.

In a news bulletin, Tapestries head-wizard and owner WhiteFire said:

Humans as characters are now allowed on Tapestries MUCK. The purpose for denying such characters in the past has long since stopped being relevant. It was originally used to discourage furry bashing and establish the Furry theme of the Muck.

The Tennessee Moonshiners defeated the Edmonton Totems in five games at the conclusion of the 2014 FBA Finals, giving the Eastern Conference club their first title in franchise history. The team’s four-year point guard Aragon Fisher (Otter, G) won 2014 Finals MVP.

The contest made history by being the first FBA Finals series to feature a team out of Canada, with the Totems improving on their previous year when they reached the Western Conference Championship series but failed to enter the Finals. The Totems were heavily watched by fans of 2014 Most Valuable Player Rocky Caracal (Lynx, G) who looked to cap a 12-year career with his first title. The Moonshiners drew fans with 13-year veteran Jamie Velasquez (Seagull, G/F) whose bumpy career has seen her cut from multiple teams, most recently by the Galveston Sand Dollars, yet earning the 2012 Most Improved Player award. Attendees also watched fan favorite Paul Teronura (Otter, C) in his first Finals appearance since 2009, before he won the 2012 Defensive Player of the Year award.

The FRP game Pathfinder slowly works its way a little more furry with the new Pathfinder Player Companion: Blood of the Moon. “Channel the power of the moon and turn the curse of lycanthropy into a potent blessing. Whether you were born with traces of bestial blood from a lycanthropic ancestor or you were bitten by a werewolf and have transformed into one completely, this volume contains everything you need to embrace the beast within and become a fearsome weapon against your enemies. Become a protector of the natural world as a scion of a werebear, revel in bloodshed with the wolf fighting style created by your ancestors, or find your calling in the witch practices of your werecrocodile forerunners. Even if you do not take directly after these bestial horrors of the night, there is much to learn from associating with them—as either ally or hunter. The choice is yours.” Sounds like several species are involved already! Visit the Paizo.com site to find out more about this new softcover volume, loaded with full-color illustrations.

image c. 2013 Paizo

This brick of a novel – 4¼” wide x 6 7/8” high x 2” thick – says on its cover that it is “metafiction”. That is apparently a synonym for bizarre. Gardiner has made it as bizarre as he could. For starters, the cover (I assume that Gardiner did it himself) appears to be from a very shabby, used copy, with several crease lines. But they are drawn into the new cover art; they are part of its design. The colophon says that this book is “written, designed, and illustrated by C. Casey Gardiner”, but his idea of illustrations are the graphics that appear frequently, rather than pictures.

This novel was successfully funded on Kickstarter during August-October 2012. Gardiner says, “There are many pictures, riddles, poems, songs and puzzles in its pages,” among more surrealistic statements such as, “It is not ergodic literature, nor is it transgressive.” (This is not the first printing; it is the ?st printing.)

The bottom line: will you enjoy Rabbit! Rabbit! Rabbit!? Yes. It is very well written, and bizarre in a good way, although you will have to work at getting it. Gardiner deliberately does not make it easy.

Detroit, MI, Blue Rabbit Fictions, July 2013, paperback $20 (752 [+ 22] pgs.). Illustrated by the author.

The 2013 FBA Finals will begin Sunday, July 21, with the Dakota Bikers (58-22) traveling to face the Tallahassee Typhoons (66-14) for the seven game series. The series will be featured on FBA Courtside: LIVE!, a podcast hosted by FBA play-by-play commentator T. Matt Latrans (Coyote) and a series of guest color commentators.

Episodes will be broadcast live. Currently scheduled color commentators include Patrick Suarez (Jackal) on July 21, Ollie Royale (Otter) on July 23, Hector Louis (Rat) on July 25, and Nightfire Kitsura (Squnx) on July 27. Archived episodes of the podcast are available.

The Furry Basketball Association is accepting character submissions for the 2013 FBA Draft.

All fans are invited to submit new characters, regardless of participation level in the FBA or knowledge of basketball. With a fresh emphasis on backstories, submissions no longer require details regarding the stats or playing style of the submitted characters. There is no limit to how many characters may be submitted this year by a contributor.

Submissions will remain open until May 1, or until 100 are received, whichever comes later. Players will be considered for participation in the 2013 FBA Draft, when teams will select new players to join them for the league's 5th season. The 2013-2014 season begins October 31.

"RATS!", a satirical rat-themed role-playing game, is seeking sponsorship on the crowd-funding site Indiegogo. In the game, players will take on the roles of intelligent rats who are engaged in a holy war against modern humanity, other animals, each other, and "numerous inanimate objects".

RATS! will be based on the third-edition d20 system. Rat characters advance by spending experience points to gain new abilities and mutations, and by growing in size. The rules are being developed by Uri Kurlianchik and Stan Levi. Kurlianchik is a game writer and storyteller from Israel, whose works have been published by Wizards of the Coast, Paizo Publishing, Mongoose, Bull Spec, and Brain Harvest. Levi is an artist, illustrator, and animator.

It is not easy to tell the setting of Spur at first. It seems to be our world, but Merle Castison, the first-person narrator, is a talking Andalusian stallion which nobody seems to consider strange. Disreputable, maybe, but not strange. Merle has agreed to accept the curse to be turned into a horse of rich industrialist Arthur Beckmann, for $10,000 a month, upkeep in a palatial stable with phone, TV, and computer on Beckmann’s luxurious horse-farm, his oldest and best friend Cole as his personal groom, a customized spell to allow him to keep human vision and speech, and frequent visits from his human RPG-playing friends.

Merle’s workaholic father disowns him for choosing Easy Money over Hard Work, but Merle doesn’t see what’s wrong with taking advantage of a cushy offer that is honest, although he privately agrees with his father that he has not accomplished anything notable in his thirty-eight-year life. Nobody would want to become a horse permanently, but this is just until Beckmann dies; then Merle will revert to human with all the $10,000 monthly payments he’s saved.

Except that Beckmann dies and Merle stays a horse.

Melange Books, May 2012, trade paperback $14.95 (209 pages; Amazon), PDF or HTML $5.99.

The Furry Basketball Association is accepting character submissions for the 2012 FBA Draft.

The Furry Basketball Association is a fantasy basketball league built and supported by the furry fandom. It has grown through the creative contributions of dozens of furries who have created the league's 24 teams and more than 350 players.

Every year the FBA opens up for new characters, usually arond mid-March. These new characters, after meeting approval by the FBA Commissioner, enter that year's Draft Pool where they will be available to the general managers of the league's 24 teams. During the FBA Draft, a live event that usually happens in September, the general managers choose players one at a time from the Draft Pool, eventually bringing 48 new players into the FBA.