How to RPG with Your Cat turns your feline friend into a furry d20
Dungeon meowster.
Every cat owner has been there - you’re playing a tabletop RPG with friends around the living room table when there’s suddenly a blur of fur and your dice, miniatures and character sheets go flying. Now, a new RPG wants to solve the issue of feline-induced tabletop chaos by making your cat part of the game itself.
The fittingly-titled How to RPG with Your Cat is an upcoming tabletop RPG that essentially swaps dice rolls - such as Dungeons & Dragons’ d20 - for a list of common cat behaviours summarised as ‘cat prompts’.
Instead of rolling to pass a difficulty check set by the GM, when a player performs an action, from attacking or defending to using an ability or spell, they look to their cat to find out how successful their character’s attempt is. The book includes rules on playing with either one or multiple cats.
The RPG’s cat-powered gameplay means it can be played as a single player - plus your pet(s) - or as a group, who presumably can try to gain advantage on their ‘roll’ by making kissing noises, waving a box of Dreamies around or dusting their figures in catnip. (None of these have been confirmed by the designers, we should add.)
As well as serving as a fluffy die, How to RPG with Your Cat allows your pet to become a character in the game itself, as either a pet or familiar to one of the adventurers. Alternatively, the book includes tips on turning your cute companion into a monster, boss or villain for your next campaign.
How to RPG with Your Cat can be played as a standalone game, with rules on creating a fresh adventure around your purring pal, or used to incorporate the book’s cat-themed content into other RPGs such as D&D 5E.
The roleplaying pet game comes from designers Jennifer Howlett and Christina Stiso of Oddfish Games, which previously released cooking-powered RPG Cooking with Dice, and is currently live on Kickstarter.