General Mud

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. GENERAL MUD is a 24-hour rpg, written for the November Ronnies, about a farm, a revolution, and what comes after.

THE ANIMAL MANIFESTO

A spectre is haunting the Farm: the spectre of Animalism. The animals of the Farm toil all their lives for the Farmer. The horses give their labor to the Farmer, the cows their milk, the chickens their eggs, the pigs their very flesh. Even in death animals are butchered for the Farmer?s table or boiled down for glue and parts. But some animals dream of a different Farm: a paradise where all animals are comrades, where every animal enjoys the fruits of their own toil.

General Mud is a game about the animals? revolution, and what comes after. The setting is an ordinary farm. It could be in the English countryside, or the American Midwest, or the Ukraine?anywhere animals toil for the tables of men.

The game has two distinct phases. In the first phase, the Revolution, there is no Game Master as such. Each player takes the role of a barnyard revolutionary, a Proletarian Comrade (PC) in the Soviet of Beasts. All the players are equal in narrating the overthrow of the tyrant Farmer. In the second phase, the Trials, one of those PCs will emerge as the leader of the animals: the fearsome General Mud (GM). Inside the game world, General Mud is a ruthless dictator? Stalin by way of Napoleon the pig?who will stop at nothing to cement his (or her) rule. In real life, the player of General Mud becomes the Game Master and directs play like a GM in any traditional role-playing game. But the other PCs may chafe under the General?s rule. It is possible for the General Mud?s old comrades to overthrow him? and take his place.

Throughout these struggles, the ideals of the revolution do battle with the muddy realities of a post-revolutionary state. The PCs confront terrible pressure to compromise their ideals?to fight dirty, to betray one?s comrades. Sometimes this is the only way to survive?but each time the ideals of the revolution are abused in this way, the red banner of the Soviet of Beasts sinks a little further into black, black mud.

Animals of the Farm, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.

Download

• General_Mud.pdf

Tags: Rob MacDougall

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 16th, 2005 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Free RPGs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.