AFTER THE MOWER - RPG idea nugget

AFTER THE MOWER

so I was mowing the lawn today - we kinda live out in the middle of the woods and so mowing the lawn is an adventure. I'm allergic to every goddam thing out here and then some more stuff so I have this respirator mask on and I actually had to stop the mower for a second cause I thought I heard this deep breathing Darth Vader animal in the high weeds and it was me so I took a break and watched all the critters and had some water

So many bees and frogs and toads and snakes and spiders and who knows what I just turn into a fine red mist

Little things - life forms for whom I have the utmost respect cause fuck - life is rough and guys can come along and mow you into a sticky paste

You know what?  Me and my mower are sort of like the frog/bee/snake/mouse equivalent of Cthulhu. Apocalyptic heavy-duty demigod of awful destruction and I got to thinking about Ms. Jonathan Brisby and the little concrete block and that song and all the bees did this little dance and so I didn't mow the wildflowers since I felt real bad about the whole thing

I mean LAWN AESTHETICS vs CONTINUED BEE AND MOUSE and BUNNY HAPPINESS and there was this one nice little toad and I almost ran him over 3 times on accident and fuck I hope that guy is okay

Anyways, whatever anti-apocalyptic ritual (INCREASE ANIMAL EMPATHY DC 32) those bees did certainly did the job since I will give them a week or two to work out the wildflower kinks but I got to thinking about how you could have Twilight 2000 but instead of Eastern Europe it could be my backyard and instead of low-yield nukes it could be my mower (or it's really the landlady's, I guess) and instead of Czechs and Poles and German paramilitary it could be bees and little mouse people trying to make their way after the mower just comes and destroys everything arbitrarily and

Jesus it gets more depressing after that but if you throw in some Gamma World powers maybe it's not so bad for the widow Brisby. Like maybe she could influence rats and pick locks underwater

I don't know 

Man. How can I feel so bad about mowing the weeds that pass for a lawn around my house?

On a lighter note, I ended up with 15,000 or so steps

CLASSES: Mouse, Bee, Rat, Toad, Snake, Bunny

Psionics, low tech (man made junk - occasional rat-sized artifacts but these cannot be clearly explained). Simple rat- and mouse-centered magics

Bees have no penalties for terrain and actually play the whole hive organization but don't have access to magic and they're wimpy and prone to swatting

skill based: no levels. Maybe BRP based

Hex crawling

The typical tropes: relocate the warren/hive/concrete block from the meadow/woods/farm. Flee from predators. Find food 

Rabies (don't get me started on this one)

The difficulty lies in: does the cause of the pocky-clipse, is it a nice guy?  Stoic farmer? Steward of the woods? Money hungry developer? Is it a natural thing like a wild fire?  Is there any food left or is a total loss? just a temporary thing and the meadow will recover?

You could hex-map it out and roll the people in the hex as characters - do they respect bunnies or gas 'em?  Is that bad-ass snake that lives in hex 1203 psionic? A wizard? Or just a really good hunter?  Is she afraid of the guy that lives in the trailer, or can you literally watch her kill that guy? (This last bit came to me as I remembered stepping on Pygmy rattlers all the time when I was a woodpecker technician on Eglin Air Force Base - I still have the snake boots in the back closet)

I guess this is starting to sound like Bunnies and Burrows or something.  Hmm. Gonna have to look that up.