Possums in GURPS

Possums are tree-dwelling marsupials from Australia, New Guinea, and nearby islands. They are almost universally nocturnal and arboreal, with many adaptations to show for this lifetyle. All four feet have opposable toes for gripping branches, their toes have ridged pads that give them an excellent grip on the surfaces they climb and sharp claws for digging in to bark, their tail is prehensile for wrapping around branches and supporting the body, and their bodies are flexible to allow them to reach out in odd directions to grip branches. Possum eyes tend to be large for collecting as much light as possible, although like most animals with night adapted vision they lose much of their ability to visually pick out fine details. They have keen hearing and long whiskers to let them feel their way around in darkness. As might be expected, their sense of smell is very well developed, and they use it to find food and keep tabs on each other through scent marking.

Most possums build spherical nests called dreys, in which they spend their day. Dreys may be located up in trees, inside tree hollows, or under shelter of dense vegetation, depending on the species. In many species, several possums will cuddle together during their day-time sleep. They will often use their tails to carry material back to their dreys for lining and insulating their nests.

Game Statistics

choose a species:
Species Male Female (optional)
enter weight (kg)
Captive? T?HR?
Feathertail Glider

Feathertail Possum

Honey Possum

Yellow-Bellied Glider

Squirrel Glider

Sugar Glider

Common Ringtail Possum

Rock Ringtail Possum

Greater Glider

Striped Possum

Brushtail Possum

Common Spotted Cuscus

Black-Spotted Cuscus

Gray Cuscus

Ground Cuscus

Bear Cuscus

Little Celebes Cuscus

Pygmy Possum

The radio button entries in the table above give typical sizes of the macropod species of the selected sex. If you want a larger or smaller specimen, enter the weight in kg manually.

The Captive checkbox is for animals that have been kept in captivity all their lives, without the ability to hone their skills like their wild relatives.

Marking the T? checkbox will give you the stats in template form with all costs listed, otherwise you get a stat sheet as for a character.

Marking the HR? checkbox will print the information using all my house rules. Otherwise, the stats will be as compatable with plain vanilla GURPS as possible (although several custom advantages and disadvantages will be present, see my Traits page).

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