Ok, I asked the gamers. This is four people who have kept piggies, seven of us altogether, youngest is 32, all have played role playing games for many many years so a lot of experience between us. We came up with the following - sorry if it's repeating stuff or not of any use -
Resilience skills; bounce, eat anything, survive on empty stomach, tough
Speed skills; jump, go first, zoomie, skid turn
Savvy skills; know plant, track, sense predator, listen, find plant
Cuteness skills; sound off, song, the look, rumblestrutt, chuckle
All these skills can be gained with experience, they each add one d6 to the pool of that statistic. Eg 'chuckle' would add one d6 to the 'cuteness' pool of dice when you were trying an action that was helped by a good chuckle.
Any guinea pig can gain these skills, but there are special classes of piggy who look after the herd in piggydom. They might need more of certain skills, eg protectors might need strength and speed skills. Or healers might need savvy skills. But all these skills are open to all, all piggies can learn to really 'sound off' if they want to! All skills can be taken more than once too, they just then add another d6 to the pool.
We envisioned a herd of piggies served by small groups of wanderers around their territory, keeping them safe, finding medical plants and so on. So you would start your piggy character as a youngling, starting out and finding their feet, gaining a skill every time you managed to do something useful for your herd. Maybe your job would be to find a wandering baby piggy, or perhaps find some mint for a tummyache, track the passage of a cat and make sure it didn't come near the herd area (rather tricky that one), or maybe talk to a nearby herd to ask if you could have some help with a problem birth from their healers. The herd may move during the year to better grazing grounds, or perhaps you have invested in planting good crops and the herd needs to stop and defend it's territory. But this would be in the kingdom of piggy, we didn't think you could play a prey animal as top of the heap in anything but a fantasy setting, limiting the predators and problems.
(I have to say we also thought it would be fun to not talk at all, simply have the normal range of noises and movements available, but I think you would need to be experienced gamers to get away with that one!)
I do hope this has helped. If you want me to write up some of the small adventures then just ask. I'm pretty sure you can think of a structure for the herd, also more small side plots for adventures. It was rather fun thinking up the skills!
