Imagine a new, dangerous world where everything is larger than you and ready to eat you. You and your little band of friends are trying hard to survive, learn, and grow despite the constant external threats. Even if the massive beasts don't eat you, disease and parasites are a concern. Luckily, herbalists and healers skilled at laying on hands are there to help you stay well. The main problem is that you are going to need to go out among the dangerous beasts to gather herbs and collect food. Weapons aren't an option, all you can do is outwit and outplan the enemy!
This is the world of the bunny rabbits.
Bunnies And Burrows (written by Dr. Dennis Sustaire and Dr. Scott Robinson, and inspired by the novel Watership Down) is the fantasy game in which you play an intelligent rabbit. This game has been through three main versions over the years:
- First/Second Edition: Published in 1976, it uses a percentile system.
- GURPS Bunnies and Burrows: Published in 1992, it uses GURPS as the system, adapted and written by Steffan O'Sullivan.
- Third Edition: Published in 2019, a revised and heavily expanded continuation of the first two editions, by the original authors.
Bunnies and Burrows has long been recognized as a very inventive game. It was the very first roleplaying system to allow non humanoid characters, the first game to have a "Martial Arts" combat system (called Bun Fu in the GURPS version), and the first game to attempt a skill system. Everything has been built with common sense and realism in mind. A lot of research went into the books and all illnesses, problems, and anatomical difficulties outlined are accurate. The game can be bought and downloaded here
! Second edition can be downloaded there.
Provides examples of:
Empath
Primarily an Empathic Healer, but they do gain other empathic abilities.
- Healing Factor: Transfers their good health to others in order to heal them.
- Healing Hands: Well, paws, but you get the idea. Notably, this involves a fair bit of Cast from Hit Points, but they have a Healing Factor.
- Liquid Assets: May be able to transfer damage taken from healing to enemies as an attack.
- Luck Stat: 10% less chance of going into shock when frightened or injured.
- Super Not-Drowning Skills: They can hold their breath twice as long as other classes.
- White Mage: Can be played as one one these, especially if they can reverse-heal as an attack.
Fighter
Even in a system where raw physical combat is often a bad move, it helps to have someone on the team who knows how to crack skulls.
- Critical Hit: All attacks fighters make deal 1 extra damage.
- Expy: Hello, Bigwig.
Herbalist
The Medic, relying on their senses and knowledge of plants rather than magic.
- Healing Potion: They can both heal wounds and cure poison using herbs.
- Super-Senses: Their major draw besides preparing herbs, which can also come in handy when foraging for food and supplies.
Runner
Rabbits defined by their incredible speed, both across fields and in fights.
- Action Initiative: Runners always go first unless in a state of shock, surprised, or confronted by a faster runner.
- Back Stab: These bunnies get surprise attacks!
- Defend Command: Runners can strike and dodge in the same turn.
Scout
While they do actual scouting and information gathering, their mechanical skill is a big focus of the class.
- Gadgeteer Genius: Bunny edition.
- Luck Stat: They have a bonus to finding hidden things. Randomly Drops may manifest due to the luck stat.
- Omniglot: They're also good at speaking the languages of other rabbits and creatures.
- The Engineer: Flexible bonus to building and inventing items, which, being rabbits, is both prized and rare.
- Trap Master: Both making and destroying traps is their thing!
Seer
They have visions and get mild psychic powers.
- Emotion Bomb: Their primary attack, it instills a paralyzing fear.
- Expy: Hello, Fiver. All the other classes draw on other members of the gang to one extent or another, but Fiver was one of the only confirmed clairvoyants in the novel.
- Telepathy: Higher stat seers communicate telepathically.
Storyteller
The good old bard!
- Chick Magnet: 20% bonus to attracting and keeping a mate.
- Emotion Bomb: Uses stories to enthrall subjects.
- Lethal Joke Character: Their skill with morale manipulation and persuasion doesn't sound as obviously useful as everyone else's, but it gives them unmatched social skills and can keep a party going.
Maverick
The party Rogue, focusing mainly on social skills.
- Bag of Holding: They can carry double the amount a normal rabbit can.
- Classy Cat-Burglar: They have a bonus to climbing.
- The Gambler: In social settings, anyway.
- Master of Disguise: They have the ability to blend in among other rabbits, which is, again, not a given.
- Use Item: They're good at using and figuring items out for a species where grasping the concept of buoyancy is not a given.
- Alliteration & Adventurers: Bunnies & Burrows is a name patterned after that of Dungeons & Dragons.
- Everybody Hates Mathematics: Straight out of Watership Down, bunnies are actually unable to count above four. Any number larger than four is just "Lots" or even "Lots and Lots" for really large numbers.
- Guile Hero: Since brute force is not a successful strategy, most rabbits are encouraged to rely on various tricks on top of what their classes give them.
- Humans Are Cthulhu: As is to be expected, figuring out what humans even want takes a really smart rabbit, and humans can literally automatically succeed at trying to invent or think of anything a rabbit can. Stat-wise, they're also hardly Puny Earthlings; their average stats are two to four times those of a rabbit's.
- Low Fantasy: It's a fantasy game with some fantastical elements, but it's also a gritty version of our world where an owl can just nab an unwary rabbit at any moment.
- Low-Literacy Setting: Rabbits can't read. At most, they can improvise basic pictograms and symbols, but they inevitably forget the meaning within a few days.
- Mundane Made Awesome: While other games cover worlds of magic and wonder, sword-swinging barbarians and cyberpunk net-jackers, here it's the exotic world of country meadows. Far more exciting and brutal than it sounds - nature, red in tooth and claw and all that.
- Rabbit Magician: There are two Character Classes built around this: the Empath, which use White Magic and Healing Hands; and the Seer, which develop Psychic Powers, Telepathy, and Emotion Bombs.
- Righteous Rabbit: The Player Characters are rabbits that go on adventures. and are generally expected to act heroically. Although given how RPG players frequently act...