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Bunnies & Burrows facts for kids
Original Bunnies & Burrows cover
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| Designer(s) | B. Dennis Sustare, Scott Robinson |
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| Publisher(s) | Fantasy Games Unlimited |
| Publication date | 1976 |
| Genre(s) | Animal fantasy |
| System(s) | Original |
Bunnies & Burrows (B&B) is a role-playing game (RPG) inspired by the 1972 novel Watership Down. Published by Fantasy Games Unlimited in 1976, the game centered on intelligent rabbits. It introduced several innovations to role-playing game design, being the first game to allow players to have non-humanoid roles, and the first to have detailed martial arts and skill systems. Fantasy Games Unlimited published a similar second edition in 1982. Frog God Games published a revised third edition in 2019 from the original authors. The game was also modified and published by Steve Jackson Games as an official GURPS supplement in 1992.
As rabbits, player characters are faced with dangers mirroring those in the real world. The only true "monsters" in the game are humans, but there are many predators and natural hazards. The characters' position in the food chain promotes an emphasis on role-playing and problem solving over combat.
Gameplay
The original game was very innovative for its time (less than two years after the first published RPG). Not only could you play non-humanoids for the first time, but it was the first role-playing game to have detailed martial arts rules, the first attempt at a skill system, and the first RPG to appeal as widely to women as to men.
Bunnies & Burrows was the first role-playing game to allow for non-humanoid play. In addition, it was also the first role-playing game to have detailed martial arts rules (renamed "Bun Fu" in GURPS Bunnies & Burrows) and the first attempt at a skill system. For its time, the game was considered "light years" ahead of the Original Dungeons & Dragons.
Players of Bunnies & Burrows take the role of rabbits as their player characters. Interaction with many different animal species is part of normal gameplay. Humans, whose thought processes and motivations are completely alien, are the only monster to be encountered.
Bunnies & Burrows has the advantage of offering players an intuitive grasp of relative dangers and appropriate actions not possible in game worlds that are substantially fictional. For example, a player is told their character is confronted with a fox. There is an immediate intuition on the amount of peril a rabbit is facing. Since player characters are substantially weaker than many of the dangers they face, the game is one of the first to encourage problem solving and outwitting obstacles, rather than out-fighting them.
The mechanics of the role-playing game system were created specifically for Bunnies & Burrows, common at the time of its original publishing. It features eight abilities and eight classes. The task resolution system is based on rolls of percentile dice. Although newer systems have updated game mechanics significantly, the ideas presented in Bunnies & Burrows created the framework for modern role-playing games.