Post by mike on Apr 24, 2005 16:58:33 GMT -5
Bunnies and Burrows
I'd like to start an online Bunnies and Burrows game. My guess is that getting a face-to-face game started is doomed, but maybe an online game will capture some hearts the way it did mine. I have a feeling there's little appetite even for a game online, but in a fit of uncharacteristic optimism, I'll go through the introduction in the hope that someone will be coaxed into trying it.
Bunnies and Burrows is the original 1976 role playing game dealing with intelligent rabbits and very loosely a coupling of "Watership Down" and Dungeons and Dragons, two 1970s pop culture phenomena. The game I propose to run is the original 1976 game, not the compromise GURPS version published by Steven Jackson games in the early 1990s. The system is similar to Dungeons and Dragons in that players represent a single character (in this case a rabbit) while the game master designs a "world" in which the players' characters adventure. It differs from Dungeons and Dragons in that there are very few rules, especially few that the players need at hand. According to the rules themselves, ideally players won't have access to the rules. There is an important component of trial and error built into the game. Rules will be revealed individually and as they become relevant and known. B&B also differs importantly in that rabbits by and large avoid fighting (although sometimes fights do happen, especially with the thuggish rabbits in the neighboring meadow or with the cat that lounges near the vegetable patch), preferring tricks and evasion coupled with mischievous and daring natures to deal with problems.
Like D&D, B&B begins with players rolling three, six-sided dice to determine basic characteristics for their character. These numbers represent innate abilities of each rabbit relative to those of other rabbits. The characteristics are: strength, speed, smell, intelligence, wisdom, dexterity, constitution, and charisma. While all rabbits need and use all of these abilities, rabbits in B&B specialize by selecting a profession related to one of these characteristics. Here are the available professions briefly defined and the characteristic they relate to.
Fighters (strength), fighters defend the warren and lend some muscle to garden-raiding parties. Whether bullies, protectors, are a mixture of both depends on the player.
Runners (speed) are experts in getting around and getting away, runners have some functions in common with fighters. Heroic runners might play tricks to draw predators their way. Less noble runners might employ their talents to get enemies into to trouble.
Herbalists (smell) use their keen sense of smell to determine how local plants might be used to their advantage. Rabbits have no magical powers or technology, so herbalists provide the closest thing to magicians. Herbs can be used for offense and defense, but depend entirely on experience with trial and error the only recourse when there's no more experienced herbalist to lend some expertise.
Scouts (intelligence) have a knack for figuring out how the material world can be manipulated through applications of logic. Scouts are especially useful in setting off traps without anyone getting hurt. Scouts also have the best facility with languages of any profession. They are thoughtful problem solvers.
Seers (wisdom), rabbits often depend on portentous dreams and visions. Seers are in tune with psychic energies and may access clues to solve enigmas and promote the warren's well being. Going into and instilling trances are also tools of the seer.
Mavericks (dexterity) are usually loners. Mavericks excel at tricks, disguises, cheating, manipulating objects, climbing, and carrying. Rabbits are ordinarily social, so even the most committed maverick will find himself or herself seeking company now and then. Some maverick skills can be beneficially used to the common good or traded for some personal advantage.
Empaths (constitution) have a nurturing power that can aid with illness and injury.
Storytellers (charisma), rabbits love stories. Stories hold their society together and are used to inspire, amuse, frighten, and persuade. Storytellers are primarily good at entertaining. This talent makes it easier for them to persuade others and to win mates.
When the game begins, all players' rabbits are beginners. At age nine months, they're fully grown and ready to embark on their own adventures, however, they have no experience to draw upon. B&B, unlike D&D, does not have experience points. Instead, the GM awards rolls to try and achieve "levels" in each of the eight characteristic areas. Just because your rabbit is a runner, doesn't mean he can't tell stories or assume disguises and in doing so earn levels in dexterity or charisma. Successes (and even some interesting failures) may result in the player having a chance to advance in level in any of the eight characteristics. Thus a rabbit could have a stated profession, but actually be a jack-of-all-trades. Innate ability scores help determine the facility that levels will come to a rabbit and place a ceiling on certain kinds of achievement, but even the slowest rabbit can learn over time to be a more successful evader within his or her limitations. Below are some circumstances that result in level rolls:
Strength: fighting (and surviving), raising a wire to help your friends into the garden, digging out the stake that holds a snare
Speed: evading a predator, delivering an urgent message to the herbalist in the nearby copse telling her to come and help with a fever epidemic, winning a race with a speedy and boastful litter mate
Smell: identifying an herb's use, catching the scent of the cranky old bobcat in time to thump warning to your friends
Intelligence: springing a trap with no one getting hurt, solving a riddle, knocking a board into place so it can be climbed to reach the barley malt on the table in the farmer's barn
Wisdom: interpreting a dream, feigning death to avoid danger, fathoming the double meaning in the message from the neighboring chief rabbit, showing the foresight to wait on construction of a borrow until the prevailing wind direction is well known
Dexterity: manipulating objects, climbing, playing a trick, disguising yourself as an owl to frighten some rabbits away from a patch of spring greens, cheating at a game of blossoms to win the clover stakes
Constitution: surviving injury or illness, healing others, giving birth to a litter, fattening up on the farmer's lettuce
Charisma: successfully mating, holding an audience spellbound with a story, persuading the chief to make you his advisor, talking a marmot out of his burrow then moving in
As rabbits gain levels, they gain with them new capabilities. For example, every level of strength, adds one point of damage from injury a rabbit may sustain without dying. Gaining levels in smell makes it easier to identify herbs and understand their most effective use.
The actual flow of play simulates as best as possible the fantastical life of adventuresome rabbits. The players could content themselves to stay near the burrow, feeding on the surrounding grasses. That's a choice players can make, however, they won't get any levels or have any adventures. Yet, it's important to note that players initiate the action, although sometimes trouble may come to them. The personality of your rabbit will likely develop over time and determine the kinds of adventures you'll have. Rabbits want a secure warren, a chance to procreate, delicious morsels, and little else. But adventuring rabbits may be curious to understand aspects of the world around them, they may want to gain a reputation for daring or for playing tricks, or seek domination over other rabbits. The only limit, as the old cliché of role-playing games goes, is your imagination.
I have a campaign in mind that starts the players off as brothers and sisters faced with a common enigma, one they may wish to solve or ignore, but one that commences the story.
If you'd like to play, roll your ability scores. No fudging. The first set of numbers is the one to play. Due to heredity, add two to your speed score and one to your charisma score. That'll make sense once we start and you learn about your parents. Your supposed to roll for gender, with bucks outnumbering does by a good margin, but I never understood the point of that rule. Just choose a gender. Names can have a huge impact on getting off on the right paw. Rabbits tend to use names related to metaphors concerning physical characteristics, or more often based on the plants. You can name your rabbit "Don Larsen" after the pitcher if you want, but I assure you there's a bobcat in the vacinity who punishes irony with tooth and claw. Rabbits are fragile and numerous. Not all reach old age, so you may want to roll up a second character now just to serve as a reminder that it's a hard world for little creatures. Once I've seen what rabbit you're playing, I'll email rules individually that concern available options based on profession and scores. Once we've got past such preliminaries, I'll post a back story to all and provide some crude maps (provided someone smart like Tyler can get them online).
I've run Call of Cthulhu online for years. That game, with its investigative flow and literary origins, works well in written form. I'm game to see if the same is true for B&B. All die rolls will be on a pure honor system.
I'd like to start an online Bunnies and Burrows game. My guess is that getting a face-to-face game started is doomed, but maybe an online game will capture some hearts the way it did mine. I have a feeling there's little appetite even for a game online, but in a fit of uncharacteristic optimism, I'll go through the introduction in the hope that someone will be coaxed into trying it.
Bunnies and Burrows is the original 1976 role playing game dealing with intelligent rabbits and very loosely a coupling of "Watership Down" and Dungeons and Dragons, two 1970s pop culture phenomena. The game I propose to run is the original 1976 game, not the compromise GURPS version published by Steven Jackson games in the early 1990s. The system is similar to Dungeons and Dragons in that players represent a single character (in this case a rabbit) while the game master designs a "world" in which the players' characters adventure. It differs from Dungeons and Dragons in that there are very few rules, especially few that the players need at hand. According to the rules themselves, ideally players won't have access to the rules. There is an important component of trial and error built into the game. Rules will be revealed individually and as they become relevant and known. B&B also differs importantly in that rabbits by and large avoid fighting (although sometimes fights do happen, especially with the thuggish rabbits in the neighboring meadow or with the cat that lounges near the vegetable patch), preferring tricks and evasion coupled with mischievous and daring natures to deal with problems.
Like D&D, B&B begins with players rolling three, six-sided dice to determine basic characteristics for their character. These numbers represent innate abilities of each rabbit relative to those of other rabbits. The characteristics are: strength, speed, smell, intelligence, wisdom, dexterity, constitution, and charisma. While all rabbits need and use all of these abilities, rabbits in B&B specialize by selecting a profession related to one of these characteristics. Here are the available professions briefly defined and the characteristic they relate to.
Fighters (strength), fighters defend the warren and lend some muscle to garden-raiding parties. Whether bullies, protectors, are a mixture of both depends on the player.
Runners (speed) are experts in getting around and getting away, runners have some functions in common with fighters. Heroic runners might play tricks to draw predators their way. Less noble runners might employ their talents to get enemies into to trouble.
Herbalists (smell) use their keen sense of smell to determine how local plants might be used to their advantage. Rabbits have no magical powers or technology, so herbalists provide the closest thing to magicians. Herbs can be used for offense and defense, but depend entirely on experience with trial and error the only recourse when there's no more experienced herbalist to lend some expertise.
Scouts (intelligence) have a knack for figuring out how the material world can be manipulated through applications of logic. Scouts are especially useful in setting off traps without anyone getting hurt. Scouts also have the best facility with languages of any profession. They are thoughtful problem solvers.
Seers (wisdom), rabbits often depend on portentous dreams and visions. Seers are in tune with psychic energies and may access clues to solve enigmas and promote the warren's well being. Going into and instilling trances are also tools of the seer.
Mavericks (dexterity) are usually loners. Mavericks excel at tricks, disguises, cheating, manipulating objects, climbing, and carrying. Rabbits are ordinarily social, so even the most committed maverick will find himself or herself seeking company now and then. Some maverick skills can be beneficially used to the common good or traded for some personal advantage.
Empaths (constitution) have a nurturing power that can aid with illness and injury.
Storytellers (charisma), rabbits love stories. Stories hold their society together and are used to inspire, amuse, frighten, and persuade. Storytellers are primarily good at entertaining. This talent makes it easier for them to persuade others and to win mates.
When the game begins, all players' rabbits are beginners. At age nine months, they're fully grown and ready to embark on their own adventures, however, they have no experience to draw upon. B&B, unlike D&D, does not have experience points. Instead, the GM awards rolls to try and achieve "levels" in each of the eight characteristic areas. Just because your rabbit is a runner, doesn't mean he can't tell stories or assume disguises and in doing so earn levels in dexterity or charisma. Successes (and even some interesting failures) may result in the player having a chance to advance in level in any of the eight characteristics. Thus a rabbit could have a stated profession, but actually be a jack-of-all-trades. Innate ability scores help determine the facility that levels will come to a rabbit and place a ceiling on certain kinds of achievement, but even the slowest rabbit can learn over time to be a more successful evader within his or her limitations. Below are some circumstances that result in level rolls:
Strength: fighting (and surviving), raising a wire to help your friends into the garden, digging out the stake that holds a snare
Speed: evading a predator, delivering an urgent message to the herbalist in the nearby copse telling her to come and help with a fever epidemic, winning a race with a speedy and boastful litter mate
Smell: identifying an herb's use, catching the scent of the cranky old bobcat in time to thump warning to your friends
Intelligence: springing a trap with no one getting hurt, solving a riddle, knocking a board into place so it can be climbed to reach the barley malt on the table in the farmer's barn
Wisdom: interpreting a dream, feigning death to avoid danger, fathoming the double meaning in the message from the neighboring chief rabbit, showing the foresight to wait on construction of a borrow until the prevailing wind direction is well known
Dexterity: manipulating objects, climbing, playing a trick, disguising yourself as an owl to frighten some rabbits away from a patch of spring greens, cheating at a game of blossoms to win the clover stakes
Constitution: surviving injury or illness, healing others, giving birth to a litter, fattening up on the farmer's lettuce
Charisma: successfully mating, holding an audience spellbound with a story, persuading the chief to make you his advisor, talking a marmot out of his burrow then moving in
As rabbits gain levels, they gain with them new capabilities. For example, every level of strength, adds one point of damage from injury a rabbit may sustain without dying. Gaining levels in smell makes it easier to identify herbs and understand their most effective use.
The actual flow of play simulates as best as possible the fantastical life of adventuresome rabbits. The players could content themselves to stay near the burrow, feeding on the surrounding grasses. That's a choice players can make, however, they won't get any levels or have any adventures. Yet, it's important to note that players initiate the action, although sometimes trouble may come to them. The personality of your rabbit will likely develop over time and determine the kinds of adventures you'll have. Rabbits want a secure warren, a chance to procreate, delicious morsels, and little else. But adventuring rabbits may be curious to understand aspects of the world around them, they may want to gain a reputation for daring or for playing tricks, or seek domination over other rabbits. The only limit, as the old cliché of role-playing games goes, is your imagination.
I have a campaign in mind that starts the players off as brothers and sisters faced with a common enigma, one they may wish to solve or ignore, but one that commences the story.
If you'd like to play, roll your ability scores. No fudging. The first set of numbers is the one to play. Due to heredity, add two to your speed score and one to your charisma score. That'll make sense once we start and you learn about your parents. Your supposed to roll for gender, with bucks outnumbering does by a good margin, but I never understood the point of that rule. Just choose a gender. Names can have a huge impact on getting off on the right paw. Rabbits tend to use names related to metaphors concerning physical characteristics, or more often based on the plants. You can name your rabbit "Don Larsen" after the pitcher if you want, but I assure you there's a bobcat in the vacinity who punishes irony with tooth and claw. Rabbits are fragile and numerous. Not all reach old age, so you may want to roll up a second character now just to serve as a reminder that it's a hard world for little creatures. Once I've seen what rabbit you're playing, I'll email rules individually that concern available options based on profession and scores. Once we've got past such preliminaries, I'll post a back story to all and provide some crude maps (provided someone smart like Tyler can get them online).
I've run Call of Cthulhu online for years. That game, with its investigative flow and literary origins, works well in written form. I'm game to see if the same is true for B&B. All die rolls will be on a pure honor system.
