Bunnies & Burrows - Gameplay

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 (known as "Bun Fu") 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. Although 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.

GURPS Bunnies & Burrows uses the GURPS system common in all GURPS products. Steffan O'Sullivan, who wrote GURPS Bunnies & Burrows notes, "The game has also been published as a GURPS supplement, but I usually play it in Fudge these days - the simpler rules seem to work better for this genre in particular. I've also run it in Sherpa, which is oddly evocative of the original rules."