* * *

New Noble Knight discount code for y’all: SpringFun. Use that to get $5 off purchases $25 or more, in store or online, from March 16  to April 11!Hang out with us on the Vintage RPG Discord.If  you dig what we do, join us on the Vintage RPG Patreon for more roleplaying fun and surprises! Patrons keep us going!Like, Rate, Subscribe and Review the Vintage RPG Podcast!Available on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, SoundCloud, Spotify, YouTube and your favorite podcast clients.Send questions, comments or corrections to info@vintagerpg.com.Follow Vintage RPG on Instagram, Tumblr and Facebook. Learn more at the Vintage RPG FAQ.Follow Stu Horvath, John McGuire, VintageRPG and Unwinnable on Twitter.Intro music by George Collazo.The Vintage RPG illustration is by Shafer Brown. Follow him on Twitter.Tune in next week for the next episode. Until then, may the dice always roll in your favor!

The post Bunnies & Burrows appeared first on Vintage RPG.

Owing to its early release relative to the original Dungeons & Dragons box set, B&B is credited with a number of design innovations: first non-humanoid player characters, first martial arts system, first skill system (though the latter is pretty rudimentary). Primarily, though, it is the first game to really push the boundaries of what an RPG could be beyond the fantasy combat of D&D.

Bunnies are not powerful critters by any measure, so the game is built around clever avoidance of combat and other hazards. This puts the focus squarely on roleplay and setting (helped along by the fact that it is easier to understand a world of rabbits and dogs and humans and cars, rather than one of monsters and magic, because we live in one ) B&B is trying to do very different things from D&D, but with a similar mechanical mindset (though the system itself is original to B&B and not a D&D hack). Despite this, I think you could make the argument that B&B is the first attempt to move RPGs in a direction that doesn’t involve tactical combat power fantasies. Which isn’t to say that there is clear DNA from B&B in indie storygames, really, but  rather, to eventually get to indie storygames, you had to start somewhere, and B&B is probably that point.

B&B remains fairly popular, with a new edition released by Frog God last year. I find this kind of surprising because, even by my standards of weird, an RPG about rabbits seems like it comes from far out in left field (in fairness, I always thought the “what if but animals” sub genre a little hard to grasp, but that is a Me problem). Amplify that by like ten because it came out in 1976, when the world of RPGs seemed so rock-solid D&D-centric. But thank goodness, right? Where would we be without it?

The post Bunnies & Burrows (1976) appeared first on Vintage RPG.