Rabbits and the Arcane Arts

[Ithoriel]

I took part in an online, theatre-of-the-mind, Bunnies and Burrows-esque role-play game last night.

None of the players knew the rules .... by design.

Our jobs were to describe our characters' actions. The DM/GM handled all of the rules side. It does free the mind wonderfully. Die rolls were handled by the interface and were visible.

As a dyed in the wool, fuddy duddy old wargaming grognard I missed the finely crafted, beautifully painted miniatures on a wonderfully detailed playing surfa .... OK, I missed the "this pencil eraser is a gelatinous cube" on a largely empty, gridded mat with the walls drawn on in washable marker.

I played a rabbit mage.

How I envisaged my character:



How he performed:



I have to confess I had a blast nonetheless. 

[O Dinas Powys]

 

Sounds cool 

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

That sounds brilliant 👏

[Gwydion]

Sounds great.
Were there rules underpinning it or was it a free krigsspiel type format? Or was the DM/Bunnymaster(?) not telling?
I don't mind either way, but generally find the latter flow better. Sometimes people say 'but my elite Special Bicycling Squad would never land on the wrong beach an hour later than planned. I challenge your decision!' but I susepct it is harder to challenge the stats for a Rabbit Mage. Or are elite bunnies better grounded than I imagine?

[Ithoriel]

Sounds great.
Were there rules underpinning it or was it a free krigsspiel type format? Or was the DM/Bunnymaster(?) not telling?
I don't mind either way, but generally find the latter flow better. Sometimes people say 'but my elite Special Bicycling Squad would never land on the wrong beach an hour later than planned. I challenge your decision!' but I susepct it is harder to challenge the stats for a Rabbit Mage. Or are elite bunnies better grounded than I imagine?

There were rules underpinning everything. We were told, for example, what dice would be rolled (but not why) and what success would look like for the roll. But most of it was kept deliberately vague.

Character creation was question and response, not die rolling. It reminded me of the Myers-Briggs Test I did as part of a management course back in the 80s. 

At the end I was told my bunny mage was very smart, had an excellent memory, was dextrous, agile and had fast physical and mental reactions. However he was physically weak, less resistant than most to damage and disease, was weak willed and preferred flight to fight.

The game was very relaxed. Everyone seemed keener to make sure everyone else was having a good time than they were to have a good time themselves. So no-one was going to get too het up about anything. I mean we were a rabbit mage, a cat rogue (the lady playing her referred to her as a "cat burglar"), a badger fighter and a stoat cleric. It's hard to take yourself too seriously.

    

[Last Hussar]

That the way I like to run an RPG (bunny makes not withstanding).

For Eura I wrote a back story for each player, and once we agreed on background, I generated the character to a joint vision. I have one character who has a skill in "herd sheep", another in formal (14th century) dancing.

The rules are Fudge, so abilities, traits and skills are defined not as a number, but a quality - his strength is "great" but his dexterity is "poor"; he is "mediocre" at tracking. You roll 4 Dice, 2 sides have +, 2 have -, and two are blank. So a roll of +, +, blank, - is up 1, taking a mediocre skill up one to a fair success. I then describe what that looks like to the character.

You really don't want a fighter who keeps rolling minus 2 on his to hit.  Guess what our group has!