Character Creation: BUNNIES!

Go ahead and sing it, I know you're thinking it. The song that's been in my head is this one:

The Game: GURPS 3rd. Edition, using the Bunnies and Burrows book
The Publisher: Steve Jackson Games.
Degree of Familiarity: Not a hell of a lot. I've played GURPS on occasion, usually with Karafa, but never run it and this is the only character I've made.
Books Required: The GURPS core book and Bunnies and Burrows.

OK, so, I love Watership Down. One of my favorite books. And playing an RPG that's based on it just sounds like all kinds of fun. I read through the Bunnies and Burrows book, and my initial idea was to make a storyteller character much like Dandelion in the novel, but putting the OK Go song together with the idea of bunny-hoppers makes me happy.

I like the idea of a bunny that makes intricate Rube Goldberg kind of devices, just because he understands, on a deeper level than a lot of bunnies, that things can be triggered by other things, which can then have their own effects. He got that notion from watching a rain shower collapse a mud bank into a pond. The raindrops made ripples, the mud made ripples, the rain fell but also made the mud fall. Since then, he's tried to use that understanding of cause-and-cause-and-effect to benefit his warren. The other bunnies call him Ripples.

Basic Attributes. I start with 10 in all of them, it's just that 10 here means "bunny average" rather than "human average." No worries. I want my bunny to be smart as heck, so I bump IQ to 15 (60 of my 100 points, holy crap...wait, shit, I started the same way with my other GURPS guy!). I'll keep Strength and Health at 10, and bump Dexterity to 12, meaning I've spent 80 points.

Physical Appearance. Well...I'm a bunny. I figure he's brown. With fur. OK, I'll stop. Ripples is a brown-furred bunny with a white tail. One of his eyes is missing the fur around it (he got into a scrape with a raccoon once), but that's about his only distinctive feature. Average appearance nets me no bonus or anything.

Wealth and Status. I have no particular Wealth. Average, no points. I figure Ripples might be known for his "outside-the-box" ideas, and honestly, I like the notion that he can get a bunch of rabbits together to put together his latest weird contraption. I'll take a level 3 reputation, and figure it applies to a limited class of bunnies (just the ones in my warren), so that costs me 5 points.

Advantages. A bunch of them are prohibited. I want Composed (I get +2 to Fright Checks), and I want Eidetic Sense of Smell (I can remember a particular creature or situation by scent - mostly bunnies just live in the moment, but what I do takes some planning). Together those cost 15. I'm at 100 points, so everything I buy from here I have to take Disadvantages to make up.

Disadvantages. Well, let's have a look. The Bunnies and Burrows book mentions that bunnies can take the Alcoholism Disadvantage, because it's not like alcohol doesn't occur in nature (berries ferment). I like the notion that my bunnies is a bit of lush; it makes sense that he'd like to alter his perceptions a little. So I'll take 15 points for that Disadvantage. I'll take Curious (duh), for 5 points and...oh, hells yeah. Trickster means I like to outwit my foes. Ripples likes to lead predators away from the warren by arranging elaborate "rabbit chains" - one rabbit runs long enough to duck into a bush, where another is waiting to run off, leading the predator further away, and then another bunny zips off in another direction, leading the predator through a garbage heap (to confuse his senses), and so on. That gives me a further 15, so now I'm up 35 points. I can only take 40, so I'll take an Enemy. That raccoon that messed up my eye is still looking for me.

See, it went down like this. The raccoon (known amongst the warren as "Render the Mask") had been known to make off with baby bunnies. That pissed everybody off, but we weren't a big warren. So then Ripples, after watching the mudslide, gets this idea. He gets the bunnies working, and then sets up a few baby bunnies in this little makeshift nest under a blackberry bush. Render climbs in across the tree limbs, as usual, and starts to shimmy down the tree...but when he gets down to the last few feet, the bark gives and he flops onto a pile of slimy, rotting vegetation, covered with rabbit fur and gnawed sticks.

Render, annoyed but not hurt, goes charging in to get the bunnies...but they've already been pulled down a hole and away into a second tunnel. Render goes digging after, but he's much heavier, and he starts to lose his grip, whereupon Ripples and LOTS of other bunnies pop out and start kicking at him. He falls into a hole, and the rabbits all pile dirt on him.

Well, he lived, but he's pretty mad and humiliated. And unlike Ripples, who has forgotten the particulars, he remembers the whole thing. But he's a busy guy (he's paying off a debt to a bear or something) and he only shows up on a roll of 6 or less on three dice. He's a 100-point character, but he's worth 5 points as an enemy.

Whew. OK. Quirks.

Ripples believes that all rabbits are basically good and that they should all work together to make the world a better place for bunnies everywhere (1). He doesn't like to thump; it makes his paws feel funny (2). He's constantly looking up and is afraid of things that climb trees (3); you can blame Render for that. He thinks human beings are lucky (as in, bring good luck), and so if he sees one he thinks it'll be a good day (4). Finally, he espouses the health benefits of fermented berries - they make you smarter! (5)

I've got 45 points. On to Skills!

I get Camouflage, Common Lagomorph, Lapine, Running, Stealth and Survival at 15 for free. I want Botany, but it's a Very Hard skill for bunnies. I'll take it at 15, for 8 points. I'll take Common Carnivore at 15 (2 points) and Ursine at 14 (2 points), so I can talk with Render (that is, beg for my life). I'll take Fiber Crafts at 15 (4 points), letting me weave stuff out of reeds and so on, and I'll take Hedgewise (kind of like Streetwise) at 15 (2 points).

Hell, better take Engineer. I'll specialize in Traps (meaning I have to take the Traps Skill, but I was going to anyway). I'll take it at 15, so I pay 4. I'll take Strategy at 15 (4 points), Tactics at 15 (4 points) and Traps at 17 (6 points). That means I've spent 36, leaving me with 9. Damn, that's one less than I need to bump an Attribute up. OK, I'll bump Traps down to 16, saving me 2 points, and then I'll take Common Avian at 14. And then I'll use the remaining 10 to bump up Health to 11.

And that's me done, I believe. Yay!