Mouse Guard, Anyone?

[Crothian]

As an actual role-playing game

As opposed to what?

 

[Aurumvorax]

As opposed to what?

As opposed to a rollplaying game. And I don't mean that as a pejorative, I mean to say that Mouse Guard differs from other games in that rolling dice isn't that important.

Mouse Guard's mechanics are a means to an end. Failure is a minor setback (you lose a fight, you slump away with a hurt pride) and only very rarely will you actually end up dead. The dice you roll are essentially factors for the GM to create a new scenario. Say you're trying to cross a river and all mice except one pass the test. The GM won't say "You drown, create a new character" he'll say "So and so is carried down stream." The players will respond with "We chase after him, catching up a mile down, and pull his exhausted body out of the water." The GM will finish the round by saying "He's exhausted (a condition of losing the test) but alive. You're far off your original trail and by the smell in the air, fairly close to a badger's den."

Had you successfully crossed the river, he might have had a different scenario planned (ambushed by bandits or a sudden cold front). Failing isn't meant to be a setback but simply provide a different branch to the same continuous path.

Character creation is by far the best aspect of the game as everyone can participate and no dice are rolled. You have a series of 20 questions or so that determines what your good at. Things like "What did your parents do? What did your master stress? Do you stockpile for the winter or improvise?"

 

[Novem5er]

Here's a really great podcast review of Mouse Guard RPG from Paul Tavis at "Have Games, Will Travel". It's pretty long and gives a great overview of the setting, the characters, and mechanics.

http://cdn1.libsyn.com/havegameswil...16&nva=20100110033516&t=0bc3d04bc14184036d6ba

He does a great job of tying everything together, as it's an easy but unique system. Mouse Guard is based on the Burning Wheel system, but after some research... it's a MUCH simpler derivative that review after review says is much more friendly and easy to pick up.

 

[Mistwell]

The comics are fantastic. And they have won tons of comic awards.

I've read about a third of the rpg and it seems quite good.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

If you don't want to be mice, but the idea of playing a Dunedain in the Fourth Age of Middle Earth scratches your itch, there is a great MG hack out there called Realm Guard.

Hey, now that is pretty cool. I think the high fantasy epic vibe of Middle Earth would work well with a "shared narrative control" game like Burning Wheel/Mouse Guard. Damn. Too many games, too little time…

 

[Novem5er]

My regular D&D group got together last night and we made our Mouse Guard characters. The book suggests that the whole party gets together to make your mice as a group, that way you can explain the rules once to everyone, and the players can work together so that their characters will compliment each other. Also, it allows the players to set up roleplaying conflicts... which I can get to in a bit.

The last chapter of the Mouse Guard book details character creation, which is odd because it's often the first chapter or two in other roleplaying systems. The book presents character creation as a list of questions or prompts. For instance, the prompt asks the players "What rank do you hold in the Guard?" and allows the players to choose anything from a new recruit (tenderpaw) up to a grizzled veteran (guard captain). This choice gives you some base stats (younger characters have less Will (mental strength) but more Health (physical strength) etc.) and also affects other prompts down the line.

The prompts continue and have players choose things like:

• Where were you born? (gives 1 skill and a Trait)
• What did your parents do? (gives another skill)
• What are you innately good at? (another skill)
• Whom did you apprentice under when you started at the Guard (skill)
• What did your Guard mentor stress you learn? (another skill)
• etc...

Sometimes the different ranks (chosen earlier) get to choose more than once. Tenderpaws get to choose TWO skills from the "parents" list, reflecting that they are still young enough to have a greater parental influence. I like this system a lot because, instead of giving you X number of skill points to spend on a big list, each choice helps the player build character background.

Each of these skill choices is also interesting in that, instead of choosing an additional skill, a player can often put another point in a skill he'd chosen earlier. Thus, players have the option of branching out or really focusing their skills.

Character creating in Mouse Guard, however, is not just about selecting skills! At a certain point, the characters are asked to:

• Name a friend; give him/her a name, profession, and a home city.
• Name your parents; give names (their profession was chosen eariler) and home.
• Name your mentor (another mouse guard who can be an ally)
• Name an enemy! Give them a name, profession, and location.

These choices aren't just roleplaying fodder. The players can get bonuses and aid when they are in a city with one of their allies. Of course, being near an enemy could cause complications...

The players choose a few more things, like their own name, fur color, and cloak color. Each mouse is given a cloak of a certain color by their mentor when they graduate from being a Tenderpaw. The color is supposed to represent some part of the mouse's personality; so this is again an interesting little choice for characters to make.

In our group, one of the players chose to be a Tenderpaw so she did NOT get a cloak. In fact, the rules state that she has to choose another one of the PLAYERS as her mentor! If we play a whole season of missions, our tenderpaw recruit can be promoted to full guardmouse, at which point her mentor (our other player!) will award her with a cloak in the color of his choosing. We were already looking forward to that RP moment, lol.

At the very end, the players are then tasked to think a little bigger than skills and traits. They have to create their character's Belief and Instinct.

These are two really neat mechanics in Mouse Guard. They are both roleplaying cues that, if used in the game, can give the player special rewards. A Belief, is an overarching ethical or moral statement that guides that individual mouse. An Instinct is like a gut-reaction, almost like a catch-phrase or action. Both help define a mouse, give players a direction for roleplaying, and help the GM set up situations that will challenge the players.

One of my players wrote these for her inquisitive, science-based mouse:

• Belief: "The reward of discovery is worth any risk."
• Instinct: "I will always aid the injured or sick."

If this player "plays her belief" in the course of a mission (perhaps risking herself for a chance at finding a new scientific truth) then she will be rewarded with a Fate point (a resource that lets her re-roll failed dice). Now, if the player goes against her belief in the course of a mission (perhaps reluctantly ignoring a potential source of new knowledge in order to complete a vital mission) then she will be rewarded with a Persona point (a resource that can give you bonus dice!). Players are also rewarded for playing their Instincts (though there is no reward for NOT playing your instinct).

The Belief/Instinct aspect is such a neat part of Mouse Guard. As a GM, they give me direct insight into what my players want to encounter in the game. The player I mentioned above obviously wants to encounter new scientific discoveries... and is willing to risk a lot to get them.

My job as a GM is to challenge that Belief by saying "Oh really?" and setting up situations that will put that character in a bind. Is a new discovery worth risking personal injury? The safety of a friend? The success of a Guard mission? Life itself?

These are the kind of stories that this player wants to play, and I can tell all that by one line on her character sheet.

It really gets interesting when different players have conflicting beliefs or instincts. When the Patrol Leader has an Instinct to "Approach new situations with caution", what does he do when his tenderpaw apprentice rushes into unknown country after a rare medicinal herb?

I'm so looking forward to our first session!

We did do a test combat (called a Fight Conflict) involving a pen of pet crickets, two guard mice, and a hungry toad. It was a blast, and I'd post how it went if anyone were interested...

 

[Aurumvorax]

Glad to see you had a blast. I wish they would come out with an expansion to the game. The comic is still ongoing so maybe there'll be some future supplements.

 

[Crothian]

As opposed to a rollplaying game. And I don't mean that as a pejorative, I mean to say that Mouse Guard differs from other games in that rolling dice isn't that important.

All games are different, but it's not a true diceless game and the dice do matter; least they did in the game I played at Gen Con. Success with penalties is a neat idea but that places a lot more pressure and responsibility on the guy running it and the guy who ran it at the table I was at did not do a good job.

The game has some neat mechanical ideas and the setting is very interesting. But from my experience it required too much of the people playing and when everyone but the guy running was new to the game it just didn't work out.

 

[Aurumvorax]

All games are different, but it's not a true diceless game and the dice do matter; least they did in the game I played at Gen Con. Success with penalties is a neat idea but that places a lot more pressure and responsibility on the guy running it and the guy who ran it at the table I was at did not do a good job.

The game has some neat mechanical ideas and the setting is very interesting. But from my experience it required too much of the people playing and when everyone but the guy running was new to the game it just didn't work out.

Playing a game at a convention means there'll be more dice rolling than normal which can be good or bad based on the system. I can't deny it requires an equal amount of work from everyone at the table (as Novem5er illuminated) and it's a system I probably couldn't play at a convention or tournament.

 

[kaomera]

As opposed to a rollplaying game. And I don't mean that as a pejorative, I mean to say that Mouse Guard differs from other games in that rolling dice isn't that important.

Personally, I think this tends to make the dice more important in Mouse Guard, not less. Or at least more interesting. Gathering and rolling the dice, and the results thereof, have a more dramatic impact on both the feel of play and the development of the story that, say, 4e where you have a lot more die rolls, but each is usually much less significant overall. Also, in Mouse Guard you have to make more significant decisions about the die roll. The whole point of turning "failure" into (interesting / fun / awesome) complications is to get the players to a place where they are willing to sabotage their characters' chances at a test (for future gain - you need those checks for the Player Turn!). So then you actually have to decide which tests you really want to pass and which you'd rather record as a fail...

The game has some neat mechanical ideas and the setting is very interesting. But from my experience it required too much of the people playing and when everyone but the guy running was new to the game it just didn't work out.

All games require a certain amount of buy-in; "indy" games tend to require more than "traditional" games (IMO / IME). If you try to play 4e with a player who just doesn't like the system, things aren't likely to go well. Mouse Guard requires that players not only be down with "Mice with Swords", but also be willing to give up always trying their best to succeed at every roll, and ready to make the most of the rewards they get in the Player Turn... I had great success introducing the game to new players, even when I wasn't really 100% familiar with the system yet myself. (But I should note that I had a far worse result with BW just a few years before - not simply, if at all, because it's a more complex take on the rules set, but quite a bit because I brought in a lot of what I had learned as "good gaming" in the preceding 25 or so years, and quite a lot of it didn't apply / was detrimental to playing Mouse Guard. So while I'm not trying to discount your experiences, I think that players unfamiliar with RPGs in general might have a better time of it than those who have played a lot of traditional RPGs but not indy RPGs. Er, perhaps... I think MG ought to make a really good bridge between the two, but maybe the GM needs to be aiming specifically for that result.)