NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Novem5er" data-source="post: 5054263" data-attributes="member: 57859">Alright, lets see how it goes...In the basic scenario I set up, there was a pen of pet crickets under assault by a hungry toad (frog stats from the book). The two mouse guard players entered with the goal of scaring the toad off before it ate any crickets.Both sides in a conflict must right down a goal when the conflict starts. My players said they didn't want to kill the toad, so they opted to just drive it away. The "toad's" goal was to eat several crickets and then escape.Whoever wins the fight gets to accomplish their goal.There are NO hit points in Mouse Guard. At the start of any conflict, be it a fight or a debate, both sides roll for their starting Disposition. A team's disposition is the strength of their position at the start of the conflict. Basically you roll for successes using a skill and add it to a base attribute, getting a number hopefully somewhere between 3 - 7 (or higher). In the case of a fight, you roll your Fight skill and add it to your Health attribute. Anyone on your team can lend a die to help add to the team's total.The mice and the toad rolled, and both got a disposition of 6.As mentioned earlier by another poster, each side in a conflict (GM and players, usually) must secretly choose 3 actions at a time. There are 4 possible actions to choose from:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Attack - lower your opponent's disposition.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Defend - decrease an opponent's attack and even recover your own lost disposition.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Feint - A trick that can completely void an opponent's Defense role.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Maneuver - Give your opponent a penalty, yourself a bonus, or both!</li> </ul>Once both sides are ready, they each reveal their first action. If there are multiple characters on a team, then they get to decide who performs which action with their skills. Players on a team alternate who takes the actions... mouse 1, then 2, then back to 1 (for two players).Round 1:The toad opted to Attack while the player's decided to Defend. This created a "versus" roll: the toad's attack versus the player's defense roll.  The mouse rolled more successes than the toad's attack, thus completely avoiding any damage to his team's disposition.GM: "The toad leaps towards you, attempting to bully you back through the pen."Player: "I block him with the shaft of my spear, and push the beast off me!"Round 2:The toad revealed his Feint action, while the second mouse player revealed that she was doing a Maneuver. Unfortunately for the mice, when a Feint is played against a Maneuver, successes are removed from the opponent's disposition! The toad rolled 3 successes on his Feint, so that subtracted 3 from the guard mice's disposition (already half their total). Thankfully, the mouse's maneuver was also successful, so her clever positioning gave the toad a penalty on its next action, and a bonus to the mice's next action!GM: "The toad leaps at you again and you throw yourself to the side. You look up foolishly from your tumble when you realize the toad hardly moved."Player: "Pissed, I use my position to roll around him and get his attention. He'll have a harder time catching a moving target..."Round 3:The toad reveals his last action of the set, another Attack. It's the first mouse's action again, and he reveals Defend (again). The toad was at a -1 dice penalty (from the previous mouse's Maneuver) and this Mouse action was at +2 dice (from the same previous Manuever!). The toad and mouse roll, and the mouse easily blocks the attack.GM: "The toad leaps at you again!"Player: "Ha! I block him with the butt of my spear and push him back!"At this point, the three actions of the set have been resolved and neither team has been reduced to 0 disposition. From here, both teams must choose 3 more actions in secret and we go again!Round 4:The toad attacks (hey, it's a toad!) and so does the mouse guard character! At this point, the players only have 3 disposition left, and the toad has all 6 of his. It's not looking too good for the mice... however...The toad rolls only 1 success (lowering the mice to 2 disposition). The mouse guard player rolls successes on ALL his dice, total 6, and reducing the toad to 0.Conflict over; the mice win!But wait... it's not so cut and dry. If the winner of a conflict has suffered any loss to their disposition, then they owe the loser a compromise. This is an interesting mechanic than can, again, twist the narrative in unforseen directions. There are three grades of compromises: minor, compromise, and major compromise... based on how much disposition the winner lost.Since the mice lost all but 2 of their disposition, I declare that they owe the looser (the toad!) a major compromise. It is the loser's job to propose the compromise and the winners can discuss and than accept or deny it. Negotiations may continue.Keep in mind that this is a narrative tool between the GM and the players. The toad isn't actually surrendering and then offering a compromise IN CHARACTER! The GM and the players are just working out where to go.So, I offer that the toad be chased away... but not before he gobbles up 2 crickets! The players discuss it... and reject the offer! They wanted to save all the crickets. They counter-propose that, as the toad escapes, he breaks a hole in the cricket pen, thus releasing all the crickets into the town!So the characters saved the crickets from the hungry toad, but since they had a tough time of it, the crickets ended up escaping the pen. If we were playing a full session, I might add the escaped crickets as another obstacle in the mission... a twist, if you will <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />So that's about it. My players had a blast! There are some fiddly bits that I didn't mention, but that add some complexity to the system. For instance, players on a team can help each other (giving bonus dice), and different weapons have attributes that can help with specific actions, etc. This is not a complex system, but there's a certain level of strategy and luck involved.It was quick, interesting, and more enough... it encouraged narration during combat. Since we've been playing 4e for near a year now, this was a welcomed pace. We've long felt that combats in 4e felt like a "different game" than the rest of our D&D session... like RP/Exploration was completely different than the combat experience. With our fist test of Mouse Guard, it seemed that there was very little break in the narrative.This same system is used to handle other conflicts like chase scenes, long journeys, and arguments... and my players are itching to try them all.I'll report back after we play our fist full session, hopefully this weekend!</blockquote>

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