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Message: <blockquote data-quote="lin_fusan" data-source="post: 5150512" data-attributes="member: 37085">Woo... Ran a session of Mouse Guard tonight. I didn't feel it went as  smoothly as it could have. Since the mice were in Lockhaven, I  decided to give them a mission direct from Gwendolyn to find an oldfur  named Alistair the Weaseleye and convince him to come out of retirement  and help the Guard map some of the Darkheather tunnels. One of  the things that I realized was that the GM has to discern player  character intent, or more specifically, get players to state their  desired results in relation to a test. My group has a tendency  to wait for one player to take an action before deciding what to do.  This is fine on the Player's Turn, but a little problematic on the GM's  Turn. I great example is when the group was chatting on how to  find the oldfur, and I suggested a Circle test. The patrol leader  suggested splitting up. Each character went in search of someone who  might know where the oldfur was. One character looked for Harvesters  that might know of an odd hermit. Another character wanted to find  children who might have seen something in the forest while playing. I  asked each one to roll a Circles test. It wasn't until afterward  that I realized that the results for each test was essentially the  same; find Alistair the Weaseleye. And since everyone was aiming for the  same result, I should have called for a single group test, not several  individual ones. Essentially, this was exactly the situation where one  character should have made the Circles test with the other characters  adding a helping die. Another example of clearly stating the  desired result of a situation was when the patrol leader ran into a  personal enemy, who not-so-gently urged him to drop his search for the  oldfur. There was some confusion where the player kept waiting for the  enemy to act first. I think he was expecting a fight. So the player kept  not acting, saying things like "I walk away." or "i ignore what he said  to me." I ended up getting a little heavy handed and stating outright  that this enemy would not let him continue unless he either fought him  or convinced him that his mission was a right and just one.They  eventually found the oldfur's hideout outside of Lockhaven. In a  Apocalypse Now-esque scenario, the mice had to climb a tree rigged with  traps and snares in order to get to the oldfur's treehouse. That also  had some confusion in terms of mechanics. Does each mouse test to climb  the tree, or is it a group test with a single roller and helping dice?The  session had to get cut off right in the middle of an argument conflict.  Strangely, that part of the session was going quite smoothly.So  the session felt a little muddled. Perhaps I need to be more clear on  the GM's Turn what the required tests are and what the intended results  should be.</blockquote>

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