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<blockquote data-quote="lin_fusan" data-source="post: 5228046" data-attributes="member: 37085"><p>I'm being a little loose in definition when I say "subsystem". When teaching the game, I tend to break down the ideas in 4 or 5 discrete chunks as below:</p><p></p><p>1) Except for certain circumstances (as in the Conflict rules), there is no failure in skill/ability tests, only degrees of success such as "I succeed, but I'm not Injured" or "I succeed, but first I must take care of this problem" (which requires another skill/ability test).</p><p></p><p>2) Each character has A Belief, an Instinct, and a changeable Goal, like alignments in D&D but more personal and less strict. For playing toward these personality descriptors (and sometimes playing against them) you will earn a Fate or Persona point. You spend these points to modify your dice rolls in specific ways.</p><p></p><p>3) Traits not only describe your character, but they also give you dice bonuses. However, every trait has a negative aspect that you can invoke that will give you a dice penalty, but give you bonus "checks" or bonus actions later on.</p><p></p><p>4) The game is split between a GM's Turn and Player's Turn. The GM's Turn is standard GMing; you assign a must-be-solved-now mission and the players have to tackle it. On the Player's Turn, the players can spend "checks" or bonus actions to do what they want to do, be it mission related or something completely different. </p><p></p><p>5) Skill/ability advancement. In order to improve a skill/ability, you have to succeed AND fail at a certain number of tests. At any given time when you are about to roll the dice, you should be thinking in-character "I really need to pass this Fighter test in order to rescue Silas from the weasels" but also while meta-gaming "But if I fail this Fighter test, I'll increase my Fighter skill by one". </p><p></p><p>6) The Conflict rules are for more protracted situations, like combat with a super-dangerous opponent, or winning over the crowd in a debate with a corrupt politician. It uses pre-scripted actions that works in the manner of rock-paper-scissors (but with four actions).</p><p></p><p>Z) The basic mechanic of Mouse Guard is a d6 dice pool. If your Fighter is at 4, you roll 4d6 and count each individual die as a success or failure. Each of the subsystems above modify this dice pool mechanic either directly (such as Traits) or indirectly (such as Fate or Persona), but each of the subsystems are tied to other aspects of the game. </p><p></p><p>OK, maybe it's six subsystems.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="lin_fusan, post: 5228046, member: 37085"] I'm being a little loose in definition when I say "subsystem". When teaching the game, I tend to break down the ideas in 4 or 5 discrete chunks as below: 1) Except for certain circumstances (as in the Conflict rules), there is no failure in skill/ability tests, only degrees of success such as "I succeed, but I'm not Injured" or "I succeed, but first I must take care of this problem" (which requires another skill/ability test). 2) Each character has A Belief, an Instinct, and a changeable Goal, like alignments in D&D but more personal and less strict. For playing toward these personality descriptors (and sometimes playing against them) you will earn a Fate or Persona point. You spend these points to modify your dice rolls in specific ways. 3) Traits not only describe your character, but they also give you dice bonuses. However, every trait has a negative aspect that you can invoke that will give you a dice penalty, but give you bonus "checks" or bonus actions later on. 4) The game is split between a GM's Turn and Player's Turn. The GM's Turn is standard GMing; you assign a must-be-solved-now mission and the players have to tackle it. On the Player's Turn, the players can spend "checks" or bonus actions to do what they want to do, be it mission related or something completely different. 5) Skill/ability advancement. In order to improve a skill/ability, you have to succeed AND fail at a certain number of tests. At any given time when you are about to roll the dice, you should be thinking in-character "I really need to pass this Fighter test in order to rescue Silas from the weasels" but also while meta-gaming "But if I fail this Fighter test, I'll increase my Fighter skill by one". 6) The Conflict rules are for more protracted situations, like combat with a super-dangerous opponent, or winning over the crowd in a debate with a corrupt politician. It uses pre-scripted actions that works in the manner of rock-paper-scissors (but with four actions). Z) The basic mechanic of Mouse Guard is a d6 dice pool. If your Fighter is at 4, you roll 4d6 and count each individual die as a success or failure. Each of the subsystems above modify this dice pool mechanic either directly (such as Traits) or indirectly (such as Fate or Persona), but each of the subsystems are tied to other aspects of the game. OK, maybe it's six subsystems. [/QUOTE]
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