Mouse Guard: First Impressions

May 28, 2009 at 10:59 pm (Games, Mouse Guard, Review) (, )

I have been playing Burning Wheel for a while now and have been, like most people, eagerly awaiting the Mouse Guard RPG.  One of the things I kept hearing from reviewers was that Mouse Guard was Burning Wheel lite.  After playing it on Saturday I have to say that I disagree with that assessment.

 

Mouse Guard is a streamlined experience to be sure.  Everything in the system points right back to who your characters are and what they are doing.  Burning Wheel is a game about being anyone in a medieval setting with elves, dwarves, orcs, monsters and magic.  That is a lot to cover and the rules are therefore much more complex to allow for that level of variety.  In Mouse Guard you are playing one thing, a member of the Mouse Guard.  There are no rules for being anything else.  To some people this seems like the system has been stripped down but in play it is just the same system with the rules you don’t need to play a guard mouse thrown out.

 

If you want to play a guard mouse this is the game for you but if you want to play something else there are other games for that.  The experience is refined so that when you are doing all the great things that Burning Wheel is known for (fighting for your beliefs and playing on your instincts) you don’t have any dangling rules to get in your way.  I still had that same feeling when faced with an obstacle I desperately needed to succeed at that I did in Burning Wheel, that feeling that no matter how many dice I marshaled to my cause there was no guarantee of success.  That is what Burning Wheel is to me and Mouse Guard is, in my opinion, Burning Wheel in a mouse shape, not simplified or dumbed  down, just different.

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Mouse Guard AP Report 1

May 28, 2009 at 3:01 am (Actual Play, Games, Mouse Guard) (, , )

Entry for the third day of the first waning moon of the Fall of 1152,

 

            Myself and a young tenderpaw by the name of Thomas were dispatched from Lockhaven this morning to retrieve the weather and captain’s logs from the Frostic outpost.  This is Thomas’ first assignment for the Guard and my first assignment in a leadership roll.  I don’t know if Gyndolin intends for me to become this boy’s mentor or if she will be watching to see how I perform in a position of leadership but either way I intend to do my best for the Guard.

 

–         Rasputin, Patrol Guard, The Road

 

Entry for the ninth day of the first waning moon of the Fall of 1152,

 

            Conditions along the road have been favorable so far.  Tomorrow we are to leave on the ship that will take us across the Northern Sea to Frostic.  Upon reading the weather this evening I can see no sign that the weather will change while we are in route.  Thomas seems to me to be overly fond of food but other than that he is an amiable traveling companion.  He has not complained about the rough conditions on the road and has indeed improved our lot with his excellent cooking skills.

 

–         Rasputin, Patrol Guard, The Road

 

Entry for the first New Moon of the Fall of 1152,

 

            The last two days have been hard on Thomas and I but I fear the strain it has put on poor Thomas.  We arrived at the Frostic docks to find no mouse there to greet us.  Upon reaching the entrance to the fort we discovered that it had been opened by force.  Our investigations lead to the discovery that all in that place had gone mad from ingesting poison that was placed there by forces unknown.  Most had died.

We disposed of the bodies of the fallen after our way and bound the two mice we found alive.  The tainted food and drink were also disposed of though samples of each we kept for further study.  The logbooks we were sent to recover were easy enough to find and we are also taking the logbook of the Quartermaster as proof of who delivered the poisoned goods.

            Thomas handled himself well during all of this and I have to say I am becoming very fond of the lad.  He was so young and innocent when we left Lockhaven and now he has seen more death than even I had in all my time before coming to Frostic, I worry that his quiet as we prepared the bodies was due more to his shock than it was respect for the dead.  He also sustained a tail injury from one of the two survivors and it is beyond my ability to heal.

            We have eight more days in this dead place before the ship returns to take us back to civilization.  We have taken what we could judge safe from the larder and will go fishing tomorrow before the storm rolls in.  Who could have done this?  Why was it done?  Some of our evidence points to Sprucetuck.  Is someone I know responsible for this madness?

–         Rasputin, Patrol Guard, Frostic

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Skill Challenges

May 27, 2009 at 1:59 pm (D&D, Games) (, , )

The fourth edition of D&D added a feature so simple yet so broadly applicable that only now after a year of really looking at what the feature can do have people begun scratching the surface of what is possible.  That feature is of course Skill Challenges.  Many DMs just don’t know what to do with Skill Challenges in their games and so have not been able to make use of them.  It has taken me awhile to dig into Skill Challenges and find what I can get out of them and I will share with you what I have found so far.
 
Every Skill Challenge (SC) starts with a goal, find out who has been stealing from the dockside warehouses, follow a cloaked figure through a crowded marketplace, or even pillage your way through a dungeon.  When you want to use a SC in your game you need to know what the goal for the SC is.  This is an important step in your adventure creation.  Skill Challenges should be used to decide on the outcome of anything that is not combat.  You might even decide to string multiple SCs together all leading to the “Big Fight”.  For instance, your players may have their characters investigate a string of robberies (first SC), follow the culprit to his secret hideout (second SC), and make their way through all of his well placed traps and guards (third SC), before confronting him and his thieving cronies in their underground storeroom (the Big Fight).
 
The goal of the first SC would be to discover the identity of the thief.  It is important to know that no matter if the PCs succeed or fail in the SC the goal will happen.  The difference should be what the goal reveals.  For instance if the players succeed at the SC with no failed rolls then the thief should turn out to be one of their enemies or if they fail the SC with no successful rolls they discover that all the evidence they can find points to them being the culprits.  When you are planning your adventure you should plan each SC with both the goal and four possible outcomes, total success, regular success, regular failure, total failure.  Each different outcome should answer the goal of the SC in a unique way and lead either to a fight or another SC.  When you sit down to write a nights adventure you should keep in mind how long it usually takes your players to complete a SC or a fight.  You only need to plan far enough in advance to get you through one play session.
 
This method of adventure planning is more like writing a flowchart than a published adventure and it may actually be useful to sketch out a flowchart that you can reference in play.  You should attempt to place at least one big fight along every path that might occur, preferably near the end of the adventure.  The more failed SCs there are leading up to a fight the tougher you should make that fight.
 
I hope that this has been helpful to you DMs out there who have been struggling with Skill Challenges.  This is not the definitive answer to how Skill Challenges should work but it is the method that has been working for me.  I have more thoughts on ways to expand Skill Challenges to make them more dynamic and important but you will have to wait on those I am afraid.
 
-J.B. Mannon

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