Mouse Guard

I've a fair bit to say on this. So I'll be covering the system, and also the 2nd Edition boxed set - of which I have a different opinion.

The System:

After a year of playing D&D I reached a point where I wondered if there was another way. It reminded me of when I became disenchanted with martial arts classes. Not because of the arts themselves, but because of the people who usually practised them. Every situation was seen only through one lens; rose tinted by a fine spray of someone else's blood.

Over Christmas the DM of a game I play in suggested I have an enemy brother. I speculated on what I could bring to meeting with this character. All I could think of was perhaps to teleport away after stating my disgust with them and cast a thunder spell to slam the door behind me. Afterwards I would wonder if it was wise to burn my combat resources simply to tell a story. My tools for roleplaying D&D are increasingly nothing but hammers and I'm saddened each time the DM apologises for not giving us enough nails.

I dabbled in Dungeon World but wasn't won over. The One Ring I really enjoyed, but still had enough issues with it to keep looking. I was told of Tavern Tales, but it's not finished, the reviews of it make no mention of actually playing it, and rolling 3D20 a pop for every action strikes me as a little silly. One last recommendation for a rules light game with a focus on story remained...

The Burning Wheel I'm told is an insanely crunchy roleplaying game by Luke Crane. Its rules apparently generate a deep amount of story, but it is not for the faint of heart. Mouse Guard then is Burning Wheel's little brother. It pitches itself in its text at a young reader in much the same way my dad used to lecture me about anything: with total fucking disregard of what a child is able to parse in one sitting. I sat reading the rules, thinking at first this would be simple to explain, and then every few pages or so a new wrinkle would present itself. By the end of the rulebook I felt like I was looking at the bag my own testicles sit in. This is not a beginner's game. My prep for the first adventure (and I seriously insist you prep your own adventure for your first game of this to get up to speed) was replete with notes on rules to introduce as we played. It is nothing like introducing someone to D&D - which simply consists of getting the player to roll The Roundest Die and pointing out some options for them. When one fully understands the rules for Mouse Guard there are at least eight separate steps to any skill test. Not all are relevant at any time, but you need to know all of them to run this game.

One of those steps makes this game excellent. It makes the hassle worth it.

Mouse Guard's skill tests use D6 dice pools. You roll 4+ on each die for a "success". You will need at least 3 successes for a good result. Let's say you are tracking a snake and you have measly rating of 3 dice for your Hunter skill (this is entirely normal for a starting character). You're going to need more. Other players can each give a single die to help - but they must deliver exposition about that help. What would be a single cast of a D20 in D&D before listening to the DM's rhetoric is now a debate. Everyone at the table is talking about how you are tracking this snake. How one mouse is using their Loremouse skill to describe the behaviour of snakes. How another is using their Pathfinder skill to tell the group about how far from the road they need to go to follow it. These rules exist in some minor way in other RPGs, but never with the same urgency. I know for a fact that the next time I play D&D I'm going to invoke the help rule for a skill test, and the DM is likely going to shut me down because they've never seen someone do that before.

There is of course a downside to this. You're going to need a tray to roll into. It also has a lot of book-keeping, with each roll generating an advancement pip on your character sheet. You actively level up skills as you play. I'm not sure whether this is infuriating or brilliant. The players seemed to enjoy it when it paid off though. Things get a step more tricky with the Conflict system - however, I really like the Conflict system.

It's a strange little card game to resolve combat or an abstraction of any large scale "disagreement". A sort of rock, paper, scissors affair where you define hit points for each party's goals and then have at it with skill tests to chip away at them. My favourite example to propose for Mouse Guard's conflict system is a cake baking competition. Yes, the goal can actually be to bake some really good cakes. No one has to die today - but if these cakes don't rise there will be hell to pay. I look back at D&D and I think, there's no way I could attempt a similar thing. What use is Colossus Slayer and Hunter's Mark when you're whipping a buttercream filling?

Like The One Ring RPG, Mouse Guard also has structured uptime and downtime. It breaks up into a GM turn and a Player turn. The first being the traditional gauntlet we all know and the next being downtime for the players to heal and bolster themselves. The players get more opportunities for character development by sabotaging their own rolls during the GM turn. This is a sort of inverse version of the help rule driven by your character's flaws. The two phases strike me as very appropriate in this game. Mice (if you've ever been unfortunate enough to know them as vermin) dash between hiding holes. Structured downtime makes perfect sense for their nature. It's also nice to never have to field questions about when players get to do some shopping.

So yes, disappointingly crunchy rules for what at first seems to be a kid's game. But you can lower the entry point if you're a savvy GM like me. Then work your way up to a rich, story led experience that never gets bogged down with bouts of Numberwang. If you're brave and you want more than bludgeonalia from your system, it's worth it.

If you want some extra help indoctrinating players, you can use this free character creation app I wrote. It's a web page that takes you swiftly through the multiple choice quiz at the end of the rule book and calculates your stats. It will even suffice for creating your own NPCs.

The Boxed Set:

When you hold it in your hands you think, "this is smaller than I was expecting." A comment repeated by my players when I showed it off to them. I ran my first game using the pdf from RPG Drive Thru - invaluable for the ability to Control+F for clarifications. I made my own conflict cards and supplied a hearty quantity of D6.

Luke's unboxing video shows everything you get for your dearly departed dollars:

Let's go through the value of each item as you unpack the layers:

• 4 player card packs: These are great. There's two packs too many to run a game, but spare parts are always welcome. In each pack are cards for the conflict system, cards describing the bonuses for weapons (rules I left out from our first game, but now much easier to include with these cards) and cards describing conditions - another feature I like about the game (you accrue crippling states instead of losing meaningless hit points). Top marks for these. Only marred by the prohibitive shrink wrap that led to me damaging some of the cards when trying to free them with a butter knife.
• 20 custom dice: Bean counting is a problem with most dice pool games. Slowed down by having to read each value - not here though as the pictograms are super easy to read. These replace my oodles of D6 for regular play.
• GM Screen: *Sigh*. I've yet to see a GM screen with enough relevant information on it for any RPG I've played. Mostly what one needs to know in Mouse Guard are the many steps involved for a skill test. This thing mostly lists weapons rules (covered by the player cards) and factors for skill tests that assumes an absence of basic common sense. It's also made from fairly flimsy card. It will cover your notes, but I've never needed to hide a roll from my players in this system and my notes are on an iPad facing away from the group. Some useful info here and there on it, but it's going to stay in the box.
• Update: Okay, I was a bit unfair - the factors for a Test are actually really useful for keeping the game fair. Mouse Guard brings out the munchkin in you because it wants you to do dramatic things to get those extra points. When you do factors off the top of your head you can lose control of the game - I actually keep the GM screen with my play-kit now. It has a lot of useful information for someone who's now read the rules a few times, but no I don't use it as a "screen".
• Character Sheets: These are double sided. So you can constantly flip them over during play and lean on them to smudge whatever you've written on either side. There's even a bit for drawing your mouse on that you can ruin this way. I spent seven years in art school and I'm surprised David Petersen (the artist who wrote the Mouse Guard comics) sat idle whilst this went to press. In the box they stay. I recommend printing out the single sided pdf version that's available instead.
• GM Sheets: These are really useful. Nice little headings to allow me to jot down all the roleplaying factors for each player. More double sided lunacy but the reverse has little space to write anything precious, mostly being packed with rules reminders. I wish they'd taken the same approach with the character sheets.
• Paperback Rulebook: The organisation of the rulebook is fairly sound. Like I mentioned above, it does suffer from minutiae popping up here and there when you read it thoroughly. Something you can deal with by owning the pdf and a reader with a search function. Paperback is never the best, but it has a nice box to stay in and will certainly help during a power cut. It will probably impress those people I meet who praise text on paper and clearly don't read as many books on public transport as I do.
• New Rules, New Missions: Some extra rules describing how to acquire a mount (the mice ride hares in the 2nd graphic novel), other weapons and some more example missions and pregenerated characters. A pleasant addition to the core rulebook.
• Map of the Territories: Definitely useful. Any mission starting in Lockhaven (Mouse Guard central) will need to refer to this to give the players an overview of their travel plans as well as a look at what a campaign holds in store. Yet again - I have this on iPad so in the box it stays, but a must for anyone operating a campaign without digital aids.

In summary, the dice and the cards are worth the full price alone. They make play so much easier for all involved. Your mileage may vary on the rest, but I'm quite happy with it despite some of my grievances. Definitely worth getting if you plan on running a full campaign of Mouse Guard.