Mouse Guard

Havn't got Mouseguard but ive read (havn't played) BWG, can you not just limit conflict to the more simple resolution if no one enjoys Fight!

>Namefag being retarded.
My god, what a shock.

Pretty good bait there, started with a personal opinion that could be argued against to start some logical discussion, but quickly devolved into a personal attack against anyone remotely related to the subject.

8/10 perhaps slightly too obvious bait but good nonetheless.

Like most other things: GURPS

>people complaining about crane combat.

I thought crane comes up with an interesting, albeit complicated, fight rules. But it's only for big cinematic fights. Most fights against unnamed mooks are handled with a simple versus roll.

I've never played mouseguard. But if it's anything like burning wheel then I really enjoy that I get the option of having high-octane combat with lots of options and rules for named npcs, or I can boil it down to something simple.

It's a guy trying to force a meme.

There's not really bloody versus option in Mouse Guard, and the conflict mechanic is very simple. It's more akin to Torchbearer than Burning Wheel, really.

It's very meta, and quickly boils down to thinking about the mechanics first and forgetting about the actual narrative. It can be fun with the right group, but it's a bit clunky.

Burning Wheel doesn't really suffer from this since the Fight! rules are actually really in-depth and have a lot of options to pick from, it feels really great.

Mouse Guard and Torchbearer's simplified conflict rules are way too abstract though, and end up feeling awkward during play.

Thanks for that information! I was thinking about getting the mouseguard box set. But $70 is a touch pricey for a game I can't try first.

I love it personally. seems like people here have issue with the conflict system, I've had really good results with it, but I have my own way of handling the resolution.

So, in this system the players are considered one "group", and as a groups they are supposed to pick three actions and an order in which they happen. For me, since I've only run with three players, I usually ask each player for one action and then ask them to decide an order. These actions then play out against the three actions I've secretly chosen for the enemy or enemy group. Once the three actions are resolved, that's the end of a round and it repeats until someone loses (almost never more than two rounds in combat in my experience).

The cool part here for me is that there is simultaneous resolution of each pair of actions. So if one player decided to go first and attack, and I had chosen for the enemy to defend on the first turn then it's a contested roll as both sides try and do their thing at the same time.

Now this can be confusing for some players, but I have a way of smoothing it over. First, we declare actions. Second, we roll and see who won. Once a winner is decided THEN we describe what happened. The loser goes first, usually in the format of something along the lines "I move in to strike, swinging my sword in a broad arc at the bandits throat BUT..." and then the winner gets to finish the sentence with something like "The bandit shuffles back and parries the blade with his broadsword, he grins as the steel rings out and you are thrown off balance."

Still, grab a pdf and try it out. You don't NEED the components to play it, they just make things much more manageable. The conflict rules weren't to my liking, but your group might still have fun with the game.

The books are great for 7-10 year olds. Just childish enough but just adult enough to teach a child a sense of seriousness for things like morality, honor, death, and violence. Never played the game though.

you know having had some really fucking dumb players, I'd like to put forward that the book is really great in being just adult enough to teach murderhobos (children) a sense of seriousness for things like morality, honor, death, and violence.

I've probably got close to 3-4 dozen game books in PDF form which I've read through because i'm a cheap miserable bastard. But mouse guard is the only book I've bothered to purchase a physical copy of, and I really did it because the art is fucking charming.

The whole "goals and compromises" thing during conflicts is a bit weird. It forces you to retcon things that happened during combat, and to not be TOO descriptive lest a rule comes up later on that will contradict what you said.

For example if your patrol is fighting a group of bandits, you can't really narrate a player killing off a mook in the middle of the conflict, because you only find out who died in the conflict after you finish it.

I've never really had a problem with this. I guess I just figured that wounds happened, but nobody really knows which wounds are mortal wounds until the adrenaline dies down or the blood drains out.

Are you saying you get a lot of murdurhobo players? Are you agreeing with my take on the book series?

I honestly don't understand your post.

Both, I'm saying I agree with you that the book is a balance of childishly whimsical and adult brutal. I think it's perfect for establishing a tone of seriousness for a clever 7-10 year old. I also think that the average murderhobo has the emotional capacity of a 7-10 year old so the book is appropriate for them as well.

Haha I gotcha. That's what i was leaning towards but I always like to clarify with people if I'm not sure of their meaning.

Funny stuff.

Some people don't like that you need to fail rolls in order to improve your skills. I like it though, it sort of makes sense that your characters learn from failure, and it rewards you for pressing beyond your normal comfort zone. You have to push yourself to get better.

This is part of a wider trend that I really like in mouse guard which REALLY rubs a lot of my friends the wrong way: failure is important. Things fail in mouse guard, and the failures are dramatic. In all systems succeeding in the main mechanic for plot resolution and mouse guard is no exception, but failures are the main mechanic of plot creation and some people can't jive with that. It's particularly crushing to powergamers and people who play RPGs to powertrip (powergamers).

they are pretty sweet

This is Redwall, not Watership Down.

...

How is the gameplay of it? I've seen this game talked about on here a lot. How do sessions play out?

user I hate to break it to you but your unique way of handling things is actually just rules as written

generally really well. They tend to be short, 2-4 hours sessions, and have an odd mix of highly structured but very narrative based play. Normally to me narrative means free form, which can be really problematic, but the meta rues of MG make for a surprisingly smooth cooperative story telling game. As a personal bonus there's only one race and no classes or magic so that scares of the worst sort of snowflakes that generally flock towards more free form forum type narrative role playing.

It's like Extras in Savage Worlds: they go down mid-fight, but you don't roll to see if they're dead dead or just almost dead until after.

Plot hooks write themselves, which is nice. I've found it unwise to really plan out anything other than the first session because rules as written failed rolls = plot hooks. If you're a lazy GM you can generally give one mission, and then the rest of the game is simply a matter of fixing things that got fucked up on previous missions in an impossible attempt to rid the world of pain suffering and evil.

You've never had a powergamer try to game the failure training system by deliberately sandbagging? Because that's usually a problem when you let a munchkin near failure grinding mechanics.

From what I've read of the system, it has a very strong game pacing structure and relatively quick task resolution system, but I've never gotten to put it through its paces. It seems like it has a good way to handle skill challenge like situations.

Wayne, I said it last time I saw you: get a job.

About that! the game is structured in turns, first the GMs turn, then the players turn.

During the GMs turn, the GM call for what roles are being made, simple as that. Nobody rolls anything unless the GM calls for it, and the GM has the veto power on any proposed rolls. This part of the game represents travelling through the wilderness where the characters don't have any free time, they are marching or trailblazing or sailing actively and the rolls called for are the impediments to their task that they encounter. This can represent pretty much any amount of time from a day to a month of roughing it.

During the player's turn the players choose what rolls they would like to make, but they only have a limited number. If they took any "damage" during the GMs turn they can use their rolls to seek help or try and alleviate their conditions by themselves. It should be noted that this is kind of the only time they have a chance to do this, so if they are sick or injured (serious mechanical debuffs) this is top priority! This turn represents time spent by the campfire at night if the GMs turn was a single day, or maybe a couple of days in a town that they've reached after roughing it in the wild. So generally speaking after trying to heal up they won't have too many rolls to do really stupid stuff with. Also, in order to "for sure" fail a test a character with a solid amount of experience would have to attempt to do something really hard or dangerous, and the failure would inevitably leave them with a condition.

Point being there's no really easy way to cheese the XP system unless the GM is a massive push over.

yeah some of the abstractions can be a little tough to swallow.

For example in the rules you can abstract all sorts of situations into "conflicts". This is fine for like fights, arguments and chases, but gets weird beyond that. One of the possible actions is a called a "maneuver" which is something to impose penalty on your opponent. This is fine in combat: sand in face, or an argument: name calling/Ad hominem, or a chase: throwing a stall down to create an obstacle, sure makes sense.

But if i'm doing a conflict about building a bridge over a rising stream (an actual example from the book) how the hell would a maneuver even represent? it's unclear, what's especially unclear is what it would represent if the opponent (the river, or arguably the season of spring) decided to use the maneuver action against the mice trying to build a bridge. Don't even get me started on how a river would feint.

I tend to avoid these situations when I can.

im curious

why would anyone even want to play a mouse?
> be small
> get rekt by everything
> die

That's exactly my problem with the rules. It's so meta and vague that it ends up halting the flow of the game so the group can come up with plausible explanations in the narrative for the stuff gong on with the rules.

I wish they'd used something more akin to Ryuutama for the fight conflicts. It's simple and straightforward without getting TOO abstract.

I very rarely tell my players that they've killed someone. I describe the effects of their actions on their enemies, and I find that the vast majority of the time, either a.) the information available to them makes it unlikely that they could conclusively state that their target is dead, or b.) the information available to them makes it so patently obvious that the target is dead that it really doesn't bear stating. Humanoid physiology is pretty complex stuff, particularly for an observer who is actively fighting for their lives, and who the fuck really has a good grasp on how undead and dragons and golems and giant laser robots work, anyway? Besides, it opens up room for since nice details that the players can observe; goblins might be inclined to feign death, but orcs might be so enraged in combat that they don't drop until they're stone dead.

Full disclosure: I've never played MG and have no idea what's going on here but it sounds kind of nice.

and
and
and

The game is not about immersing yourself in your character: it is about immersing yourself in the STORY.
So, unfortunately for the pure immersion crowd, you won't have 'full immersion'. It's about crafting an interesting tale, overcoming obstacles and conflict as a cooperative group, not about individual drama. The characters ultimately are disposable (they're mice!).

Could someone just provide a good example-of-play of how a fight conflict would play out in a 3-player party?

I'd trying to wrap my head around it, but it sounds kinda weird.

I don't get it.

I know it's /v/ but i can't help feeling that Mouse Guard would make a pretty sweet video game.

They just showed a psvr game at e3 called Moss

There's a decent turn by turn example broken down in the rulebook (which can be found in the pdf share thread) pages 102-110 just read the brown italic text.

So what i'm hearing is that mouse guard on "That Guy" is like garlic on a vampire?

I wish the comics were available online. Ordering to where I live makes me pay my ass out and I couldn't find them anywhere near me

Redwall = tiny man-mice with clothes, homes, weapons, and so on
Watership Down = real rabbits doing real rabbit things
GURPS does realism, or so goes the meme.

Pretty much, yep.

they’re easily in reach with google. I reread them the other day just by looking up “mouse guard fall 1152 pdf"

Good system for itself, though conflict can be a bit dodgy. But hey, I'm playing low tech mouse jedi, I'm not complaining.

GREAT for newbie GMs, though, and I recommend it hands down.

Actually, probably referring to Bunnies and Burrows, a 3E GURPS supplement for playing in Watership Down universe

Can someone find me an actual play session where the group has a Fight conflict?

I've been listening to podcasts and youtube actual plays but I haven't stumbled upon a group having a fight conflict yet.

Is there any useful advice in the 1E book for someone planning on running 2E?

MouseGuard as a setting is fucking top-tier classic Boss-level awesome.
all of it harkens back to the flavors of a bygone age of exploration and survival.

the RPG is just there. who cares, re-system the thing.

however,
you, sir, are right.

we live in the post-milennial age, covered thick in white niggers.
>yes, white
who knows how to appreciate such class as Mouseguard?
we want bling. we want porn. we want our character to be deep yet being such fuck-up thus we overwrite them so far into uselessness we get tropes like the snowflake, the donut steal, and edge.
we, the new generation, literally do not know why Treasure Island is fucking bad-ass and why Robinson Crusoe is shit on a platter disguised as literature.
we don't know why NC Wyeth or Durer was a thing.

even if we did, we'd call them racist and marginalize them just because they were old and white.

we are so entitled to lift our voice or type a reply we've forgotten how to really read and enjoy a good story.

fuck.

fuck this gay earth....

what are you even on about?

...

he's got a point
can't tell if it's tldr or not

I've ran 1 session of it, which seems to be more than most people in this thread.

Wonderful illustrations. Nice setting. Lots of flavorful details, but it doesn't overwhelm you or the players with big lore dumps.

The rules for family/contacts are pretty cool. Great way to weave your characters into the world, and helps encourage players to engage with NPCs and the setting.

Rules for conflicts (which includes combat, chase scenes, and even debates) are a mess. There's some neat aspects (choosing actions in advance before revealing), but also some really baffling choices that kind of ruin any sense of pacing or drama. It can kinda work as a "story generator", I guess? But as the GM, I found it very tedious, and all my players disliked it, too.

The character advancement and "failure" didn't bother anyone, although maybe it wouldn't work for a really long D&D-style campaign. I enjoy stuff like Apocalypse World and Dungeon World, so Mouse Guard's skill system wasn't a huge change.

Is a good way to describe it. It's really more of a "story game" than a "role-playing game". Although I think it has some of the same problems as a game like FATE: it tries to mix role-playing mechanics and story-telling mechanics, and ends up being kinda shitty at both. I'd much rather play a "pure" story game like Microscope or Fiasco.

>But if i'm doing a conflict about building a bridge over a rising stream (an actual example from the book) how the hell would a maneuver even represent?
An ally goes just a bit upstream, jamming some logs into a narrow point in the stream. It's not sturdy enough to cross, or even halt the flow of the river, but it can slow it down enough to make it easier for you to put the real bridge together without the worry of being swept away.

>> be small
>> get rekt by everything
>> be smarter than most other things
>> invent swords
>> form a society and learn to work together to not get rekt
>> prosper

virt did nothing wrong

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