I've played three more games of Mouse Guard in the past few weeks. One has been with my wife and daughter, the other two with my regular gaming group.
The family game went as well as the first two, although it was somewhat constrained by bedtime. They had to defend a caravan of parties supplies from some mouse bandits - this led to a fight, which was a great success. They then had to deal with a bluejay trying to steal cake, which they had less luck with. Continues to be fun with a young kid - she had no problems at all with the concepts involved in the conflict mechanics for the fight, either.
For the regular group, we played out "Deliver the Mail" and then a mission to see what some mysterious sightings on a certain road were being caused by
The intricate details of these games aren't really such a big deal - the thing Mouse Guard really shines at is ease of play. You can sit down for 5-20 minutes and come up with some good ideas for a mission, but if you don't have time for that you can just pick a couple of things as you crack open the rulebook at the beginning of your session. The characters' beliefs and instincts give you really big clues as to what sort of things the players want to see, too.
As you play, failed rolls allow you to provide twists to the story, which is a perfect way to elaborate things as you go whenever you have a cool idea for what could happen next. The trait mechanics encourage players to choose to make rolls harder for themselves in order to gain checks to use later (I can see this becoming more common as people play more sessions and begin to really realise the power that checks have), which contributes too.
It ends up with the game seeming to reflect the choices that the group as a whole makes about where things should go, but without anyone having to try really hard to make it happen. I continue to recommend this game!
Showing posts with label mouse_guard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mouse_guard. Show all posts
09 March 2009
08 February 2009
Mouse Guard: Actual play with family
Yesterday and today we played a couple of sessions of the Mouse Guard RPG as a family - me GMing, my five year old daughter and somewhat reluctant wife playing a two-mouse patrol.
I decided that I'd take them through full character generation, as my daughter is still learning to read, so going through a template would probably be more hard work for her than thinking up answers to the character generation questions. Being impressed by Saxon in the comics, she made up Autumn, a tenderpaw who wants to be the bravest mouse in the guard. The patrol is filled out by Trevor, a middle-aged slacker of a patrol leader, who basically wants to hang around the pub drinking at every opportunity.
Their first mission was the deliver the mail episode from the book. We moved through it fairly quickly to account for a five-year old attention span, but managed to hit all the main points. They failed the pathfinding test and encountered the raven - as a twist on an attempt to use Birds-wise to help on the path-finding check (she wanted to get a bird to give her a ride to see the way!) So the raven decided to try and steal the mail instead, and was persuaded not to via a very definite Loremouse check from Trevor.
They continued to Gilpledge and sorted out Martin, and then had a brief player turn. My daughter had a lot of fun and quickly requested a second game (which had to be put off until the next day). She did sit down later on to draw a picture of her guardmouse.
Today, she insisted we play another game and once we had all the chores done we made time for it. We decided that Autumn convinced Trevor that they should go and get Martin's chair from weasel- territory after all (to play up her desire to be the bravest mouse), so that was their mission for today.
Their first obstacle was to get across a flooding stream, which they did by building a bridge (with two carpenters along, an obvious choice!) However, the roll was failed, so that made all the mice tired.
Next, when they got to Walnutpeck, they found a weasel watching the road for anyone coming along. They tried to sneak past it but failed, and had to run away from it. We decided to use a simple versus test as neither daughter nor wife felt like learning the full conflict mechanics just yet (today's elaboration was the use of traits on top of the basic roll mechanic). Autumn made this roll, eluding the weasel spy and leading the patrol and Martin back to Walnutpeck to pick up his heirloom chair before heading back into the mouse territories.
Another quick player turn followed with Autumn successfully testing to remove her tired condition and Trevor failing (I suspect a late night drinking was to blame!)
Overall, a great success. I've played a few roleplaying games with my daughter previously but this is the first one that really seemed to grab her. This might be partly the age she's at, and I think Chris Petersen's art plays a huge part. Plus, in play, the fact that the mechanics are fairly easy to grasp even for a kid who is just beginning to read (lots of "can you think of a way that you can help the other mouse do such and such?" and things like that). The fact that there's no plain old failure is also helpful, as I feel like rolling and being told "your mouse didn't do what you wanted" would be a buzzkill for her, but being told "well, you built the bridge but now you are all tired out" was okay.
Looking forward to more stories about Autumn and Trevor the brave and lazy (respectively)!
I decided that I'd take them through full character generation, as my daughter is still learning to read, so going through a template would probably be more hard work for her than thinking up answers to the character generation questions. Being impressed by Saxon in the comics, she made up Autumn, a tenderpaw who wants to be the bravest mouse in the guard. The patrol is filled out by Trevor, a middle-aged slacker of a patrol leader, who basically wants to hang around the pub drinking at every opportunity.
Their first mission was the deliver the mail episode from the book. We moved through it fairly quickly to account for a five-year old attention span, but managed to hit all the main points. They failed the pathfinding test and encountered the raven - as a twist on an attempt to use Birds-wise to help on the path-finding check (she wanted to get a bird to give her a ride to see the way!) So the raven decided to try and steal the mail instead, and was persuaded not to via a very definite Loremouse check from Trevor.
They continued to Gilpledge and sorted out Martin, and then had a brief player turn. My daughter had a lot of fun and quickly requested a second game (which had to be put off until the next day). She did sit down later on to draw a picture of her guardmouse.
Today, she insisted we play another game and once we had all the chores done we made time for it. We decided that Autumn convinced Trevor that they should go and get Martin's chair from weasel- territory after all (to play up her desire to be the bravest mouse), so that was their mission for today.
Their first obstacle was to get across a flooding stream, which they did by building a bridge (with two carpenters along, an obvious choice!) However, the roll was failed, so that made all the mice tired.
Next, when they got to Walnutpeck, they found a weasel watching the road for anyone coming along. They tried to sneak past it but failed, and had to run away from it. We decided to use a simple versus test as neither daughter nor wife felt like learning the full conflict mechanics just yet (today's elaboration was the use of traits on top of the basic roll mechanic). Autumn made this roll, eluding the weasel spy and leading the patrol and Martin back to Walnutpeck to pick up his heirloom chair before heading back into the mouse territories.
Another quick player turn followed with Autumn successfully testing to remove her tired condition and Trevor failing (I suspect a late night drinking was to blame!)
Overall, a great success. I've played a few roleplaying games with my daughter previously but this is the first one that really seemed to grab her. This might be partly the age she's at, and I think Chris Petersen's art plays a huge part. Plus, in play, the fact that the mechanics are fairly easy to grasp even for a kid who is just beginning to read (lots of "can you think of a way that you can help the other mouse do such and such?" and things like that). The fact that there's no plain old failure is also helpful, as I feel like rolling and being told "your mouse didn't do what you wanted" would be a buzzkill for her, but being told "well, you built the bridge but now you are all tired out" was okay.
Looking forward to more stories about Autumn and Trevor the brave and lazy (respectively)!
16 January 2009
Mouse Guard RPG: Actual Play Impressions
Just a quick post to note that I played a one-shot game of this on Monday night, with the pre-generated "Trouble in Grasslake" mission from the book. We had a lot of fun, and the game seemed to work in all the places that reading it led me to expect that it would.
We had a few rough areas with certain rules, but nothing serious - they were all things that would be easily dealt with if we had a few sessions of familiarity (or just an actual book to flick through instead of a printed out pdf). We had a major conflict, which ran surprisingly easily given that it's more involved in the reading. That might be partly because a really good early roll made it fairly short, but I think that was pretty minor - the options were pretty straightforward as we dealt with each in turn. Tactically we probably should have all been thinking more seriously but that will come in time.
Most importantly, we had a great time. The mission played out well, with the major plot and main subplot both giving a lot of entertainment. We skipped one of the suggested subplots, which never quite fitted in, so no great loss there. I also mainly hit the mice with conditions as the result of failed tests, because that was what the fiction called for. The one complication that I remember came in the player turn and led to some great drama between the guard mice as an ill-advised action by one mouse became fairly public knowledge.
Overall impressions: fantastic! I am hoping to run or play some more at Kapcon tomorrow.
We had a few rough areas with certain rules, but nothing serious - they were all things that would be easily dealt with if we had a few sessions of familiarity (or just an actual book to flick through instead of a printed out pdf). We had a major conflict, which ran surprisingly easily given that it's more involved in the reading. That might be partly because a really good early roll made it fairly short, but I think that was pretty minor - the options were pretty straightforward as we dealt with each in turn. Tactically we probably should have all been thinking more seriously but that will come in time.
Most importantly, we had a great time. The mission played out well, with the major plot and main subplot both giving a lot of entertainment. We skipped one of the suggested subplots, which never quite fitted in, so no great loss there. I also mainly hit the mice with conditions as the result of failed tests, because that was what the fiction called for. The one complication that I remember came in the player turn and led to some great drama between the guard mice as an ill-advised action by one mouse became fairly public knowledge.
Overall impressions: fantastic! I am hoping to run or play some more at Kapcon tomorrow.
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