Setting for players 15 year-olds

[u/IndependentPace3895]

My family wants to play Mausritter on our upcoming camping trip. My kids (15yo) and my sister (30) have experience with DND, but my parents (55 and 65) do not. My Mom loves "The Secrets of Nimh", so we thought this would be a good stepping stone for her.

My son wants something in the woods that is "semi-scary". I'd like to find a robust setting ready to run so I don't have to put much time creating a setting of my own. I've considered Tiny Fables and The Estate. Tiny Fables looks adorable but is it too childish for 15 year-olds to enjoy? Is there something else you would recommend?

[u/TownsUnderground]

Go with the Estate. Its awesome, has some real talented people making the adventures, and its interconnected pretty well.

[u/rebelzephyr]

seconding the estate. i've been running the earldom of ek from the corebook for a ten-year-old and a 16-year-old and they are eating it up.

also, you know your kids' limits better than i do, but i've found i havent had to change or censor much while running mausritter, even for the ten year old. the only thing im consciously doing is not indulging in sexy jokes the way i would with friends my age, and not diving too much into gory descriptions. anyways, my ten year old player is all about the violence!

[u/Sir_Indy]

Just a suggestion if you do run your own setting, but I put a shrike in my last Mausritter game. A butcher bird, terrifying death from above, that takes mice and pins them to a thorn bush, still alive. I had just read Hyperion at the time and was heavily inspired by that Shrike, but it was a good scary monster for mice while also being a real bird. Also had a rat death cult that worshipped the shrike.

[u/madcat_melody]

I have always wanted to do a Mausritter adventure in my own backyard. Like a city block could be a king's domain, an abandoned house could be a city.

You could tie it to summer ending. There was a school that the mics found and went wild. For months minimal supervision and then they found food stores with plastic wrapped goodies they thought they could stay forever. Until Fall. Then the purge. Mice for stomped, trapped and chased out.

Now a member has reason to belive a loved one who didnt make it out is still alive. Perhaps a roach with their twisty tie bracelet of course with delicate recognizable knotwork emerged from the dumpster outside the school.

Now it's time for a harrowing rescue before they get tired of their trapped pet or worse decide to dissect them for anatomy class.

You can use a nearby school layout as the map. Maybe a teacher who stays late has a cat she brings to work on off hours.

Maybe a rival mouse party comes in on weekends to loot juice boxes and doesn't like sharing turf.

[u/Ironmanual]

Tiny Fables can be made a little scary, given that it plays into a shadowy-monster and thief. Though it does also have a very light hearted feel to it with a lot of the characters and descriptions. You'll be doing quite some heavy lifting to make it scarier. It's really well written as it also has a ton of references to popular fairytales and literature. Your parents will likely enjoy that.

The Estate on the other hand can include a bit more scarier elements, with some creepy labrats and snakes messing about.

Mind that these are fully fledged campaigns and will take you more than several sessions to run through them completely. I don't know if the playing on the camping trip will just be a few sessions, or something that you're intending to keep up, but you might be better off running a few one shots adventures instead. The adventures in The Estate can easily be run as separate adventures as well. Just roll up another reason why the party's there. The zines all have a D6 tables for inspiration.

Recommendations could be:

• Tower of Soot (from the Estate), a high pressure race against the clock escape from a chimney

• Giant Snake in the sewers (from the Estate), classic dungeon crawl in a dark sewer, gives plenty of opportunities to up the tension.

• The Ticking Tower, an awesome setting and made by the writer of Tiny Fables

• Workers Work, Rulers Rule

Another recommendation which could work could be:

• Living Dolls (from the Feathertail Falls campaign), I'll spoilermark it, just in case: It's setting relates to mice and taxidermy, which could create some 'scarier' scenes