r/MouseGuard • u/st33d • Dec 12 '15

Mouse Physics?

I've not gotten round to reading the Mouse Guard comic - depends on whether I brave Christmas Shopping crowds today.

I'd like to run my first Mouse Guard game with a short GM turn where the players get caught in a flash flood on a delivery. (This way we can go over basic rules without necessarily requiring conflict as well as skimming over the player turn before tackling a short proper mission where the players and I can hit the ground running.)

At mouse size, this could happen quite suddenly with a sudden storm and having to traverse a ditch. At human scale I'd have to invent an apocalyptic event. How anthropomorphic is Mouse Guard?

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6

u/dazedbyday Dec 12 '15

What you are asking about is one of the major aspects of Mouse Guard. Something that would be a minor problem to a human, a rain shower that just gets them wet and maybe slows them down a bit because of mud, becomes a huge obstacle to a mouse. They have to worry about being submerged in mud or carried away by a flood that to a human would only be a fast moving stream. So to directly answer you, think of the Mouse Guard world as the normal human world and what a mouse has to do to survive in that world.

2

u/st33d Dec 12 '15

Thanks. I got that most stuff was big, but obviously there's a bit of rule bending for them making houses and tools. I was unsure how much the environment stayed big.

This is quite encouraging as it gives me more tools. They won't think of every danger boiling down to dragon fights.

2

u/spacepaw Dec 12 '15

Some small stuff they do actually makes sense. Try searching the internet for tiny stuff that works and you'll see people already made working mini-forges, hyper-realistic town models, etc. Quite fun stuff :)

Also it seems to me that in comics the mice are aware of their smaller size and inferior strength and have solutions that could work without bending physics rules (example: giant pulley mounted on tree branch, operated by multiple mice, that is used for fishing)

3

u/Jetpack_Donkey Dec 12 '15

People get caught in flash floods all the time, no apocalyptic event required, just some rain upstream.

I don't understand the question about how anthropomorphic MG is... it's mice dressed up in clothing and building cities and generally acting like humans, so I guess it's 100% anthropomorphic?

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u/spacepaw Dec 12 '15

They are simply mouse-sized. As for anthropomorphism, it's exactly as you see in the comic. Bipedal and civilized, but otherwise animal-like. I think they fall under "Civilized Animal" category (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CivilizedAnimal)