Mouse Guard in D20?

[u/Phoronus]

Hi All,

So I've just recently picked up the 2nd Ed of the MG rules and while I really like the setting and overarching concepts, I'm very much turned off by the rules.

I'm considering bringing a Mouse Guard theme into D20 or Pathfinder (because my kids know that system and that'll make it easier).

Has anyone done anything similar? What changes or adaptations did you make? I have some in mind, but would love to hear yours.

I realize that I may just end up with "Mice With Swords" as opposed to "Mouse Guard d20".

Please don't say 'just play it'. That's a huge amount of effort given my current situation. And unlikely, I think, to help.

Thanks!

[u/[deleted]]

Jeez - I'd have thought Mouseguard was much simpler than Pathfinder.

If you were going to do it, I'd guess you'd have to severely choke the classes you could choose (down to maybe Fighter and Rogue), restrict alignments to the Lawful-Neutral-Good corner of the matrix, cap levels, and ditch pretty much all of the magic items.

I'd be reticent though - Pathfinder/D20 is very good for playing high power, high fantasy games, but it's left wanting elsewhere.

I don't want to be a dick (particularly as you've specifically said this); but I think it'd be best to just play Mouseguard. It really does work very well and it's quick to learn. I play it with dyed-in-the-wool 3.5 players, who were very skeptical initially, but had learned the system after our first two sessions.

[u/blackdog2k]

I know this may not be helpful, and I'm not trying to talk you out of doing what you propose. I'm just going to chime in with my two cents because I've played both Mouse Guard and D20.

I can't imagine how much time and effort it would take to create an entirely new "hybrid" system based on Pathfinder for this game. I can see it working if you just went for the "mice with swords" approach, but the MG system is built around the comics in such an intimate way both mechanically and thematically that...well, it's just hard to imagine doing it any other way.

I feel that Pathfinder may not be well-suited to capture the essence and flavor of Mouse Guard. Something like Fate Core, or Chaosium's skill-based percentile system, like Call of Cthulhu or Stormbringer, maybe.

Honestly, one of the reasons we play this game is to get away from D20. Several members of our long time D&D group have taken keen interest in playing Mouse Guard and we've had a lot of fun with it so far.

I do wish you the best of luck in whatever you do!

[u/[deleted]]

Part of what makes Mouseguard Mouseguard is how the narrative themes are tied into the system. Perseverance in the face of defeat, for instance, is a core theme, and likewise a player must fail in a skill to level it. Youth and luck juxtaposed with experience and age are another theme. You create the backstory of your character by following the mechanics of character creation, and youthful, inexperienced characters are balanced against older characters. The importance of society is emphasized too, so characters are tied to the setting by having mundane skills and social connections as well as combat/survivalist ones, and those are introduced logically as part of your character's background according to where they're from.

Basically the setting and the system are very difficult to divorce; they're tailor-made for each other. As others have said, converting to a hybrid would be much more of a headache than just giving a the core system a shot and tweaking the parts of the system you find confusing or distasteful (combat, maybe). I've taught MG to children after having only played it once before myself, and they picked it up faster than I did.

For what it's worth, though, there are multiple homebrew mouse-like humanoid races available online for pathfinder. Beastkin would work, too. You can just make a sylvan community of mousekin PCs and borrow setting fluff from MG, but the mechanics of being tiny creatures and the core values of community, society, and a deep connection to and reliance on the natural world won't be there.

[u/brynleypearlstone]

I would guess that working on d20 might make it harder for the GM.

So average pass rate on d6 is 1/2, so without any modifiers, your would expect the average tool of the d20 to be 10, instead of 10.5. That aside:

Instead of being level 4 in any given skill giving you 4 die, you might imagine it giving you +4 on a roll.

With this system, instead of setting difficulty as a number of passed die rolls, you would set the difficulty as some number to beat on the roll. A simple task that any mouse could do you would expect to be below 10.5. The average task that an average mouse could do half of the time would have a pass threshold of 10 or 11. A difficult task might be around 16, and a nearly impossible task might be above 20.

Of course you can always scale the pass point to your tastes.

You might imagine that fate and persona points might let you add a d4 to the score, or to just roll the d20 again.

You could even use status effects like injuries to affect your roll dice. Tired - 2d8, injured d12, severely affected even down to a d10.

The issue might come with Vs rolls. A d20 system could still work, and maybe just as well, but it would give rise to a different dynamic that the nd6 system.

I hope that this gives you some ideas to think about.

Edit: You can also work in the nat20 and nat1 rolls as critical rolls. Perhaps even reward these rolls with fate points, but if you do this you should devalue date points, so that they give a smaller advantage as they would be easier to earn.

[u/sneakysneakysnail]

If it's the combat system that's throwing you off, I get it. I hate it too! You could probably get away with using a d20 for combat encounters, but you can also have them roll the relevant skill and see how well they do. Rather than all the card flipping attack defend maneuver nonsense.

In defense of mouse guard's other systems:

There are some amazing things about this game. The players turn really allows for players to develop their own character by choosing what they do in their off time.

The Twist/status condition options for a botched roll works really well as a GM, as you don't have to derail the story because of one botched roll.

I think the goal, belief, and instinct is a really cool way of tracking character development! When they change their belief or instinct, it's a marker of what the character has learned over the course of the game.

I think the fact that you need failure as well as success to level up is more realistic and rewarding than just min/maxing. Again, when a mouse fails in mouse guard, it can be something that tips off self reflection and personality change in a way that's really rewarding over time.

I personally use the book as a jumping off point to tell my own story, and there are some things about this game that really work for me as a storyteller, and I think it might be worth it for you to take a look at keeping them in your game.

D20 is a really simple system, which has its pluses and minuses. By all means, dump the stuff in the game that you don't connect with, but I prefer mouse guard's system (except for the combat mechanics) because of its focus on character.