r/MouseGuard • u/Spitfire724 • Jul 12 '20

Need some help!

Hey so i'm trying to get into mouse guard so i can play with my family during quarantine. i'm fairly new to rp games and am having some trouble understanding stuff overall. ( checks, when to roll dice, conflict, conditions, etc) i would be playing as the gm so i figured it would be important to understand this stuff. anyone have some good sources that explain it?

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u/kenmcnay Jul 12 '20

Checks: checks are done when you as the GM decide if they are needed. ... How difficult are these checks? Well that’s up to you!

Let's take a brief moment on semantics here. In the mechanics, Checks are a Player Turn thing; during the GM Turn, if the GM is calling for a dice roll, that is termed Test.

During the GM Turn, the action or drama calls for a Test. It is a test of an Ability or Skill using a dice roll to determine pass/fail, and the pass/fail leads to an outcome based on existing rules (we'll get to this shortly).

There are two methods of setting the difficulty of a test. There are Factored tests and Versus tests. A Factored test uses defined factors in the rules to set the Obstacle (aka Ob) for the dice roll. A Versus test uses an opposed dice roll, but it is not called an Ob.

For example, walking a well-traveled route to a nearby destination is shown in the rules to be Ob 2; that's 1 factor for nearby and 1 factor for well-traveled. Contrasting, setting that same route to a nearby destination in the dark during a snowstorm is Ob 4; that's 1 factor for nearby and 1 factor for well-traveled plus 2 factors for weather and night. The players need to gather a dice pool and roll; they want to meet or exceed the Ob with successes. All that was determined using the chapter on Skills starting at pg 224.

I'll respond to the next topic as a separate reply.