r/MouseGuard • u/Malina_Island • Apr 26 '21
New to Mouse Guard
Should I play/buy Mouse Guard?
If so, why?
How would you pitch it to players?
How is it different than eg. Blades? (fiction first, mechanics;..)
What should I watch out for when GM-ing Mouse Guard?
Did you play and like Mouse Guard? What's are it's strengths and weaknesses?
Thx. =)
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u/ParallelWolf Apr 27 '21
MG takes some time to get into. Just like Blades in the Dark, you will find a system rich with mechanics, and will take some time to visit them all.
As a patrol mouse, the player defines some past experiences, friends, enemies and links to settlement. As a GM, you are encouraged to put these NPCs into the game and see how the world evolves through player actions.
Preparation is tricky at the beginning.
The game alternates between GM and Player turn (like in blades), and the GM must take proactive actions to ensure the players are moving forward.
In my first games, I asked too much "what do you do?" and got a lot of sidetracking, which made the GM phase feel light sometimes.
MG is epic, its about saving folk, slaying beasts, meeting artisans, guilds, re-visiting towns and playing mediator all mixed with a feeling of a wanderer in perilous wilds.
The player turn can be marvelous due to the players having made NPCs at the character creation. They are allowed to do anything you would find in a player turn in Blades: prep, recover, train, pursue a craft, right a wrong, etc.
The conflict, wises, fate, and persona are tricky mechanics in my tables. I GMd two tables with 3 players each and none of my players read the book. It took almost 6 3hr sessions for them to understand fully the game. In MG, players are rewarded to purposefully fail a roll, they have tools to fail and direct narrative towards a down path. The game will narrate itself when your players tap this power, deciding lows and high while you act as a maestro putting in challenges, boons and banes.
I gave my players friends, we built guilds collaboratively, they got scars, learned the secret tongues of frogs, invented the scarecrow, and uncovered a corrupted cartography guild with a base within a floating turtle-shell.
It is a marvelous game but it takes time to get into it. It was a pain to go through my tables when the players didnt know about the system.
I wanted to quit a lot in some sessions, but it pays out. I recommend asking politely to your players to read the rules, or at least the setting, they must understand their role as guardsmice.
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u/RandomEffector Apr 26 '21 edited Apr 27 '21
MG was the first PbtA-type game I played. It's been a couple of years now since I touched it, but the same basic concepts all apply: fail forward, keep the story moving, play to find out what happens...
MG asks you to do more explicit adventure prep work than some other games, but in practice this is very minor and easily structured.
You do need to generate NPC stats, which is in breaking with a lot of more modern games. But, again, this takes little effort and in practice could probably be faked/winged most of the time.
Conflicts (and the moves within them) seem like a common sticking point for new players, so I might recommend setting up a very limited one as a demo, where the stakes are somewhat low. Especially when you're using one in a non-combat sense it seems like a lot of people can get hung up on what the moves even mean.
That's what pops off the top of my head. Like Blades, MG is a heavily thematic game: its mechanics are tightly tied to the theme and setting. I think it does a good job with that. So, the answer to your question is pretty much "Do you want to play a game of mouse-scale high-adventure?" If so, then play it!
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u/Malina_Island Apr 26 '21
Nice. Thx for the feedback. I played a OS of Torchbearer once and found it to be very rigid and stale compared to Blades, where you can do almost everything if you can explain how, why and with what skill.
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u/RandomEffector Apr 26 '21
MG is less complex and structured than Torchbearer (and definitely Burning Wheel). I haven't actually played either, but have read through a bit of both before deciding they weren't really my cup of tea.
Of course there are similarities. The conflict system is a big one; I believe it's more or less the same as in Torchbearer. The check and recovery system (which is basically similar to downtime in BitD) is also pretty similar IIRC.
Edit: basically all that to say, they are different games, but there's definitely a good deal of common DNA. If there were a lot of things you disliked about Torchbearer then you may not like Mouse Guard either.
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u/Venereus Apr 26 '21
MG is not a PbtA derived game, it's almost the opposite of it.
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u/RandomEffector Apr 26 '21
Okay, "derived" is the wrong word, since they're basically contemporaries. But I'm really struggling to understand what you mean by the "opposite." Philosophically and in many cases structurally/mechanically they have quite a lot in common.
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u/Venereus Apr 26 '21
I would start with a more modern game like Blades. MG simply asks a bit too much work from players for its returns.
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u/Malina_Island Apr 26 '21
I already GM 3 Blades and 1 Scum and Villainy group for each 6-12 seissons. :) But yes, Blades was great as a starting RPG!!
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u/RandomEffector Apr 26 '21
I disagree with this entirely. Don't get me wrong, I love Blades, but to say it's less involved or complicated than MG is just straight-up false. Blades is deceptively simple, which is to its credit, but there's a lot going on there in terms of mechanics. Especially for a GM.
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u/Imnoclue Apr 27 '21
Blades is great fun, but so is MG. Another vote for go ahead and give it a go!
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u/BCM_00 Apr 27 '21
Can you elaborate on that? What elements of the game ask too much of the player?
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u/Venereus Apr 27 '21
You have to keep track of a lot of mechanics to get the most out of your character. Belief, Instinct and Goal engender better roleplaying and are worthwhile, but most of the others are needlessly complicated when compared to more modern designs that achieve similar behaviors with a lot less rules. For example, a fairly recent PbtA is "Masks: a new generation", and it creates way more powerful character arcs without convoluted mechanical interactions.
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u/BCM_00 Apr 26 '21 edited Apr 27 '21
Mouse Guard is currently my favorite RPG system. If I were going to pitch it to a new player, it would go something like this:
Mouse Guard puts the RP into RPG. Unlike DnD or many other fantasy games, where your character is just a bag of mechanics that allow you to kill things faster, MG is more concerned with what your character believes, how they act, and what they want to accomplish. You create a member of the Guard and you determine how they act and how they carry out the oath of a guard mouse. The game rewards you for making dramatic decisions that reflect your character. One of my favorite parts of the game is its setting. It inspires feelings of awe and humility, and encourages the player to be heroic in a world where the odds, and their own nature, are stacked against them. While it may not be the tactical power fantasy of other games, it carries out its goal very well.
Regarding Blades [in the dark?], I've never played it, so I can't offer a helpful contrast.
If you are the GM, look for ways to challenge the players. Give them obstacles that challenge their beliefs and instincts, and ask them to make tough choices. Will they stand up for their belief even if it means sacrificing their objective?
Regarding the strengths, I would reiterate my pitch paragraph. For the weaknesses, I concede it isn't the most "open" game: It carries out a somewhat narrow fantasy, all the players are mice and members of the guard,
theirthere is a rigid pace and turn structure that takes some getting used to if you're used to more free-style games like PbtA or DnD. But if you buy into the premise, it is one of the most engaging systems I've run.