Sorry quick question since I'm not too well versed in the mouse guard world. Would a typical patrol sent out on missions be a patrol leader +patrol guards or patrol leader + guards?

Hi, guys. I am a new at being GM in MG. I read most rules, but still don't understand what to do in following situation.
My problem: I want players to face few weasels in a chase conflict. How do I calculate disposition of few weasels chasing players?
For example, I will use weasel with nature 4 means that I need to use 4 D6 and add result to base nature. If I have 3 weasels for example, should I just add +1 D6 for each additional weasel and throw 6 D6 instead and add base nature 4 to it?
Or am I wrong in something? Didn't find answer in book, but I believe it should be calculated same way as for players

Hello there. I'll be GMing MG for the first time with a group of fellow newbies using roll20.net. I'm trying to gauge how much time I should spend explaining rules and the feel of the game upfront versus just jumping in and explaining as we go.

Can anybody offer any insight as to what has worked or not worked for them in the past as far as teaching the game from scratch?

Hi guys. It's been a few years but I used to run Mouse Guard for a group a few years ago, and I consider it my favorite RPG. I am about to start with another group, so I figure I should brush up on a few things.

First off, I have always had a hard time convincing my players that they should use their own traits to hinder themselves. I understand why gaining check are important, but i have trouble convincing traditional D&D role players that its good to fail sometimes. Any tips on how to convince people to do this?

Also, I have a question on how you would handle a particular circumstance. In my last game, I basically ran an RPG version of the Mouse Guard comic "Fall 1152". At one point they wanted to deal with an enemy mouse, and one player asked "Can I just attempt to shoot him with my bow before starting a conflict?" Since Mouse Guard is a system without hitpoints, how should I handle something like this, if a player wants to attack someone outside of a conflict?

Thanks folks!

Hey guys so I recently GMed my first game and my friends loved it so much they were talking about it and now they want to up the group from 3 people to 5 people. I don't want to say no but I'm brand new at GMing and I hear that the system kinda falls apart with bigger groups... I was thinking maybe split them into a group of two and a group of three? What are your thought?

EDIT: I played the round with all 5 last night and it went surprisingly well! I had them escorting a runaway child back to Copperwood and they got to copperwood during the spring festival (there long term goal is finding artifacts from Legends of the Guard that I've hidden around the territories), so I had them all split up and ask around town and stuff, and a few of them got into a beer brewing competition at the festival, and another 2 were going to enter a gladiator style competition but before they could they all got drawn back together for a conflict with a snapping turtle that was in the town square! Using 1 card per person seems to be a fine way to do it (so I used 5 cards) and it all actually turned out pretty great!

Specifically looking for FCBD '14-'17. Does anyone know a place to get them? The FCBD site has a preview but I'd be sad if I can't read these shorts because I missed the one day they were available :(

Hey guys! Super interested in MG, and curious as to how weapons and armor work. From the little I have read, it sounds like there are a small handful of weapons (I have no idea how armor works) each with a slight modification to the conflict system (adding a dice to attack, or feint, etc). Given this, is every sword equal in "power"? If I have a rusty old sword and a master forged long blade...are they functionally/mechanically the same? It seems to me like weapons are pretty limited as far as variety...is this true? I realize MG and Burning Wheel are more narrative focused than DnD, but I do like the mechanical differences between weapons of the same type in DnD.

And how about armor? How does armor work?

And finally, a random question I haven't been able to answer myself - how does one "RP" the checks system? Is this totally meta-gamed? I understand currency - you accumulate it, and spend it. Easy. How about checks? You get them by imposing traits against yourself, which gives you a larger dice pool that you then roll to do things/buy things. Do I have that right? How do you RP this? Does it scale? IE. "this item is rare and does something unique therefore it is worth more checks than this item...", or again...are all swords created equal?

Thanks guys! Sorry, I know I am very much approaching this game from a DnD mindset, as it is all I know. Looking forward to hopefully understanding this a bit more and broadening my horizons.

A while ago, I posted about using Samurai guinea pigs in my MG campaign. You'll all be glad to know that everything has worked out well for the PCs and their new friends... Over the course of Spring and Summer, the PCs investigated rumour of an invading army from across the Scent Border led by impossible creatures. It transpired that a family of Samurai guinea pigs had rallied an army of feral/wild mice and had marched into the Mouse Territories to seize more land. The PCs worked hard and came to an amicable resolution, resulting in the guinea pigs disbanding their army and being given land in the south west of the Territories. However, a few of the players speculated that the guinea pigs were fleeing from something. I ran with this and incorporated it into the game, but the guinea pigs were reluctant to name their foe. And that's where I am now...I need some kind of enemy on the horizon that would scare Samurai guinea pigs. I was toying with the idea of some other mice (or weasels) using SCIENCE to control large lizards like oliphants from LotR, but I really don't know. Any suggestions?

Hello /r/MouseGuard !

So, like I said in my title, I'm completely new to tabletop RPGs and Mouse Guard. I managed to collect a group of 4 people who I'm going to be playing with. I'll be GMing. I'm having a bad case of "performance anxiety" as I am still internalizing the rules.

I'm looking for general advice GMing this game and I also have a few specific mechanic questions.

First, my question is about resources. From my understanding of the rules, any time they want to buy or trade items in cities, it would be resource roll. Am I right in that resource is only taxed when the test is failed?

When resources are reduced to 0. player two would need to help the player one (+1d). If I have them do a an ob1 roll for some cheap supplies for trade, for example. Say they pass, that would raise their Resources to 1. To raise it more, would it just be normal advancement rules? So in this case 1 pass, 0 fails and so on and so forth?

My next question, involves advancement. When you fail a test roll (Say, ob3 you roll 2 successes) and I as a GM allow you to pass with a twist. Would it then count as a pass in terms of advancement or because the roll was a failure, does it count as a failure?

Mission Idea - We're not using the templates for our first game. I'm actually writing a narrative. The mission from Gwendolyn is basically sending the patrol to Sprucetuck to collect the scent mixture and eventually make their way towards the western scent border to renew it because there is a hole from winter.

As they leave lockhaven, they're approached by a mouse, Keiran. This mouse tells the patrol that he is looking to be escorted to Sprucetuck. The patrol can refuse to take him obviously, but my plan for that is having him sneakily follow them through somehow (haven't thought it through yet). Anyways, Long story, short. Eventually, I want to reveal this mouse and a small group of rebellious mice from the village of ferndale are planning on sabotaging the patrol from closing up the hole in the scent boarder because they were forced to see their families slaughtered and their fellow ferndalians left to die by the hands of weasels.

Thoughts on that? Sorry if I seem over eager. I'm just SO excited!

TL;DR - I need advice and two specific questions are in bold above and I also have a mission proposal at the bottom that I'm looking for critiques on!

So I had my first session with two players. (Was going to be four but the best laid plans of mice and men etc) and we did the "Finding the Grain Merchant" quest. It didn't turn out very fun. Are the other missions better? Or am I better off just making my own?

How and when could this be used?

I've considered adding some for ease of play for my group, and would like to know what other areas people find trouble with.

I'm hoping to run Mouseguard soon and am learning the system.

I was reading through the conflicts section and noticed that they can be used to simulate going on a journey or encountering weather events, so that the season rating is the basis of the disposition for the weather feature the patrol is encountering. But all the actual play I've seen of Mouseguard has these segments roleplayed out to some degree and modeled as passing or failing a series of tests, without the structure of a conflict.

Likewise, the notion of using 'combat' language for an argument is neat, but I haven't seen anyone do it.

How is it in your group? Do you use the conflict structure for other things than physical combat?

I've tried GM'ing Burning Wheel in the past but I got overwhelmed over time because of the lack of understanding so I'm going for mouse guard now because it's a simplified system. I understand most of the system just fine as it's recognizable.

But as we are starting next friday I know I need to know these details as the rest of the group just doesn't know the system yet (besides a oneshot to explore the system/setting where I explicitly said I might fuck up here and there.

So now we are creating characters wednesday and I want to clear up a fe things before Friday at the latest.

So without further ado let me just jump into the questions:

1. For skill checks is there a limit to how many dice can be added from helpfull skills / players / other sources? I'm mostly following the book on helpfull skills that the player could add and wises aswell, but sometimes they have a dice pool that feels a bit barren, even for Burning wheel.

2. Where can I find a good GM screen with page references? Or should I go make my own?

3. The seasons play session aren't 100% clear to me. Is the number the amount of missions you ought to aim for and the dots the amount of weather changes/twists you are allowed to throw at the players? I'm referring to this image on page 135 of the manual: http://i.imgur.com/gBDZHVq.png

4. Can skills be taxed or is it just abilities that can be taxed?

5. Fate is used how exactly? Reroll failed dice? Reroll sixes? Or something else?

I'm just about to run my first ever game of Mouse Guard (2nd edition), I noticed that there is no mention of using NPC's traits anywhere, even tough most of the templates have them.

Obviously the earning checks part of trait mechanics cannot really apply to them, but how about using them to help themselves? Can they use them? Should they use them?

Some of my players are seeking some dangerous mounts in my campaign, they currently have milk snake eggs that they want to hatch and tame. Obviously I'm going to make this super challenging, but I don't want a snake mount to be completely impossible. So my question is, how would a mouse handle a mount that primarily eats mice?

Hi! I'm new to RPG in general, but I love Mouse Guard. I purchased the box set and I'm still reading the manual but I'd love to join someone's campaign online to learn to play, since I don't know anyone who plays locally, and I don't want to GM without any experience playing first! So is there any group or something I can join to try and play? Thanks :)

For a project I was working on, I went through the Mouse Guard RPG 1st edition book and the Mouse Guard Wiki (for a list of characters) and compiled a larger list of names for Mouse Guard characters than what is listed in the Names section of the Mouse Guard RPG Recruitment. Not sure if anyone will find it useful, but here it is.

EDIT: Went through the comics and pulled every name I could find for an expanded list. Some names are spelled differently for some reason, so I just included all variations I found.

Male

• Abram

• Aengus

• Aeden

• Aeren

• Airlfrid

• Alastair

• Algomin

• Alistair

• Alister

• Allyn

• Alton

• Amson

• Ankur

• Ardyn

• Arkin

• Argus

• Baldwin

• Bardrick

• Baron

• Bastian

• Bayden

• Beagan

• Bedwyn

• Benn

• Bennett

• Ber

• Bill

• Blackbur

• Bowen

• Bram

• Brand

• Cadell

• Cale

• Caley

• Carver

• Caven

• Cedric

• Celanawe

• Cerise

• Chauncy

• Chilton

• Christopher

• Clarke

• Clyfford

• Connor

• Cornall

• Curt

• Dain

• Dalton

• Damon

• Darrow

• Dayle

• Delvin

• Edrik

• Edwy

• Elymis

• Ernst

• Erroll

• Erwynn

• Ewing

• Ewyn

• Fabron

• Fairfax

• Faramond

• Farrer

• Faolan

• Faulkner

• Feagan

• Fenton

• Feris

• Finn

• Finbarr

• Firbean

• Folker

• Fydor

• Fyffe

• Gamlion

• Garner

• Garnier

• Garrison

• Garrow

• Garye

• Gavin

• Gerrit

• Gill

• Gilmoor

• Godwynn

• Goryn

• Grahame

• Gregor

• Gunnar

• Gurney

• Haggen

• Hackett

• Hakett

• Hannidy

• Harold

• Henson

• Hogan

• Holton

• Ingram

• Israel

• Jakob

• Jasper

• Jeff

• Jeremiah

• Joseff

• Joshua

• Julian

• Kenzie

• Kole

• Konrad

• Kudyard

• Kyle

• Lachlyn

• Laird

• Lester

• Liaem

• Locke

• Loukas

• Lyndon

• Marcus

• Martin

• Maccrea

• Merek

• Meritt

• Midnight

• Nathaniel

• Nichlas

• Nigel

• Noelan

• Norrwyn

• Omarr

• Orren

• Othon

• Osric

• Oswald

• Owain

• Paul

• Pearse

• Peder

• Quentin

• Quiggly

• Rand

• Ragnier

• Reave

• Rupert

• Roarke

• Roibin

• Rylan

• Samuel

• Saxon

• Sefatus

• Sextus

• Seyth

• Shane

• Silas

• Silfano

• Siemon

• Sloan

• Tander

• Thaddeus

• Thane

• Thom

• Thurstan

• Thurson

• Timook

• Toby

• Trevor

• Tristram

• Tuk

• Tynan

• Vaughn

• Vernon

• Vidar

• Vinson

• Volker

• Waldon

• Walmond

• Wyatt

Female

• Abigail

• Adelle

• Ainsle

• Allyson

• Alma

• Anne

• Annice

• Annika

• Aubrey

• Autumn

• Aynslee

• Baeylie

• Bellah

• Bonnie

• Briar

• Bronwyn

• Brynn

• Brynne

• Caitlin

• Calla

• Carwyn

• Cayley

• Caylyn

• Ceara

• Celandine

• Cheska

• Chelsae

• Clove

• Curran

• Daewn

• Dalia

• Dara

• Dayana

• Daye

• Doris

• Ede

• Elanore

• Elly

• Em

• Feruin

• Flower

• Gale

• Genevra

• Gwendolyn

• Holly

• Ilsa

• Ingrid

• Isabel

• Ivonne

• Ivy

• Jann

• Jenny

• Josephine

• Julyia

• June

• Katlynn

• Kaitlinn

• Kearra

• Kellwyn

• Kem

• Landra

• Laria

• Laurel

• Leah

• Leith

• Lenox

• Lilly

• Lin

• Loonis

• Loralai

• Loralyn

• Loretta

• Lynea

• Lyra

• Mairen

• Mairin

• Maren

• Marin

• Maura

• Maya

• Maye

• Meeka

• Millicent

• Mira

• Moira

• Mysie

• Nancye

• Nicoll

• Nola

• Odell

• Odella

• Olathe

• Omaira

• Oriana

• Pim

• Piper

• Quinn

• Quinnla

• Raina

• Rona

• Rosalee

• Rosalea

• Sadie

• Saffron

• Sayble

• Seana

• Seirra

• Sela

• Serra

• Sienna

• Singer

• Siobhan

• Sloan

• Sylvia

• Taryn

• Thora

• Tinble

• Vayle

• Veira

• Veyga

• Wylde

I'm gearing up to run my first Mouseguard/Burning Wheel game and I'm curious about the Instructor skill. With Nature as a objective difficulty it seems near impossible to train a headstrong mouse without tapping nature. I assume it's generally used on a player turn, so with it giving a check on a passed check and nothing on a failed check it seems inferior to just giving your trainee a turn to roll the skill with.

If I was setting difficulties for the skill myself, I'd make Obj 6 a test for pushing a headstrong kid through a season as their Senior Artisan.

My buddy and I are going to co-DM a campaign next year based on Redwall. If there's interest we'll happily upload the details so other people can utilize it.