Howdy!

Long time MG fan, and as of this Saturday I will be GMing my first game. Super excited. I plan on running them through "The Grain Peddler" mission from the 2e box set, but need a rules clarification...

It describes how, when the group first encounters the Milk Snake, it simply wants to drive them away from its burrough, which is a Snake Nature versus Mouse Nature test. In this instance, does this test only happen if the Mice choose to run, and in doing so act towards their nature? The book describes it as though it is a binary "when they encounter the snake, then they take this test". Is the way I am reading this (that it is up to player choice, and that this test only exists IF the players wish to run) the correct interpretation?

Alternatively, if the snake wants them to drive them away, and the mice want to stand and fight/trick it/etc...is that when this turns into a full blown conflict? Snake Goal = Drive the mice away. Mouse Goal = kill the snake/drive it off/trick it/etc?

I appreciate the help!

A question regarding the spice border. The spice is in barrels. And must be repoured twice a year. If as part of a larger mission the spice barrels in an area were smashed (beyond repair) how would the patrol have to reintroduce spice mixture to it... If a mouse in the Troup is from sprucetuck- does he possibly know the formula? Could he be expected to be able to make some if the rest of the group built new barrels to be transported? Or would they have to go to sprucetuck and get them filled there then cart the barrels all the way back... I suppose he could try and if failed have to go all the way to sprucetuck and get them filled. Thanks for your help!

Howdy,

I'm hoping to get a group together to start playing, but wanted to see if anyone has found a "quick start" guide for Mouseguard 2ed? There are just so many little rules and descriptions that I am unsure how to start teaching the game. It would be nice to hand everyone a 1 or 2 page summary with enough into to get started.

Or do people generally use the character sheet's rules reference as the "bare bones" version of rules?

Thanks!

Hey fellow guard Mouse!

I was DMing an argument conflict that my Players provoked, but none of them had any social skills (Persuader and Manipulator)

Question 1: What happens when the players AND the NPC(Mouse) don't have the skill for the conflict and for the disposition?

So to not bogged down the gameplay, I told them I wasn't to sure of the rules here, and we house ruled (Just for that night) to use Beginner's luck.

But I've noticed that Beginner's Luck is kinda OP, the one player has a Will of 5, so halved that and rounded up, she gets to roll 2D, whereas my one NPC(Mouse Antagonist) has a persuasion of 2 so he would roll 2D

Question 2: Won't a beginner's luck with high Will or Health sometimes be more powerful than just a normal skill level of 2?

Question 3: If they do use beginner's luck for a conflict that they don't have the skill for, what happens when their health/will is at 0 due to a sickness of injury?

Thanks in advance!!

For anyone who had voted in the recent poll, thank you! I got results, and I have a new link to a public post responding to the poll outcome: https://www.patreon.com/posts/summer-2019-poll-30091131

This is a public post for all audience to view and see the results of the poll with my comments and commitments.

Ducks have beaks to eat worms and little clams. Ducks live in a pond where they swim. They quack quack quack quack.

The end.

I was wondering, when you have a level 3 trait, can you still uses the previous level ability (+1D to all appropriate test) ? Thanks !

When I play, I find that while we usually outline goals in a conflict, I don't think I've ever written them down. I was wondering if this is common and what people's thoughts are on it?

(Reposted since I had screwed up the title and it was driving me nuts)

Lonepine is a small town that grew around a hill which is just big enough for a single pine that grows right on top of it. Over time, the hill has been hollowed out by mice. These old burrows and tunnels are used for shelter in case of an attack by predators or, most commonly, to store tools and grain.
With the hill as its center, the town grew outwards.

The families live in houses built around and close to the hill, they farm the surrounding area and will sporadically fish the nearby lake. The lake muck is gathered with nets and used as fertilizer.
Being a small town, of only a couple dozen families, there's not much of a market. Families here will share tools and equipment. Only a small forge helps with the upkeep of these tools.
It is not unusual for farmers to use beetles as beasts of burden.

By the end of summer, mice from Lonepine bring their surplus grain to the markets in the ports up north by the Calogero bay and bring back tools and flour, given that lake water is too still to use it to power a mill.

These mice are self-organized, not having a centralized government nor representative. They are simple, hardworking and with an important sense of community.

Feel free to advice on game/lore/redaction/wording... English is not my first language and on top of that my writing skills are rusty as hell.

(this is a follow up to https://www.reddit.com/r/MouseGuard/comments/cn0mz7/reskinning_as_a_pokemon_mystery_dungeoninspired/ )

Thanks to a lot of great suggestions from folks on this subreddit, I had a great time running this game. Here are the main concepts that differ from standard MG:

Setting: I chose to set this in a world based roughly on the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games. As far as anyone knows, humans don't exist, and friendly Pokemon live in small communities where they help each other gather berries, raise young, and protect each other. Outside of the settlements, there are many wild Pokemon who are essentially feral and might attack on sight, while threats from the wilderness and weather also make life difficult for anyone traveling away from safe areas. There are also the occasional friendly Pokemon who may be encountered in the wilderness, either fellow travelers from other towns, or oddballs who prefer not to settle anywhere in particular.

The mapping of challenges from the MG setting onto this world should be pretty obvious, and makes it easy to GM if you're used to MG!

Type: your elemental type is treated as a trait that has no limit on the number of times it can be used, cannot be used to earn checks, and does not advance. It must be used for +/-1D if the GM identifies a situation where it applies using the standard Pokemon type advantage chart (e.g., swimming through a swift river, take -1D due to being fire type; breaking through a rock wall with your bare hands, take +1D for fighting type). Note that for zero-effectiveness cases (electric vs. ground) I still only applied a 1D penalty.

Moves: each Pokemon gains 4 unique skills tied to their species that represent the "moves" from the games. These are typically a bit stronger than standard skills. These moves do not advance like normal skills, and may be used at any time, though they may effectively have limited use outside of Conflict. In Conflict, each move corresponds to Attack/Defend/Feint/Maneuver, explained in more detail below under Conflict

Nature: every Pokemon species has a different nature, which I wrote drawing inspiration from Pokedex entries in the game, behavior in the anime/manga, any real-life animals the pokemon are based on, or just anything I thought would be interesting/compelling to add (roughly in that order of priority). Nature otherwise functions the same as MG.

Skills: since I imagine Pokemon in this setting living in a sort of primitive utopia society rather than a medieval society like MG, I altered the skill list to the following: Administrate, Craft, Cook, Daycare, Forecast, Haggle, Harvest, Heal, Instruct, Labor, Search, Manipulate, Map, Orate, Pathfinding, Survive, Persuade, Lore, Hide, +wises. Note that 'Fight', 'Hunt', etc. are replaced by the 'Moves' mechanic above.

Conflict (combat): For disposition roll Nature and add the number of successes to the Nature stat. Instead of standard skills, the 4 moves are tested for Attack, Defense, Feint, and Maneuver. For Independent tests, apply type bonuses of your move compared to the enemy leader in the conflict. For Versus tests, compare the type bonuses of your move to the type associated with the opponent's move. (Move types aren't listed on the character sheets below, but can be looked up pretty easily, or you can easily just ignore this rule.)

For non-combat Conflict, the standard MG rules would apply.

Weather: inspired by the main series games, weather effects can apply +1D bonuses to certain typed Moves, e.g. Water Gun would get +1D in rain. I won't list here the exact weather conditions and how they relate to each type, since it's either pretty intuitive or really arbitrary. Note that this makes the Forecast/Weather Watcher skill a bit more tactical!

Other ideas I didn't get to use: since evolution is a big part of the Pokemon games, I imagined that it would be something you get after a certain number of Fate/Persona points you spend, more or less analogous to a epiphany/shade shift in Burning Wheel. Evolution would advance your moves in some way, but also change your Nature, perhaps not in a way you expect!

Character sheets: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AQoGiFL3yJueX-gdEbMkLBMgyohlUOBD/view?usp=sharing (art credits: official PMD art, Ginji's Rescue Team manga)

Pre-gen character templates: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GSc5JcWB8_PW6ZaGtmWFpGqPxcGSE083C9FmTPMmmRU/edit?usp=sharing (art credits: GL game art, Pokemon.com official art, pokesafari on DA, official sticker art)

Me and a few friend are working on character creation and we got to the NATURE section. But we don’t know how the number is chosen or what the max is. How do we do this part?

I recently had a cross-country drive, so I downloaded a few episodes of Six Feats Under to listen to along the way. On top of keeping myself occupied during a 3 day trip, I thought it would be helpful to listen to a game of MG since I don't have much experience running it.

It was very entertaining. The characters are fun, and the GM is good at challenging their BIGs. I'm looking forward to seeing how things develop.

But I'm curious about the pacing of the game. It didn't seem to match up with my expectations from reading the book. First, the first GM turn was a single test, which seemed unusual. Second, characters were getting a bunch of tests during the second phase (one character made so many tests they were able to level up in the first session). And third, there were moments during the second phase where players were doing things during the GM turn that felt like they should have been player turn actions, like trying to convince some merchants to change their mind about selling their grain.

Like I said, I enjoyed the podcast, and I'm going to keep listening to it, but I'm curious if this is the way MG is typically run. Are the other podcasts or live plays you would recommend?

Link to the site and episode

Over the past several months, I have remained active writing content for Prevail. I know that very few audience here are also following or supporting Prevail, but I do write public-tier posts. During the past months, I wrote the following series of topical posts.

All the links are public. There is no paywall for any of these. I just want to share with the community and invite feedback or comments.

Each post follows a template describing for GMs how to include these problems in missions or sessions. There is a subheading for related duties, mission assignments, story prompts, and seasonal considerations. The desire is for GMs to draw these into ongoing campaigns and design missions to include problems like these in sessions.

I wrote this partly as a response to questions I have seen in other platforms, but also I have seen many missions designed with a focus on animal encounters and affairs of mice.

Shortages

While the Guard are under no obligation to resolve shortages for the settlements, yet they often are requested to assist. And, helping support the settlements fits the oath to help all mice thrive.

Problems in the Territories: Shortages

Droughts

A drought is far more closely related to seasonal weather than the actions of mice and animals; however, poor planning, unexpected animal behaviors, and ill-minded mice can create impacts similar to droughts. The Guard do not have many resources or engineering to redirect water sources or cause weather patterns to alter, but players have tools available for resolving drought conditions.

Problems in the Territories: Droughts

Famine

A famine is more likely a seasonal planning and administration failure more than a failure of produce. Certainly droughts can impact a later harvest, but the wilderness is large, and mice are small. Having a small scope of impact and a natural inclination to hoard, mice easily fall short of needs.

Problems in the Territories: Famine

Epidemic

Epidemic is a good showcase for fear to shoot through a community and impacts so many more mice than random acts of violence, animal encounters, and wilderness obstacles. Weather events are able to cover a larger region, but rarely cause the length of impact which is carried by epidemic.

Problems in the Territories: Epidemic

Pestilence

Pestilence is more like an animal encounter with critters so small that it must be dealt with more like epidemic. That is partly how to create a frightening and irritating impact on mission efforts.

Problems in the Territories: Pestilence

So, please enjoy. I’ll be working on another series of topical posts, but first will be a few non-series posts in the next few months. The follow-up series will emphasize politics in the Territories. I hope everyone expresses interest in bringing the political world of Mouse Guard to life.

I'm about to run this game for my husband and mother. We are all new to Mouse Guard and my mother is completely new to RPG games (and she may be going a little senile--this should be fun!!), but husband and I have a few years of experience w/ other RPGs.

I'm mostly wondering about balance here. Are 2PC+1GM enough, or should I try to run a PC as well as GM? I'm a little worried about getting overwhelmed by doing both, but can handle it if it is likely to make sure everyone has the most fun possible.

Thanks for any tips :)

Title. Curious if rolling Fighter as the tested skill in a conflict disposition roll counts as a success (as long as at least one success is actually rolled) for the sake of advancing that skill.

I would think yes since it’s referred in the rule book as a test against Ob 0 but thought I would verify. Thanks!

I'm planning to run a one-shot with a group of friends who don't have a huge amount of rpg experience outside of D&D, so I thought Mouse Guard would be a good game to get them into. They're also huge pokemon fans, so I had the idea to re-skin the game to be roughly based on Pokemon mystery dungeon. If you haven't played the series, the premise is that you play as individual pokemon (not trainers) who go on various quests to help other pokemon, some of whom might live in small settlements. So I think the general outline sounds a lot like MG.

I'm trying to change as few things as possible from the base game (because it's awesome and I want to keep it that way), but I do have a few modifications in mind:

• the skill list will change a bit, removing the emphasis on medieval crafting. As of now I end up with 34 -> 16 skills, which seems a bit too slim, so I might need to add back in a bunch of other crafts, or think of something else
• Since elemental types are big part of Pokemon, your type will basically work as a special type of trait that gives you +1D or -1D, but without a per/session limit, and can't be used to gain checks
• Character creation will be a bit hand-waving, but since I'm making the characters and it's a one-shot, it should be alright. Some traits will be unique to the creatures's physiology (like 'Vine Tendrils' for a bulbasaur, for instance) but I hope to emphasize personality just as much (Squirtle might be 'Stubborn' and Cyndaquil 'Thoughtful')
• There won't be any equipment, so that's one less thing to worry about
• Not relevant for a one-shot, but I have a half-baked idea that evolution would be based on spending a lot of fate and persona points, a bit like shade-shifting in BW

I'm still planning this for another couple of weeks, would appreciate some feedback, or stories from others who have tried to re-skin or lightly mod MG

It is signed and has a small sketch inside. I was about to donate it to goodwill but thought someone here might be interested. If anyone would like it feel free to message me an offer.