Mouse Guard Roleplaying Game
In Archaia Studios’ Mouse Guard Roleplaying Game, Luke Crane adapts his Burning Wheel system to the setting of David Peterson’s Mouse Guard graphic novel series. The player characters are mice that can talk and use tools (they’re bipedal, but not anthropomorphic in the furry sense) who belong to the Mouse Guard, a group dedicated to defending mouse society from the dangers nature, their fellow mice and other animals pose. Organized into patrols, they are assigned missions by their superiors, and deal with any other problems they discover along the way.
I’ve never played other incarnations of the Burning Wheel system, but I am familiar with it from various RPG forum threads, blog posts and podcasts. The Mouse Guard RPG therefore didn’t hold any great surprises that made me sit up and go “wow!” Nevertheless, it is an extremely well-crafted game, and it is liable to be a revelation to anyone that is not already aware of the Burning Wheel series of games. Because Mouse Guard RPG is targeted in part at younger people that might be fans of the graphic novels, Crane had to clean up many of the pointy bits found in his previous efforts, producing a clean, elegant system that drives stories and tests characters. This is a game suitable for almost any gamer, from older pre-teen to adult.
Although it is not classic high adventure, Mouse Guard is particularly appropriate for RPG adaptation, since the graphic novels had their origin in Petersen’s roleplaying sessions. The Fall 1152 series features a patrol of guardmice tasked with a simple mission that snowballs into something far beyond any of their expectations. How many fantasy roleplaying sessions and Shadowrun games have followed precisely that pattern?
The scale of a typical Mouse Guard RPG mission is smaller than that of a typical high fantasy game, though. Rather than saving the world, saving princesses or slaying terrible monsters, patrols of guardmice deliver the mail; reinforce the scent barrier that keeps large animals away from their towns; or fend off other creatures that threaten to destroy towns or simply eat their fellow mice. There are other, larger threats that the GM can throw at his players. Weasels seek to enslave the mouse territories, and there are always threats from within. I have even heard of a con game about pirates. You can happily play a small, rustic campaign without having to bend over backward, though.
Mouse Guard RPG missions are also rooted in service to the mouse community. The acquisition of glory, power or wealth, which tend to feature prominently in most action-adventure RPGs, are largely absent. Combat is not the primary form of conflict, either. Social disputes, herding animals, finding food and facing harsh weather and the other forces of nature play a major role in the game. I find a certain pleasure in these changes. I love swashbuckling combat as much as the next gamer, but it’s nice to have a compelling alternative.
The resolution system is a typical, almost old-fashioned, dice pool system. When a character is tested, the player rolls six-sided dice and every die that shows four or higher is a success. When you roll enough successes, you achieve your task. There is also a most-successes-wins opposed check system, called a “versus test”. The first sign that Mouse Guard is not just another Shadowrun or World of Darkness clone is what happens when you don’t roll enough successes. Instead of “whiffing,” you still succeed at the task, but the GM gets to complicate the character’s life in one of two fashions. Twists put new obstacles between the guardmice and completion of their mission, while Conditions place penalties on the character’s effectiveness. Characters can grow Hungry or Tired, Angry, Sick or Injured as a byproduct of their efforts. There are ways of sidestepping the whiff factor in any game, but I like the fact that Mouse Guard RPG puts it directly into the system, especially in a game that is targeted at young and new roleplayers who are more likely to find steady failures frustrating, or even upsetting.
Also, instead of a combat system, the Mouse Guard RPG has a conflict system that you use in any situation where there is an element of competition, rather than mere opposition. This includes combat, of course, but also arguments and debates, tracking and chases, or even a sporting competition. Appropriate skills are assigned to the actions that are available in any conflict, and then each side rolls for their Disposition, roughly hit points for the current conflict. Each side then scripts out three actions, and the tests play out against each other depending on which actions occur simultaneously. Players may roll independent checks, with each side dealing “damage” to the opposition’s Disposition equal to the number of successes they roll, or they may make versus checks, with the winner dealing the difference in successes as damage. Feints lead to a couple of other variants as well.
This is an interesting, and rather distinctive, system. It accentuates the high points of a session, like any other combat system, without being limited to fights. Mouse Guard is intended to be about community service, but it is also about defending what you care about, and conflict is how you do that.
That said, it is also a form of rock-paper-scissors with dice added. The proliferation of so-called simultaneous action selection in German boardgames has soured me on the mechanic, so I am rather biased against it here, as well. In the process of simplifying the system (compared to its ancestors in other Burning X games), I think a lot of its tactical depth and variation may also have slipped away. There are wrinkles like Conditions, though, and elements of resource management that I have not touched on yet, so perhaps it is not as simple as it first seems. I have not gotten Mouse Guard RPG to the table yet, and the proof, ultimately, is in the playing, but I am wary that conflicts may wear thin in a hurry.
Also, Conflict is only one chamber of the system’s heart. The rest of it lies in Beliefs, Goals, Instincts and Traits. Together, these provide a rough sketch of a character’s personality, and a guide for the GM about where to put pressure on the characters. They are not manacles that constrain how a player chooses his mouse’s actions, either. A player may go against any of these descriptors without penalty. Instead, a player receives benefits when she does act in accordance with them at least once during a session. Beliefs actually pay off, in different ways, for playing in accordance with them and for going against them. Each of them is a little bit different, both in the aspect of the mouse’s character it describes, and the reward for exemplifying it.
Rewards are handed out at the end of each session in the form of Persona and Fate points for play that is relevant to the character’s Beliefs and Goals, as well as for good roleplaying and for playing a key role in accomplishing the patrol’s mission. Instincts and Traits are oddballs that provide rewards as soon as they are brought into play. Both Persona and Fate points can be large boosts to a character’s effectiveness when they are spent, letting a character accumulate large numbers of successes.
In a strange parallel to Beliefs, Traits are double-edged. When they are relevant to a skill check in a positive way, they grant a bonus to that check (but typically only once per session of play). Invoking a Trait’s drawbacks instead, complicating your own character’s life by taking penalties to the current roll, is also rewarded. It allows another positive use of the Trait later in the current session, and the player also marks one or more checks next to that trait on their character sheet. These checks are a currency that can be spent during quieter times to alleviate conditions and to pursue avenues that the player is interested in.
The final aspect of the reward system is also an interesting twist. In order to improve a character’s rating in a skill it already has, the character must succeed at a certain number of checks with it, and they must also fail with it an equal number of times. That means that, in order to improve, the character must attempt actions that are at, or even beyond, its limits. This subtly encourages players to take risks, instead of just striving for safe successes.
The structure of play is, as far as I know, entirely unique. The GM’s turn resembles normal RPG play, where the GM presents the patrol with a mission and the players face obstacles on the way to the objective. Once the characters find some peace and quiet, however, the GM’s turn ends, and the Players’ turn begins. This is when the checks you get when your Traits bite you in the behind get spent. You can try to end conditions from unsuccessful checks, and you can try other actions to improve your situation within the context of the current situation. Characters can follow up on leads, train their skills, or obtain equipment or services. While this does not come close to usurping the GM’s authority over the world, it is more control over events than many games give.
Resources and Circles checks are also parts of Mouse Guard RPG that will stand out to old roleplaying hands. Resources checks are the substitute for traditional monetary systems. When a character tries to acquire something, he rolls his Resources skills, with a target determined by the value of the item. Failures decrease the character’s Resources ability. This system is not unique to the Burning X games, but it is fairly rare. I mostly associate it with spy RPGs, where it is used to depict an agent’s access to agency resources.
I am not aware of any system like Circles outside the Burning X games, though. A player declares that he wants to find an NPC of a particular role or position. The character automatically finds the NPC, but he must make a Circles check to discover the NPC’s disposition with a difficulty determined by how powerful or unusual the NPC is. Success means the NPC is favorably inclined toward the PC, while a failure imposes a unique twist, called the Enmity Clause, and the NPC will be hostile to the PC. Not necessarily violently so, but the NPC will usually end up causing some sort of trouble for the character that failed the test.
The rulebook includes three sample missions as part of its effort to be friendly to new or young roleplayers. They vary from the rather simple and straightforward Find the Grain Peddler to the difficult and less straightforward (but not actually complicated) Trouble in Grasslake. Each includes a complete pregenerated patrol tuned to play the mission. They do a good job of showing what kind of missions patrols get sent on in the game, but Grain Peddler and the middle mission, Deliver the Mail, feel a little railroady. There are some choices for the players to make, but all roads tend to lead to metaphorical Rome. Part of the problem is that they are not full-blown adventures; they are jumping off points that end with several possible continuations. Railroads are also an eternal bugbear of published scenarios for any RPG, especially those that use a mission-based structure. Having a mission tends to limit the players’ options by their nature. Nevertheless, it would have been nice to see more places where player choices have an impact on the mission’s direction.
The system is not the only unconventional aspect of this game, either. Most RPGs start – after a brief introductory chapter – with the character creation rules, or perhaps an overview of the default setting. The Mouse Guard RPG begins with the resolution systems, instead. In fact, the character creation rules are the last chapter in the book, even coming after the sample missions. Mouse Guard relies on a sample character in the introduction to orient readers to terminology, and the pregens for the sample missions. Character creation is treated as an advanced topic, and the crunch chapters about Traits and Skills come at the last minute, right before the sample missions, too.
Maybe I’m odd, but I prefer this approach. I always feel at sea reading how to create a character with no way to judge how strong a rating or how useful a power might be. A broad understanding of terminology, and perhaps a range of possible ratings, is all I need to understand most systems, though.
Although the editing is excellent on the whole, there are some small issues with how the book is written. While I appreciate the extensive examples that litter the text, they are formatted the same way subsection summaries are. Typically, you get one or the other at the end of a subsection, but the main text is organized well enough, and written clearly enough, that summaries are usually unnecessary. There are even two or three summaries that use nearly the same words as the main text of the section. The examples, on the other hand, are almost all well-placed and well-written. Most are taken from the events of the graphic novels, with the others coming from actual play.
For my taste, some of the sample goals for the pregenerated characters are a bit hard to assess at the end of the session. For instance, Saxon’s goal for Find the Grain Peddler is “I will protect Kenzie and Lieam on this mission.” How much harm must come to Lieam and Kenzie before he is deemed to have failed? Is it just the effort that matters, so the only way to fail is to let other parts of the mission distract him from protecting them? What about Lieam’s goal of “I will show Kenzie and Saxon that I am a valuable member of the patrol”? Is it a simple matter of a yea or nay vote from Kenzie and Saxon’s players? Obviously, each group can decide for itself, but I’d prefer goals that have clearer pass/fail conditions as examples.
The index is an alphabetized, in-depth table of contents. This certainly places it among the top tier of RPG indices, especially since the text is well sliced up into section and subsections. Nevertheless, this is more a condemnation of the sad state of RPG indices. The Mouse Guard RPG’s index is adequate, but not as good as it should be.
Finally, the Mouse Guard RPG is one of the best looking roleplaying books I have seen. Luke Crane is a professional print designer by trade, and it shows here. The typography is luxuriant, with ample whitespace. It is a pleasure to read the book and it is easy to search for a particular section or subsection, even. Purists may pooh-pooh how many typefaces he uses, but compared to your typical RPG, it is a masterpiece of type design. Even the shape of the text blocks rest attractively on the eight inch by eight inch pages.
All of the art in the book is by David Petersen, the writer and artist of the original graphic novels. His full-color line art has beauty and style to spare, and does a brilliant job of evoking the warm yet gritty feel of the setting. Much of the art in the roleplaying game is taken from Petersen’s comics, but there are a few original pieces, and they are every bit as good.
There are only two minor problems with the physical design of the book.
The first is the faux parchment background graphic used as a background for the text. In my opinion, the typography is so good that any distraction is a design flaw, and I find the yellow background a nuisance. The type would shine if left alone, and it would be a bit more pleasant to read to boot.
Crane uses icons to call out parts of the text that are of particular interest to the players or the GM, and particularly important rules. The icon of three swords that points to important mechanics is clear and easy to distinguish, but the player icon and the GM icon are not distinctive enough. They both show mice and they aren’t that far apart despite different fur colors and background shapes. Fortunately, the primary target of any given section is easy to determine from the text itself.
The Mouse Guard RPG is an excellent game. It propels story while presenting players with a wide range of challenges, both in form and mechanics. The fact that it is the fourth iteration of a system shows – almost every piece is honed and well-polished. I think it is important to play the game as it is presented, too. Bringing too many habits from generic stat and skill systems will short circuit parts of what makes Mouse Guard sing.
This smoothness has been enhanced by the game’s target market: fans of the graphic novels, including children. Complexity had to be reined in, and the presentation had to be made as clear as possible. For my money it is as good an introductory RPG as the hobby has seen since the original Marvel Superheroes RPG. It teaches how to roleplay, and it teaches how to play the Mouse Guard RPG extremely well. It is also worth the time of experienced gamers, though. It is not a dumbed-down game. It is a well presented, full-blown roleplaying system. While the conflict system may wear itself out after several sessions, that’s more high quality play than many popular systems offer by dint of their own merits.