Mouse Guard

I picked up the Mouse Guard RPG at PAX after the designer impressed me with his analytic skill and I enjoyed a demo session. It’s a simplified version of the Burning Wheel system set in the world of the Mouse Guard comics by David Petersen.

Burning Wheel itself has won awards and is well-known in the indie RPG scene. I’ve never played it, but the sample chapters I’ve read commit several pretentious indie sins. Worst is that it uses obscure or inappropriate words for existing RPG concepts that have conventional names. Your numeric rating in a skill is not its “rating” nor its “rank” nor its “level”. It’s the “exponent”. (Yes. Really.) The rough equivalent of Experience Points are called “Artha”, which is not an English word and is not pronounced the way you probably think it is if you’ve never seen it before.

Mouse Guard solved the terminology problem, thankfully. On the other hand, it’s still verbose, with longer examples and more reminder explanations than it needs, to the point where some explanations contradict rules elsewhere. (This is a perennial problem of “helpful reminders” in rulebooks.) Another thing I’ve noticed is how tightly it’s tied to the source material. The character generation rules only create guardsmice (which is fine for what they’re meant for, just limiting elsewise) and are littered with special cases and exceptions to steer characters into closer alignment with game world norms — tweak this stat up if you did this in your childhood, cap that skill at rank N if you’re not related to your tradeskill mentor, etc. etc. for an entire chapter.

There are two types of task resolution. The shorter of the two is the Test, and it’s nothing new to RPG vets: the character trying to do something rolls a number of 6-sided dice equal to her most-relevant skill rating, with bonus dice from her equipment, related skills and traits, and party assistance, and counts how many dice come up 4+. If that number meets a certain minimum, she succeeds, otherwise — well, this is mainly a narrative game, so maybe she fails, or maybe she succeeds but gets injured, or maybe there’s a plot twist and now she has to do something else too. Whatever the play group thinks is most interesting.

The longer resolution method is the Conflict. It’s a clever device that lets the entire team pitch in. Each side starts with an initial disposition representing the strength of their side’s standing. Then the Conflict plays out in rounds, with both sides committing blindly to a series of three actions from different team members. The actions are revealed one at a time, in parallel, and one or both sides might get to roll for effect depending on the matchup. (For instance, if we both Attack, we both hurt each other. If you Defend and I Feint, I trump you and get to hurt you while you do nothing.) If both sides are still standing at the end of a round, do another one.

I suppose all I have to do now is remember how to be a GM.