somewhere deep in the wilderness
The weasels, distracted by the unexpected appearance of their look-out’s severed leg, left their captives unattended just long enough for Black Mariya, hidden on a ledge above, to hoist her two injured comrades out of the torture pit. The survivors fled from the caverns and hobbled through the crumbling autumn leaves, struggling desperately to get back to Port Sumac. A bitter squall of late October rain threatened to drench them to the bone. As they huddled huddled around a hastily-constructed fire, they reminisced about their fallen patrol leader, Vidar Blue-Cloak, pierced through both eyes by two arrows. “God, he was fat,” someone said.
mouse guard’s a lot of fun
(if you like it when mice suffer horribly)
Last night we finished up our three-session run of Mouse Guard, one of those RPG’s that calls out, “Run me more often!” from my shelf. (Others who clamor: Shadow of Yesterday, Trollbabe, Primetime Adventures.) Mouse Guard has been out long enough by now that it’s already found it’s audience, but damn if it isn’t an elegant, low-prep, easy-to-run game that (in my experience) always provides a session that is at the very least entertaining. The thing is written in a way to put me to sleep, and they’re kidding themselves if they think the audience is children, but it’s a damn fine game.
the honeycomb dispatch
A one-shot Mouse Guard scenario, with pre-generated characters, that plays out in about three hours give or take. Comes with character sheets, GM record forms, a map, and other stuff like that. I think this link ought to lead straight to downloading a zipped file folder. But I’m dumb with this stuff, so if it doesn’t work I apologize.
Just for the record, the snippet of play above isn’t from the “Honeycomb Dispatch,” but rather from a session that grew out of it. Poor Vidar!
It was a lot of fun, even if I only got there at the last session.
Thoughts on mouseguard:
I find the combat conflicts interesting related to the goal of killing a foe. If I recall my rules correctly, you have to state (kill somebody) as a goal at the beginning of the conflict and characters or foes won’t die unless this is declared at the table. It makes the gamemaster goal of death on a player character in combat a big threat.
Also the GM adjucation of “complications” and hinderances after a conflict seems big-time GM fiat considering how much player “rights” are hardcoded in the game.
I forgot to compliment you on your highly entertaining weasel characterizations. Varieties of militant Peter Lorre dressed as Sarcens talking to each other about what to do with captured mice is classy.
James,
I love this scenario, and I’d like your permission to run it at Burning Con ’12 (http://www.burningwheel.org/?page_id=111). That is, assuming that you aren’t yourself planning to run it there. I gather you’re living in NYC, so I figure there’s a good chance you’re planning to attend the event.
Chuck Henebry
Chuck, you’re more than welcome to run it at Burning Con! Please let me know how it goes.