This past weekend at GenCon, I was privileged enough to play through a playtest of Clinton Nixon’s Mouse Guard, run by Clinton himself. (Mouse Guard is a game he wrote as a fan of the comic by the same name, not necessarily with any intent to publish.)

There were three characters for the playtest: Basil, the experienced Mouse Guard veteran, played by myself. A fellow named Chris played Arthur, the diplomat of our group. The last character, the very friendly Ivy, was created by Vincent’s lovely wife Meg but was actually played by my husband Kit.

As with Dogs, the game started with initiation conflicts for each character to earn “badges” of honor. These initiating conflicts were very helpful because they helped us get used to the conflict system, which is a bit unusual in that it is possible for both the GM and the player to win their stakes in a conflict, since both parties set different but related stakes for their success.

Something else that we did before opening up the action was for each player to name a situation that they were interested in, to give the GM ideas for what the players were interested in seeing. Meg chose ‘ensuring the harvest’ for her situation. Chris chose ‘fighting an owl’ as his. And I went with ‘brush fires’ for mine. So already, our mice looked like they were in for some harrowing times.

With that, we jumped head first into the action. The scene opened on Mouse Town in a panic as owls were flying toward the town, seemingly intent on attacking. Mouse Town had a long-standing treaty with the owls, so there was confusion as well as panic – why were the owls attacking? Arthur went out with his quarterstaff, prepared to fight the owls for an explanation. Impressed, the owls apologized for frightening the mice and explained that they weren’t there to attack, they simply wanted to warn them that a huge fire was raging through the forest and would completely destroy Mouse Town in about two days.

Further, they flew Ivy, Arthur, and Basil out to see the fire for themselves; the fire was huge – there was no way they would stop it in time. Mouse Town would have to be evacuated, and the harvest sped up.

Upon their return, they still had to convince the rest of Mouse Town of their convictions. Basil found himself arguing with Jerome, Captain of the Mouse Guard, about the best course of action. This led to one of my favorite conflicts because I set as my stakes that Basil would convince Jerome that the Guard had to evacuate the town. Clinton set as his stakes that Jerome would be set on digging a trench as a fire break. In this instance, I succeeded and Clinton failed, but everyone agreed that it would have been very cool if Clinton had also succeeded because it would have meant that Jerome would have dug a fire break anyway, despite knowing the ultimate futility of it. Very cool stuff.

Meanwhile, Arthur found himself trying to keep the rest of Mouse Town from panicking (as mice tend to do) while he got the elders to speed up the harvest and have their food brought down to the river so that it would survive the fire. He managed to succeed his stakes of successfully organizing the harvest, while keeping Clinton from succeeding in his stakes of having the mice completely panic, so Arthur managed to keep things running smoothly to get the food harvested.

As for Ivy, she headed out to talk to the squirrels, who would be able to easily evacuate the children of Mouse Town on their backs. Clinton decided that before helping, the squirrels would want help rescuing the squirrels already caught in the fire. Kit succeeded in persuading the squirrels to help, but Clinton succeeded as well, which meant that Ivy soon found herself trying to rescue squirrels from a burning tree. Clinton managed to win his stakes for the following conflict as well, which meant that although Ivy successfully saved the squirrels, she herself was now trapped in the burning tree.

Luckily for Ivy, help arrived in the form of Arthur and Basil on the back of an owl. The tree had collapsed around Ivy, but the owl flew through the flames and swooped through the hollow burning tree(!) to pluck Ivy away to safety. But Clinton was on a roll, winning his stakes yet again, and he decided that although Ivy escaped unharmed, the owl was hurt in the process. The squirrels, grateful for the rescue of their family, carried the injured owl all the way back to Mouse Town, racing to stay ahead of the flames.

By then, the rest of Mouse Town had already squeezed into makeshift boats with just barely enough room for the mice and the harvest. Basil, Ivy, and Arthur were faced with a dilemma. Did they get on the boats and leave the squirrels and the owl out to dry? Or did they try and save them too? They chose the latter, and so there was one final conflict – could we save everybody? Clinton’s stakes were that if he won, the fire would destroy the harvest. We won our stakes by using the gates of Mouse Town to make a raft that would fit the owl and the squirrels. But Clinton won, and so the fire jumped onto the boat with the food and burned up all our food.

So in the end, our mice lost their town and their forest to the fire and were sailing in ships with no food. (“Battlestar Mouse”, Clinton called it.)

It was incredibly fast-paced – the story took about forty-five minutes to play through once we were done with character creation and initiation. Conflicts moved very quickly, and the fact that it was relatively easy for Clinton to win his stakes meant that our mice seemed to be keeping just one small step ahead of trouble.

Upon reflection, it seems to me that some of the qualities (used by players) and problems (used by the GM) to resolve conflicts need to be defined or qualified somehow when picked by the player. My second most important problem was “injured”, which I think would have been an appropriate choice for Clinton to use against me in several conflicts. But Clinton seemed hesitant to use “injured” against me because it was so nebulous. Likewise, the quality of “trained” seems a bit too open-ended as well, since it can mean just about anything.

I think it would be helpful for players to write very short one or two word phrases after each quality and problem to help when deciding which traits would be appropriate to resolve a conflict. For example: “injured – crippled leg” or “trained – diplomacy”. It would also help to individualize the mice a little more, since in most cases the mice are going to be sharing several qualities and problems.

All in all, it was very fun and I very much look forward to seeing a finished version of the game!

~Anna

Excellent game session!  How the heck did these little mice keep rising to the dangers of a viciously hostile world??  We turned out the kind of  harrowing tale that’s marketed to kids but would in fact scare them profoundly (not knowing the source comic, I thought of Secret of Nimh (rats, mice, close enough); that movie scarred my childhood with the profound terror it evoked.  Good scars, though.)  And the tale took us less than an hour to tell. 

There are three areas I wanted to comment on:  conflicts, relationships, and situations.  In that order, then!

Conflicts

Wow, those paired goals in conflicts are fun!  The GM and player both have goals, and both have resources to apply to each.  The goals simply can’t be mutually exclusive; the player defines his or her goal first.  Further, a player’s goal is bolstered by one of the character’s Qualities, and the GM’s goal draws on one of the character’s Problems.  Conflicts are thus always about that character being a mouse, right then and there.

Clinton, what’s your take on players working against their own mice in conflicts?  While it didn’t happen for us, it certainly came close:  that conflict with Jerome was so cool that I could completely see a player using resources to re-roll the GM’s goal-die from a loss to a win.  We were all taken by the idea of Jerome helping to send everyone to safety and then obdurately digging the trench with full knowledge of what would happen, but what transpired was obviously different.

Relationships

One of the resources a player has to affect conflict is a character’s relationships.  The player spends a relationship, and both player and GM reroll their goal-die. 

Sounds simple, but I absolutely have to mention that relationships tricked me!  I can’t believe I didn’t see this until I actually used it, but by invoking a relationship you’re bound to further complicate your character’s situation.  In our game, Ivy was trying desperately to save the squirrels from the forest fire.  It was clear that Ivy would get the squirrels to safety, but I was still fighting to ensure Ivy herself wouldn’t come to harm.  So I had Hazel, Ivy’s little sister, appear, reaching out her little paw to Ivy across the gulf between two trees.  I had my chance for a reroll, sure, but now Hazel was suddenly smack-dab in the middle of all the peril along with her big sister!  So very cool!

Situations

I think I would have liked to see some mechanism for a player to bring his or her Situation into play.  I say this because for the entire game session, in the back of my head I was obsessing about the “ensure the harvest” situation Meg had written.  I wanted Ivy there in the little mouse fields, pulling food from the ground while fires raged around her!  As it stands--if I’m understanding it correctly--Situations are fodder for the GM to help direct the game (and they’re resources in their own right), but could the player be given some mechanical oomph to get the GM’s attention?

Or am I looking at the player-written Situations from the wrong angle?  Are they “something I want to see my character involved in” or more generally “something I want to see regardless of participants”?

I look forward to seeing where this game goes! 
- Kit

Kit and Anna,

It was awesome to have you guys in this game! You covered just about all the incredible fun that we had. I'll address questions and issues:

I must not have brought up Situations enough. You get a free re-roll when you pick a situation.

Anna, your suggestions about qualities and problems are really, really good. I will most likely use that.

Kit, your insight about relationships is dead on. I should make that very explicit in my text.

Hi everyone!

Yes, that game was completely awesome, with extra goodness beyond that.  Having read the comics, I'd say it also fit the source material very well.  Most issues of the comic end with someone sacrificing their life for another- so I really wanted to push saving the owl in the last scene. 

I'm especially impressed with how agonizing the reroll choices can get- between achieving your goal or avoiding heavy cost.  I think it's just the right amount of resources, because it lets you go back and forth 2 or 3 times, but not more than that, so you avoid getting bogged down in a single conflict.

Chris

Kit!  Anna! (serving as both greeting and address)

This game sounds like a lot of fun with some very interesting mechanics.  I'm not familiar with the comic, unfortunately, but I love the fact that the GM and the player can both succeed in their goals and still have it be totally cool.  I've been trying to get my design ideas in line to work on my baby, and this inspired me in so many ways.  Clinton, I've never met you (although I theoretically could, living only an hour or so away), but you rock my small little world.  Is there any way to get a hold of a copy, without having gone to GenCon?

Nick

This game sounds so fun - and being a fan of the comic book I simply have to ask whether you've got any plans for the game, Clinton? And do you have a playtest document that one can get a hold of?
Best
Peter