Mouse Guard Diaries: Delivering the Mail, Part 4, Finale

Player Turn:

In the player turn, each player gets to spend a free ‘token’ called a ‘check’ to do one thing, of his own choosing, like  recovering from a negative condition, playing a scene to achieve an unmet goal or interact with the story in some way.  Players each get 1 free check.  They can earn more by using their character traits against themselves during the GM turn.

For example, during the 1st round of the hollow tree conflict, the Raven and Quentin tied in an opposed check.   Quentin used one of his traits to break the tie in the bird’s favour.  That earned PM an extra check  for the player turn.

(You see the number of new concept one has to digest to play this game?  I’m saying it’s totally worth learning, but I’m putting a ‘Steep Learning Curve Ahead’ sign).

So the player turn started with Quentin succeeding a Resources check to obtain a map of the area around the weasel-held area for the next adventure.   Daim skipped his to give it to Baron (injured in the raven conflict)  should he fail his recovery check.

When Mike’s turn arrived, he looked uncertain.  He asked me if his mission, something like ‘Prove to Quentin that I’m worthy”, had been addressed.  If it had been he’d spend his check on his instinct ‘Create useful objects for the patrol’.

Chatty (Thinking):  Hey PM, what does Quentin think?

PM (Looking up from his character sheet): Hmmm, no he didn’t notice anything that made Robin stand out during the mission.

Mike and PM then started discussing  facts and events of the session… it dawned on me what this was.

Chatty: Guys, guys.  Should we make a conflict instead of discussing this?

Mike (Backing down): Hmmm, I don’t know…

PM (Adjusting his “I haz Evil’ hat): I think we should.

So we set up an argument conflict. Robin’s goal was “Get Quentin to acknowledge that I’m a worthy addition to the Mouse Guard” whilst Quentin’s was “Teach the youngling that you must be ready to commit personal sacrifice”.

Argument conflicts are exquisite beasts.  The ‘weapons and gear’ bonus you get in them is with actual Roleplaying, adjudicated by the GM, and you actually lose dice if you repeat arguments yourself.

To say that Mike was outside of his comfort zone is an understatement of epic proportion… but then again, so was PM.  But true to his nature, Mike bit the bullet and launched into an attack argument  vs  Quentin’s dismissive Maneuver.

Robin: “Throughout our trials, I’ve made sure to be most helpful to my fellow Guards, always there, always ready”.

Quentin: “One needs to learn the meaning of personal sacrifice to learn what it means to be truly useful”

Robin: “huh?”

Other players have the option to jump in a conflict to help one side or another.  Once they join a side, they are committed to it and share the results.  Thus, Franky, playing Baron, joined the fray in Robin’s favour while Daim remained neutral.   Baron didn’t hesitate to outright lie to support his friend in the face of an increasingly stubborn Quentin.

PM: Hey, I’ve Bonehead-wise, can I use it to help myself?

Chatty: Sure, since it’s getting obvious you’re doing this to teach him a lesson more than anything else.

At a certain point, table chatter took over the conflict as the more extroverted players kinda wanted in on the cool action and several argument suggestions were shared around before it was brought back under control.  Which led to a great finish!

Robin (Agitated): How the hell can you know if I was useful or not, you ALWAYS had your damn snout in those map of yours!

Quentin: Why you…!

Winner Robin by a Knock Out.

At the end of the conflict, Robin had lost about half his disposition which meant that Quentin could negotiate a significant compromise.

PM: How about I grudgingly concede he was useful but he loses my cooperation from now on?

The table wasn’t satisfied with that compromise so we sent it back to PM, who was at a loss.

Chatty: How about we say that Quentin concedes to Robin that he is worthy but Robin ends up being Angry because he had to fight to get that recognition?

(Which in my mind, mirrored Mike’s chain of thought)

The compromise was accepted.  God I hope to play a ton of other conflicts like that.

On Baron’s turn, he tried to heal his injury and he failed.  Quentin skipped his second turn, getting ready to give it to Baron if  Daim’s help failed.  Daim made a Circles roll to find a Healer and located one.  The healer made a heal check,  succeeded and Baron was healed.

I had forgotten to make Baron Angry or at least Tired from the conflict as part of the compromise… immaterial in a one shot.

So we were back to Quentin’s last check.  In which PM reveled in his Magnificent Bastardness.

PM: I write a letter to Lockhaven, recommending that Robin be granted full Guard status, but that his temper and attitude had to be watched closely.

Mike: Bastard…

End of Player Turn.

Conclusions

I love Mouse Guard.  It’s such a consistent, enjoyable roleplaying game. It possesses all the elements I look for in a RPG to enjoy it.  This game will likely become my system of choice to practice in-character role playing and storytelling.  I want to play it again and I’ve actually convinced most of the group to start a 1 year “lets play once a season” campaign.

However, like all games, I have some reservations.  First, the rules suffers from under-explaining of its core concepts.   Coming from an academic background, I was taught to assume that readers were 10 year olds and that repeating concepts and definitions was ok.  Part of the confusion while reading the book was that some mechanics were explained once, had a really generic name (ex: “help”) and were never re-explained once introduced.

Were I to sit down with Crane again, I’d try to convince to write his next game using Monte Cook’s approach in Ptolus, where key terms were always bolded and a page reference appeared in the sidebars. This would make referencing/learning during play so much easier.  I know it would work because I’ve been doing a LOT or back and forth reading while working out the game.

Don’t get me wrong, everything to play the game is in there.  Nothing needs to be pulled out of thin air.  It’s just that finding and integrating everything is quite an effort.

My second concern about the game is a consequence of its mechanical simplicity.  Since this is a dice pool game, all shenanigans players go through during skill checks only amount to gaining or loosing extra dice or successes.  Thus, I feel that the game may sometime derail in a longish stories of little interest or significance just so a player can get an extra dice.

Then again, maybe I don’t get the math of what one more dice means… and frankly, I don’t wanna know.

As internally consistent as everything else is, I’d explore this aspect in a potential revamp of the Burning Wheel engine.

Bottom line, I will play this again.  And if you ask nicely, I’ll GM it for you at a Con t. 🙂

So yeah, Chatty finally converted to Indie games.