Mouse Guard Diaries: Delivering the Mail, Part 3

Fight at Raven’s Hollow

With a failed Pathfinder’s check, I moved to the adventure’s first plot twist.  In a home brewed adventure, the GM would have had the choice of creating a plot twist or letting the PCs succeed but gain a negative condition liked ‘Angry, Sick, Injured’.  From my understanding, the GM is encouraged to go for the most dramatically appropriate twist and is offered multiple templates and models.

This being a pre-written adventure, the failed check lead the party to seek shelter for the night in a hollowed-out  trunk (based on Baron’s survivalist skill) occupied by a big-assed Raven!  Said raven was very curious about the mail bags and decided that it wanted them for itself.

Thus was set the evening’s first conflict.  We broke out the rules book because even after reading about them 3 times, conflicts are the most complicated aspect of the game (as combat rules usually are unless you are a game named Risus).

We divided the game in 2 teams: Quentin and Daim on one side,  Baron and Robin on the other.  We then proceeded to attribute conflict goals to each team.  That’s where each side decides what they wish to achieve by winning the conflict.

We ended up fumbling with the rules here… which lead to a somewhat inconsistent conflict.  The raven’s goal was pretty straightforward:  Capture all the mailbags and fly away (hence the plot twist as it would frak the party’s mission) .   However, the 2 teams ended up choosing diverging but complementary goals.  The junior mouse (Baron/Robin) chose ‘Slow down the Raven to let Patrol Leaders escape’ while the older mice chose “Flee with the mail and hide it from the Raven”

Now I missed a very small paragraph in the rule that says ‘if teams choose different goals, run separate conflicts’.  This means I should have played out the ‘stall the bird’  conflict followed by the ‘you can’t catch us!’ one.   We ended up playing the whole thing as one team fighting the Raven while the other made a fighting retreat and the bird trying to block any escape… it was a bit disjointed but we got to learn the rules real good.

Conflicts in Mouse Guard are played in rounds of 3 actions.  Each round are planned out in advance with teams choosing all 3 actions to be performed one after the other.  Each team member are assigned specific actions (a team of 3 mice = one action each).  The actions are ‘Attack, Defend, Feint and Maneuver’ (regardless of conflict type… the abstraction is nice and clever).  Then all teams reveal Action 1 (GM first, players second), a cross-reference chart is checked and leads to some sort of dice roll (either against target number of successes or opposed to the opponent’s number of successes).

Multi-teamed conflicts are further complicated but I’ll spare you the details.

Then the GM and players describes (as a narrative) what each side plans to do.  In our case, I told players ‘describe me what you intend to do up until the point of uncertainty’ and I did the same with the bird.  Dice are then rolled and this usually leads to ‘damage’ being dealt to the some or all teams’ dispositions’ (the conflict teams’ Hit Points).  Then the GM/players narrate what happened.   Repeat for action 2 and 3 and restart the cycle until a team’s disposition reaches 0, meaning the winners reach their goals.

I’m doing the game a terrible injustice but I’d like to close this series before Santa comes and gives me that copy of Super Mario Bros Wii I bought myself.  So I’ll cut the mechanics talk short and go full narrative from now on.

Here’s what I recall from the fight. The bird charged the mice to knock them down, to gain a slight advantage… after a short faceoff with Halberd-yielding Baron, it flew outside the hollowed-out tree to catch Daim and Quentin before they ran away with the mail.  Baron, boosted by Robin, flew up the tree’s interior, climbed on top of the broken trunk and dropped on the raven’s head, impaling its halberd into the bird’s skull, knocking it out cold.

(Remember, death wasn’t on the line here… plus Mice can’t normally kill ravens, they are too high on the Animal Order, I’m serious, this is a cool concept… Mice vs Wolf = Mice paste, Mice + Science vs Wolf = uncertain).

The conflict was ended… and we were a bit confused as to how to mesh the various goals.  When a conflict is done, the winners get 100% of what they want.  The loser gets part of its goal or can inflict a condition on the winners relative to the amount of ‘damage’ it dealt to the winners.  This is done through out of character negotiations.

So in essence, the bird had been stalled and the senior mice had escaped with the mail but the bird was allowed a minor compromise.

Chatty: Okay, then as you stand around the bird, it stops faking and tries to  poke one of Daim’s bag to at least get one letter

(A later complication asked for a mice NPC to do something foolish because she didn’t get an expected letter)

Yan: I really, really don’t want to lose any mail, it’s my goal.  I’d rather be hurt!

(Yan had not yet realized how bad being hurt was)

Franky: No! I’d rather take the hit, my goal is to see to the leader’s needs before he does.

So a compromised was reached by having players invoke goals and beliefs.  Really cool.

Chatty: Okay, as the raven aggressively pokes its sharp beak toward Daim , Baron shoves the leader out of the way and gets skewered by the raven’s beak.  Appaled at the unexpected taste of mouse blood, the raven squawks in frustration and flies away.  Baron bleeding from a side wound is now injured and might be able to heal in the player turn.

(Yes, you may heal after the mission is over.  In Mouse Guard, you usually get to rest when the job is frakking done! )

End of the line

The PCs reached Gilpledge.  Before they delivered the mail, they got accosted by a reputed artisan who was a refugee from one of the cities taken over by the weasels. He asked the PCs to help him go and recover a heirloom in the abandoned city behind the border.  The artisan was willing to argue to convince them.  They said yes (!!!), after convincing Martin (Daim rolled a Persuader check) to wait for late Spring (i.e. within a few days) to start off after the mail was delivered.

This brought the adventure and the GM turn to an end.  One test, one twist/conflict… about 90 minutes.

Up next: The Player turn, and an unexpected introvert conflict!