Hmm, what did I miss

[mr_h]

Mouseguard looks FUN One of my PnP players has bought it and says he will GM it eventually. (( Aka this means he has bought the books and will read them over and over and think how awesome the game is and then eventually forget all about them because he's too lazy to run it. ))

- Obe

After someone on FUG pointed out Mouseguard I got a couple of the comic books and a copy of the rules. I haven't gotten all the way through the rules, but it looks pretty interesting so far, could be fun.

[richvalle]

Thanks Joshuha! I'll have to try and jump on fum again after you have time to fix it.

PheumaPilot: I'm not sure if the book expects you to already have the Burning Wheels rules and they just expand on it ala D20 systems expecting you to have the Core PHB.

There was quite a bit of dice rolling. Pretty much anything that can be seen as a 'conflict' can result in dice rolling. This includes getting into arguments with people, trying to convince someone to your point of view, a chase, ect, ect. Depending on what the conflict is you roll dice and get 'hit points' that show your success vs the opponents. We had dice off's where we tried to convince the town to let us use a cart (which belonged to someone that hated a member of our group), trying to find burnable materials, trying to drive off a huge snapping turtle, trying to find out where the turtle came from, tracking a mouse who had gotten lost, sneaking up on nasty weasels, running from one weasel, fighting said weasel, sneaking up on the remaining two and finally fighting those last two weasels. Whew!

Where the game gets weird (in my eyes) is that even if you fail you can still succeed at what you are trying to do but with a cost. Also, even if you win you might still have to give up 'something'. Depending on how much you lost during the dice off. Examples: our goal with the turtle was to drive it back into the water. Its goal was to eat mice. We won but had lost most our points so we had to give up something. It ended up being that the mouse that was helping us was eaten (leaving only his tail). With the weasel fight where we only had 1 point left we were left for dead on the field of battle in a heap of bodies.

The game tries to be more narrative where you need to describe what you are doing besides just saying 'I do this'.

And here is where it gets really weird and we had a hard time with it. One 'session' is broken up into two parts. The first part is where the dm runs the game. In the 2nd part the players take over and say 'I want to do "this" ' where this is whatever they want to do. You always get 1 thing to do during your session but can have more. In order to get more you have to give up things during the dm's session. Like, if you and someone else are tied in a dice off you can say 'I lose' and get an extra 'this' in your session. Or, use some other skill besides your best one during a dice off (I think this works...).

The problem we had with this is when were fighting a freaking GIANT snapping turtle who was rolling 8 dice every time and we were lucky to get 4 or 5 we felt like we has to throw everything we could into it in order to win. Same with the weasel fight. And once it was our turn we were at a bit of a lose as to what to do (the guy that was eaten was the one that hated our party member and much of the plot went down with him). Its hard to get into the mentality of 'I lose here so I can do something later'. It might be easier with practice and maybe in a different scenario.

But, over all it was fun and I'd be willing to try it again or play it more. Then again I'd play just about anything.

rv

[PneumaPilot]

Ahh, I didn't know about it being based on another rule system. That makes sense then.

Sounds like a pretty crazy system that is trying to do some creative stuff.

[Griogre]

Griogre: what did you end up running? 4th or CC?

I was kinda leery about 4E, was reading about it and not being very happy but trying to keep an open mind before release. You know how it is with each release of D&D - the new version is always going to ruin the game (actually except for the AD&D release) - and 90% of the players convert within a year.

I was completely sold after Xorne ran a pre-release adventure. For some reason the game runs much better than it reads - all the things I was worried about either didn't matter or in actual play worked better - plus it was fun.

I'd say about the only ones who did their job at Wizards for the 4E release were the play testers and designers, though. Management, QA, and Marketing (third party support in particular) were all botched - I'm in awe - I've never seen a successful product lanch done so poorly, its like a case study of how not to launch a product.

Despite all that I'm happly running a few weekly 4E games. It's such a joy to run and not fiddly and you don't need a program to make high level NPCs who die in a round anyway.

[Tokuriku]

Hey Richvalle, welcome back.

For my part I also tried Mouse Guard and it is THE game for me.
I mean, I have tried a large amount of systems but this is the one that works best for me for a number of reasons. But I best not get into those or you'll be here all night.

One things I advise people is try the system first before making yourself an opinion. While I read trough the rules, I was like: "What the heck, this will never work" or "How am I supposed to use that". But once you actually use it, everything just clicks. And the rolls are very closely intertwined with the roleplay. You cannot "roleplay" without having to roll sooner or later. This is a game kids can grasp and play but VERY deep for adults. If you don't like mouse, play in a Dune setting or something and it will work

My players where at a loss also when they got to the Player Turn. But after running a session once, they got the hints and now games are smooth and MUCH greater then any I have ran so far in my 20 some years of game mastering.

As a last note, here are 2 advices.

First, if you have questions, go on the forums at Burning Wheel. People are friendly and will help you understand rules that seem unclear. Even Luke Crain himself replies to most questions.

Second, (this is for richvalle) conflicts are not the best place to try and get checks for the Player Turn. Conclicts are the end of the line in a lot of twists so you should fight with all you have. The best place is to use your traits to hinder you in standard obstacles (the start of twists). Doing that, you get your check for the Player Turn but more then that, you have a chance to fail which means that the gamemaster should have to come up with a new twist/obstacle to keep the game rolling. You get a failure point to help raise your skill later and the story evolves and gets interesting... all good things!

20 some years in the hobby and I thought I saw it all, boy was I wrong. This game flipped my gaming world upside down and for the better. Burning Wheel is IMHO not easy to start with if you have nobody to show you the ropes. Mouse Guard could be a very viable introduction to it.