Hi all,
So if I am interperting this correct, then you would kill an entire patrol if they lost in a kill or be killed fight, with no compromise?
Would you allow a defend heal of commitment, to avoid a comprominise in the players favor?
How would you decide who dies if you have a 50% party kill, lose with a minor compromise?
I personally would use health rolls, with the 2 lowest rolls dying.
Simon Burling
It should be clear from the way the conflict played out whose character’s life was on the line.
Nobody dies because a bad roll. Even through a Health test after a lost Conflict.
You, the GM (from the attacker perspective), must decide.
When I ran my session of Mouse Guard (before the big BW pain times) I hated this degree of responsibility. I want to be absolved from it! So I said that I’d be killing the mouse that went last in the conflict or stating who’s at stake in the conflict goal.
I still think I’d struggle with it if I was running another session and doing it properly.
I’d go with this. From the fiction in the fight, who was in the most dire predicament? Who had taken the biggest beating? Who was the snake trying to swallow when he won the conflict? That mouse dies.
Hi! I might be playing my first Mouse Guard session soon, and i wanted to make some questions before hand. Since this thread seems to address this kind of issues, I hope the original poster won’t mind a little hijacking xD
“Traits are set on stone”: I would like to use the pre-made characters in order for my players to start playing more quickly. Curiously, the book states that the traits are “set on stone” and shouldn’t be modified. I understand that this has to do with the lifepath equivalent system used to create characters, yet i find it kind off ackward (from a narrative…and sociological point of view xD). Yet, i haven’t played any game using Burning Wheel System, so my question is: Would it cause any trouble to just allow my players to pick any Trait they wanted for their character? (keeping the maximum number of traits in the usual way)
Turn Sequence: Suposse that we are in the middle of the Player’s Turn and the players run out of checks; we are allowed to start a new GM turn, aren’t we?. The book semeed to state this at times, yet it could be meant to impose a certain limit to the game lenght (for example to put a limit on the actual time the players have to fulfill their Goals).
¡Thanks in advance!
It’s really a good idea to run a sample mission, with the sample characters, as written for your first time or two playing Mouse Guard. Treat it like a “trial run”, then have your players roll up their own mice if they want, and start putting together your own adventures after you get an idea of how the game was designed to be played without choosing to change the game before you’ve even tried it.
It seems that the hardest things for players and GMs to wrap their minds around when playing MG the first few times is that “there is no failure” (“failure” leads to twists/complications or conditions, but players still generally get what they want), and that it’s in a player’s interest to “fail” often during the GM’s Turn if they actually want to do anything during the Players’ Turn. If players earn lots of checks during the GM’s Turn, it’s likely you’re going to have a nice, long and interesting play session, and probably won’t have time for another GM’s Turn. If the players succeed at everything during the GM’s Turn, they are going to have a highly successful, quick and BORING mission. Make sure to explain how checks work to the players before you start playing, and remind them (at least during the first session or so) when they have opportunities to earn checks.
Hahahaha, you are right about the Mouse Guard Police thing. This ten years i’ve been playing roleplaying games i was more used to play some “mechanic-heavy” games (LotR, D&D, SW D6) were small changes in the rules would usually cause unexpected and unpleasent big repercussions on the long run; my question pointed toward that kind of repercussions.
But your idea of using the pre-made character just as they are is probably a sound one. I hope my players agree with it ^^
About the quoted comment, it’s not so much the “no failure idea” (in fact, that was one of the things that drawn me into reading the book) but the whole “GM’s Turn/Player’s Turn” mechanic what’s hard to figure out. But I’m anxious to test it!
Thanks for your reply ^^
Well, I have it on good authority that there are indeed RPG Police who do make house calls. So play at your own risk.
Unsurprisingly, I’m going to invite you to play with the rules as written the first time out. After you see how the game works, there’s plenty of room for customization.
Play out the GM and Player Turns. Give out rewards. Take a break for snacks and stuff. Jump back into the game with a new goal and new GM’s Turn, etc. Repeat until exhausted! The game is broken up that way to ensure that there are discreet sessions so that everyone can get a chance to play and be rewarded.
They better have some long distance call plan or something…
Thanks for the reply Luke. As said before, i’ll try to follow your advice. Hopefully my players won’t mind playing with the sample characters.
I’ll try to deliver some feedback once we play our first session ^^
Some of my more successful sessions had two GM’s Turn-Players’ Turn cycles. I recommend doing it if time allows. It’s especially helpful for letting the players see the feedback and reward mechanisms in place.
In general, however, we haven’t done end-of session awards in between the two sets of turns. I guess it depends on how much the patrol accomplishes during the first GM’s and Players’ Turns. If they’ve addressed their goals, do end of session awards. If they haven’t, save them for when the game wraps up for the night.
Do let us know how it goes running your first session.