FIELD DAY FEVER (a zzzman74 custom scenario)

Mouse Guard Missions
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FIELD DAY FEVER
A custom Mouse Guard scenario by ZzzMan74
Official Con scenario for QCC Con, Buffalo NY

BACKGROUND:

The patrol is currently in Sprucetuck after completing a late summer mission to deliver ingredients to the Scent production facility there. Two mice begin with random conditions. Allow one player to narrate the back-story if he is feeling creative. Allow the players with conditions to describe how they were afflicted.

INTRO:

While resting and recovering, a letter arrives from Gwendolyn instructing the patrol to travel to Elmoss for the Field Day Festival, the annual Mouse Territory sporting competition. There, they are to set up a recruiting station and recruit mice to join the Mouse Guard. In the past, this event has proven to be an important source of new recruits. While preparing to leave the next day, the sky appears grey and overcast, threatening stormy weather. The mice know that if the weather is bad, the turn out for Field Day will be poor and that will likely affect their ability to recruit. Players may optionally choose to do a WEATHER WATCHER TEST VS AUTUMN NATURE 6
• Success: MG sets the weather for the Field Day Festival
• Fail: it rains throughout the festival. Turnout is worse than usual
• These results will effect the first OB below

ARRIVAL IN ELMOSS:

The journey is uneventful although the weather has taken a turn toward cooler fall temperatures. Elmoss is in full Field Day mode with decorations, musicians, vendors, performers, and lots and lots of food. The large field to the east of the town is roped off into sections, to separate various sporting events. A small impromptu city of tents surrounds the Fields and in the center of this is a Bazaar. The MG locate the Field Day Director of Events and last year’s Maiden of the Flowers pagent winner, Loretta. She should be the enemy of one of the players, perhaps a scorned lover. She is beautiful but industrious and appears very busy. She instructs the patrol that payment has already been received from Lockhaven, securing a stall in the busy center of the Bazaar. She politely rushes on then but sneezes loudly before she leaves. “It must be my allergies”, she says as she leaves. Her eyes look wet and red. She sneezes again. And again.

THE RECRUITMENT:

This will be an OB 3 (nice weather) or OB 6 (bad weather) PERSUADER test. The rolling mouse must use PERSUADER, but the helpers can use any skill that they can roleplay and justify as helping the recruiting effort in some way. For every success they get at or above the OB#, they recruit one mouse. Some potential recruits are:
• Remmy, the bakers son who wants to be a warrior
• Belinda, quiet and determined
• Maquetta, tough and outspoken
• “Goose”, long and gangly, eager to serve
• Glamroon, fat but immensely strong

Take a few minutes and describe some of the highlights of the festival before moving on.

If the recruitment test is failed, a sparrow lands in the center of the Field, scattering away frightened athletes and the crowds in the bleachers. Mice run for safety while the bird hops around pecking at tasty morsels of food left behind. The guardmice rush over to chase the animal off. This will be a brief and simple FIGHTER VS BIRD NATURE 5 TEST.
• If the MG wins, they notice a group of 3 young athletes watching intently from a distance. They are eager young mice who secretly wish to join the guard but are too nervous to approach the guardmice. They would be willing to discuss opportunities with the Guard, but only after the Field Day Festival is over and they have had the opportunity to compete.
• They are: Gregor: a young and talented archer, Madeline a young exuberant mouse who is an excellent baker, and Jack a wide-eyed young mouse who hopes to win the wrestling competition.
• If the bird wins, two of the mice take the conditions INJURED and TIRED.

DAY TWO:

There is a buzz about the bazaar early the next morning. Numerous athletes and judges are bedridden with some sort of illness. They are too sick to participate. Loretta herself arrives to speak with the MG. She looks positively awful, barely able to stand. She sneezes repeatedly into a kerchief before asking if the MG has any medicine to spare. She swoons and faints. With Loretta incapacitated, the Festival grinds to a halt and all events are postponed. The guardmice notice that many of the locals look very ill. Not much time later, Trudy, the wife of Foswick a head Field Day Judge comes looking for medicine also. She is followed by numerous other seeking the Guard’s aid. The patrol realizes that something must be done.

This will be a custom MEDICAL CONFLICT:
Each action takes place over one day.

Attack: Scientist, to discover and make medicine
Defend: Healer, to treat the sick
Feint: Healer, to try new treatments
Maneuver: Laborer, to move the sick, quarantine, gather and distribute supplies and medicine

“THE FIELD DAY FEVER”
Disposition: 9
Attack: 7, mice become ill, it spreads
Defend: 7, it mutates and gains strength
Feint: 7, it lies dormant waiting….
Maneuver 7, it spreads to new locations and gets more out of control

After the conflict, enter the PLAYER TURN

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Great stuff again, Z! I’m definitely going to run this for my group.

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I think Id like to edit the first OBSTACLE where the MG tries to recruit mice. I think the final outcome should be a SINGLE mouse signs up but the excess mice are simply interested. Those mice will require a follow up visit later in the player turn.

I think this will create more tension for the players since they may not want to return with only a single recruit. Also, in my reconstructed con scenario, one mouse has the goal of recruiting “one more mouse” than his fellow patrolmate! (He is competitive that way). For the con, this will maintain the balance needed to keep his goal attainable. The two guardmice can compete in the PLAYER TURN and very likely may not actually help each other.

Here are the pregen Goals:

  1. Recruit at least one mouse
  2. Win back Loretta’s heart (she is the mouses enemy since she refused his love ovatures in favor of another mouse who she isn’t with now)
  3. SLOAN character will take the goal: recruit one more mouse than whoever takes the 'recruit one mouse ’ goal
    4.the patrol leader takes the goal: find evidence to support my fear that Sloan is a liar and schemer and shouldn’t be promoted to guardmouse.
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I played this with my group and they loved it. The idea of using checks in the players turn to finish off recruitment was a good one, as it forced them to really think about how to best use their resources to complete their goals and the mission.

Thanks for sharing!

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This mission was a big hit at our local con. However, being a critical GM, I always think: what could be better. Here are my after game thoughts:

  1. Make sure EACH mouse has something personally at stake in the mission, ideally with BIG or friend/enemy.
  2. For this mission, in the PLAYERS TURN, the guardmice will likely spend checks to try to recruit more mice. I would build in extra complexities to this process. Such as a recruit wanting to visit his parents in a nearby town first (travel &danger involved). Or the recruit is friends with a character’s enemy and he then creates a scene and discourages other recruits. Or things like that.

If anyone has ideas to make this mission better, post ideas here.

The conflict with the sickness went over really well! Overall, the players really got into the mission and roleplaued it up.

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I ran this recently for my group of new Mouse Guard players. They enjoyed the idea, and were very disheartened when they only managed to recruit one mouse. Their next mission will involve escorting a large caravan of supplies to Lockhaven, and bringing the new recruit along.

One point I wanted to note was that I felt the fever itself was very easy to defeat. My players broke into three teams; one team of one player with the goal of making sure that supplies were where they were needed, and two teams of two. The two player teams had the goals of “cure the disease” and “save as many mice as possible”. I felt it was fair to let them break into three teams with these goals, but the result was they crushed the fever in about two actions. Part of that was a couple of pretty bad rolls on my part, but mostly the fever didn’t have enough disposition to stand a chance. This is all despite the fact that no mice in the patrol actually possessed the Laborer or Scientist skills. They did Beginner’s Luck to try to learn them. They did have two very skilled Healers.

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Thanks for the feedback. The main idea here was to create and experience a new sort of conflict type. To be fair, that wasn’t my original idea to use fighting an illness. I borrowed it from a fellow fan here in the forums.

Anyway, I’ve never had my players split into teams so that’s new to me. But it’s always easy to scale the difficulty by adjusting the disposition of the conflict higher or lower.

I hope you had fun all the same!

Zzzman