Getting Started Hacking

We want you to hack this game. We want to hack this game!

There are a few things this game requires in order to run:
• Team-based adventure
• An implacable, over-arching force (of nature)
• Dramatic adventure that focuses on fighting for what you believe in

If your idea doesn’t have those three elements, it’s not going to work as a hack of Mouse Guard.

When hacking, these elements are most important:
• Premise – What’s this about? What do characters do in this setting?
• Missions – What kind of missions do the characters go on?
• Conflicts – Does the setting require new conflicts? How do they work?
• Weapons – What are the weapons for the conflicts?
• Overarching Conflict – If your setting isn’t about outdoor survivalism, what’s the overarching conflict? What’s the implacable force?
• Territories – What are the Territories for this setting?
• Denizens – What creatures or NPCs populate the setting?
• Skills – Your setting’s going to need new skills!
• Abilities – Come up with new obstacles for Circles and Resources for your game.
• Traits – What are the traits for your setting? These are easy to come up with!
• Recruitment – This is the biggie. Recreate the Recruitment section so that it fits your setting! Rename the steps, but keep the same number of steps and the same point totals.

Hacks we want to see: Star Mouse (Star Wars), Mouse Punk (Cyberpunk), Mouse Run or Shadow Mouse (Shadowrun) and Twilight Mouse (Twilight 2000).

Squeak of Cthulhu?

Oh, droll… We need another thread just for brainstorming hack titles. :^)

Call of Moosethulhu.

Start another thread!

I was thinking much the same…

And then my daughter wanted to watch Dora the Explorer…

Mouse Guard has almost everything needed to do Dora or Diego… the only thing is scaling up two scales, and allowing some animals to have Will and Health like mice (children always do); animals must keep nature as the highest attribute, but one of the two may be equal. Instead of mice, the PC’s are young children and talking animals. Treat them all as guardsmice… littler children as tenderfeet, and “tweens” as leaders…

It even follows the adventure format…

Events 1-4 occur on the way to or at the 4 “checkpoints” (the last of which is the goal), and there are 1-2 twists for failed rolls.

Does this revoke or promote my geek rank???

Pretty sure that promotes your Fatherly Geek rank. Very cool. Hmm what about Blue’s Clues? Now I have to work on Ben 10 for my son.

Cool!
If you stick to two types of animal PCs, I think it’d be easy to do.

3 clues, each with a distraction, plus an additional distraction… and then the reveal… The GM has to play Blue as an NPC… again, scaled up, tho’ Salt and Pepper are mouse sized, and paprika is small mouse sized.

Kids TV is a veritable banquet of ideas for Mouseguard Stories, as most of it is built on 3-5 plot turns & twists.

WasteMouse - A fallout / wasteland inspired post nuclear apocalypse setting.

EDIT: whoops in hindsight this should have gone into the Brainstorm thread.

Surely there’s a way to do muppets in here, somewhere… Kermit sure seems to be going through a kind of hero’s quest in the first Muppet Movie…

What about Hairy Potter?

Would adding magic be a more extensive hack? I know the MagBu could handle Harry Potter really well. But MG would be a little more kid friendly.

Here’s one. Guess the title:

• Premise – Men on a mission in dangerous territory.
• Missions – Black-ops search and rescue/destroy mission.
• Conflicts – No new conflicts are necessary, I think.
• Weapons – Knife, grenade, pistol, rifle, minigun, bow, and improvised weapon.
• Overarching Conflict – A silent, unseen hunter, bent on bloody murder.
• Territories – South American jungle.
• Denizens – South Americans, mostly military, and animals (like pigs).
• Skills – Nature (Soldier) is probably too broad. Tactics, Close Combat, Firearms, Tracking? Renaming, really…
• Traits – Too Many Pencils, Bad Jokes, Afraid of No Man, Ugly Motherfucker, etc.

“I ain’t got time to bleed.”

Trait: Sexual Tyrannosaurus

Of course! How could I forget that one…

So, obviously, you really only have one overarching foe. Scripting him’s even pretty easy: Nature(Predator) 10 or something outrageous. The interesting bit would be figuring out what Nature(Predator) entails…

  • Fucking shit up
  • Kicking ass
  • Acrobatics
  • Hunting (ie skinning, trap-setting, trophy-taking, etc.)
  • Alien technology

You could probably build it out in more detail, but I’m thinking you could be ready to play in a matter of minutes.

p.

Ooh, what about some mouse spies? Mousepionage? (sorry, that’s the best I could come up with :slight_smile: )

New Conditions inspired by Trail of Cthulhu would be fun:

Delusion
Homicidal Mania
Megalomania
Multiple Personality Disorder
Obsession
Paranoia
Phobia
Selective Amnesia

You would probably need 2 tiers of severity and could base them off the existing modifyers.

NOOOOO. Do not change the core mechanics with your hack. You will break the game and you will not have fun. There’s no reason you can’t do insanity with the present conditions and traits.

We’re actually saying the same thing. My apologies for being unclear.

What I meant to say is you could break down the existing modifiers and re-skin them based on their levels of severity. Not that you should change the modifiers themselves but rather use them as a guide.

Looking at the following…

Hungry/Thirsty (Ob 1 Harvester, Cook, Brewer, Baker or Resources)
Angry (Ob 2 Will)
Tired (Ob 3 Health)
Injured (Ob 4 Health)
Sick (Ob 4 Will)

For Trail of Cthulhu I might do something like…

Hungry/Thirsty -> Scared, Shaken
Angry -> Delusion, Paranoia, Obsession, Selective Amnesia
Tired -> Drained, Exhausted
Injured -> Bleeding, Infected, Broken
Sick -> Homicidal Mania, Megalomania, Multiple Personality

Traits would also rock for some of the above!

But I’m happy to be used as an example of what not to do! Hahahahaha.