I’ve begun tinkering with my MG hack for The Wire:
http://darkplaces.wordpress.com/2008/12/20/the-pawlice-the-wire-done-mouse-guard/
Feel free to comment here or there.
Some kind of WW2 The Great Escape/Prison Break kind of thing could work with MG I reckon.
It’d have to be a fairly short series of connected missions to achieve “waypoints” on the road to freedom in friendly territory.
• Premise: The characters are all imprisoned by the bad guys, in the heart of enemy territory. They are isolated and have only limited resources and few sympathisers to rely upon. They have to get out.
• Missions: There is only one main mission: get out. All the missions in a session are stages moving towards getting out or towards getting resources needed to get out.
• Conflicts: I don’t think there are any new conflicts. Perhaps something specifically about scrounging/begging/conning gear out of the captors/locals/wilderness - probably this is a simple test though - unless people want to make it a social or vs. “Nature” type challenge.
• Weapons: More or less the same, with some WW2 colour (guns, vehicles, gymnastics equipment, Red Cross packages, hidden radios).
• Overarching Conflict: Get Out. Escape the Stalag and the clutches of your enemies. Possibly also applicable to other POW situations (Soviet imprisonment, Japanese imprisonment) but these tend to be less dramatised (Japanese imprisonment dramas are more about surviving the imprisonment rather than escape).
• Territories: Prisoner of War camps (big compunds, old castles). Germany and occupied Europe. The Alps. The Low Countries. Maybe Finland?
• Denizens: Soldiers, friendly and unfriendly locals, dogs, alpine wildlife, resistance types, Allied operatives and commandoes.
• Skills: Probably lots, maybe a lot of recoloured things to reflect a military focus.
• Abilities: These would need to reflect prison black markets and the problems with accessing resources and circles in an occupied and mostly unfriendly environment.
• Traits: Ranks, things to reflect prison experiences, maybe secret agendas (“I’m really an Allied spy!”), cheesy national stereotypes, handlebar moustaches.
• Recruitment: The “ranks” might not be military ranks but how “incorrigible” a prisoner you are. “Higher/Older” characters have been in the system for a while, have better networks, have honed their skills and plans for escape better than FNGs. Specialisations probably either are military (although this might be better as “parents” and “hometown”) or to do with what your plan for escape is!
I might make some traits and fiddle with recruitment on my break; if I get anything publish the notes in a document somewhere for people to rend into fragments.
As comes out of this thread (starting post #11) North West Mousey Police. If you wanted to drop the mice you could as easily do North West Mounted Police. Weather can stay the overarching natural force. Far flung settlements is all there. Rustlers, wiskey traders, claim jumpers, and even the occasional murder is great. But also remember that the NWMP were representatives for the Crown in other ways too. Because of it being frontier they were the Queens presence even outside of strictly the criminal matters.
On the mechanical side I see the hack would mostly involve stats for pistols, rifles, and such. It’s bearly a skin over the MG. [EDIT: The only thing is your PC wouldn’t normally meet the materiarchal Queen in person.]
Never done something like this before but here goes.
Mouse Wars:
• Premise – The mice of the Jedi order are monks, warriors, hand-crafters and philosophers. You are one of those Jedi.
• Missions – diplomatic missions as well as combat missions when needed.
• Conflicts – I don’t think there needs to be any new conflicts here.
• Weapons – lightsabers, blasters, probably add in some form of the Force as a weapon, possibly something like Force Attack (for pushing, pulling, throwing, etc) and Force Mind (“these are not the mice you are looking for” type effects).
• Overarching Conflict – The overall conflict is Light vs Dark side.
• Territories – Turn some of the popular planets into territory types (Endor = Forest, Dagobah = Swamp, etc).
• Denizens – bounty hunters, rebels, stormtroopers, Sith, smugglers.
• Skills – Administrator, Archivist, Armorer, Astronavigator, Deciever, Fighter, Force Reader (replaces Weather Watcher), Haggler, Harvester, Healer, Hunter, Instructor, Loremouse, Militarist, Orator, Pathfinder, Persuader, Pilot, Scout, Survivalist, Techmaster.
• Abilities – Depending on the era the game is in these would include trouble dealing with/against the Jedi Council, rebel groups, the senate, the empire, etc.
• Traits – Most of the book ones would work very well as is. Change Weather Sense to Force Sense to represent the “bad feeling about this” attitude or the “search your feelings” Jedi often do.
• Recruitment – Start the same but replace Guard Rank with Jedi Rank (Padawan, Knight, Master, Council Member, Grand Master).
Move on until Nature. Answer these 3 questions instead: 1) Do you put the needs/wants of the Jedi Order above your personal needs/wants? 2) Do you face conflict immediately or do you sit back and reflect on the proper course of action? 3.) Do you feel anger towards your enemies?
Where were you born moves on to picking a planet your mouse is from. Move along as normal, parents are important, the apprentice part is who you studied under while a Youngling, etc. The only other part that changes is Cloak Color. That changes to Lightsaber Color.
Other than that stuff, I would probably change Hungry & Thirsty into something like Doubting or Distracted. Something causes you to question your path (find out your father is the evil bad guy, develop feelings for the queen, finding out you have a sister, etc). Whenever this condition is imposed the mouse’s disposition suffers during conflicts.
Alex, I’m also working on a Jed-oriented Mouse-Guard hack. I’ll probably put it up once my copy of the book arrives.
Doing lightsaber colors like cloak colors is brilliant. Wish I had thought of that.
Oh…Jedi.
For a minute there I was picturing a redneck family feud type of game, or maybe one where backward hick mice discover oil and move to Hollywood.
p.
Funny. Is it bad I think that could totally work with Mouse Guard?
Cool, I’d be very interested in seeing it.
I’ve also toyed with doing a Clone Wars version where all the PCs are part of the clone army. That’s still just a thought in my head though, nothing down on paper yet.
Is there a reason this isn’t a sticky at the top of the forum?
Just my 2 cent on this brainstorm:
MG Tittle (Based on…)
- Mouse of the ring (Lord of the Ring)
- Legend of the 5 Mouses (Legend of the 5 rings)
- Dungeons & Mouses (Dungeons & Dragons)
- Weremouse (Werewolf from white wolf)
- Mouse of Darkness (World of Darkness from white wolf)
- Mouse guard: The Requiem (Vampire the Requiem from white wolf)
- Mouse Guard: The Awakening (Mage: The Awakening from white wolf)
- Mouseling (Changeling from white wolf)
- Mouse Guard of the caribbean (pirates of the caribbean where we would play mouse bandits aganis mourse guards )
I could say more but they were already mention on this thread
One thing that i think it could give a great “boom” to Mouse Guard, is Magic/Sorcery (or maybe this would make it too complex or loose the point of being “animals”… i dont know :S)
So here’s a hack that occurred to me a couple days ago. I was pondering the kinds of setting ideas that put the PCs and NPCs in the same kind of situation as the Mouse Guard and mice are within the MG setting - where most everything is better than you, stronger than you, faster than you, and wants to eat you - what fell out of that was the idea of a game playing prehistoric, tribal humans.
You could play around with this a bit to make it more Burroughs’ Hollow Earth, or play it almost totally straight.
• Team-based adventure - check
• An implacable, over-arching force (of nature) - check
• Adventure that focuses on fighting for what you believe in
• Premise – Players are protecting their tribe and fighting for the survival of their people.
• Missions – Trade/deals with other emerging tribes, foraging for food, hunting (big, scary game), dealing with predators, looking for the next place the tribe can settle in for a few months, like that.
• Conflicts – Shouldn’t require any new conflicts.
• Weapons – In physical contests, the weapons would be very primitive - probably stone axes, spears, flint knives and things like that. Persuasion would involve more barbaric trappings - skulls of the dead sabretooth your warriors killed, etc.
• Overarching Conflict – Still pretty much survivalism - finding some kind of stability in a land where you are the softest, slowest food around.
• Territories – Probably different tribes. Unlikely you’d have a unified Guard working with all the tribes – you’re protecting one group, and the other tribes would vary in degrees of friendliness to you. The Weasel equivalent would be a couple tribes who’ve essentially gone feral and hunt and kill other tribes when they can - cannibals and such.
• Denizens – Big cats, super mammoths… and of the crazy animals of pre-history. Dinosaurs, if you want to go pulp-pre-history.
• Skills – Apiarist becomes animal handler. Archivist becomes storyteller. Loremouse become Shaman. Same basic skills, different color.
• Abilities – Resources would almost entirely be based on barter and making your own stuff.
• Traits – These can mostly be the same.
• Recruitment – Haven’t done this yet, but I think the Town would be replaced with some kind of Tradition, rather than you tribe, since everyone would perforce need to be from the same tribe. Other than that, I can’t think of too much else that’d change.
Here’s another one - the Nac Mac Feegle (from Terry Pratchetts Discworld - the little blue men) from Wee Free Men. I was about 20 or so pages in to the book and the realization hit me - these would be perfect for Mouseguard (or vice versa, ;-)).
Watch this space!