It states “If you win with a compromise in a group conflict, one character takes one for the team. Everyone else is Injured and Tired.”
I assume that means one character dies.
Also, this is stated as a special rule for weasels and mice. I assume any other to the death conflict between say a group of mice against a group of small snakes is handled with the normal minor, medium, and major compromises?
Thanks,
Tom
Yep, one character takes it. However, remember that this is only for actual “I’m going to kill you” games wherein the opponent is actually out to kill the guardmice, not drive them away. I think it should happen rarely enough for it to be very exciting.
I THINK in a mouse vs. snake encounter, you can still have the snake kill the mouse if that was the snake’s goal. However, unless the snake wins, it doesn’t actually kill the mouse, so interesting compromises to be had there.
I actually ran my first game last night (well, at least the GM’s turn) for my 2 girls. The snake brought their disposition down to 0 during its first encounter, and it lost less than half its own disposition… Its goal was to drive the mice away, not to kill them, so I took that as an opportunity to be easy on the girls. The compromise rules made it pretty clear that one of the mice should have died, and logical roleplaying would dictate that the youngest girl (6) would be the one to take the hit. So I applied the Injured AND Sick conditions (beat up in the fight and a brush with snake venom) to her, and the Injured and Angry conditions to her sister’s mouse (beat up buy the melee and angry at her utter failure to protect her tenderpaw partner, which was her mission goal).
I don’t know if this was the right way to handle the situation, and I admit I froze up during the conflict… I completely lost all sense of what I was supposed to do. I got confused with how they could be a single team yet do different things physically (the younger mouse was trying to distract the snake while the elder pelted it with arrows).
Anyway, that’s how I ran the compromises.
If your goal for the snake was to drive the mice away, then death is not on the line. And if death is not on the line, death does not have to be part of the compromise.
Regardless, the snake won so the guardmice were driven away. The winning team does not then apply additional penalties via the compromise. The LOSING TEAM sets the level of compromise. Therefore, it’s your daughters’s characters who are owed something from the snake. Your daughters can now offer you all sorts of interesting tidbits like: the fight attracts another predator, they find the snake’s burrow, the snake is injured and sick from the fight, etc.
-L
That helps, Luke! I’m still trying to clarify the rules from the standpoint of a 40-something who has only ever played D&D. I’m determined to make MG my RPG of choice now. It’ll take awhile, but damned if it doesn’t seem full of potential for great stories and collaborative role-playing.
No problem, man. MG uses different brain muscles than D&D, but you’ll be up to speed in no time.