Mission Ideas! Get your mission ideas here!

Mouse Guard Missions
1

A Batch of Mission Ideas

So I’m currently playing in two MG campaigns, one a Play-by-Post and the other a Play-by-Email. Anyway, I’m hooked and am now a HUGE Mouse Guard fan! I find myself often thinking of ideas for missions if I should ever run a game as a GM, which will be very soon as our PBP is using a rotating GM schedule. (There’s another thread for that if you have any ideas, we would appreciate it.) Anyway, so thinking about it, I decided that instead of hoarding my ideas from… well, in my mind everyone. Haha. I thought I would share some ideas that might spark some awesome campaigns for others.

Here goes.

Snakes On A Plain:

The Idea - A while back I was watching Discovery Channel and a special on Snake Island came on. Basically this deserted Brazilian island is covered in deadly, Golden Lancehead vipers, one every 1.2 meters to be exact. And I thought. What if I was stranded on this island and I was forced to cross without being bitten? A scary thought. Well, fast-forward a bit, and now I’m thinking “What if I was a mouse with a sword and a few patrol mates, and we had to cross without becoming food?”

The Pitch - A new mouse outpost requires help. This isn’t a Guard outpost, but one built by a nearby town to help with protecting trade routes, and the inexperienced mice have picked one of the worst places to build. During the fall a plan was set in motion to build the new outpost overlooking a field. The local mice worked hard and built quickly and now a half-finished rock fort has been partially constructed on a single rock pile in the middle of a flat plain. However earlier during that same fall, the snakes that usually inhabit the plain have hoarded together and denned up deep under the rock pile for winter. As the mice built, they took rocks from the pile underneath them and accidentally opened up a new exit to the snake den. The mice’s efforts to reseal the den failed, and as time went on, the temperature went up. Now a group of mostly carpenters and stonemasons are stranded in a dangerously exposed area.

I thought it would be neat to strike up the plan for the party to travel to the town and help the families there build a mouse tank. Something like a turtle shell with wheels, and make them travel to the fort to rescue the stranded mice.

The Great Hare Race:

The Idea - Yeah, I really like Jeff Smith’s Bone Series. And I thought, why not a Great Hare Race? Not quite like the book, but I thought maybe more like jockeys racing on thoroughbreds.

The Pitch – Every summer a race is held in a mouse town that draws many fans. Brave mice and their brave hares race other teams around a large track that leads outside of town and then back to a grand finish in the middle of the town square.

Story plots:

  • A poisoned hare now too ill to race, or possibly dead.
  • A rival has bet he will win against one of the patrol.
  • A family friend has entered the race for the first time this season and has asked you to ride his hare, one catch; the hare is young and needs to be convinced to race.

A lot of fun I think, especially with potential the twists.

Twists:

  • The race has attracted the attention of a hawk, now a mouse must fight for their life in a dangerous mid-air battle.
  • A coyote has caught the scent of the racers! He’s hot on their trail as the mice and their hares head into town!
  • Weasels have had time to set snare traps and now are rushing to collect their catch, a newly caught hare and a mouse to boot!

Wolfepoint Bravery Test:

The Idea - Though I’m not a huge fan of M. Night Shyamalan’s ‘The Village,’ I did enjoy one scene where the towns boys all took turns to stand on a single stump past the town’s yellow flagged safety poles and try to see who can stay the longest to prove their bravery. This rings similar to Ace Ventura’s second film as well. Anyway, I wondered what “games” the savage Wolfepoint boys might play to prove their bravery.

The Pitch – On a routine trip to deliver mail to Wolfepoint the patrol walks into town during the annual Bravery Contest. Adolescent mice are competing for the right to join the other hunters on the next hunt. The patrol is invited to also compete and show the townsfolk how brave the Mouse Guard brothers can be. This might also be a chance for the Guard to recruit more willing mice to serve. The poles are standing on the outskirts of town and dangerously exposed to both weather and predators. The last mouse down alive is the winner.

Some problems could be a mouse has been murdered. Perhaps an important mouse has been struck by a poison arrow or dart. (They are pretty easy targets up on those poles.) A Heron has snapped up one of the braves, the chief demands blood, and a hunting party is formed. A flash flood suddenly turns a once dry area into a rushing river, and the poles are close to toppling, throwing the mice into the waters.

Lord Maheun’s Riddles

The Idea - I have always enjoyed a good riddle, or puzzle. In fact Myst is still one of my all-time favorite PC games. Anyway, what if instead of killing some weasel, or fixing the scent border, the mice where forced to use their wits to solve puzzles?

The Pitch – Lord Maheun wasn’t a lord at all, he was just a rich oldfur that turned his home into a parlor of tricks (a la’ funhouse). When a young mouse girl goes missing, the patrol is begged to go inside the “haunted” Maheun’s mansion and get out with the girl alive. Stories of strange noises and disappearances have fueled the towns fears and with some truth. Lord Maheun was an inventor, a master tinkerer and throughout his life he stuffed his home with mechanical oddities for his enjoyment, later in life he went mad and believed the whole town was out to get his treasures, so he fashioned booby traps to catch cunning thieves. (I thought it would be fun to scour the internet and find really tricky puzzles and brain-teaser the players would have to figure out by hand. Successful rolls or +1D helps could be hints on how to solve the problems from the GM.)

Oh and by-the-way… the mouse girl is trapped in a room quickly filling with sand!

Anyway, if the forum likes these, I’ll add some more, or heck, this might be a recurring idea house.

Hope y’all enjoy!

And PLEASE post if you do use these in your games, and let us know how they went, or how you changed these ideas!

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I like it, probably will use it in some way.

The Great Hare Race:

The Pitch – Every summer a race is held in a mouse town that draws many fans. Brave mice and their brave hares race other teams around a large track that leads outside of town and then back to a grand finish in the middle of the town square.

Story plots:

  • A poisoned hare now too ill to race, or possibly dead.
  • A rival has bet he will win against one of the patrol.
  • A family friend has entered the race for the first time this season and has asked you to ride his hare, one catch; the hare is young and needs to be convinced to race.

A lot of fun I think, especially with potential the twists.

Twists:

  • The race has attracted the attention of a hawk, now a mouse must fight for their life in a dangerous mid-air battle.
  • A coyote has caught the scent of the racers! He’s hot on their trail as the mice and their hares head into town!
  • Weasels have had time to set snare traps and now are rushing to collect their catch, a newly caught hare and a mouse to boot!

This one’s right up our alley. We’re running a ancient mediterranean variety of Mouse Guard called SPQM (www.illertass.se) and hare races are an important part of several of the cities cultural life (although not as often since there’s some differences between hare & mice and horses & humans). This was inspiring. I’m blogging our sessions at www.illertass.se and will try to remember to put up a reminder here when I’ve blogged about the session were we used any of these ideas.

Wolfepoint Bravery Test:

The Pitch – On a routine trip to deliver mail to Wolfepoint the patrol walks into town during the annual Bravery Contest. Adolescent mice are competing for the right to join the other hunters on the next hunt. The patrol is invited to also compete and show the townsfolk how brave the Mouse Guard brothers can be. This might also be a chance for the Guard to recruit more willing mice to serve. The poles are standing on the outskirts of town and dangerously exposed to both weather and predators. The last mouse down alive is the winner.

Some problems could be a mouse has been murdered. Perhaps an important mouse has been struck by a poison arrow or dart. (They are pretty easy targets up on those poles.) A Heron has snapped up one of the braves, the chief demands blood, and a hunting party is formed. A flash flood suddenly turns a once dry area into a rushing river, and the poles are close to toppling, throwing the mice into the waters.

This one’s also interesting.

Lord Maheun’s Riddles

The Pitch – Lord Maheun wasn’t a lord at all, he was just a rich oldfur that turned his home into a parlor of tricks (a la’ funhouse). When a young mouse girl goes missing, the patrol is begged to go inside the “haunted” Maheun’s mansion and get out with the girl alive. Stories of strange noises and disappearances have fueled the towns fears and with some truth. Lord Maheun was an inventor, a master tinkerer and throughout his life he stuffed his home with mechanical oddities for his enjoyment, later in life he went mad and believed the whole town was out to get his treasures, so he fashioned booby traps to catch cunning thieves. (I thought it would be fun to scour the internet and find really tricky puzzles and brain-teaser the players would have to figure out by hand. Successful rolls or +1D helps could be hints on how to solve the problems from the GM.)

I liked this one too.

Anyway, if the forum likes these, I’ll add some more, or heck, this might be a recurring idea house.

If not obvious already. I liked them :slight_smile:

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It’s All About the Masks!

I’m not sure what it is, but maybe it has to do with the fact that when someone says don’t think about elephants, well undoubtedly your brain is destined to be overrun with pachyderms. Anyway, I wrote one idea having to do with masks, and well, the idea stuck.

Enjoy! And please comment on changes, new ideas, or if you use these in your games!

Pollen In the Wind:

IDEA: I’m a fan of Nausicaa of the valley of the wind, so I guess maybe this is it’s distant brainchild.

PITCH: A huge cloud of pollen has moved into the territories. Anyone outside is susceptible to symptoms like hardness of breadth, swollen eyes, and on occasion, death in the young, elderly, or ill.

The party needs to deliver simple breathing masks to various towns across the territories and advise the town’s populace to stay indoors. As they travel the patrol needs to keep on their special masks given to them by the science mice at Sprucetcuck.

Problems:

  1. The patrol need to be ever vigilant to keep their masks in case of succumbing to the pollen cloud. Along the way, the group is forced to deal with a fallen bush across the trail. The brush is thorny and could rip the mask away. (I’m not sure how to make this work, just a thought to how to get the masks off and force the group to roll against the symptoms.)
  2. As the team finishes their patrol and nears the last town on their route, a band of coughing mice with swollen eyes meets them on the road. These mice are from a smaller town down the road, they plead for the Guard members to follow them and instead deliver the masks at their town. If the Guard refuses, the mice get rough making shouts and advances to take the masks by force. From here is where you as the GM get to watch as your group changes the world they inhabit. Some things to consider, the patrol could offer their own masks to placate the town’s mice.
  3. Local bandits are fed up with hacking, coughing, and swollen eyes. They ambush the patrol and attempt to steal the masks, and anything else they can, from the mice.

Masked Rabbits:

IDEA: Came across this picture http://ursulav.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=48#/d2l01az and thought, “Why not?”

PITCH: A sudden string of sightings by local mice have all been mentioning the same thing; masked rabbits are terrorizing the countryside. The patrol is sent to investigate this unusual problem, on their way they pick up on some interesting facts. The rabbits all have masks that bear a certain symbol, a black star encircled by a thorny wreath. The rabbits are acting peculiar, even dangerous, attacking mice on trails, and if they can infiltrate towns in attempts to ransack what they can.

The truth is that the rabbits have been dosed with a poison making them act erratically and extremely dangerous. The culprits are a small group of weasels in the territory. These weasels have captured the rabbits many months ago and have kept them captive. In their cages, and holes, the rabbits were mistreated- beaten, starved, and tortured. Upon release the weasels dose the rabbit’s water with a natural poison. This drives the already stretched thin hares to the brink, and when they are let loose on the countryside, they snap.

Problems:

  1. The hares aren’t normally dangerous. Certain mice may want the rabbits to be saved, not slaughtered.
  2. Where are the weasels? What are their true intentions?

Fighting With Fire:

IDEA: I wondered if not all mice of the territories wanted to see their world built behind stone walls and thick doors, if maybe there were a few like-minded souls who instead desired to see all mice return to their natural ways. Thus, the druids were born.

A band of masked druid mice that have forsaken living in towns and within walls have begun to try and scare mice back into their natural state of living off the land by setting fires to their homes.

Problems: The druid mice are very in tune with the natural and have created very strong bonds to the wild.

  1. The druid mice have coaxed a small army of potentially dangerous animals to live around their hideout. Poisonous salamanders, venomous spiders, even a scorpion could be out in the brush, just waiting to pounce.
  2. The druids aren’t pacifists, they have crafted traps to catch or kill the curious or would-be heroes. Snares, pits, spiked logs could all be out there, there might even be a wounded mouse or animal used for bait.

Recruiting followers has its benefits. The druids have infiltrated certain towns and have drawn the allegiance of mice that have succumbed to the druid’s fanatical plans. The patrol need to be wary of who operates in their midst.

Mouse Burglar:

IDEA: Not all crimes are based off of malice or hate. Some might even be downright noble.

PITCH: A thief is making his way across the territories stealing valuable items and treasures. Though the mouse hasn’t been identified or even seen. He wears a mask and operates in complete secrecy.

Problems:

  1. Thankfully, the thief isn’t a murderer. In fact it seems as though the mouse goes out of its way to keep from killing anyone. Why?
    Fact is the mouse is a member of the Guard, Grace Hollowtree. Her spouse has been captured by a band of mink from past Wolfepoint. They are holding Sir Hollowtree until his wife coughs up enough treasure to pay for her lover’s release.
  2. Out trying to find the burglar, the patrol finds the mink hideout, there they encounter a sole member of the troupe. If he is dispatched or killed, further encounters with the rest of the band are planned. Gallen Hollowtree is beaten, bruised but thankfully not dead. The patrol returns the kidnapped mouse to find that her spouse has finally been captured, and is scheduled for trial and possibly a death sentence. Now the patrol has another problem, explaining Grace’s release.

Until next time!

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Awesome ideas! Fleshed out, but with room to build! Originality is awesome!

5

These are some great ideas! Thanks. I hope to return the favor. :slight_smile:

6

The Great Hare Race is my favorite. I really like that idea. Sort of a high adventure thing to take a break from the grit. I like it.

7

I think this is a great idea (I’ve seen “1001 story ideas for [game]” on many other RPGs and its great to have some ideas for an upcoming game or some ideas tucked in the back of your mind for when you need to think on the fly as a GM.

Some of mine:

The Missing Sword:

A rogue Guardmember has stolen a sacred relic of past wars, a sacred blade carried by a hero of seasons past. This weapon is highly symbolic of the bravery of the guard and must be recovered at all costs!

The Tournament:

There is a tournament of fighters (or bakers, or whatever you wish), prove you are the best in the territories and bring honor to your home city! A great setting to meet more mundane rivals (those who are your enemy but not out for blood).

The One that Got Away:

An early frost destroyed a large percentage of the crops for [any given city] and food stores need shored up before the heavy snow comes. The Guard will be dispatched to the sea to catch some fish to be smoked and stored for the winter (great for some more aquatic themed games, with boats and such).

Just Politics:

A mouse in [any given city but Lockhaven] is raising opposition to the guard, arguing that they are an occupying military force and must be removed from power. The Guard wants him dealt with but they have no direct power over the cities of the territories, find a way to remedy the situation.

Dragon Hunt:

A snapping turtle has entered the territories looking for an easy meal, hunt it down and deal with it any way you can!

The Gods have Arrived:

A moose has wandered into the territories, it means the mice no harm but could do great damage to cities inadvertently and may attract larger predators. Find a way to remove it as quickly as possible.

The Storm:

A major storm is causing streams and rivers to overflow all over the territories, help the Guard evacuate threatened towns!

Winter Comes Early:

The town of [whichever] did not adequately prepare for the early snowfall and now does not have enough food to survive the winter. Brave the dangers of winter to get supplies through before its too late.

Just some ideas I came up with quickly, they could potentially be elaborated into the entire mission or simply used as a side story or a lead in. I tried to come up with some that stressed different angles, some more combat related, some travel and dealing with the elements, some more political or dealing with other mice in a non-violent way and some that just seemed fun (fishing would basically be the mouse version of whaling).

I’ll post more if I come up with more. One of the problems I sometimes have with MG is its somewhat narrow scope makes coming up with missions/scenarios hard (how many times can you have your players deliver mail?) so the more ideas the better.

8

Some great mission ideas. I actually ran the “Missing Sword” session a while back for some players on myth-weavers.net, it went great. There happened to be a shady antiquities dealer named Fern who had a small army of ninja-esque mice that would steal a many an artifact for her. Later she would sell the relics to black-market traders dealing in and around some of the darker places in the territories for any matter of payment. The PC’s thought it fun and bought into upholding the pride of their past fellow guards mice whose belongings had been stolen.

Anyway, to the comment about having problems coming up with new missions or scenarios for your players, I find that the best place to look is in the Seasons section of the rule book. Just reading through the particular time your group is playing Spring, Summer, Fall, or Winter has massive amounts of session ideas.

I used to try and make each session super special. Huge backgrounds for NPC’s, articulate designs for the undefined places on the maps, and sneaky undertones for storylines. Now I just do what the book says, Luke is totally right when he says to use the simple no-prep method to making a game. Just set up some tough beginning and end to the mission, throw in some twists and viola, you have your game.

I used to find that so hard, I think it was the cliche gamer in me, Mouse Guard is totally different though. Simple is better.

One tactic you can use is this; Your players start the mission heading somewhere doing something along the way have them stop at a fork in the road, either literally or figuratively and let them choose their way.

Example:

[i]The group has been traveling for two days now, delivering mail and clearing the occasional branch from the trails between the towns. Your original orders are to take a barrel of freshly concocted Scent and make your way to the border to apply this seasons protective barrier for the territories. An annual practice imperative to the territories survival. The pace has been slow and cautious to assure the success of the Scents arrival.

(At this time you can highlight some of your players talents to make them feel all warm inside.) Last night your scout avoided an altercation with a rather grumpy porcupine who had decided to burrow its way into a finely hidden outpost fashioned under a grand old oak tree. The animal looked as though it was just trying to escape the wind and maybe find some food too, nothing insidious, but still a dangerous threat to a well-known haven for other traveling guard members on the trail.

Your patrol hunkered down for the night some yards away and slept soundly through the night each taking turns on lookout.

In the morning your group discovers the porcupine long gone, but the outpost is decimated. The front wooden wall of the small space is ripped away and vestibules of preserved foods and supplies are strewn across the forest floor. While searching the remains your patrol starts to discover evidence that the outpost wasn’t empty last night. Half eaten grains litter the floor and a candle still smoking sits upon the minimalist table in the center of the room. Then someone finds a child’s toy, obviously not a guards chosen traveling tool under a leaf. Farther along the trail of destruction a splintered rattan traveling crib lies empty. Finally a trail of two mice tracks are discovered running haphazardly away from the tree. One is obviously adult while the other is smaller like a child’s.

What do you do?[/i]

Anyway, best of luck!

9

I like this last one; pitting the good of the many against the needs of a few. It’s a good moral quandry to throw at your patrol

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Yeah it’s just another spin on ‘The Creek Is Rising’ in the rule book. Like I said in the post, the book is chock full of great ideas for missions. Most start with mostly mundane circumstances, yet taking the first step on a new adventure is always the hardest for me as a GM. After that playing off your characters BIG’s is the greatest road map you own. Does your patrol leader have a Belief like, “Weapons provide the best answers to a problem.”? Then guess what, he apparently wants to see some action with fighting and the like, of course putting him smack-dab in the middle of a political court decision could be just as fun.