No worries! They struck me as a little… meh as I wrote 'em but I felt the Nature aspects needed altering, likely because I didn’t see their uses. However…
Awesome examples. I guess I wasn’t thinking broadly enough. (Thinking tends to be hard after four 12-plus hour work days…) Those examples make a lot of sense and something I hadn’t thought of before: I like the possibility of making an argument for an action that is using tapped Nature as being in line with Nature.
Or… just leave them as nouns. After all, these are more like areas which their Nature affects. At this point and after some thought, I say let the ambiguity of the nouns stand. After all, look at Luke’s examples; they relate to those three aspects of Nature. There are separate actions undertaken in relation to them.
Leave 'em as Tradition, Grief and Family. Those realms of experience are in their Nature. Period.
Thoughts?
I know the idea is to go with actions because of Mouse Guard, but I say why?
In the absence of better suggestions, I’m with Patrick. I’d just break the rule and leave 'em.
The real key here would be to back up these descriptors in the setting description. Ideally, we’d have a nice description of the traditional life of these fellows and the descriptors would be plucked right from the prose.
-L
emphasis mine
This was weird with Nature going up and down. So delete Nature from this sentence. Also, the Ob for the Healer test seems too high. This may be because only one had Healer at all and his skill was a 3 (he did not have a useful Wise and only one other Guard had a Wise that could help either). You guys know the numbers/probabilities of the system better than I; is Ob 4 ok or should I reduce it to Ob 3?
Thanks. I was not happy with the Nature I’d come up with (it seems to be the hardest thing to get right in these hacks). I think the other Numenor ‘stuff’ will be Traits.
I’ve also been looking around and I can’t find a set of verb forms to replace these that work. For the moment (unless or until someone suggests something more elegant), I’ll go with these as presented.
I agree with your later comment that in a perfect world this would be backed up with some choice direct source material. Since I don’t have time to reread these right now I’ll muddle through as best as I may. Anyone know of any good message boards with teaming LOTR fans that might be willing to do some of this work for…(I mean with) me? 
Also, this changes the end game at 0 and 7 Nature. Would you just reverse the results but keep the same descriptions?
Thanks again for everyone’s contributions and encouragement. 
These are the changes to the existing Mouse Guard Traits.
Bigpaw is renamed Rough Hands
Fearful is restricted to Recuits. More experienced Rangers have overcome this issue or they would have been removed.
Guard’s Honor is renamed Ranger’s Honor
Innocent while not completely restricted to Recuits would be very unusual in more experienced Rangers.
Longtail is eliminated.
Lost is restricted to Recuits. More experienced Rangers have overcome this issue or they would have been removed.
Oldfur is renamed Greyhair.
Sharptooth is eliminated.
Other more specific Traits are being mulled over. Any suggestions?
Corrupt
Some stray too far into the methods of the Enemy, or allow their desires to overmaster their duty and loyalty. Those who embody the deceitful, subversive and dark ways of the Enemy are tainted, corrupted; they have fallen.
That’s an idea if you’re still looking for that kind of Shadow-taint idea. There are Black Númenoreans, after all.
Saint, as I was saying to you before, I’ve got a whole slew of stuff to work out with ya on this hack. The ones needing the most public feedback are the Nature descriptors for Men (non-Dúnedain), Dwarves and Hobbits. I brainstormed:
Man: Adaptation, Community and Self-Preservation (least pleased with the first but I like the other two)
Dwarf: Greed, Stubbornness, Loyalty (ideas spurred from Glendower’s Dwarf Guard hack)
Hobbit: Beneath Notice, Merriment, Back Woods (most happy with these, though finding a noun sort of descriptor for “bucolic” or “rustic” was annoying)
I figured we might as well have 'em, since that would mean less redundancy with the Denizens stuff: No need for the Nature (blah) specification. Just have Nature and it defaults to the race, making a Hobbit Cartographer different from a Dwarf Cartographer.
Orc: Aggressive, Destroying, Loud and Pursuing
Trolls: (Had to be different because of the different types and how some are fine in sunlight and others are not.)
– Torog (Hobbit troll): Nocturnal, Capturing, Hoarding, Eating
– Cave-Troll: Nocturnal, Huge, Obeying, Smashing
– Olog-hai (War trolls): Powerful, Fearless, Huge, Smashing
I even messed around with Balrog (Gigantic, Shadow & Flame, Aggressive, Tormenting) and Kraken (Predator, Constricting, Whelming, Laying in Wait) for fun. After all, the Kraken is still there and who knows whether another Balrog (or multiple) lie hidden or imprisoned in the North?
Last thing: King Elessar Telcontar (aka, Aragorn II)
Nature (Ranger)…6 | Resources…10
Will…6 | Circles…7
Health…5
Skills: Fighter 5, Persuader 4, Orator 4, Rider 4, Healer 4, Scout 5, Militarist 3, Realms-wise 4, Enemy-wise 4, Trail-wise 5, Obligation-wise 4
Traits: Alert (2), Leader (2), Wise (2), Determined (2)
Gear: Andúril (sword), Scepter of Annúminas, Elendilmir (crown), Ring of Barahir
Oh, and I meant to mention: If you’re looking for info, wikipedia is great for anything that involves insane geek knowledge (star trek, star wars, LotR, comics, etc.). Found a bunch of info there.
I would probably have put the setting around the time of the White Council, when the Witch-King became active in Carn Dûm again, but that has the drawback of being more described. I played in a campaign set in the Northern Kingdoms after Tyrn Gorthad fell which was also a great setting, but that was before the Rangers.
One of the problems of the northern setting for Mouse Guard is that the North is severely depopulated so except for Bree, Rivendell and the Shire and perhaps Cameth Brin (the Hillmen town) you don’t have any large settlements to speak of so place-bound Traits and skills are divided among few towns. Of course in the Golden Age that’s different. You have places like Annuminas, Tharbad, among others.
Btw Goblin Nature: Servin’, Smashin’, Scavengin’.
Base is probably the new Northern Capital by lake Evendhim (Fornost again?) or Rivendell if we play during Third Age. Rivendell: Lore, Music, Smithing, Hunting, Calligraphy, Cartography, Sindarin. Traits: Elf-touched, Loremaster, Philosophical.
How’s progress? This looks amazing, by the way. I love all the great hacks for Mouse Guard almost as much as I love vanilla Mouse Guard. 
Heya, Framweard, and welcome to the forums! v1.6 is slow going. I worked on it last week and started a version with no images at all. However, that screwed the layout and it’s been an utter bitch to fix. So it’s slowly moving.
PS: Just a heads up, please don’t commit thread necromancy. If you’re curious about something but the topic died over a month back, link to the post that interested you and start a new thread. Otherwise, Luke will rape your village and pillage your… wait, no…