Mouseguard: Wildwatch

[bmcarbaugh]

These forums seem fairly dead, but hell with it. Let’s poke this corpse.

In anticipation of the upcoming and indeterminately-dated 2E release, I’m currently cobbling together a supplement to Mouse Guard tentatively titled “Wildwatch”. The goal of Wildwatch is to introduce some play-mechanics that broaden the scope of the kind of adventures patrols can get into—in particular, traveling beyond the borders of The Wild Country, into the Darkheather, and onto the high seas.

The goal is not to “fix” Mouse Guard, as I think it’s a beautiful game. I just know there are some boundaries my group and I have bumped up against in the past, and I think they present some interesting design opportunities. The goal here is to grant players the tools to explore the darker/scarier areas of the MG universe, while still retaining the essential heart, moral character, and RP-driven nature of the system.

To that end, it introduces several new rulesets, including:

• Special rules for traveling in Wild Country, where things are bigger, scarier, and more dangerous
• Discharge Conditions, which allow players to take temporary leave from (or even be kicked out of) the Mouse Guard, under specific circumstances and conditions, with paths to reentry
• Oaths, which allows players who have left the Guard to pledge things to npc’s, gaining benefits but also taking on requirements and risks
• Minor tweaks to the Nature system, that modify what happens when your nature hits 0 or 7
• A teensy-weensy-teeny-tiny handful of new skills that, similar to Weatherwatcher, grant players additional means to take an active hand in shaping the story
• Finally, my personal favorite, a Misdeed system whereby players are now able to commit the kind of “un-guard-like” actions you’d typically railroad them away from in Mouse Guard (stealing things, killing NPC’s, etc) but in a way which disincentivizes doing so and rewards roleplay oriented around gradually pinning down a character’s moral code

And of course to demo all this, it offers up several new settings, stats a bevvy of new NPC’s sampling the new skills, and taps into Mouse Guard comics (including Black Axe and Legends of the Guard) which have released since the RPG was first written, in order to provide new campaign material.

Most of the hard legwork is done already. I’m still first-drafting all the flavor text and statting NPC’s, but the rules are tentatively done, barring (hopefully) some minor tweaking. The reason I’m posting the thread is this: I’m going to need playtesters to try these out soon, if anyone is interested.

I’m planning to run these by own group in the coming weeks, but additional feedback is always handy. Any volunteers? I’ll probably compartmentalize the new rulesets initially and split them up into various groups. I’ll need:

A) One group to test out misdeeds and leaving-the-mouseguard rules
B) One group to test out new skills
C) One group to test out the oaths system
D) One group to test out rules for traveling in Wild Country

Thanks all!

[majis]

@bmcarbaugh

• Minor tweaks to the Nature system, that modify what happens when your nature hits 0 or 7
• A teensy-weensy-teeny-tiny handful of new skills that, similar to Weatherwatcher, grant players additional means to take an active hand in shaping the story

These two seem interesting subjects. I’m eager to see what you can do with them. And what comes to the testing, if we can find a good time to play (my time zone is +2), I could join. I have experience of playing the Mouse Guard in english although it is not my mother’s language.

[bmcarbaugh]

Thanks! However, I was actually looking more for people willing to take my rules and GM a session of their own, with their own group, and then report back the results. I’ll be testing these rules in my own game of Mouse Guard, but at a certain point, they’ve got to leave my hands and be tested out by other people, in order to determine if they actually work.

[Karbonara]

@bmcarbaugh

Thanks! However, I was actually looking more for people willing to take my rules and GM a session of their own, with their own group, and then report back the results. I’ll be testing these rules in my own game of Mouse Guard, but at a certain point, they’ve got to leave my hands and be tested out by other people, in order to determine if they actually work.

I’m running a pre-comics 1151 campaign, about 4-5 sessions per season.
I’m using the year to introduce the group to the world of mouse guard in a gradual fashion, but they’ve become quite adept at it.

Essentially, our summer sessions depicted the plight of settlements and both the ego, and generousity of mice (visiting Thistledown, Barkstone, and a new western village, under pressure from grain-thieving birds and drought).

After that they entered into the fall, with scent border, investigations, and now a conflict with scouting weasels, in the ruins of the lost city of Walnutpeck. One of their own has now been captured and dragged into still-used tunnels of the Darkheather. My patrol will most likely abandon that poor mouse, for the greater good - in getting news of the Weasels’ movement to Gwendolyn.

However. One of the guard mice in my group was in the Weasel war of 1149, and actually fought to defend Walnutpeck as it fell, losing his entire patrol, and his mentor in the process.

For the upcoming sessions, I’ll let my players step out of their current characters, and instead embody my patrol leader’s old patrol and mice of war.

And with this, I want to say I’m interested.

Cause I want to send them beyond the borders, and into the uncertainty of the Darkheather.