So I thought I knew what I was doing...

Robb, it sounds like things are starting to click better. The mice learned an important lesson about Feints, too :wink:

As for compromises in conflicts, it really helps to state the conflict goal clearly at the start. Gwendolyn won, so she gets “convince the mice that the map is not enough evidence.” The onus is now on you to propose a compromise that is acceptable to the players, keeping in mind their conflict goal (and their BITs). And it has to be a major compromise. So, making the PC hungry might have been an acceptable compromise if the player won (although angry or tired makes more sense to me), but not under these circumstances.

Yeah, but the grimlocks I’ve played with don’t always get it.

Alright, I was able to squeeze in two more sessions today- with 3 players, and then 5 players. So thankfully in both I had the two people who had been playing so far to help things along.

To be honest, I don’t remember much of the first session. It lasted about 45 minutes and it was mostly us trying to teach the mechanics to the new player. Despite it being short it was rather effective and he picked up right away on how the conflicts work and compromises worked. I started it off with a 2-test obstacle to get to where they were going. I made them do pathfinding and asked them what they thought would be a good idea for this journey. They debated a little bit between Scout and Survivalist and eventually picked one. They passed the Pathfinder but failed the other and made the one who made the test Hungry. I then introduced some other obstacle- I think they outran a fox or something.

So eventually they made it to town and their mission was to find out what has been stopping shipments. Begin Player’s Turn. Now, here was a question- how would the find information? I know that to find people it’s a Circles check, so I winged it and made it a Circles check. They passed, found out that a badger was terrorizing them and spent some checks healing up. With a final check they went to look for the Badger and failed- the Badger attacked them from nowhere! They lost with a compromise and I tried explaining to them what happens when THEY get to make the compromise. I think they whittled it down to the one where one of the group dies but argued over who it was. After a while I asked why they both (the two experience players) wanted to kill themselves off and it was because they wanted to, in fact, make their characters from scratch again now that they knew what they were doing. So, after the 4th player walked in the room, I started up the character creation process.

So 3 of the players had played now, and the 4th one had seen the end of the GM’s turn and all of the Player’s. I led the through Recruitment, Each one a different rank from Tenderpaw-Patrol Leader. Now, what I did was I asked them the questions in the book (Like, “Do you save for winter and go without now, or use what you have when you need it?”) and did not tell them the consequence. I wanted them to be more concerned about their character’s story and personality than stats. Was this bad? Good? They had no problem with it and actually liked it. They worked together when it came to skills and wises and got a good diverse group. A lot of Fighter/Hunter but after the Badger they all wanted to be good at fighting animals. Right when they were wrapping up the last player showed up and I tried to catch him up to speed. They eventually all got their characters in order, picked out some good beliefs and instincts and we were on our way.

So I gave some background on the Guard using the “Jedi” example earlier in this thread which got some of them excited and reinforce the idea of the Guard. I then gave them their mission, emphasized their mission and pointed out the exact wording of the mission and they wrote their goals. Some were good, others were ‘eh’ but we ran with it. None were terrible.

This time I started with a three obstacle test to get to where they needed to go. They were delivering mail and I described the journey through the first couple of towns. Then on the last leg they had to choose to navigating through the spring rain that was falling. They went with Pathfinding, Scout and Weather Watching. They went Pass-Pass-Tie. They did not really understand the process of failing quite yet so with the tie the weather did not change.

Then, right before they reached their final destination a hawk swooped down with the goal of making a snack of the mice! They split into two teams of two (one decided to sit out the conflict and hide in a bush). They beat it with Dispositions of 7/10 and 6/9. I figured this was a minor compromise so I made them tired or something. However, both teams had different goals. One team wanted to just scare away the Hawk, the others wanted to injure it a bit. So, I was at a loss for a moment. I told them to (knowing it was wrong) continue it was a Argument conflict. It should have been still a fight, right? Or just a new conflict? I really did not know and I searched the book to no avail.

Eventually one team one with 1 disposition left. Now, does the other team get a major compromise? Could they have requested the other side Tired and Sick (or whatever two it was)? Because that’s what they did but I really did not know how to handle this at all.

Then, for some reason, no one really earned checks throughout the session. I think three of them had their free check only, one person had earned one, and another had earned two. Most of them tried to heal their wounds and one used their check to complete their goal. They failed it by one so I made them Angry but gave it to them.

This lasted all of about 2 1/2 hours including giving out the Fate and Persona points at the end.

I then got some feedback.

The first two players still liked it. Things are still rough but are considerably better than before. Like I said, the first scenario today they earned a lot of checks, but didn’t the second time for some reason.

The third player said he still preferred D&D because of the freedom. He did not like having to go along in the GM’s turn but overall still wanted to give it a few more shots because he really liked that people had to roleplay.

I didn’t get much of an opinion from the fourth player but he seemed to like it and looked like he was starting to have it click by the end of the session.

The last player LOVED the fact that it was somewhat linear in the GM’s turn (something he complains about not being the case in D&D) but ultimately was still pretty confused by the conflict and obstacles.

So, right now the consensus is we’re going to keep alternating it with D&D (so no more Mouse Guard for two weeks :[ ) and give it a fair shot. Ultimately if they end up not liking it I’ll shelf it or possibly find another group to play it with separate from them (or maybe bring one or two of them along).

Tell me if I’m missing something but they met the Ob on the WW test right? That’s a Pass; Ties are for vs. rolls.

Then, right before they reached their final destination a hawk swooped down with the goal of making a snack of the mice! They split into two teams of two (one decided to sit out the conflict and hide in a bush). They beat it with Dispositions of 7/10 and 6/9. I figured this was a minor compromise so I made them tired or something. However, both teams had different goals. One team wanted to just scare away the Hawk, the others wanted to injure it a bit. So, I was at a loss for a moment. I told them to (knowing it was wrong) continue it was a Argument conflict. It should have been still a fight, right? Or just a new conflict? I really did not know and I searched the book to no avail

One team injures the hawk while the other team scares it away. The conflict is resolved. It does not continue. See “Fun once, let’s not do it again” for MG’s view on repetitive tests.

Eventually one team one with 1 disposition left. Now, does the other team get a major compromise? Could they have requested the other side Tired and Sick (or whatever two it was)? Because that’s what they did but I really did not know how to handle this at all

Conditions are just one way to handle compromises. Look at what the hawk wants for guidance as to an appropriate compromise. It could even be something like " you scare it off for now, but it’s holding a grudge. It will be back when you least expect it."

Then, for some reason, no one really earned checks throughout the session.

Its easy to forget when you’re learning the game. Try to prompt them with the option to hinder themselves periodically.

… Technically, yes. I thought it was a versus roll against Spring but I realized that that is not the case. So yea it would have been a pass.

Alright, so even though the two teams had very different ideas of what to do to it, they both just get what they want since they were on the ‘same side’? Makes sense.

The compromise there was the argument between the mice. So if the player’s conflict with each other, how do you handle compromises then?

I did! Haha they would be going through their sheet seeing what they could add and others were trying to help. Most of the time I’d ask “You gonna use a trait for or against you?” But again, they’re thinking is still in D&D for now it seems.

Re: your three-team conflict involving the hawk,
If the hawk is reduced to dispo 0 before one or both of the teams is reduced to dispo 0, I would encourage one remaining team to surrender.

However, I would start with an attempt to bring the two teams together. It sounds like there were 4 mice in the patrol; that is a reasonable team. You could have offered they join in one team with a goal of, “We will cause severe injury to this hawk to scare it off from hunting us,” “We will fight to scare off this hawk, and possibly injure it also,” “This hawk will retreat from our patrol scared and injured,” or “We must cause injury to the hawk; if nothing else, we will give it a fright.”

That gets the patrol on one team. Mulitple team conflicts need to have goals that are nearly at odds or fully at odds with one another to ensure they have a reason to keep the conflict after the opponent is indisposed to continue.

One last thought is that you could have continued to role-play out actions of the hawk while one patrol team attempted to fulfill their effort to scare the hawk and the other team attempted to fulfill their goal of injuring the hawk. In such a case, the injury-minded team might want the bird to draw near in range while the frighten-minded team might want to keep the bird far from the group.

The players would really have to sell me on the idea. Those goals can be so easily combined, I would expect they really work hard to prove they will not, in actuality, work together, but instead, would work independently to accomplish different goals with different ends in mind. The compromise would have to reflect the rift in planning between the patrol teams also.

I mean to say, one team is angry with the other (maybe the frighten-minded team is very angry the other mice of their patrol would mistreat a wild animal so violently; it was acting within its nature and could have been deterred without bloodshed), or the additional conflict rounds pursuing different goals may lead to far more harsh conditions being laid upon the shoulders of all involved. The teams continuing to conflict with each other very likely would render a major compromise, but one team conflicting over one goal (even a slightly more complex goal) could get away with a medium or minor compromise instead.

I really liked your take on the map/evidence coming back to Lockhaven. I’ve run that sample a few times and always assumed that Gwendolyn would immediately accept the map as evidence of betrayal. Kudos for the perspective.

Yes, it’s a different thing to say “I want to scare off the hawk rather than injure it,” and "I want to scare off the hawk while preventing anyone from injuring it. " If the latter, then when team B shoots its arrows at the hawk, Team A is in conflict with them and needs to do something about it. If they don’t act to prevent injury, they dont get that part of their goal even if they win. The conflict may not even be done even though the hawk is out of dispo and has no mechanical say anymore. Though i would just as likely ask for a quick versus roll between the two teams to decide injury, with the hawk being driven off as the win.

You keep on bringing in animals that want to eat the mice and threaten them directly. This seems unsustainable, since every time the mice lose, one or more of them is going to be eaten!