In our Sprucetuck game, two of the players felt awkward giving helping dice to teammates in Fight conflicts.
Outside of the Fight conflict it wasn’t an issue. Outside of conflicts, finding the right skill or wise can be challenging and when it fits, players felt like they earned it.
It was also a non-issue in our Argument conflicts. In an argument, the -1D for repeating kept the pace sharp and exciting. Players sometimes held back help out of fear of using up roleplaying material they could use for their own actions.
But in a Fight conflict, using fighter or nature to help (where applicable) was easy. And describing the fictional circumstances of how that help applied was equally easy. There were cases where I or the group rejected an offer of help because the character in the fiction wasn’t positioned correctly to help or preoccupied in some way, but two players still felt it was too easy to help. They felt like they were cheating!
To be fair, our Fight conflicts involved the group attacking 1 target. In past Mouse Guard games I’ve run where there are multiple targets, this didn’t come up as much (since characters were scattered and not in position to help). But I suspect there is still more I can do.
That all said, I’m really proud how we handled the Argument conflicts. They were very crisp!
Yesterday was my first Argument Conflict. Player’s Turn, two players versus two players. The moment a player stood on the table and said “It’s not what you fight, but what you fight for!”, pointing a finger at another player, was epic.
I love the Conflict System, and Help was neccesary I think. Allows other players to participate as it is the turn of his teammates to throw the dice. Maybe you could put the patrol against tough enemies so that they will need all the help possible to defeat them.
This is also a good point. In our Fight conflicts, not only was it all the players vs. one target, but the odds were fairly even. Where in the Argument conflict, the odds were slightly against the players. That could have been another reasons help in the Argument conflict worked so well.
Mouse Guard is a neat game. I’m really enjoying it.
My memorable use of helping in a fight mechanic was to shove a dining table into an attacking group of Weasels, the next exchange we started throwing plates at them. On my turn I tapped nature and launched myself at the nearest weasel. It was awesome. I love the helping mechanics.