Hello all, I wrote a post for my blog on my theories on writing missions. It’s based on several months of running a play-by-post Mouse Guard game. I hope people find it useful.
Mouse Guard Mission Design
Hey Coyotebd,
I’ve been running a Mouse Guard game and we’re about half way through Summer (using the number of weather twists style of game) and I would have to agree with your blog on keeping the actual mission straightforward with no twists as the twists will present themselves upon failure of a particular skill.
My example would be that I listened to The Walking Eye Mouse Guard Actual Play podcasts and at this stage we had already successfully ran Spring and were just at our first weather twist in Summer. They had a neat mission that they ran where Sprucetuck was attacked by ants and needless to say rather than me run the mission and let the twists happen within the game I tried to force it and railroad them so that certain things would happen that I had heard on the podcast. The session in my opinion wasn’t as good although the players said they had fun, they didn’t seem to have as much fun as when it’s more straight forward and flows more naturally. After reading your article it made me realize what the problem was. So thanks.