Mouse Guard: Rustleaf

GM: Michael Miller

Mouse Guard is based on the comic of the same name, and the PCs are all mice in the Mouse Guard, charged with patrolling the mouse territories.

Players:

Kevin Fitzpatrick: Duke, the leader of the patrol

Eric Larson: Sky, Duke's lieutenant and friend

Me: Josephine, the tenderpaw

Richard Flynn: Mort, a seasoned guard newly assigned to this patrol. A red-furred mouse.

Mouse Guard is a streamlined version of Burning Wheel / Burning Empires. I think all of us had at least a little familiarity with BW, and at least one player had a lot. This helped, although, despite the streamlining, I still had the anticipated no-fault-of-the-author's problem.

Julian: Ah. It still has rules.

Me: Yeah.

That said, I did have enough background to pick things up quickly, and having read the first 75 pages of Mouse Guard helped. First, Michael walked us through the character sheets, which cram a lot into them, resulting in somewhat painful tiny print. This surprises me primarily because I had gotten the impression that older children / young adults were expected to play this, but I could be wrong.

Each character has a Belief, a Goal, and an Instinct. The belief is long term. The goal is specific to the mission. The instinct is a behavior. One can play towards or against any of the three. The pre-gen characters already had Beliefs and Instincts, but Michael left the Goals up to us, once we had heard the mission.

The mission was delivered to the patrol by Mort, who had been assigned to join the group by Gwendolyn, the head of the Mouse Patrol. Pirates had seized the grain shipment for the town of Rustleaf. The other towns had gotten together a new shipment, and the patrol was charged first and foremost with seeing it delivered, and secondarily, with dealing with the pirates once and for all, if possible.

Duke's Belief: It's not what you fight, but what you fight for.
Duke's Instinct: Always protect the tenderpaw.
Duke's Goal: Bring the pirate captain, in chains, before the 
governor of Rustleaf.

Sky's Belief: The place for the guard is in the wild, not in Lockhaven 
(the guard's base of operations).
Sky's Instinct: Never take anything at face value.
Sky's Goal: Convince the pirates to join the Mouse Guard.

Josephine's Belief: Order is the Guard's strongest weapon and greatest duty.
Josephine's Instinct: Always pack an extra knife. (Me: Oh ghod, I'm a 
bounty hunter. (This is a West End Games Star Wars joke.))
Josephine's Goal: Impress Governor Elaine of Rustleaf (positively) (She was 
one of the people Josephine knew.)

Mort's Belief: Always embody the true ideals of the Guard.
Mort's Instinct: Never trust a rich mouse.
Mort's Goal: Make sure that the grain gets to the needy, not grabbed by the rich.

Missions are divided into turns: The GM's turn and the players' turn. The GM's turn lasts until the mission is either accomplished or utterly botched. The patrol went to the town where the grain was to be picked up. Duke, with help from the others, tried to get help from the harbor master. The other PCs helped by choosing a skill and explaining how it helped. Alas, the attempt failed, leading to a scene where the harbor master berated Duke, who had lead a unit including the harbor master's nephew, in the Weasel Wars, where the nephew died. The harbor master told the mice to go back to Lockhaven and have Gwendolyn to send a "real patrol".

Josephine tried next, using her skill Governor-wise to go over the harbor master's head. With help from the others, she narrowly failed. Michael ruled that this was a "You succeed, but" moment. Josephine was Hungry and Thirsty, a mechanical condition that would last until the mechanics, not actual game food and drink, caused it to go away. In other words, merely being on a barge full of food wouldn't help.

The governor told them where the grain and the new barge were, and confirmed that the four mice were the barge's only crew and escort. The pirates who claimed the last shipment were all red furred mice who came out of the mist on leaf boats. They took the previous barge and set its crew adrift on those same leaf boats, saying, "And now, Rustleaf can see how starvation feels."

The other players explained to Eric, whose PC, Sky, was steering the barge, that the question wasn't whether Sky wanted to meet or avoid the pirates, but what Eric wanted. He wanted the PCs to get into a battle with the pirates. We all concurred.

Michael: You want it, and I want it, so it's going to happen. So, you're rolling to see who has the mechanical advantage.

The pirates did, and this led into the conflict resolution system. The way this works is that each side has a pool of points and a stated goal. Each side privately scripts three maneuvers, deciding which character does what. Michael said that while we didn't have to go strictly around the table, basically, everyone had to go once before someone else could go again.

As maneuvers were compared, dice rolled and the size of the two pools changed based on the results. Eventually, one side is reduced to zero, in this case, the PCs. But, this does not mean that the other side gets its own way. How much compromising is done depends on how much the winner is knocked down.

So, the pirates' goal was to capture the barge. Ours was to capture the pirates. We eventually decided that we got the captain, a leaf boat, and a trail of grain showing which way the pirates took the barge, in return for Michael throwing in an obstacle. Kevin protested this last until he realized that "obstacle" was a mechanical term, not free license for Michael to do whatever he wanted.

The obstacle was a mink. Its goal was to eat the mice. Their goal was to kill the mink, something the mice could do because it wasn't too much bigger than they were. The mice won, but it was a long struggle, and we had to give a major compromise. Since we were okay with the mink just being driven off, we suggested that we had not killed it. Why set the goal to kill? For just such compromise possibilities. In other words, in Burning Wheel, it is perfectly reasonable to initiate a duel of wits with the king by saying, "I want the king to end slavery." This is a good goal because it is broad enough that there is room for compromise if, and likely when, the mechanics call for it.

So, the PCs eluded the mink, but needed to make a scouting test to find the rest of the pirates. They failed, so they interrogated the leader of the pirates, Errol. Errol explained that a granary had burned down, and he and all the other red furred mice had been blamed and banished. His son, who had white fur, had been kept in the city by the governor.

Player: Is this, like, normal behavior?

Michael: What, scapegoating some group for your problems?

The PCs convinced Errol to turn himself in in return for their word that his people would not be executed. Errol took them back to the pirate lair, and, after some discussion, the PCs decided to go to Rustleaf with about a third of the shipment they were sent to protect, and only Errol with them. This would be both a show of good faith and a disincentive to the governor to simply seize the grain.

Here, Michael declared an end to the GM's turn. The players' turn began, with the group less than unified.

Sky, never one to take anything at face value, had asked Errol why Errol had set the granary on fire, and had questioned the red furred Mort's loyalty to his face, saying that he hadn't seen the letter from Gwendolyn. Sky worked against the other PCs.

Eric: I'm not sure this really makes sense for my character. I guess I've gone over to the dark side.

Me: So, he's Clouded Sky, now?

The PCs got their various conditions cured, which would remove penalties in the final conflict, a debate. Mort fulfilled his goal, making sure that that the poor mice got the grain. Picture the other members of the Mouse Guard flanking Mort, and, instead of pushing away the riff raff so that the merchants could get the grain, pushing away the merchants so that the riff raff could get it.

Merchant: I'll pay you 20!

Second Merchant: I'll pay you 30!

Duke got evidence about the true culprit. The granary had been burned down by Lionel, who was not the wealthiest merchant, because Errol had been the wealthiest merchant and it was Errol's warehouse that burned. Lionel framed Errol and red furred mice, with the governor's connivance, iirc. Michael said that this evidence would count as a weapon in the upcoming duel of wits.

Mort tried to sway the crowd's opinion of Red Furred mice. Josephine helped, saying, among other things, that she'd always found Red Furred mice to be quite attractive. The successes there became a bonus at the beginning of the duel of wits.

This duel was Governor Elaine, aided by Sky, versus Duke, Mort, and Josephine. Our goal was for the Governor to have to step down and for there to be an election. When the duel was over, our compromise was that she stepped down, and there was an election, but she was a candidate, and nothing was certain about the outcome. And there, we ended the game.

While I had fun, I had a couple of issues with the game. The first was that even streamlined Mouse Guard is higher crunch than I preferred. The second is that, for me, there is a disconnect between the conflict resolution and the roleplaying. That is, I am fine with the idea of the dice being the important thing, but in that case, I resent having to work at making any kind of good argument for a duel of wits or cool description for a fight. It feels like a let down when a crappy die roll puts paid to my improvisational brilliance.

Explaining this leads to a circular argument. E.g.:

Kevin: But it's a game. That's why we roll dice.

Me: Oh, I totally get that. But then, why do I have to put in so much effort on describing what I do or say?

Kevin: It's roleplaying.

Me: But it doesn't matter what I do or say.

This was a similar problem to the problem I had with the larp "And Thunder Shall Roll", where we were told that our gun skill had to do with the number on our cards, but really, it had to do with how good the players were with nerf guns.

Matt Weber didn't quite get why I had a problem with the rules, but said, "Wait, you're saying that you liked the story you all made, but not the process of getting there? Okay, that I understand." He also pointed out that there's a rule calling for advantage dice for good descriptions, which I did not know, and which makes a big difference.

Julian made a suggestion for a modification that would make the rules work better for me: Use fortune in the middle. This way, the dice roll, we see who wins the exchange, and then we narrate.