Also, we've drifted the game slightly (suck it, Luke!).

1. I let the players decide when they want to take a condition to succeed on a failed roll. But I still get to decide which condition. We do this because we're player-empowerment hippie wankers. Also...

2. We sometimes only have time to run a single obstacle in the 3 hours we have for play, but instead of having things roll over in weird ways, we've still been treating that as a full GM turn. To compensate, I've been making the single obstacle more complex or difficult, like the woodpecker + bobcat encounter from last session. This seems to work and I imagine I'll get better at hammering them as the game continues.

Aye Jonathan, any chance of some out of game context to all of his awesome mousery?

Posted By: Jonathan WaltonWhat do you wanna know, Judd?

That is exactly what I wanted to know.

Awesome.

Just lazy, I think. But those are good suggestions.

The session tonight was a lot of fun, but it wasn't as hard hitting as it could have been and that was probably because I wasn't driving at Beliefs, Goals, and Instincts hard enough. I'll work on that for next time.

Wanking it,
Jonathan

Inside the fortress, there were two other weasels, an older, regal one who called himself "the Earl" and a scrawny one that began sharpening his knife and preparing to cook Winifred and Brand. Brand, however, made his loremouse roll to be able to speak weasel and then won an argument with the Earl, convincing the weasel lord that there were more mice down in the Darkheather tunnels beneath them (which wasn't completely a lie, because Clarence was there, and maybe Myrtle and Anthony too). The Earl asked if those mice were "in the hands of those pirates?" Brand said, "Uh.... yes, definitely!"

When the other weasels returned from searching the settlement, however, they didn't believe Brand's promise of more mice below and wanted to eat these two mice now. An argument resulted, which turned into a brawl, and then one weasel knifed another and it was fucking on. While the weasels were fighting amongst themselves, Colin snuck down into the fortress and freed Winifred and Brand. They scurried off towards the watchtower with the weasels fast on their tails.

They reached the top room of the watchtower only to find a spectacle of astonishing gore. Two mice had been ripped apart there, mangled beyond all recognition, but it appeared to have been done almost a year ago, since everything was dried and rotten away. Brand made a loremouse roll to try to determine what type of creature could have done this. His mind said "wolverine," but a creature like that wouldn't have fit in the tower. Colin also examined the scraps of cloaks that remained and determined that the victims were guardmice.

With the weasels bursting into the room behind them, they didn't have any more time to piece together the crime scene, so they jumped out the window and tried to scrambled down the side of the tower towards the creek. Winifred failed her roll again (the dice were not kind to Jen) and plummeted into the creek before being quickly carried into the Darkheather, as Clarence had been earlier. After examining this entrance and deciding to avoid falling into the Darkheather, Brand led Colin through the muddy bottom of the former bog, across to where the Winter War attack had originated from. There, they found a burrow-style entrace into the Darkheather that they could simply walk into.

Meanwhile, Winifred splashed around frantically in the darkness and eventually found herself clinging to the side of a large ship-size boat that was laying upended in the flooded Darkheather tunnel, with the back end of the ship sticking upright at a strange angle out of the water. Winifred heard voices coming from inside the wrecked ship, and peaking through a hatch she spied Clarence (looking utterly terrified) sitting across a banquet table from a weasel dressed in a fancy but ill-fitting admiral's uniform that clearly once belonged to a mouse.

We ended there and are going to take the player's turn before starting next time. Can't wait! I love this game.

Robert was back this week, so we had everybody for this killer session of revelations and utter chaos in the Darkheather tunnels beneath Ferndale. First, we ran the Player Turn from last session, with everybody pausing to lick their wounds. Then it went down...

SESSION 4: JOURNEY THROUGH THE DARK(HEATHER)

Myrtle and Anthony began the first scene in an underground cell filled with tufts of dried feathers, obviously the cell where the late woodpecker had once been kept and trained. Robert and I improvised some vague but worried conversations between Myrtle and Anthony, since I didn't want to reveal exactly who had captured them yet.

Next to where the creek plummeted into the Darkheather, Winnifred snuck into the wrecked ship and secretly freed Clarence from perhaps being eaten by the pack of "pirate" weasels. Together, they stole away, climbing out of the wreck and heading down the dry part of the tunnel, in the opposite direction from where the creek was flowing.

Elsewhere, Brand and Colin began delving into the immense tunnel system, guided by Colin's compass (he a sailor!) and good sense of direction. After moving through a series of abandoned rooms filled with empty stores and more than a few dead weasels and mice, they heard a bizarre thump-thump-clank noise coming up from the depths. Colin went to ground again, while Brand was once again stuck out in the open, falling onto his back while trying to scramble and dig a side alcove hurriedly. But what should emerge out of the darkness but two mice riding feral weasels. The weasels were chained up and clearly mistreated, much like the woodpecker had been and wore metal, bladed gauntlets on their paws, leading to the clanking noise whenever they hit small stones on the tunnel floor.

Next I revealed that Myrtle and Anthony were currently in the clutches of a group of mice who ride abused, feral weasels. They had actually been captured by the "pirate" weasels but had been ransomed to the mice in exchange for more food (badly needed, since the weasels were starving). In this scene, Myrtle was interrogated by the leader of the mice, Rose Marie, and her silent-but-scary lieutenant, Graf. Rose Marie wore a "CL" Carolingian League pin, exactly like the ones wore by the doddering old scientist-revolutionaries in Sprucetuck (way back in Session 1), but she was surprised to learn from Myrtle that there was a Sprucetuck league, since she claimed that her group was the original Carolingian League, founded by Caroline from the survivors of Woodruff's Grove and Ferndale. Unfortunately, Caroline disobeyed the League's own rules and was caught "communicating with outsiders" (mice from the Territories) and was thus "exiled" (though Myrtle rolled a success and figured out that Rose Marie was lying about exiling Caroline). Myrtle ultimately convinces Rose Marie that she and Anthony came looking for Caroline because they were fed up with the Spucetuck league not actually doing anything and would be happy to join the Ferndale league.

Meanwhile, Winnifred and Colin manage to pry open a set of massive, weasel-sized metal doors with Brand's sword (both of them pushing together) and sneak into the section of tunnels controlled by the savage Ferndale league.

Genevieve, the mouse leading the league patrol that stumbled upon Brand, sends the other mounted mouse, Taylor, back to tell Rose Marie that she's captured a guardmouse in the tunnels. After Taylor leaves, Genevieve and Brand have an argument that soon turns into a battle for control of her weasel mount. Brand is ultimately victorious at getting the weasel to throw her off and Genevieve is knocked cold. Brand makes a further roll to gain the weasel's allegiance and the trained beast leads Brand, Colin, and the unconscious Genevieve back towards the league's headquarters.

This is a great read, Jonathan. I've been shanghaied to GM a saga of Mouse Guard myself, and find this very inspiring. Thank you!

So I picked up the new Mouse Guard issue today.

Guess what? Underground river through the Darkheather.

Awesome.

Hot!

I'm finally getting ready to run my first post-playtest balls-out Mouse Guard game with the Thursday hippies. Fun to get back into the spirit of it with your AP.

p.

Thomas, you should perhaps contact the publisher Archaia Studios Press about a translation.

Jonathan, are you running this campaign with a more traditional approach to the GM pacing of events...as opposed to the very specific "X" obstacles method in the book. Or is that just a incorrect impression from the way you're describing the events here?

Ralph, we've been a bit looser about Player Turn and GM Turn, such as having 3 conflicts in the last GM Turn, but I've been trying to stick to the obstacle planning guidelines in the book as much as possible. Frex, the last session saw Weather Conflict, Animal Conflict, and Mouse Conflict, so I never throw down two of the same obstacle in the same session. However, yeah, the game has unintentionally turned into a chronicle that takes place entirely within a single season, Spring, even though we were intending to have a couple of sessions per season. Instead, we're ending up with a six-issue (six-session) structure more like an arc in the comics, which works just fine, I think. So I guess the answer is that it's somewhere in between "traditional GM pacing" and the strict guidelines in the Mouse Guard book. Does that answer your question? The third conflict last session was one I threw in because 1) they botched the Weather/Journey conflict and 2) we had a bunch of time left before 10:30, when we usually wrap up.

FWIW, we did the same thing, pacing-wise. We played 5(ish) sessions, all in Spring, all on one mission, more or less. It was a big (huge!) deal for mouse-kind, though, so the patrol stuck with the problem rather than returning to Lockhaven after the initial action.

Last night, for session six, we summarized the events of Summer and Fall, and then played our Winter session. Winter session is amazing. It's now my favorite feature of the game.

I didn't have an arc in mind starting out. I just presented a problem for the patrol to deal with, and in doing so, they uncovered more bad stuff. So they decided to stick with it and root out the problem rather than go back for a new mission.

I'd stick with the episodic structure, unless and until the patrol decides to break out of it.

Sweet. I knew you didn't have an entire railroad plotted out, but it seemed you had more of a general gist of the overall Carolingian theme. So all that just fell into place sticking with the episodes...nice, and nicely reassuring.

About the seasons changing, I'm guessing you either didn't go with the obstacle based season progression, or haven't thrown that many weather twists into the mix. Did you give some thought to changing the seasons and decided not to or did you wind up just realizing after a few sessions that you were still in Spring.

Wrapped up the game with Session 7 last night. It rocked socks. But now I have to play catch-up over the past two sessions...

SESSION 6: THE MICE ACT WEASELY

During the player turn, an exhausted Brand confronts Rose Marie and tries to gain her help in resolving the Ferndale League's occupation of Sprucetuck, but Rose Marie schools Brand, 3 successes to 1. She heads off on her own, disappearing into the city, and he watches her go.

Winnifred goes down to the larder to check out the stores, since she has a bunch of ranks in Harvester and Famine-Wise. Things are not looking very good. Rationing has already started and Sprucetuck will be experiencing a full-on famine in about a week.

Myrtle goes to chat with the music teacher she had encountered earlier, trying to lose her Angry condition over a cup of weak tea. She fails and is still totally fed-up with the current situation. Colin crashes on a couch and sleeps.

Clarence wakes Winnifred up to tell her about the plan that he and Anne (Wessex's daughter, the original singer of the Ballad of Caroline) have cooked up. They have a backpack rigged to operate like one of the elevators in Sprucetuck, allowing mice to belay down from tree branches in a manner that seems horribly unsafe, offset by the weight of a large rock. They want Winnifred, the known bobcat-fighter to get a drop on the bobcat using the pack while Clarence distracts it by riding forth on the back of a stolen feral weasel. When Winnifred reports this to Brand at the meeting, the patrol begins planning how to stop this madness.

That night, Anthony sneaks into Graf's apartment, straddling the injured mouse's chest and demanding to know what really happened to Caroline. He is followed by Colin and Myrtle and Colin finally has to stop him when Anthony starts strangling Graf, who offers only scraps of information like "...the tower!... wasn't my idea!" Once some militia members burst in and haul Anthony away, Colin decides Anthony had the right idea -- even though he didn't want murder to be on Anthony's conscience -- and moves to stab Graf himself. Myrtle intervenes and they wrestle for Colin's sword for a while before both stalking off after a heated conversation about what the Guard's true responsibilities include.

In any event, Graf dies during the night, from his previous injuries and perhaps helped along by Anthony's attack. Anthony himself is kept prisoner in Graf's old apartment by Genevieve and the Ferndale League. Wessex himself comes to Brand and ask for his help in saving the life of his manservant (Anthony). With no food in Sprucetuck, the feral weasels are growing hungry and desparate, so rumor has it that the League is considering feeding Anthony to the weasels, as punishment for Graf's death.

And so an elaborate and somewhat ridiculous plan is concocted and executed by the patrol.

Winnifed and Myrtle wander around the tunnels near the roots of the tree, picking a known variety of poisonous mushroom. That night, militia collaborators bury Graf's body in a side alcove of the tunnel. Wessex maneuvers Brand and Colin onto the work detail that comes in on the next shift. They bluff the guards into going to fetch some timbers to "shore up the tunnel so it doesn't collapse on all of us" and dig up Graf's body. While Brand provides some cover, Colin sneaks the body over to where the feral weasels are kept in cages. He then, quote, "chops the body up, stuffs it full of mushrooms, and feeds it immediately to the weasels."

Meanwhile, Winnifred and Myrtle have borrowed the belaying pack from Clarence and Anne. They haul the pack and its attached rock up to the insectry, which has not yet been fully repaired from the woodpecker attack. They consider using the pack to drop Winnifred down the side of the tree, landing her on the small balcony outside Graf's former apartment, but instead untie the rope from both pack and rock, having Winnifred simply climb down it. They rescue Anthony and stow him with the music teacher, before joining the rest of the patrol for a well-deserved hot bath.

So... there were no full-on conflicts last week, just normal obstacles, which felt a bit weird to me but all the players said they still enjoyed it. I found myself wishing that there was a "Caper" conflict type for escapades of this sort, but maybe Luke doesn't want to encourage mice to act like weasels.

That just leaves the final session from yesterday.

Anne comes to find Winnifred. "Clarence was just here. He's going to try to kill the bobcat by himself, because he says you never let him do anything!" Winnifred rushes towards the tunnel.

Meanwhile, Colin is watching the small tunnel opening (it's finished, kinda!) being widened and overhears some of the militia guards saying, "Kid, you can't be in here." He goes to find Clarence trying to talk his way past, carrying his backpack that's been stuffed full of mail, trailing letters all the way down into the tunnel. He's got a kitchen knife stuck in his belt, since he lacks a sword. Colin chews him out for having dropped the mail, sounding very much like Brand lecturing Winnifred in Session 2. Then their exchange goes like this:

Clarence: "Looks like the tunnel's done."
Colin: "Yup."
Clarence: "So... somebody should probably go and tell Gwendolyn what's happened here."
Colin: "Yup."
Clarence: "And only one of us is going to fit through that hole right now..."
Colin: "... Okay, kid. Take one lap around the tree, see if you spot the bobcat, and report right back here immediately."
Clarence: "Yes, sir!"

Winnifred, Brand, and Myrtle arrive a few minutes later, having followed the string of letters. Clarence doesn't return after about 10 minutes. The young tenderpaws, being the only ones who can fit out the tunnel, go after him, leaving Colin and Brand to start digging the tunnel wider. Clarence is, of course, going after the bobcat. Myrtle is chewing him out for having run off alone when Winnifred notices the bobcat watching them from the tree right above them. They run and the first conflict begins. They manage to hold the cat off until Colin and Brand spring out, roll their own independent Disposition and begun and two-groups-against-one conflict (which is honestly how I should have run the fight against the feral weasels in Session 5). In end end, both Winnifred and Colin stab the bobcat but good, succeeding in their goal of driving the beast away from Sprucetuck indefinitely.

We took a player turn at that point, because it seemed silly to wait and take one after the campaign was over. With the bobcat gone, the spring harvest began and most players decided to remove their "hungry and thirsty" condition by filling their characters' bellies.

Then, we fast-forwarded to the Tunnel Completion / Bobcat Fighting / Surrender / Satirical Operetta Ceremony the next day. Notably, Rose Marie was not present as the ceremony began. First Sprucetuck honored the architect and the various guilds and militia units responsible for digging the tunnel. Then the entire patrol was brought up on stage and given bobcat-shaped pins crudely spun out of copper wire (scientists, right?). Finally, Genevieve came up and gave some half-hearted comments about how she hoped everyone could "put these unfortunate events behind us" and "build a new future together." She didn't mention the word "surrender" or Wessex or Roland (the mayor of Sprucetuck) or the patrol.

Next came the moment when Anthony and Myrtle's operetta was to begin. First, Anne came out and began a solo, which was what everyone was expecting. She was just about to bring in the chorus and break into the satirical parts when a single elevator descended quickly from the top of Sprucetuck, carrying Rose Marie to the middle of the stage, right beside Anne. Grabbing Wessex's daughter, she threw a lever and began rising quickly back up. A large rock tied to a rope descended as a counter balance. The patrol sprang into action. Brand, Winnifred, and Clarence took to the stairs. Colin began climbing the dangling rope. Myrtle and Anthony stepped forward to continue leading the operetta, pretending this was all part of the show.

At the very top of Sprucetuck, there was a dramatic final confrontation, with Rose Marie jumping between the various elevators suspended from the ceiling, dragging Anne along with her. Her goal was "To turn this whole performance into a debacle." The patrol's was "To save Anne and capture Rose Marie." Rose Marie Feinted that she was planning to drop Anne a couple times, but Colin, hanging below her, Manuvered against this possibility. Brand shouted out that everything could still work out, even now, that it was not too late to make the right decision. Rose Marie threw a bunch of levers, causing some of the elevators to begin descending, but Winnifred threw Clarence on top of a large rock to counterbalance them, so multiple levels of elevators stood dangling in mid-air. Winnifred leaped out and began grappling with Rose Marie on the top of one of the elevators. Colin swung up and knocked Rose Marie off, but she grabbed one of the bars of a lower elevator with her tail.

With a Feint that dropped the patrol to Disposition 1 (while she still had 4), she swung up, placed a kiss on Brand's cheek, and then -- giving into her nihilistic impulses -- let go entirely, freefalling towards the stage below. For the next round, I scripted Attack, Attack, Attack. The patrol scripted something like Manuver, Attack, Defend. The Attack-Maneuver exchange led to a stalemate, but Rose Marie blew right through the last of their Disposition in the Attack-Attack exchange. Since Attack-Attack rolls were independent, however, the only question was whether the patrol could get 4 successes and make Rose Marie lose as well. Colin tapped a bunch of Nature and Fated some 6s to get the necessary successes, so we ended with what one player called a "Gwen Stacy ending." Colin swung a dangling elevator to over catch Rose Marie, but she landed with a sickening thud and we all knew she was dead.

That sounds awesome, thanks for posting.