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In Short

The Good: The nature of the mechanics result in a sense of the entire world being a serious threat, which is brought together nicely through conflicts emphasizing a feeling of teamwork among the guardmice. The artwork and stories from the comic are fantastic, as is the entire RPG presentation.

The Bad: My sense is that either you will love the mechanics of this game or you will hate them. Those who prefer games with lots of player input (through scene editing and such) may have trouble with the system as failure is both more likely and more interesting here than in some other games. The system demands active, descriptive players.

The Physical Thing

Under the Cover

The Setting

The setting for Mouse Guard is quite unique. Mice are sapient, as are weasels, while other forest creatures remain just as they are now. Both species use forged weapons, armor, and fortifications with a technological sophistication on a level with that of the Middle Ages. Mice also make use of one important piece of technology, a powerful scent that they brew and spread around their territory. This scent barrier keeps larger predators from entering the area, and the reapplication of the chemical often falls to the Guard to perform.

Mouse society has no strong organization, instead involving independent city-states that are each governed in various ways. The Guard is based out of Lockhaven, the oldest and most heavily fortified of these settlements, and it’s a volunteer organization that serves to protect all mice from the dangers of the world. While politics within communities does exist, the harsh nature of life results in most communities looking to the experienced and trained mice in the Guard for aid with various problems throughout the year.

The Mouse Guard is a para-military organization of volunteers who initially apprentice to existing members in order to learn scouting, hunting, fighting, diplomacy, and other skills in high demand during a crisis. It offers supplies and regular pay to members, thanks primarily to community donations from those many cities that have been helped by the Guard. Everything from running mail to removing dangerous predators can fall to the Guard to take care of, and they represent all that is heroic about mouse society.

System

Mouse Guard is powered by the Burning Wheel system, a somewhat gritty conflict-focused system that encourages characters to answer hard questions and, most notably, to change through doing. It’s a d6 dice pool system wherein a result of 4, 5, or 6 counts as a success. Dice are drawn from appropriate Skills and Attributes, along with some modifiers adding additional dice, and this pool is tested independently against a difficulty of 1 to 6 successes, used in a simple opposed roll to resolve mundane contests, or is used during an opposed Conflict situation.

The bread and butter of task resolution comes from Skills, the primary Skills in Mouse Guard being Fighter, Healer, Hunter, Instructor, Pathfinder, Scout, Survivalist, Weather Watcher, Orator, Deceiver, and Persuader. Additional Skills are also included, the most notable being Wises which reflect special knowledge of a given area. Beetle-wise, for example, might reflect the knowledge of a character who has spent a great deal of time studying and working with beetles.

Dice pools are determined primarily based on the ratings of these Skills, from 1 to 6, but other factors can increase the pool. Being able to bring in a useful Wise can award an additional die, so a character with Beetle-wise using Fighter against a large beetle would add an extra die to the pool. A friend helping can also roll an extra die, assuming they have a relevant Skill to help with, though this ties them into the conflict such that they will share the fate of the primary actor. Equipment may also add a die. Additionally, characters have a reserve of special points, Fate and Persona, which may be used to enhance a die roll. A spent Fate point allows for any result of 6 to be added and rerolled, thereby potentially allowing for an incredible success. Persona either adds a single die per point or, more often, brings in a number of dice equal to the mouse’s Nature (more on that).

The use of Fate and Persona are important to the game as they enable a mouse to succeed at an important task but can only be replaced through active roleplay. Characters have Beliefs, Instincts, and Goals that can enable a player to gain additional points. Beliefs are simple one sentence statements of what the character actually believes and by roleplaying them a character can earn Fate. Roleplaying against a Belief can earn Persona. Instincts are things a character does naturally, without hesitation, and playing through Instincts can also award Fate. Goals are session specific. If the character obtained their goal then they receive Fate, if they merely worked towards it then they receive Persona. These, along with party rewards for most valuable player, are the common ways to gain this valuable currency.

A few more base mechanics shall be mentioned before moving on to a discussion of Conflicts. All characters have Traits, very short descriptors that function to stimulate roleplay description and to encourage players to disadvantage their characters in the short term for a later benefit. By taking a penalty on an action, giving an adversary a bonus, or resolving a tie in favor of an enemy a character earns Checks which can be used for a variety of benefits. This game currency is used to recover from injury and other status conditions, provide bonuses, and accomplish certain tasks. For example, a character with the Trait “Short” might narrate how being short prevented them from reaching far enough with their sword to strike an enemy in battle. By disadvantaging the current action they will later be able to better recover from injury, or succeed when a success is greatly needed.

In addition to all of the above, characters have Abilities at various ratings. These include Nature, Will, Health, Resources, and Circles. Nature reflects how mouse-like a character is, and it’s the dominant Ability for just about every non-mouse NPC the characters will encounter. The higher it is the more like a typical mouse the character is, while a low rating reflects a more human-like mouse. Characters want to have a Nature of a more middling to high value as they can add bonus dice equal to Nature to an appropriate roll by spending Persona, which is extraordinarily powerful. Doing so risks losing some Nature, however.

Will and Health tend to be used to resist certain Skills, such as Will being used to resist a Persuader attempt, and they also form the basis for Disposition in a Conflict (more below). Resources is used to purchase things, making it a simple but abstract system for handling wealth. Circles is used to make contacts and find people, representing social connections. With those mentioned, let’s talk about Conflict!

Conflict comes in many forms in Mouse Guard, just as it does in life. Conflicts are both abstract and tactical, requiring a group actively interested in flavorful character description. Conflict begins by forming teams. PCs should be on a team no larger than 3, as each team will have three actions in the conflict. This results in a narrative description that sounds very integrated and team-based throughout the Conflict.

Once characters have been placed on teams the teams’ respective Dispositions are determined. This typically involves taking Health or Will and rolling a specific Skill, adding successes to the base Attribute to determine total Disposition. So for a melee battle one character on the team will roll Fighter and add successes to Health. While determining Disposition the groups will also need to determine what their specific Goals are in the fight. Perhaps it’s simply to kill the enemy or take them prisoner. In a social Conflict it might be to embarrass or discredit an opponent, but the Goal can be as interesting and specific as the players care to come up with.

During the Conflict each side will choose three Actions drawn from Attack, Defend, Feint, and Maneuver, each of which has specific rules associated with it. Weapons add a little more complexity to this, changing the Conflict rules a bit based on what type of weapon has been brought to bear. There’s a moderate amount of strategy involved in the selection, especially since neither side knows the other’s chosen Actions until they’re all revealed. Thus, one team might go for a maneuver to deliver a devastating follow up attack while another goes for multiple Defensive actions in the second round to build back up from their losses.

The outcome of a Conflict is significant, often inflicting harmful Conditions on the participants. The winning team will gain their Goal, but if the losing team beat up on them quite a bit then they may have to make a concession towards their opponent’s Goal as well. Additionally, the standard Conditions of Hungry/Thirsty, Angry, Tired, and Injured may be imposed during Conflict resolution. Losing a fight and being captured is almost certainly going to inflict Injured on the characters. These Conditions provide notable, stacking penalties and are typically removed by spending Checks (from roleplaying Traits, as above) to make recovery tests to remove them. Failed recovery tests either result in the condition remaining or, in some instances, a permanent injury.

The flow of the session is interesting and deserves some attention. Sessions are split into the GM’s turn and the player’s turn, with each group having control of the action for about half the session. During the GM’s turn the GM puts the characters through harsh adventure, challenging everything they believe in and forcing dangerous confrontations. During the player’s turn the characters recuperate from the beating they received while also pursuing their individual interests. The players take the story in a different direction. While the GM still plays the antagonists and arbitrates the rules, the switch is meant to encourage players to drive the story forward towards the next session.

The session isn’t the only part of the game with a unique flow. A full campaign normally goes through a season per session, with each season having its own special considerations. Winter involves the most harsh and dangerous weather, for example, but many common predators are not around during the winter months. A more concrete consideration involves a limit on weather-based Twists used by the GM during that time. Twists are ways for the GM to make a failure more interesting, often turning a failure into a “success BUT” result. Twists are a wonderful way of pushing the adventure forward while also introducing an interesting consequence of failure.

To sum up, Mouse Guard uses a d6 dice pool system that is either rolled solo, against an opponent, or in a Conflict where teams choose three actions per round and compare them to try and decrease each other’s Disposition in order to obtain a Goal. Heavy emphasis on individual player narrative is reflected in the mechanics and flow of the game, so if you have a number of shy players this may not be the game of choice for your group. Those that are on the ball, though, can have a fantastic time.

Support

Mouse Guard contains an incredible amount of support. Many detailed example characters ready for play, a huge number of NPCs and creatures, and plenty of discussion of the many hazards the Guard is likely to encounter can all be found here. As if that’s not enough plenty of short adventures are included to show the reader both what life is like among the Guard and how to construct an appropriate adventure for the system. The support is simply excellent, and there is nothing else I could ask for.

Play

My group used four of the pregens to embark on a mission to discover why Whitepine hadn’t reported in since the Spring thaws began. Weather was often a problem along the way, as were a few hungry foxes. By the time the characters made it to Whitepine they discovered that the colony had been destroyed. Some investigation led to weasel tracks and, ultimately, a showdown with a pair of weasel spies who had stayed behind to ransack the place.

In play we found the mechanics to work very favorably, and the setting was a blast to play in. The most common gripe I heard afterwards was that some folk weren’t prepared for how brutal both the setting and Conflicts could be, but I consider that to be a positive aspect of the system. Player description was very active, even from players who don’t always get as involved in narration, and as everyone discovered how extremely important Checks are they began working harder to narrate problems for their characters.

The strangest part involved the nature of Conflicts, and it took players a moment to wrap their heads around how the situation was playing out. Once they had, however, everyone really enjoyed the mechanics. The more strategy oriented players, in particular, really got involved in trying to outfox their opponents and I felt like Conflict was fun as a mini-game that changes pace as much as it was fun for being an interesting way to pace resolution of a complex task.

My Take

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