Mouse World roleplaying

[Lago PARANOIA]

fair point, I was merely demonstrating the kind of power such a character could bring to bear, and the corpse could be taken care of as well.

PA, if you're so obsessed about having tiny badasses killing things 300x heavier and 30x bigger than them then stop dicking us around about wanting a Mouse World. You want a Giant World where the protagonists are furries or warforged.

And that's fine, but you can't mix and match your tropes. Mouse Worlds completely break the fuck down if a tiny critter can just resort to a technological solution to their environmental problems, like ordering and paying an assassin online or using poisoned darts. The fact that you've come up with so many ways to subvert common hazards to the point where they're jokes just proves how fragile and narrow the setting is.

[Prak]

and (at least some of) the shit I'm coming up with actually happens in the setting. Maybe not when the protagonists are mice, but they are things I would expect of pretty much any other type of protagonist, with the possible exception of most Dolls.

So the setting is narrow, well, fucking fine. I didn't grow up on Nimh or Redwall, and with damned good reason. I grew up with Toy Story as the main example of this setting for me, and recently I've found other examples in 9 and Mushroom Men, rather than Mouse Guard (though I do intend to read that at some point).

But if a rat using "technology" by killing a poisonous animal, and then harvesting that animal's venom is outside of the setting, then setting seems to miss it's own fucking point. The idea, as I understand it, is to show a mirror of human society on a smaller scale, where everyday things are suddenly challenging. Well, fucking primitive tribesmen have figured out "We can harvest this small animal's venom to kill bigger animals." So why the fuck can't rats with human intelligence do the same damned thing?

[violence in the media]

Then why are you playing rats? I always thought that the point of Mouse World stories was that the protagonists were more moral/more noble/kinder than the average human. The small creatures that act like the humans or adopt their harmful ways are usually the bad guys.

Also, there's typically an assumption that if the humans were to discover the intelligence of the small world that it would be wiped out, or that it's revelation to the larger world would be harmful to the small world's human allies. So no, you can't poison crossbow dart the human exterminator because the humans will find the dart, despite your best efforts, and then the scientists at NIMH will come and capture or kill all of you. If the toys tell Andy that they're actually alive and will be watching him masturbate when he's older, that will fuck him up for the rest of his life. Even if he doesn't tell his mom or teacher and get committed to a psych hospital as a result.

[souran]

Mouse Templar is a totally different comic book about mice with swords written by a totally different dude. Never read it.

I checked wikipedia and this appears to be correct. Mouse Guard and Mouse Templar are by two different authors and are unrelated material.

I think the best short description of Burning Wheel is:
"It's a cool game, set firmly in a reductionist neo-tolkien/warhammer/warcraft gameworld."

-Username17

.....

So, Frank doesn't have anything scathing to say about burning wheel? Or, more specifically anything to say other than "its cool" wouldn't this seem to imply that this game is some sort of modern marvel? A masterpiece of game creation that could only have sprung from the pen of the messhia himself?

Also, I thought that the setting of burning wheel games was like 3.x implied but not integral. So you could make your own worlds type game.

Is it worth buying and playing?

[Username17]

I've actually never played it. But if you got the impression somewhere that Burning Wheel was divorcable from its implied setting without a tremendous amount of work, you were led astray.

The deal is that character generation is Mechwarrior style "lifepaths" and different races not only have different life paths available, they have different stats. So if you want to have cat girls or kobolds, you pretty much have to write your own game and mark "Inspired by Burning Wheel" on it (the author has essentially done this). The setting is integrated all the way through character generation, and you interact with it repeatedly before your character is even playable.

But basically it's the same engine as in Mouse Guard the RPG. You get a dicepool, and 4+ are hits and 1-3 are misses. It's very focused on discussions of why an action should succeed within the story. It gets a well deserved amount of praise.

-Username17

[souran]

I've actually never played it. But if you got the impression somewhere that Burning Wheel was divorcable from its implied setting without a tremendous amount of work, you were led astray.

Ok, thats good to know.

The deal is that character generation is Mechwarrior style "lifepaths" and different races not only have different life paths available, they have different stats. So if you want to have cat girls or kobolds, you pretty much have to write your own game and mark "Inspired by Burning Wheel" on it (the author has essentially done this). The setting is integrated all the way through character generation, and you interact with it repeatedly before your character is even playable.

This I have seen. They author is VERY proud of his background/character building stuff. I didn't realize how deeply it affected characters, but the price for a the "character burner" seems out of line with its page count and size.

But basically it's the same engine as in Mouse Guard the RPG. You get a dicepool, and 4+ are hits and 1-3 are misses. It's very focused on discussions of why an action should succeed within the story. It gets a well deserved amount of praise.

-Username17

I have read the system, and have also never played it. My impression was that it seemed fairly stable at least with mouseguard.

Comparing it to say ironclaw/jadeclaw for anthropomorphic role playing the system seems MUCH more usable. However, every time I have read the rules it gives me a dp9 "sillouhette engine" vibe (Dream Pod 9's "Silohuette Engine" is far and away the BEST wrtten system I have seen mechanically/mathematically. Its also creates the most STALE pcs I have ever played. )

[Prak]

Then why are you playing rats? I always thought that the point of Mouse World stories was that the protagonists were more moral/more noble/kinder than the average human. The small creatures that act like the humans or adopt their harmful ways are usually the bad guys.

Setting Page on TV Tropes.
Just because it's called mouse world doesn't mean you're playing mice. Yes, Mice are very commonly used, and yes, they're usually "better" than humans. Hell, maybe that's why I never really got into Nimh or Redwall.
However, there are plenty of creatures used as protagonists in Mouse Worlds, hence my second post or so in this thread. Different protagonist types are used for different reasons, and mice are used because they're innocent and vulnerable. But Dolls or Plant People are blank canvases to the point where you can use them as your story requires. If you don't want to completely design what various types of blank canvases are like, you use toys, because then there's a form and attitude to inform you. But 9 had things that have pretty much not been seen before, so they got used as the writers desired, basically the same as people, with a slightly lower inclination to violence on the whole. Plants have nothing but arbitrary decisions. At best you could look at human folk lore for clues, but even then, you're kinda on their own. Like in Mushroom Men, the tribe your character comes from is the Bolettes, and they're timid, peaceful, and vaguely spiritual. The main villain tribe is the Aminitas, who are aggressive and treacherous. Completely arbitrary. Hell, the TV Tropes page has many examples of rodent protagonists as humanoid. And of those rodent protagonists you have almost as many that don't focus on mice as that do (9:10)

Also, there's typically an assumption that if the humans were to discover the intelligence of the small world that it would be wiped out, or that it's revelation to the larger world would be harmful to the small world's human allies. So no, you can't poison crossbow dart the human exterminator because the humans will find the dart, despite your best efforts, and then the scientists at NIMH will come and capture or kill all of you. If the toys tell Andy that they're actually alive and will be watching him masturbate when he's older, that will fuck him up for the rest of his life. Even if he doesn't tell his mom or teacher and get committed to a psych hospital as a result.

and yet the occasional human does get taken down in these stories. (and the toys did show themselves to Sid, specifically to fuck with him, so they could escape and he would stop mutilating toys).

My point is that if you're playing tiny protagonists with human intelligence, don't get pissed when they use it the same fucking way humans have.

As an aside, if the setting's strength is "the ordinary is extraordinary", that's fine, but I sure as hell want to play an extraordinary character. Joe the Dirt Farmer is not an interesting concept to me, regardless of how extraordinary the world is. and if you make me play Joe the Dirt Farmer and beseige me with gargantuan horrors, I will use every ounce of intellect at my disposal to become Joe the Badass Giant Slayer. And I'm sure there's a fairly significant portion of gamers who feel likewise.

[Prak]

Okay, let's put it this way, ie, the way I was looking at this originally, if a Mouse World type game were to exist, it would need to accommodate everything from Nimh, where protagonists are small, innocent and vulnerable, to Toy Story, where the protagonists operate under a mutual agreement masquerade, to Mushroom Men or 9, where the protagonists are fully capable of significant badassery and only stay hidden as much as necessary.

Or... it really is just a setting TYPE and different systems are appropriate for different source works within the setting. Maybe Burning Wheel works fine for Nimh and Mouse Guard, and hell, I'll bet something like Story Teller would work fine for Toy Story, and then maybe you use D20 (with classes that are worth a fuck) for Mushroom Men and 9.

[Grek]

Regardless of your expectations vs. humans, Mouse World is probabily not a homeric setting. This means you would want dice pool mechanics.

Combat vs. big people shouldn't be super-crunchy: If you're fighting a human, or a dog or a tractor, there is no amount of whoopass that your mousey self could muster to put them in a headlock and, no matter how many pushups you do, you are not going to be able to tank someone stepping on you.

Even if the game is 90% dealing with stuff your own size, than small-scale, DnD style "sneak into people's houses and murdering them so you can rifle through their belongings" action shouldn't the the focus of the game. That's really not the story people want to tell when they say "Mouse World"

There should probably be a mass combat system. It's a pretty common trope to have hordes of tiny people, and having a tiny war going on inside the pantry that then gets broken off due to a human coming in for a can of peas is too good to cut.

Stealth mechanics are basically a given, but I would go further and say that they should be more crunchy than combat is. There should be alot of different ways to hide, since alot of mouseworld is about hiding. The following abilities need to be accounted for:

-Hide by going under/inside of something else.
-Hide by pretending to be something inanimate.
-Hide by being where people can't or don't look.
-Make a distraction using the terrain.
-Run away really, really fast.

[TavishArtair]

Mouse Worlds almost certainly use levels of a sort, in terms of Size.

However, the bonus growth for having a better Size than someone.should be so ridiculous it might as well be a +100 or x100 modifier when dealing with things that are, well, 100 times your Size.

[ETortoise]

The price for a the "character burner" seems out of line with its page count and size.

The 25.00 price tag is for the character burner and the rulebook together. The books are 8 1/2" x 51/2" but they each have around 300 pages.

As for the game, I haven't really been able to play it since my gaming group is pretty conservative and my players weren't really interested in assuming the authorial power the rules give them. (Each character has 3 beliefs which the gm uses to plan the game.) I did play in a few sessions with a gm who had run Burning Wheel before and it was a lot of fun. The mechanical systems for combat (Fight!) and social resolution (Duel of Wits) are both fun and frustrating because they involve player skill along with that of your character.

[Lago PARANOIA]

My point is that if you're playing tiny protagonists with human intelligence, don't get pissed when they use it the same fucking way humans have.

And that's exactly when and why the setting breaks the fuck down.

Mouse Worlds are really fragile, especially in games with a higher technological base. Characters shouldn't even have goals or solutions that a human being could easily do. It shouldn't even register in their heads. Sneaking into the exterminator's house and replacing all of his poison with cotton candy is fine. Forging a letter from his ex-wife stating that she'll forgive him if he gives up the exterminating business is also fine. Hell, even tricking him into going to Ratigan's HQ and spraying there is also a fine solution if you're that much of a bastard.

If your solution to the human exterminator is 'shoot him with a poison dart' you should play a different game. That's not heavy-handed, that's the exact same thing I'd say to someone who wanted to have a goal of 'make a legal and safe living as a mage corterie of street performers' while playing Shadowrun or a group that had a goal of 'be simple farmers' while playing D&D.