Mousetrap 2017 edition

The homebrew forum

Moderator: Moderators

Post Reply
PhoneLobster
King
Posts: 6403
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Mousetrap 2017 edition

Post by PhoneLobster »

So anyway.

I decided to reorganize the structure of mousetrap a bit.

The result is the 2017 edition. A split to smaller documents and an excising of various somewhat pointless "extra" bits from a lot of the documents (especially the cultural ones) to eventually turn into a GMing guide document and a "Why is this so?" design guide document (the two least complete documents at this stage which are largely just dumps of old texts and various notes to work on).

Basically all the old material has been processed and moved over, only relatively minor actual rules changes have occurred, but the opportunity for some minor keyword reforms and so on has been taken here and there with the intention to do some more as I go.

Additional materials have been added, including some of the pregenerated materials documents and (part of) a character build/game play guide I had been talking about doing in the prior edition thread.

Of course it is, as it will likely always be still in progress, I say this not to ward off criticism but just so you wont be surprised when some parts abruptly just stop with "insert text here", a dump of jumbled notes and depreciated text or otherwise don't exist yet. Still there is more than sufficiently complete material here to run a game, a campaign, or even campaigns with somewhat different settings and content.

And this time with somewhat better organization you can find pretty much all of it via this START HERE document.
Phonelobster's Self Proclaimed Greatest Hits Collection : (no really, they are awesome)
User avatar
Foxwarrior
Duke
Posts: 1626
Joined: Thu Nov 11, 2010 8:54 am
Location: RPG City, USA

Post by Foxwarrior »

Is there a list of some basic prebuilt completely playable early-game characters out there? I'm getting really stuck on the clothing, it feels like the many elaborate layers of clothes can easily be more convoluted than a character's actual trained abilities? And then you lose your clothes during the fight and have to recalculate your defensive keywords to determine which weapons are effective against you?
User avatar
Foxwarrior
Duke
Posts: 1626
Joined: Thu Nov 11, 2010 8:54 am
Location: RPG City, USA

Post by Foxwarrior »

Unrelated observations: I dived into the magic stuff by reading the most important spell school first... the Reality Engine filled me with malicious glee, but... most spell schools don't get their own artifact superweapons?

I feel like "Hotshot Fighter Pilot" would make a pretty much perfect character archetype for your secret base-based advancement system (but not so much for the ambiguity of air zone sizes), but so far I haven't seen much sign of mecha at all.
Last edited by Foxwarrior on Sun Sep 20, 2020 8:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
The Adventurer's Almanac
Duke
Posts: 1540
Joined: Tue Oct 01, 2019 6:59 pm
Contact:

Post by The Adventurer's Almanac »

Sending people to a "Start Here" page that links them to a bunch of other documents is a brilliant way of obfuscating how long your game actually is. I checked out the "Why Play" page and you've definitely caught my attention with it. I'll check this stuff out once I've got time and a magnifying glass.
User avatar
Foxwarrior
Duke
Posts: 1626
Joined: Thu Nov 11, 2010 8:54 am
Location: RPG City, USA

Post by Foxwarrior »

Foxwarrior wrote:Is there a list of some basic prebuilt completely playable early-game characters out there?
I'm going to expand this to a request for cultures, careers, monsters, and a stable of usable NPCs, maybe even some maps. Just like, some content you put together for a campaign you ran, no need to put the effort into making them more generic (unless they're embarrassingly depraved I guess). Because I'm tempted to try running this for my group, but I don't want to do any more prep than is absolutely necessary (I'm willfully ignoring the hours spent reading the rules here).
PhoneLobster
King
Posts: 6403
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by PhoneLobster »

Wow, necro hey.

OK. So let me describe my design process.

About once a year give or take, I decide to make changes to my rules.

Tear up give or take half of it then rewrite close enough to the same thing.

Somewhere before completion I'll start a campaign with it and shift my focus from functional rules to a functional campaign.

This makes everything kind of a mess in terms of presentation and completion of the actual rules.

But that's fine because by the time I realize the rules completion has stalled and my campaign notes are a mess it's been about a year now and I want to change something moderately fundamental and that is going to require tearing down about half the rules...

I'm sorry but the not quite complete 2017 rules might be my most complete version of these ever? I don't even remember. But it's probably the one I did the biggest push on completing, and you'll note some of the sample moster/etc... documents are barely started. Aside from that I'm amazed the link works, looking at it feels like archaeology to me. Not that I'm going to claim I've moved on that much, and honestly it's probably the version I'd most stand behind in broad terms as something I'd be proud of showing as an at least somewhat complete human readable and theoretically usable product.

Since then I kinda stopped caring about producing anything especially presentable. You might note, oh I don't know, the four years of this thread having zero replies...

Anyway I... don't know if I have the familiarity to produce content for my 2017 version anymore. I am fairly confident my old campaign notes are full of lazy cut and pastes, "wing it" insertions of one off material and at least a few embarrassingly naked elf girl npcs.

I could um... quietly reform some of that. Or I could try and make my current stuff more presentable.

Though... my current campaign notes... so Covid you know, and oh wow WAY early in my rules creation/destruction cycle there, and I got bored of the lack of gaming early... and started a solo campaign with my wife...

I'm cripplingly embarrassed about the uncertain potential smattering of topless elf girls in my regular campaign notes I am SO not sharing anything from the campaign I play with my partner and remember very clearly and recently the nature of the content.

Anyway in more direct responses...
Not everyone gets artifact super weapons because I never got around to it, High Tier is always a challenge to get to before the next rules cycle sets in and the smattering of it that exists in the 2017 edition is probably as close as I ever got. The longer campaigns generally end (and spend most of their time in) something resembling Mid Tier. Some versions of the rules had a a pretty damn solid completion rate on Mid Tier, I THINK the 2017 edition was the best one...

Yes clothing was still a fucking mess in the 2017 edition, I think, items in general had issues. I've TOTALLY fixed that now, I just did it in a way that kinda fucked up ALL the options. Sort of.

Basically I kinda decided the item complexity bloat needed to come under some control, then simultaneously decided the custom item creation that caused that bloat should apply to basically everything. BRILLIANT. Then I got lazy and was all "yeah I KNOW I was going to rewrite a better flexible set of option creation guidelines, but that's like, effort, and I just need individual guidelines for my game right now and I mean it's not like anyone is reading this or complaining if they don't technically adhere to a structure that technically doesn't exist..."

Anyway how about I uselessly ramble about where I'm at currently then come back later with my more modern core material that isn't remotely the things you asked for then probably wander off in six months before getting to the point of providing the things you asked for?

Because that, that I think I can fucking nail.
Last edited by PhoneLobster on Mon Sep 21, 2020 12:15 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Phonelobster's Self Proclaimed Greatest Hits Collection : (no really, they are awesome)
User avatar
merxa
Master
Posts: 258
Joined: Wed Nov 22, 2017 3:24 am

Post by merxa »

so, do you have a rule set you can share and people can play test?
User avatar
Foxwarrior
Duke
Posts: 1626
Joined: Thu Nov 11, 2010 8:54 am
Location: RPG City, USA

Post by Foxwarrior »

Mousetrap 2017 seems fully playable merxa, it's just that as it is the DM has to build cultures, all the NPCs including guards and beasties, careers I think, probably some items. For a system where the original designer intends to always be available to make balance decisions, it sure does spend a lot of time on describing creation systems so that any DM could make their own setting using these rules without fear of it being unbalanced.
PhoneLobster
King
Posts: 6403
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by PhoneLobster »

Foxwarrior wrote:For a system where the original designer intends to always be available to make balance decisions, it sure does spend a lot of time on describing creation systems so that any DM could make their own setting using these rules without fear of it being unbalanced.
I see that as a tool for myself.

It's the formatting and clarity which is for other people.
Phonelobster's Self Proclaimed Greatest Hits Collection : (no really, they are awesome)
Post Reply