Hello. I love this game. I feel like it's an improvement on Into the Odd, an already good game.
I wanted to confirm: Do you see spells as warranting saves in this system? My impression is not, but I wasn't certain if it was just not stated.
Something like Fireball doing [DICE}+[SUM] seems intense. My assumption was this is offset by the caster taking real risk of Madness. However, I could see a player having Fireball cast against them as feeling a little intense with no save.
The Goblin Punch rules seem to factor in saves, and Into the Odd arcanum in some cases include saves, so I was curious what your thoughts were.
Thank you for any insight, as well as for compiling such a lovely game. For those unaware, the website (https://losing.games/mausritter/) has some very impressive tools as well.
Good Q. I wouldn’t give a save for a spell unless it’s explicitly mentioned (I don’t think any of the base ones allow a save, but could see a very powerful spell that does).
I general, I think the higher default HP levels (of HP + STR), plus the genuine risks that casters take (I’ve had at least one mouse reduce themselves to zero WIL on a failed spell) balance out a spell like Fireball without a Save. But if you feel like it’s overpowered in your context, house rule away :)
Hello, I am really loving Mausritter! Can’t wait to run a campaign for some friends. I did notice one discrepancy, under the Mendicant priestbackground it lists Calm as a spell. However, the spell isn’t listed in the spell section. I am planning on house ruling a pretty simple effect for the spell. I am curious to was an intentional omission or was it an over sight?
Hello and first of all, thank you very much for this very inspiring game.
I know that this RPG has not only been designed for a Mouseguard world, but I was wondering about the experience rules. They say that the XPs are earned when bringing back treasures or useful goods to settlements. That's fine, but I was thinking that the Guard missions encompass a broader spectrum: control the borders, secure roads, explore places, protect mice and make sure that justice is done.
I feel like GMs who would want to emulate a Mouseguardish game would give XP for "things that are not related to pips"... but it's hard to handwave these sort of things.
What would be the guidelines for awarding XPs besides pip stuff, do you think? (and this would work in a Mouseguard world, or in any other kind of games, if you want to reward exploration)
Hey, I think XP is one of the easiest and best things to hack to get a different feel from your game.
XP is the best way to say to your players “this is what I want you to do”. The default assumption of Mausritter is that the players are poor and desperate mouse adventurers, without a permanent home base or social structure to rely on. They get XP for doing the dangerous things that other mice won’t (and they get XP for re-investing it into the communities that previously shunned them).
One option that’s not in the rulebook (and probably should be) is that I also award XP to my players for rewards given by other mice. So if the village puts together a collection of 300 pips to reward the mice from rescuing their matriarch from an owl, that would count as 300 pips for XP purposes too.
For an exploration-focused campaign, you could easily have non-player mice who are willing to pay rewards for mapped locations, or strange new discoveries. Or if you want to reward exploration directly, I would write out a list of things you want to reward players for, then assign values to them. Make this public, so players know what they’re aiming for ie. Mapping hex: 100xp; Mapping adventure site: 1000xp; Discovering a new settlement: 250xp; Finding a new spell: 100px.
For a Mouseguard-type setting, where mice are part of an hierarchical organisation and being sent on missions, I would consider getting rid of XP entirely and looking at what Into the Odd (on what a lot of Mausritter is based on) does. In that, you advance to level 2 after surviving your first mission, level 3 once you’ve completed three more after that, level 4 after five more, and taking on an apprentice, etc.
Any possibility of making a blank item-condition-weapon sheet? I hate to print our redundant items when I only want some more blanks. Super bonus if they were in some way form-fillable!
Amaaaazing!! A couple of days ago I downloaded this game and was absolutely amazed by it. Just came back and bought it properly. I hope we get more and more material for the game. Thank you for this gem!
I've just played a one shot and it was so much fun! I have some difficulty GMing fantasy games, but things went really well. One of the rats died in a moment so honorable. It was quite something! The random tables helped me a lot to make things ready faster.
Like some others in the comments, I’ve only just discovered this game due to Questing Beast. I’d absolutely love to buy a physical copy of the game too!
It was great to see this get reviewed. I bought it previously (according to Itch.io its been 147 days!) - are there big changes in this version? Any chance of more physical copies?
Happy to re-purchase it, especially if supports a future supplement.
First, many of the larger tables are mis-numbered, most commonly the ones labeled as d66, I imagine they were meant to be 6d6. I could go through and redo those tables, but if possible it would be nice to have the original copy's tables corrected.
Second, and this might have an unfortunate side-effect on the layout of these, a belt slot is desperately needed. Specifically a slot that acts otherwise the same as a body slot but is explicitly for extra items such as potions or quivers. Currently stone pouches and quivers are only equippable when wearing light armor. However only slings are usable in light armor. Bows require the wearer be unarmored in the base rules. While I'm sure this is a balance thing, it also instantly breaks everyone's immersion cause it makes little to no realistic sense. In the base rules an archer that wants to be armored would only be able to use heavy armor and fire once every other round. My current fix has been to break up armor into individual pieces and slightly buff them. Basically light armor has become a shield and cuirass which provides 1 protection each. Heavy armor has become a breastplate and helmet. The helmet provides 1 protection and the breastplate provides 2. This has allowed some players to become slightly tankier, but honestly there weren't really many tank options in the base rules.
Lastly, do you mind if people write third party adventures or supplements? I'd love to make a potions, alchemy, and artificing supplement. Plus I finished slapping together a point-crawl adventure that might make for a decent starting adventure.
In case you haven't figured this out yet d66 is meant to be 1d6 for the 10s and 1d6 for the 1s... the lowest being 11, highest 66. 6d6 would make the highest 36.
I didn't actually know that. Nowhere does it explicitly state how to read such a table. I've also never encountered such tables before so didn't understand how to read them. Thanks for the clarification though!
I didn't get a chance earlier to talk to your other points.
I like the armor changes. I wonder if it would be better to raise the heavy armor to a 2 value, but keep them as a 2 body slot item. The light armor could be separated to a shield w/ armor value 1 and 1 paw and the armor as 1 armor slot and 1 body slot. This would allow a light armored mouse with two light weapons, or a bow and quiver. Or a super tanky mouse, heavy armor and shield, medium or light weapon.
I would like to know about the supplement part as well, I want to add more to the beasts, like beetles, ants, bees, wasps, moles, squirrels, chipmunks, weasels etc.
I mainly separated heavy armor like I did because it created a similar realism issue for my group where they couldn't wear a quiver just because they had a helmet and breastplate on. For a larger audience that doesn't nitpick near as much, the changes you're suggesting would probably be better.
As for the beasts thing, the rules actually lay out how to make beasts and additional races pretty well given the examples. An expanded bestiary would be nice though. Weirdly moles would work well as a ghoul analogue for the system.
I just got done making an alternate weapon and armor sheet that can be printed out in which I did away with the light/heavy distinction entirely. The way I have it there are three "armour" items. I have "helm" which uses the thimble image from the heavy armor and offers 1def and has three usage. I have "armour" which is the light armor image minus the shield (I copied and flipped the exposed part to make a symmetrical armour image that I liked). It also has 3 uses and offers 1 def. Then I have a "shield" which is just the button from the light armor image. It has no usage and gives no def but works differently. Basically, if you have a shield equipped you can declare that you are sacrificing your shield to negate one enemy attack and then it shatters. Each of these items takes up one equipment slot. Occupations that start with light armor get the armor and shield. Occupations that start with heavy armor get all three. I have attached a jpeg of the alternate sheet.
It's actually not my own rule. In the OSR community it's known as "Shields shall be splintered" and it's a common house rule to make shields a one shot negation of an attack. Then again, the shield also usually offers a passive bonus as well but I didn't want to ramp up the armor too much. I might give it 1 def and 3 uses but with the option to shatter to completely negate an attack.
Ok, so I just tested my alternate armor with some practice rolls and I think I get why the armor value of 1 was chosen. Even two points of armor drastically reduces the amount of damage a character takes because of how small all the numbers are. If a mouse can equip three pieces of armor and gain 3 def it makes a huge difference. They start being able to shrug off attack after attack without taking any damage at all. I might play around with it a bit more to see if I can settle on something that allows for shields to be a separate item without breaking the game, but I don't think I'm going to have them grant a point of defense or be able to negate three attacks. But at the same time, I don't want the player to not have something they have to give up when using the shields shall be splintered rule either. It should cost something to sacrifice your shield. So basically I'm not really happy with either solution at this point.
"Bows require the wearer be unarmored in the base rules."
I think this is a deliberate decision. In normal D&D an archer will be lightly armoured. They aren't rocking up to the battlefield holding a shield (Like the "Light armour") or wearing full plate (Like the "Heavy Armour").
An Archer in Mausritter would be wearing normal protection like this. It's just that normal armour is taken for granted by the rules. The game assumes that every mouse would be wearing normal armour, so it doesn't give you any special advantage or bonus defense.
So your archer isn't actually "Unarmoured", they're wearing normal light protection that is not modeled by the rules.
If the archer is wearing protection, it should be modeled as damage reduction. I.E. armor. "Normal armor" is still armor and it should be statted appropriately if it's being implied.
Even in the image you've provided, the archers are actually wearing a form of light armor accessories, and could possibly be wearing gambesons. Which is light armor... which is an item... that you have to equip... that prevents you from equipping stuff for archery in the base rules.
Sorry to be a bit combative, but I genuinely fail to understand what point you're trying to make outside of being artsy and contrarian for the sake of it.
Hi, I wanted to let you know that Ben of Questing Beast sent me your way, so I appreciate him, and I've gladly purchased. Thank you for the lovely product! I'm mildly curious what happened to chapter 14.
I'm about to run Mausritter for a virtual con in two weeks (Kobold Con) and I am working on an adventure for that. I'll happily share it with you when it's finished. It's going to be a one shot dungeon crawl but in the roots of an old tree and it will feature elements that play into the fact that these are mice (Like human made objects or things to show that the characters are little. I gave the players the link to this site so I don't want to say too much yet).
The zines are a bit of an experiment (and I honestly didn’t expect them to all go so quickly). I’ll probably print another run once the first batch are out the door so stay tuned :)
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I would like to see another print run as well. Just found the zine.
Cheers!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/isaac-williams/mausritter-box-set-and-adven...
Any plans for another print run?
Cheers!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/isaac-williams/mausritter-box-set-and-adven...
Hello. I love this game. I feel like it's an improvement on Into the Odd, an already good game.
I wanted to confirm: Do you see spells as warranting saves in this system? My impression is not, but I wasn't certain if it was just not stated.
Something like Fireball doing [DICE}+[SUM] seems intense. My assumption was this is offset by the caster taking real risk of Madness. However, I could see a player having Fireball cast against them as feeling a little intense with no save.
The Goblin Punch rules seem to factor in saves, and Into the Odd arcanum in some cases include saves, so I was curious what your thoughts were.
Thank you for any insight, as well as for compiling such a lovely game. For those unaware, the website (https://losing.games/mausritter/) has some very impressive tools as well.
Good Q. I wouldn’t give a save for a spell unless it’s explicitly mentioned (I don’t think any of the base ones allow a save, but could see a very powerful spell that does).
I general, I think the higher default HP levels (of HP + STR), plus the genuine risks that casters take (I’ve had at least one mouse reduce themselves to zero WIL on a failed spell) balance out a spell like Fireball without a Save. But if you feel like it’s overpowered in your context, house rule away :)
Hello, I am really loving Mausritter! Can’t wait to run a campaign for some friends. I did notice one discrepancy, under the Mendicant priestbackground it lists Calm as a spell. However, the spell isn’t listed in the spell section. I am planning on house ruling a pretty simple effect for the spell. I am curious to was an intentional omission or was it an over sight?
Ahha, yes I think that is an oversight. It should be “Restore” instead — that must have bene renamed somewhere along the line :)
Hello and first of all, thank you very much for this very inspiring game.
I know that this RPG has not only been designed for a Mouseguard world, but I was wondering about the experience rules. They say that the XPs are earned when bringing back treasures or useful goods to settlements. That's fine, but I was thinking that the Guard missions encompass a broader spectrum: control the borders, secure roads, explore places, protect mice and make sure that justice is done.
I feel like GMs who would want to emulate a Mouseguardish game would give XP for "things that are not related to pips"... but it's hard to handwave these sort of things.
What would be the guidelines for awarding XPs besides pip stuff, do you think? (and this would work in a Mouseguard world, or in any other kind of games, if you want to reward exploration)
Hey, I think XP is one of the easiest and best things to hack to get a different feel from your game.
XP is the best way to say to your players “this is what I want you to do”. The default assumption of Mausritter is that the players are poor and desperate mouse adventurers, without a permanent home base or social structure to rely on. They get XP for doing the dangerous things that other mice won’t (and they get XP for re-investing it into the communities that previously shunned them).
One option that’s not in the rulebook (and probably should be) is that I also award XP to my players for rewards given by other mice. So if the village puts together a collection of 300 pips to reward the mice from rescuing their matriarch from an owl, that would count as 300 pips for XP purposes too.
For an exploration-focused campaign, you could easily have non-player mice who are willing to pay rewards for mapped locations, or strange new discoveries. Or if you want to reward exploration directly, I would write out a list of things you want to reward players for, then assign values to them. Make this public, so players know what they’re aiming for ie. Mapping hex: 100xp; Mapping adventure site: 1000xp; Discovering a new settlement: 250xp; Finding a new spell: 100px.
For a Mouseguard-type setting, where mice are part of an hierarchical organisation and being sent on missions, I would consider getting rid of XP entirely and looking at what Into the Odd (on what a lot of Mausritter is based on) does. In that, you advance to level 2 after surviving your first mission, level 3 once you’ve completed three more after that, level 4 after five more, and taking on an apprentice, etc.
Oh thank you for this very thorough response! Kudos!
Still holding out hopes for a print edition. Name your price hahaha
Can’t say much more, but It’s the next project :)
I'll be following along!
Any possibility of making a blank item-condition-weapon sheet? I hate to print our redundant items when I only want some more blanks. Super bonus if they were in some way form-fillable!
Any plans to create a Mausritter Discord community to find people to play with?
Amaaaazing!! A couple of days ago I downloaded this game and was absolutely amazed by it. Just came back and bought it properly. I hope we get more and more material for the game. Thank you for this gem!
Excellent!
I've just played a one shot and it was so much fun! I have some difficulty GMing fantasy games, but things went really well. One of the rats died in a moment so honorable. It was quite something! The random tables helped me a lot to make things ready faster.
Very good game!
is there any way you could email me this adventure??
This is all I wanted from a mouse point of view! Thanks!
Awesome little game!
Like some others in the comments, I’ve only just discovered this game due to Questing Beast.
I’d absolutely love to buy a physical copy of the game too!
Great work.
It was great to see this get reviewed. I bought it previously (according to Itch.io its been 147 days!) - are there big changes in this version? Any chance of more physical copies?
Happy to re-purchase it, especially if supports a future supplement.
does a war band scale creature ignore damage from non war band scale creatures?
Yep, that’s correct. From the book:
thanks! Love this game btw looking forward to running it. One more question, if a monster has 2 attacks does it use them both on its turn or pick one?
A few things:
First, many of the larger tables are mis-numbered, most commonly the ones labeled as d66, I imagine they were meant to be 6d6. I could go through and redo those tables, but if possible it would be nice to have the original copy's tables corrected.
Second, and this might have an unfortunate side-effect on the layout of these, a belt slot is desperately needed. Specifically a slot that acts otherwise the same as a body slot but is explicitly for extra items such as potions or quivers. Currently stone pouches and quivers are only equippable when wearing light armor. However only slings are usable in light armor. Bows require the wearer be unarmored in the base rules. While I'm sure this is a balance thing, it also instantly breaks everyone's immersion cause it makes little to no realistic sense. In the base rules an archer that wants to be armored would only be able to use heavy armor and fire once every other round. My current fix has been to break up armor into individual pieces and slightly buff them. Basically light armor has become a shield and cuirass which provides 1 protection each. Heavy armor has become a breastplate and helmet. The helmet provides 1 protection and the breastplate provides 2. This has allowed some players to become slightly tankier, but honestly there weren't really many tank options in the base rules.
Lastly, do you mind if people write third party adventures or supplements? I'd love to make a potions, alchemy, and artificing supplement. Plus I finished slapping together a point-crawl adventure that might make for a decent starting adventure.
In case you haven't figured this out yet d66 is meant to be 1d6 for the 10s and 1d6 for the 1s... the lowest being 11, highest 66. 6d6 would make the highest 36.
I didn't actually know that. Nowhere does it explicitly state how to read such a table. I've also never encountered such tables before so didn't understand how to read them. Thanks for the clarification though!
Common OSR thing these days. Also, awesome!
Its pretty common nowadays.
I didn't get a chance earlier to talk to your other points.
I like the armor changes. I wonder if it would be better to raise the heavy armor to a 2 value, but keep them as a 2 body slot item. The light armor could be separated to a shield w/ armor value 1 and 1 paw and the armor as 1 armor slot and 1 body slot. This would allow a light armored mouse with two light weapons, or a bow and quiver. Or a super tanky mouse, heavy armor and shield, medium or light weapon.
I would like to know about the supplement part as well, I want to add more to the beasts, like beetles, ants, bees, wasps, moles, squirrels, chipmunks, weasels etc.
I mainly separated heavy armor like I did because it created a similar realism issue for my group where they couldn't wear a quiver just because they had a helmet and breastplate on. For a larger audience that doesn't nitpick near as much, the changes you're suggesting would probably be better.
As for the beasts thing, the rules actually lay out how to make beasts and additional races pretty well given the examples. An expanded bestiary would be nice though. Weirdly moles would work well as a ghoul analogue for the system.
I just got done making an alternate weapon and armor sheet that can be printed out in which I did away with the light/heavy distinction entirely. The way I have it there are three "armour" items. I have "helm" which uses the thimble image from the heavy armor and offers 1def and has three usage. I have "armour" which is the light armor image minus the shield (I copied and flipped the exposed part to make a symmetrical armour image that I liked). It also has 3 uses and offers 1 def. Then I have a "shield" which is just the button from the light armor image. It has no usage and gives no def but works differently. Basically, if you have a shield equipped you can declare that you are sacrificing your shield to negate one enemy attack and then it shatters. Each of these items takes up one equipment slot. Occupations that start with light armor get the armor and shield. Occupations that start with heavy armor get all three. I have attached a jpeg of the alternate sheet.
That works I suppose. Why not give the shield three uses though? It's not like it's that fragile.
It's actually not my own rule. In the OSR community it's known as "Shields shall be splintered" and it's a common house rule to make shields a one shot negation of an attack. Then again, the shield also usually offers a passive bonus as well but I didn't want to ramp up the armor too much. I might give it 1 def and 3 uses but with the option to shatter to completely negate an attack.
Ok, so I just tested my alternate armor with some practice rolls and I think I get why the armor value of 1 was chosen. Even two points of armor drastically reduces the amount of damage a character takes because of how small all the numbers are. If a mouse can equip three pieces of armor and gain 3 def it makes a huge difference. They start being able to shrug off attack after attack without taking any damage at all. I might play around with it a bit more to see if I can settle on something that allows for shields to be a separate item without breaking the game, but I don't think I'm going to have them grant a point of defense or be able to negate three attacks. But at the same time, I don't want the player to not have something they have to give up when using the shields shall be splintered rule either. It should cost something to sacrifice your shield. So basically I'm not really happy with either solution at this point.
"Bows require the wearer be unarmored in the base rules."
I think this is a deliberate decision. In normal D&D an archer will be lightly armoured. They aren't rocking up to the battlefield holding a shield (Like the "Light armour") or wearing full plate (Like the "Heavy Armour").
An Archer in Mausritter would be wearing normal protection like this. It's just that normal armour is taken for granted by the rules. The game assumes that every mouse would be wearing normal armour, so it doesn't give you any special advantage or bonus defense.
So your archer isn't actually "Unarmoured", they're wearing normal light protection that is not modeled by the rules.
If the archer is wearing protection, it should be modeled as damage reduction. I.E. armor. "Normal armor" is still armor and it should be statted appropriately if it's being implied.
Even in the image you've provided, the archers are actually wearing a form of light armor accessories, and could possibly be wearing gambesons. Which is light armor... which is an item... that you have to equip... that prevents you from equipping stuff for archery in the base rules.
Sorry to be a bit combative, but I genuinely fail to understand what point you're trying to make outside of being artsy and contrarian for the sake of it.
Question:
Are you considering releasing this under an open license (CC-BY-SA or otherwise)?
Just curious.
Thanks!
Any recommendations on how to print the spread version?
Great game! I'm interested in the physical version too. Any chance of it being available in Lulu? Shipping costs to Spain?
Is Heavy Armour supposed to be a value of 1?
Yep, that’s correct. The main value of heavy armour is that is doesn’t take up a paw slot, so you can use a heavy weapon or carry a torch.
Thanks!
Hi Losing Games,
is it okay to show your beautiful game live on stream (the PDF)? I'd love to go through the PDF for my tiny audience, of course linking to your game!
Greetings
Niilo
Hi, I wanted to let you know that Ben of Questing Beast sent me your way, so I appreciate him, and I've gladly purchased. Thank you for the lovely product! I'm mildly curious what happened to chapter 14.
Thanks so much! The chapter numbers are actually also the page numbers, so chapter 14 got eaten by the bestiary.
Just chiming in that I would also love a proper hardcopy. Love this little game!
Hopefully soon with the Questing Beast review!
Mark me for a couple!
Great game!
Any updates on the next print run?
I’m currently working on a small pamphlet adventure. The plan is release a new print run with that when the adventure is ready!
yay!
Happy to hear! Keep up the good work!
I'm about to run Mausritter for a virtual con in two weeks (Kobold Con) and I am working on an adventure for that. I'll happily share it with you when it's finished. It's going to be a one shot dungeon crawl but in the roots of an old tree and it will feature elements that play into the fact that these are mice (Like human made objects or things to show that the characters are little. I gave the players the link to this site so I don't want to say too much yet).
Sounds cool, please share!
Love the game! Cant wait to run it.
Are you going to print more Zines? I would love to get one.
Thank you!
ditto
same here!
The zines are a bit of an experiment (and I honestly didn’t expect them to all go so quickly). I’ll probably print another run once the first batch are out the door so stay tuned :)
awesome! i'll be checking back, but if you are taking preorders i'd love to sign up now :P
i need :o
I'll happily buy a printed version of the core game and the adventure. Great work!
Awesome game, love Redwall type stuff! When I bought the print zine, it didn't give me the option to set my address. Did PayPal send it to you?
Hi Philip, thanks for buying the game! I just sent you an email to sort things out :)