Mausritter Play Report

While I typically only run games for veterans of the hobby, people who are game masters themselves, it is important to introduce new people to the hobby sometimes, both so that they may get a chance to grow into good players themselves, and for you as a GM to experience fresh new ideas and questions. I decided to do just that yesterday with "Mausritter: Sword-and-whiskers role-playing".  

 

Character Creation

Each of my players drew up a mouse, and then rolled to see what stats, equipment and how much HP and currency they'd start with. Two of them got spells: "Heal" and "Be Understood". Then they each grab a weapon of choice, a torch and some rations, and that's character creation done in 10 minutes.

 

"Frodo Mousekins": Sometimes you have to make compromises with players on what fantasy genre you're playing.

Honey in the Rafters

This adventure, which fits on a 3-sided pamphlet, came with the box set. We had about 2.5 hours set aside for playing, and this module fit that timeframe perfectly. I use a plot hook from the module, that the brother of a PC (Or PM, for "Player Mouse") has left to join a "Cult of Sugar". The Player Mice set out on their heroic adventure to save Frodo's older brother, Peregrat Mousekins.

The player mice traverse through treacherous tall grass, thrice as high as themselves (about 1 foot or 30 cms tall), until they find an evil black sunflower sticking out from the grass, as well as an abandoned, dilapidated shack. They peer from the edge of the grass and see a skunk sleeping on the side of a log, as well as a swarm of bees going back and forth from the black sunflower and the shack. These beginner players' OSR mindset immediately turns on, and they begin considering how they can get the skunk to fight the bees for them. 

They wake Shig the skunk and speak to him. He is very grumpy to have his sleep interrupted, and is not helpful to the Player Mice at all (I judged they should roll their reaction roll with a -1, because he is not happy to be awoken). It is of no help at all either that mice and skunk don't share a common language. However, they are both mammals, so there's a chance they can speak to each other. The player mouse sent to speak with Shig fails his WIL check to communicate, and they don't learn much. As they're leaving and Shig falls asleep again though, they see him drool and hear him grumble "Suuuugarrrr...." in his sleep. Now they know what he wants.

The Player Mice head into the shack, through the slightly ajar door. Frodo Mousekins, Julius Cheesar, and Bramble all get in with ease. Darwin (pictured below) however, doesn't fit through. A regular wooden door, to these mice, might as well be a great stone tower. They try their best to move it using a warhammer as a lever. They pull, and pull, and then really pull with all their weight, and finally they drag the door open just an inch wider! Darwin gets in, but the others fall onto their backs and make a loud noise. I roll for an encounter, and an omen of an encounter with bees happens; The buzzing of the beehive above them gets louder and louder...

Darwin, "Magic Mountain". Legends say he has a second stomach just for cheese.

The Player Mice sneak in, and between all the dust of this abandoned shack, they find mice pawsteps on the ground leading to and fro a black oven. They peer in through it's windows find a bunch of mice in a circle. They correctly interpret their group as being a cult, though my narration ended up making it seem more like a crackden, with sugar being their drug of choice. One Player Mice knocks on the window of the oven, and all the mice inside ominously, creepily, turn their heads at the window. The Player Mice are eventually invited in, though they're hesitant to try the sugar offered by the cult members, fearing it to be a drug (They're half-correct, it's not laced or anything, it's only as much of a drug as sugar is in real life). Frodo sees his brother, Peregrat, working the cauldron in the back, but the cult leader, Brother Glacé, does not let Frodo in to meet him. While Glacé tells the Player Mice he is "cheesed" to meet them (Yes, my players audibly groaned too), they need to earn his trust before they can be let in. He asks the Player Mice to bring a bee back to him. He gives them two sugar candies as a show of good faith.

The NPCs in this game are a delight to roleplay. I had Brother Glacé speaks with a Mickey Mouse voice and make terrible puns.

Frodo must save his brother, so he goes along with it. The Player Mice head outside to see if they can get Shig's help. They climb up some regular sunflowers so they can stand above Shig and speak with some authority. They wake him up again, and they give him food; seeds from the sunflowers they're standing on, and one of the sugar candies. In exchange, he helps them out with the bees, letting the Player Mice ride on his back and use him as a cushion to soften their fall, if they should end up at some great height. Which is very handy, as Frodo decides to climb up the black sunflower. 

He gets up a great height, and just as he's about to reach the top, he looks down. He fails a WIL check, and adds a Frightened condition to his inventory. He gets up on the head of the black sunflower and collects some seeds, but then realizes his fear of heights stops him from jumping down, and bees approaching him means he must flee. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, he uses his fishing hook he randomly got at the start to grappling-hook onto a flying bee and fly away (I agree, this plan should not have worked, but he succeeded on his check). The bee can't support the weight of a mouse hanging on it, and it slowly flies down. The Player Mice knock this bee in unconscious combat before it's friends arrive as reinforcements, and they take the bee to Brother Glacé. 

The cult leader takes this bee and puts it on a pike outside, as a threat to the beehive. He also alters the deal; He wants the seeds the players got from the black sunflower in exchange for letting Frodo's brother go. They disagree, and combat ensues. Frodo is beaten to unconsciousness, and the cult takes his sunflower seeds (Frodo's player continues playing as Peregrat). Glacé tells them to take their unconscious friend and his brother and leave. Just as they're leaving, with the cult behind them, the random encounter roll comes up a 1. The bees come to attack. They can't go back inside, and they can't fight all these bees, so they get clever: They use their spell Be Understood to tell the bees that the cult inside is the enemy. Another player props the doorway open with a rock, and the swarm of bees attack and destroy the cult.

Session Review

My party of mostly beginners took to the OSR mentality well. I instructed them to read the best practices (below), and they understood the message. The Mausritter system is great, the small rulebook is easily read, and leads to great gameplay. The adventure too, gives enough to work with, while leaving some room for the GM to draw their own conclusions and add parts they want to see.