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The Harnish
Germany
Duisburg
NRW
Cult of The Harnish Leader
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Session #3 saw some interesting twists in the story but deviated significantly from the standard Mouse Guard "mission" format. Last mission the patrol had been sent in to a death trap and returned sick, tired, and/or angry - Vidar set out to track down the mouse that had betrayed the group and beat info out of him on who had hired him. Thus, this session didn't really need a formal mission since the group already had a pretty specific goal. Unfortunately we were down one player (Mullan) but that turned out to work quite well with the way the story turned this afternoon. On to the details....
Overview & Planning
My planning for the session involved a grand total of 15-minutes of thought on the way to work this morning: I considered the characters and decided that my objective for the session was to reveal the details of the treacherous plot to allow the weasels to raid Pebblebrook and to introduce Kuba as one of the major bad guys within the town. I also wanted to find a way to bring Tess into the spotlight a bit more since for two sessions her real areas of expertise hadn't really been put to use (she's good at deceiving people). I also wanted to push Mullan's relationship with Kuba out in the open. I decided that the patrol should track down Langfingers and then I'd see where things went from there. Thus With that decided upon, I was ready to play this afternoon - God do I love prepping for this game!
Mission: Track down Langfingers and then Kuba.
Plot: Group will need to find a way to locate Langfingers (a Mice-related obstacle). Langfingers is going to be evasive and rather crafty.
Summary
As I mentioned above, it turned out we were down one player short and that meant altering plans to highlight Mullan and Kuba's relationship. No big deal. With that in mind, I opened up the game with a scene with the group gathered around the tavern's table, discussing their plans. Mullan was upstairs, sleeping off her exhausting ordeal (and playing a bit of hooky since she wanted to avoid running in to Kuba). Thomas had done some asking around on his own, contacting his friend Oliver, who warned Thomas that Langfingers was a sly devil who shouldn't be trusted - he was the cronies of the local "boss" (Kuba) who was a well-placed official within the town's ruling council. Langfingers could usually be found hanging around another tavern (The Rat's Tale) every evening, trying to pick up barmaids.
All of this info came straight from Thomas's player, who passed his Circles test. I told him "Tell me what you find out." and he created virtually all the details above except for the fact that Kuba is on the town's council; I added that. He even looked down on his character sheet, noted that he had never settled on where his friend (Oliver) was from and proposed that he lived in Elmoss. Awesome since he managed to explain how he came by all this info in a very natural and logical way. This story was a pretty cool contribution since it helps bring the whole world to life and didn't require hardly any effort on my part.
With this information, the group discussed how to get to Langfingers - they wanted to get the information out of him without necessarily raising any alarms about their suspicions. Vidar proposed that Tess try to attract Langfinger's attention, since he had a taste for ladies. At this point, Tess mentioned that both her parents had been brewers and thus she could probably pose as a barmaid.
Wow, this was an insanely cool twist that I never saw coming. I guided them a bit (once Tess's player mentioned the knowledge of brewing, I told her that would include things like being a barmaid), but this was once again the players taking control of where the story was going and me just along for the ride.
Off the group goes to the Rat's Tale where Thomas attempted to use his authority as a patrol leader to get the tavern owner to let Tess pose as a barmaid. He went in to a lengthy speech about the owner's civic duty and such, but was cut off by the owner who demanded some money up front - money talks for him... Thomas forks over some of his wealth and the tavern owner tells Tess to come back on time. He also asks why the group wants her to work as a barmaid - Thomas, not thinking, tells him that they're investigating a couple of local mice, including Langfingers. Uh-oh.
I say "uh-oh" because Thomas had failed the Oration test completely, despite both Vidar helping by sitting at the bar sharpening his sword (Intimidation) and Tess showing off her knowledge of bar procedures (Brewing). At that moment I decided to introduce a twist - the tavern keeper is a completely unscrupulous fellow and so was going to fill in Langfingers about the plot.
Tess got ready for her workshift, while Thomas hid outside the inn by climbing in to a rain barrel. Vidar, decides to do something similar, hiding in some bushes just down the street. Right on time, Langfingers comes in and Tess sidles up to him and starts some small talk - she explains she's new in town, having just moved. Langfingers is very charmed by her and offers to give her a tour of the town after she gets off from her shift. After some more pleasant conversation, Langfingers leaves, pausing for just a moment by the bushes where Vidar is hiding, before disappearing around the corner. Both Vidar and Thomas stay put, while Tess finishes out her shift.
Another interesting set of events here: Tess crushed Langfingers with her Deceiving test (5 successes vs. his 2), but of course the twist was that the tavern keeper was going to warn Langfingers about the spy anyways. So the result was that Langfingers was thoroughly convinced by her...for the time being. Later, Thomas passes his hiding test (using Nature) while Vidar blew his - his tail is poking out of the bush as Langfingers goes by. This would lead to the next twist....
While Vidar waits in the bushes, a pair of local toughs creep up on him (sent by Langfingers) and attempt to knock him out with a blow to the back of the head. Fortunately for the guard mouse, he's wearing a steel helmet and the blow simply bounces off it. The seasoned warrior spins, drawing his sword. What follows is a brutally fast battle - Vidar beheads one of the thugs with his first strike and moments later stabs the second, who stumbles out through the bushes and falls, dying in the street. Thomas sees the wounded mouse and rushes to his aide, showing up just in time to prevent Vidar from pinning the thug to the ground. The two decide they need to question the tough and that means saving his life. Unfortunately Vidar can't stop the bleeding and that leads to the humorous scene of the two mice picking up the wounded enemy and running down the street with him to the local healer's place.
Vidar devastated the mice - he out-scripted me in the first 3 volleys and took out one of the enemy in volley 2 and the second in volley 3. Brutal. His goal was to kill the mice, but he had to concede a bit so the second was left dying. Of course Thomas's belief kicked in here and that lead to Vidar being ordered to try and save the mouse whom he had just stabbed. The blown Healing test worked out perfectly as it set up Tess to be left on her own - I couldn't have wished for a better situation.
Tess meets Langfingers outside, oblivious to what went on only a few minutes before down the street. The crafty mouse takes her on a tour, but not before she tries to get him to drink a spiked ale (using her poison-wise skill) but he passes on it. He leads her to a fine bistro which she agrees sounds great. Unfortunately, inside she discovers four club-armed thugs. Langfingers chides her on thinking she could fool him. Fade out with her looking around the room nervously...
Tess failed her poison-wise test and thus doesn't manage to drug Langfingers. It also convinced him that she was in on the plot against him. He thus leads her to be captured. I assured Tess's player that the situation did not mean she as dead but rather just meant she was in hot water and was going to need to find a way out. We both decided this was a good cliff hanger to finish the session on.
We finished up with Thomas and Vidar paying the healer to help save the thug's life - they were told by the healer to come back tomorrow and, if he lived, he might be able to talk to them. They returned to the tavern and discovered Tess was gone. Thomas questioned the tavern keeper who said she had left after her shift ended. However, Thomas noticed there was something shifty about the tavern keeper, and based on his past experiences with the mouse's greed, decided to bribe him with some more money. The tavern keeper says that he saw her meet Langfingers and that they were probably headed back to where the treacherous mouse lived. We left off with Thomas and Vidar heading out the door...
Again, another shift because I didn't really expect Thomas and Vidar to track down Tess so quickly but they choose an interesting method and helped each other plus got a bunch of successes (Thomas spent a Fate to explode the two 6's he got and ended up with 5 successes in the end). Thus, I have Tess surrounded by the bad guys but the cavalry on its way.
My Thoughts
The more I run Mouse Guard, the more I love it - the loose, quick prep and the fact that it generates amazingly cool stories is simply awesome. I'm also really enjoying the type of creative play I get out of the students at the club. This is in stark contrast to the "I swing my sword" type of play I experienced last year when I ran 4th edition D&D. It's simply a lot more fun and satisfying to run. In fact, these sessions are easily as good as the ones I've had with my adult group - everyone is contributing to our shared creative space and the way the story twists and turns has me waiting on the edge of my seat to see where it's going.
More importantly though, the students are loving it. I actually had a colleague ask me what we were up to in the club this year because several of his students (11th and 12th graders) were raving about how much fun they were having this year. That's something I've not seen in the 6 years previous I've run the after-school program - we typically run pretty low under the radar since gaming is not really a "main stream" activity in high school. However, my experiences this year with running more creative, player-narrative heavy games have me I'm considering pitching the idea of a club in the elementary school next year because I could take a few of the more creative, older students and run games (probably using a system like PDQ) for kids in the 3-5th grade age range.
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Mike Montesa
United States
El Cerrito
California
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Just curious as to what parts of the story happened in the GM's turn and what parts happened in the players' turn. What were the players spending their checks on?
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The Harnish
Germany
Duisburg
NRW
Cult of The Harnish Leader
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That's a good question: There was no Player Turn this session. I wanted to end on the cliff-hanger of Tess's predicament and Thomas & Vidar leaving the tavern to find her since it seemed like a perfect place to stop things (especially since we're off a week for fall break). The players' turn was going to be anti-climactic at that point so we're pushing it off until the end of next session. Structurally this also makes more sense since we're in the middle of the "mission" at the moment anyways.
BTW - This has happen in other MG games I've run as well (i.e., the session ending not lending itself to a players' turn) and one of the things I commented on the BW forums was how I didn't like the rigidity of the GM/Player structure at times and was relieved/surprised/delighted to hear from Luke that it was just fine since the turn structure is supposed be more of a cycle rather than a rigid form that must be followed every session.
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