Rather than rehash the complicated story once again, I’ll just link to the post I wrote on The Fifth World Design Diary: “The Pedagogy of Playing Mouse Guard.” I’ve gotten really excited about Mouse Guard. I’ve even convinced my face-to-face group to give it a try. So, we’ve started a campaign called, “Tales of the Black Forest.” I’ve tried a couple of new things with this.
First, I’ve moved the setting from the “Mouse Territories” of David Petersen’s comics to Cook Forest—one of the last remaining old-growth forests in the eastern United States, and my home. Before Anthony Cook saved it and gave it a name, people called it “the Black Forest,” because the old-growth white pines blocked out the sun. I’ve stood there on a hot summer day; the trees and the shade make it feel breezy and cool. I think that name, “the Black Forest,” also helps evoke that medieval tone, by reminding you of the Black Forest in Germany, and all the fairy tales associated with it.
Second, I’ve undertaken a weird format, with two patrols in a single campaign. I wrote about that in a “Table Chatter” piece on the Obsidian Portal campaign site, so I won’t repeat what I had to say there, here. The Myth Weavers will play one patrol, and my face-to-face group will play another; so you, dear listener, will get to hear one half of the campaign.
Third, and most immediately relevant, I’ve tried to adapt Willem’s “Pedagogy of Play” (I, II, III, IV) ideas to Mouse Guard. The crunchiness and complexity of the Burning Wheel mechanics, even watered down, pose a much bigger challenge for this approach than something as simple, elegant and streamlined as Polaris.
We didn’t get through my whole process in one shot this time. In this episode, we get about half-way through. In the next episode, we’ll finish the process. I plan to record an episode with Giuli—the only other person who will play in both patrols—and Willem to talk about how it went in those episodes, how it went at our face-to-face table, and evaluate whether we’d call this a success, and what else someone might do to create characters (and setting) for a Mouse Guard game while teaching the game.
I don’t think I can distribute the lists of names, skills and traits I sent to our players for this, for copyright reasons. I did include, beyond the names presented in the Mouse Guard book, the table of Old English name elements from the Story Games Names Project. With 2d20, you can generate a pretty good, random, Anglo-Saxon name. I have drifted the tone a bit to the Anglo-Saxon end, with more Old English words and names, and a date of 867 instead of 1152 (that has a significance which may—or may not—come up in the game).
The Myth Weavers, episode 11 [1:15:22m]:
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