Mediums and Messages

November Mausritter - Session 1

Doo Lee. Steamboat Willie Enters the Public Domain. 2024.

Today we started a new micro-campaign - this time of Isaac Williams' Mausritter and specifically The Estate adventure collection. Like last time, we'll run for 4-6 sessions. These reports will record my player-facing notes and some thoughts on the rules and rulings that came up each session. I'll strive to keep them spoiler-free, but if you ever plan to play in The Estate, steer clear.

Missing in Brickport

This week, our party consists of four mice:

Brickport is a mouse settlement in the basement of an old country manor. The town's usual population had doubled to nearly 800 mice in anticipation of a biannual event, the great race to hear the Song of the Frogacle. At the vernal and autumnal equinox, the Frogacle emerges from her lily pad temple in the manor's pond. To the first person she sees, she grants a boon - three questions answered with oracular accuracy. To avoid any bloodshed and to promote tourism, Brickport's mayor has organized this event as a race. Anyone seen before the Frogacle who doesn't check in at the race's start point will be outlawed from Brickport.

As the town bustles with visitors, the party finds themselves in Brickport's Biscuit Inn. They've been gathered by the inn's proprietor, Gwendoline Burley, for a job. Her daughter Heloise went missing around two weeks ago. Her son Milaster went looking for her one week ago and has not returned. She'll pay 1000 pips for the safe return of her children or 100 pips for concrete evidence of where they might be found.

The party asked if Gwendoline had any leads. With the bustle around the race, she had not been able to get away from the inn, but she had found out that Milaster had gone to see Louie Two Knives. He was a disreputable mouse who lived in Brickside, a series of tiny apartments dug into the brick wall of the cellar. She also suggested checking in with the various gate guards.

The party shared a big slice of a scavenged Big Mac, family style. They concluded that Gwendoline was clearly doing well for herself with this many pips to throw around. They noted a table of mice in sailors uniforms and a contingent of rats surveying some kind of map or blueprint, then decided to question Two Knives first.

Brickside

Horatio kicked things off in Brickside by just shouting if anyone knew where Louie lived. A mouse on the third floor called back he'd lead them to Louie for 10 pips. Adolphus played hard to get and talked him down to 1.

Upon climbing up to the mouse and paying him off, he revealed he was, in fact, Louie Two Knives. Fennel tried intimidating the mouse, but he laughed it off, saying they might get him, but he had friends in the Bone Gang who would avenge him. Instead, he said he'd be happy to share the information and even some pips for help with a job. He wanted someone to scuttle Lyra McDoom's steamship, currently docked in port before the race. They agreed and Adolphus shared that Gwendoline had some jobs open for some of Louie's contacts.

The party went down to the dock to check out the steamship. It appeared to be a rubber sandal built out like an ironclad with a tin hull and a small kettle for a boiler. The ship moved on a single rotor, which suggested there must be a rudder to steer it. As they watched, a uniform clad mouse loaded wood below the ship's deck through its single hatch.

After some discussion, the party decided to return that night to do the deed.

Interviewing the Guards

With an afternoon to kill, the party started interviewing the various gate guards. Brickport had three exits: the dock, a ground level gate, and a lift up to the manor house above.

At the gate, Rosemary greeted Bindle and Bunting, the twin guards. They had clearly lost something, but were happy to share that Milaster had left through this gate a week ago. They said he was headed "behind the house."

At this point the party debated chasing after him. The journey behind the house would take about 6 hours, so they could conceivably scout in that direction and still return in the early morning to sabotage the ship. Rosemary pushed to check in with Peanut Jammy, the lift operator first.

Arriving at the lift, they found a queue forming. Peanut Jammy was nowhere to be seen. Fennel decided to take matters into their own hands, charging the ten queued mice 1 pip a piece to ride the elevator. With a flick of the switch, they sent the lift hurtling up to the top floor. Fortunately, Rosemary, a frequent rider, knew exactly when to pull the brake to stop it from hurtling off the end of its track at the top.

The party headed over to Peanut Jammy's place next, a small cottage along the banks of the drainage channel that split Brickport. They found Jammy holed up in his house, unwilling to come out or even say why he wasn't operating the lift. He let slip that Pastor Basil at the Temple of Peace had told him not to. More helpfully, he said he had given Heloise a ride about two weeks ago. She seemed distraught and was planning to cut through the manor to get somewhere out back fast.

Afternoon Grifts

At this point, the party split. Fennel and Rosemary operated the lift for a few hours, earning another 10 pips. At one point, some of the mice they had sent up earlier returned, mangled. They had been ambushed by a cat that lives in the manor. Rosemary chided them, "of course, there was a cat! That's why a house is dangerous!"

Horatio and Adolphus went to interview Pastor Basil. The Temple of Peace was a cheese greater stacked on top of small structure. It had recently been crudely painted matte white. Inside, they found Pastor Basil preaching to his flock of the merits of Reverend Goldenfur and to give up their human-made possessions. He offered peace and succor to any who would give up their worldly wealth.

Seeing an opportunity, Adolphus tried to start up a collection to gather valuables from the listeners. This proved too much for them though and they left in a huff. Frustrated, Basil demanded to know what they wanted.

Adolphus pretended to be Heloise's lover, probing for information as to her whereabouts. Basil said he knew Heloise and knew she was considering the pilgrimage to the Chapel of Eternal Peace, behind the house. This was a rite performed by many aspirants, but he couldn't say for sure she had departed for it.

Horatio asked some follow up questions, but didn't get much more from the pastor before being ushered rudely out.

Sabotage

The party reconvened that night outside the docks. Adolphus used a disguise kit to look like a cordial old mouse and went to distract the dock guard with small talk. While he did, the rest of the party snuck aboard McDoom's steamship.

Inside, they found four mice sleeping in hammocks stretched across the interior space. They also saw the ship's boiler, controls, and exposed drive train. Rosemary borrowed Fennel's file and snuck speedily across the ship, quickly disabling the rudder and breaking the drive shaft. It wouldn't cripple the ship forever, but it would be hard to repair.

In the meantime, Fennel and Horatio noticed a small cannon mounted at the front of the ship. They stole two barrels of black powder, deciding to leave the cannon as too bulky to remove in a timely fashion.

After a job well down, the party retreated to various corners of town to get a watch's rest.

Confirmation

The party met again for breakfast at the Biscuit Inn. Gwendoline slipped them mushroom flapjacks with butter in exchange for the news so far, impressed a their quick work. Well fed, they headed up to Brickside to meet with Louie.

Louie was happy to pay the party their nominal fee and share what he knew. He confirmed that Milaster had come to him looking for Heloise. Louie had checked with his contacts in the Bone Gang and they reported seeing a mouse matching her description at the Chapel of Eternal Peace while delivering a batch of chemicals.

Louie Two Knives said he would be more than willing to find more work for such an enterprising band of mice in the future and drafted a "Two Knives Passport" for them - a sheet of paper that would signal to any Bone Gang members that they were friends.

With that confirmation and with a day until the start of the Frogacle race, the party decided to set out for the Chapel to search for her.

GM Notes

I really like Mausritter. This is my first time running it, but it's pretty closely akin to Into the Odd so I'm finding it quite easy to wrap my head around.

Character creation is super slick. Characters having sub-10 attributes gives a clear opportunity to say "Hey, don't rely on these. Try to find advantage or not roll at all." Looking up your character's background as the index of HP and Pips also proved to be a big hit.

I'm opting for a slightly more cosmopolitan vision of the Mausritter world. Mice, rats, rabbits, and other small mammals all can freely communicate and visit one another's communities. Larger mammals might speak mouse or might not, but can.

I'm also holding myself to rolling dice as saves, not skill checks. Players only roll dice when there is a clear risk. We'll see how that calibrates out over a few sessions of play.

The Estate presents kind of a dizzying array of potential rumors and adventure hooks. I decided to mash a few together and just see what pulled the players. Mindful of finding a defining question I opted to explicitly present them the challenge of finding Heloise and Milaster as the very first scene of the game.

I was a little leery of starting off with an investigation session. I like running them, but they do require players to be at least a little self-guided. Folks rose to the challenge handily and got into some fun roleplay. The party has a fun dynamic of balancing the piratical instincts of Fennel and Adolphus versus the more honest approach of Horatio and Rosemary.

Finally, I think I maybe set the pip value on some of their jobs and grifts too low. Mausritter is a xp-for-pips system. They need 1000 each to level and walked away this session with 30. Sometimes that happens and I do want to encourage going adventuring rather than just operating the lift all day, but I'll be mindful of those values going further. I may even retcon their pay from Louie next session.

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