Now there is a bit of a problem with this, because given what I do and
have done for the last fifteen or so years, conventions aren’t places where I
go to buy things or see the new shiny, they’re places I go to run things and
make sure that everyone else gets the new shiny...
The other thing is that when I buy things at conventions, they tend to
be games that I’ve played at the conventions, which makes most of my purchases
board games or war games, certainly in the last few conventions I’ve been to,
I’ve bought X wing, Wings of War, Rocket Race, and a whole bunch of other
things, but the RPG content I pick up tends to be things that I’m missing from
my collections or things that are so low in price that I just take a chance on
it being some good and if it’s not, I haven’t lost much money...
With this in mind, the best convention purchase I’ve ever made was at a
convention called Dragonmeet, held in London ever year and one that I’m now
helping to run whereas at the time I was only putting in a few games for them
and helping out where I could.
Mouseguard...
There won’t be many out there that haven’t heard of Mouseguard, it’s
the game of the comic book of the same name, following the adventures of the
guard mice of Lockhaven. For all those
finding this a little on the weird side, just think D&D...
With Mice...
It helps to have read the comics, which I had before I picked the book
up, and it helps to like the idea of the heroism inherent in the books, of the
motto of the guardmice, it’s not what you fight but what you fight for...
So it is with this game, it’s worth mentioning the scale of the game
which is the thing that most players have problems with. A wolf in any other game is an easy target to
be casually slain out of hand, in this, it present a threat that can take
dozens of mice and planning to bring down.
The main province of the guard mice is to defend Lockhaven and the scent
barrier that prevents the predators from finding them and wreaking havoc, but
there are also threats from other mice, who have political ambitions of their
own. The game was also designed with
younger players in mind, and a particularly nice touch is that the players
(when you’re doing it right) all have little finger puppets to show when their
mouse is talking and when they themselves are talking.
Corny?
Maybe...
But it’s very effective for getting the younger players involved
quickly, allowing them to easily differentiate between what they’re doing and
what their character is doing. The
system is a simple one, and while there’s enough material in the book to allow
the characters to keep going for the entire of their guard lives, it is a
sandbox environment, there’s never likely to be times when the mice go far
beyond the barrier and into the great wide unknown. It could be down, but when you consider the
problems that the mice face when they come up against a wolf, when you
encounter a bear, or worse still, a human...
Well, the consequences would be unimaginable...
That said, it’s a well done and faithful representation of the world
brought to life in the comics, the presentation values are spectacular, you
have to think that they got a good deal with the publishers of the comic
because the book is the same size and quality as the comics and although the
artwork in the RPG is taken from the comics, all of it is perfect for purpose
and chosen well.
When I bought the game, it was fifteen quid and remains to this day
some of the best money I’ve ever spent on games...
