Deconstructing Mouse Guard

Mouse Guard is a brilliant comic by David Petersen about mice who live in a pseudo-medieval world of the territories beset by the dangers of the natural world.  The Guard protect the mouse territories by sword or by wits.  I first came across the comic at a small local comic convention, Vancouver ComicCon. Luke Crane adapted his acclaimed Burning Wheel roleplaying game to the world of Mouse Guard.  The game has won numerous awards including Roleplaying Game of the Year at Origins in 2009 beating out Dungeons and Dragons 4e.

Being a long time fan of the Mouse Guard comic, I ordered a copy of the RPG from Indie Press Revolution last year.  It is a beautiful book that lives up to the talented graphic design of the comic.  For a while I thumbed through it but didn’t know if my gaming group would take to mice with swords RPG.  I’ve since sat down to digest what is honestly my first indie story game and find myself loving it.

One of the primary reasons that I wanted to get the game was my son. He is 5 and I’ve been keeping an eye out for a way to share my passion for roleplaying games with him. Mouse Guard is a game with lighter subject matter than others like D&D. One which I hope will help fuel his growth as a person in the lessons it can teach.

The ChattyDM has advocated many of the concepts in his D&D 4e games over the past several months. Rather than trying to just read it and sell my group on it, I thought it might be a good idea to examine some of the core concepts of the game on my blog and try to deconstruct it in my own mind.
(continue reading…)

For quite some time now I’ve found the format in which adventure design is presented to be outdated.  Sure the Delve format had a large impact in the last few years since its debut in some of Wizards of the Coast’s later 3.5 D&D adventures. Even that, however, stuck to the format of a book be it in hard copy or pdf format.  Dungeon-a-day.com is actually the most recent example of a very forward thinking designer pushing the bounds of what is possible. Dungeon-a-day.com offers a hyperlinked website with new encounters updated every weekday. The site features fresh new content from the mind of Monte Cook and its presented in a much more modern format.

But where too next? Where can today’s modern web tools such as XHTML and HTML5.0 push design forward?

I recently read two very informative articles by two of RPG Blogging’s rising stars, Phillipe Menard (aka @ChattyDM) and Dave Chalker (aka @DavetheGame) that explored some of the possible scenarios that set my mind aflame.  Here were two popular vocal proponents advocating the same revolution in adventure design that I had been craving.

(continue reading…)