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'MOUSE GUARD' RPG INTERVIEW AND PREVIEW
'Mouse Guard' creator David Petersen and RPG creator Luke Crane talk about the upcoming Role Playing Experience centered around the popular indie comic!
By Steve Sunu
Posted 8/1/2008
Wizard had a chance to sit down and chat about the details of the upcoming RPG based on the cute and cutthroat characters of the indie comic Mouse Guard
The game will be released this Fall.
After you read the interview, be sure to check out the preview pages of the core book!
WIZARD: How did you guys decide to do an RPG?
PETERSEN: There were a bunch of fans starting to pick up on the fact that I was an old school gamer (from the comics). A lot of them started asking, "Did you used to role play and stuff?" And I did, so there was a little bit of a demand for a Mouse Guard role-playing game. I had talked to some folks and Luke was part of that discussion and he convinced me that he was the guy.
CRANE: A friend of mine, Clinton Nixon, picked up the comic and showed it to me and said, "I want to make a game out of this! This would be an awesome game!" He gave it a shot and it didn't work out, so David and Mark came to me and asked if I would be interested. We talked about ideas back and forth—what would be important for the game and what wouldn't? We saw relatively eye to eye on mice with swords and cloaks and we went from there.
PETERSEN: Luke had actually come to me because Clinton was a friend of his—trying to convince me that Clinton was the guy for the job. In doing so, Luke convinced me he was the guy for the job.
What are the mechanics for the game?
CRANE: I'll field this one. It's a basic D-6 Die Pool system. If your stat says five, you roll five dice. You need four's or better on each die for them to count as a success. The player with the most successes wins that test. It's a very basic mechanic. We use that in a bunch of interesting and cool ways through out the game.
How are players going to be able to customize the character they play in Mouse Guard?
PETERSEN: We did it so that there are canned, pre-existing characters. Some of them actually from the book and others were made specifically for the game.
There are all the rules there for making a character. Luke really went into the idea of character development as opposed to stat development, which a lot of role-playing games just depend on stats. It really is about describing your character and his or her upbringing. Everything about them, whether they are fat and short, tall and skinny, paranoid, if they have quick hands or a good sense of smell, what their parents did for a living—it really gets into personality stuff and you get a real sense, by the time you've made your own character, who that mouse is.
I think it's pretty cool with the customization that way because a lot of it depends on how creative you want to be about their background. Those questions, as you are answering them, like what were your parents like and what was their profession, really fuels the mechanics of the game and what skills you start with. You can also deviate from that just because your parents did something doesn't mean that's what you have to do, but you at least have some kind of base skill set from that.
CRANE: It was really fun when we were getting started to ask, "Ok, how does a mouse get into the Mouse Guard, David?" He said, "I don't know, that's a good question." So we went through how they get into the Mouse Guard, what's the process and so we really got to take some of the seed ideas that he had and flesh them out. Not only can you just sit down and be Saxon—you can play Saxon, BAM! No problem. You can play Lieam, Kenzie and Sadie.
I wanted that from the beginning. We talked about it and went back and forth on it, but decided that was the best course. You could pick up the game and be able to start right away with the basic characters. But then after you've done that a couple times, you can sit down and develop your own little mouse history with your own problems and quirks and cool stuff that makes up a mouse with a cloak and a sword fun to play.
PETERSEN: There's always a danger when you put pre-existing characters into a role playing game. Ultimately, it's going to be disappointing for the fan in some way. It's kind of like nailing down, "This is exactly what that character is." But, because Luke's system isn't stat heavy—it's about other things, it's open ended and you can kind of interpret what the skills are—I don't feel like it's overly defining who Sadie or Lieam is. I think fans are going to be excited they get to play and even have a little wiggle room to play Lieam their way.
CRANE: We had a demo game that I ran the other day and two players wanted to play Saxon. So I said, "Ok, well one of you is going to play Saxon and one will have to pick someone else." So this girl said, "Ok, I'll change my character." We have rules for modifying the Saxon template and she created Saxon's sister.
PETERSEN: I didn't even know he had a sister!
CRANE: Me neither! It was great, she lowered her sword skill by one so Saxon was the better swordsman, but raised up some other stats and basically ended up creating a completely different character. The whole arc of their story together was having her prove that she was worthy to be out of his shadow and part of the family.
That sounds really awesome. Are there plans to role-play some of the mice's adversaries?
CRANE: No, you play a Mouse Guard, period. That's it. When I looked through the comics, it's very clear what they're about: mice and the Mouse Guard. It was very easy to say no playing skunks or badgers. This is about the mice and the Mouse Guard.
PETERSEN: Yeah, people ask me, especially with the Redwall comparison, what about other species and how come they're not teaming up with the mice. I feel like because of the mouse situation, where they stand in the food chain and how they relate in the world, they really can't trust anybody but themselves. It's about self-reliance and self-preservation. They pretty much disassociate themselves with everything. So in the role-playing game, if you could do something else it wouldn't feel like the comic any more.
Have you guys gotten the chance to run a couple games together and test it out?
CRANE: We did, we invited David over at New York Comic Con for a final sign off play test where David played Saxon and gave some stealing squirrels a "what for."
PETERSEN: I ran them through!
So you enjoyed your time with the game?
PETERSEN: Yeah it was a lot of fun!
What do you think fans of the series are going to be most excited about for this role playing game?
CRANE: I think all the extra information that's in the game. We've done a nice job of not really drawing any hard lines or borders and providing a lot of background info and kind of meat on the bone.
PETERSEN: Luke started with a barrage of questions. Every couple days I would get emails from Luke with new questions. I would just take my time and answer them and sometimes that would mean developing stuff that I hadn't really started to think about yet. Sometimes he forced my hand into thinking about things I didn't even want to think about yet.
Like Luke said, I didn't write anything I felt was wrong. Nothing is counter to the comics and nothing is counter to what I want to do in future comics. It's all canon; everything in the game is canon. It really helped establish more details about what the Mouse Guard world is and actually planted the seeds for a story that I want to do later. It actually developed a new story.
If it's all canon then would it be safe to say it all ties into the comic?
PETERSEN: A lot of the stuff I felt comfortable putting into the game because it's minutia. I only have 24 pages per issue, six issues. That's a good place to tell a story but I can't get into all the boring day-to-day stuff that's kind of interesting to know about. But, to try and cram it into the story will either feel boring in the story or laid on top.
So, the role playing game is the perfect place to explore all that minutia detail about how they live their lives and what the city structures are like and who does what jobs where. It's the kind of thing for a role-playing game and I'm hoping that people picking it up and reading that information are actually going to find what they read and have already read in Mouse Guard more interesting.
CRANE: I'm really excited about fans getting their hands on the game and fleshing out some of the other cities, like Dawn Rock, and telling us stories about what's going on there. Just to see what they do.
We've planted these seeds now and we've collaborated to set the scene, but we haven't set up everything. We've left a lot of room open for fans to come and say, "Oh my Mouse Patrol did this in that city and the mayor of the city is like this!" None of that is canon of course, but it's fascinating to see what they'll do with it.
Obviously the game can currently stand by itself, but are there any plans in the future to bring forth any supplements to it?
CRANE: As David produces more material we'll talk.
PETERSEN: Definitely, we've already kind of talked about what direction the first supplement would be. But, I have to get the material out in comic form first so it's not spoiling anything.
CRANE: The game covers fall and winter pretty thoroughly. There's a lot of game to play. It's not like you're going to need a new game come Christmas or anything.
PETERSEN: It's only limited by your imagination as a player and as a game master. I know it sounds like a lame tag line, but it's true. As creative as you want to be is how creative your game is going to be.
CRANE: Just as long as you're playing a mouse! [Laughs]
What is each of your favorite parts about this game?
CRANE: Wow. It's in halves—but they're related. The new art that David did for us and watching his technique improve even from the early pieces that he sent. But also, from like issue one of Fall to the last piece that he sent. It's just like "Holy Cow!" Watching the depth and the light and all this stuff really emerge from the newest art is just gorgeous stuff that you guys haven't seen yet, but you will soon!
One of the core chapters of the game is called "Seasons" and David did these awesome frames of fall, winter, spring and summer. They're the same piece of woods, but with different animals and different colors. I love that chapter; I love the art and the whole deal. So that's what I'm most excited about.
PETERSEN: I actually went back to my old stomping grounds where I used to run around and play in the woods. I went back to my hometown and got the camera out and took a picture of one place and used that place as a reference for those four images. So it's the same landscape, but going through the four seasons.
My favorite part of the game is the book itself. He haven't received a printed version, but looking through the digital files and the proof, we took as much care in designing the layout and the book itself as much as the craft as making the game. It looks like a pretty book. It's not just like a bad encyclopedia or something. There's a border on almost every page, the papers are made to look like parchments, and the illustrations all fit the same dimensions as any Mouse Guard panel. It's going to feel very much like a Mouse Guard book that just happens to be the role playing game.
Anything else you want to let fans know about?
CRANE: I'm satisfied.
PETERSEN: It's going to be cool. It already is cool; you just don't know it yet.
