Mausritter (Riverbend Valley): A Review
I recently semi-concluded a short four-session campaign of Mausritter using the Riverbend Valley module. I wanted to use this post to organize my thoughts about both the system and the module.
Play Report
Here's a summary of what happened during our game:
Four mice enter the swampy Riverbend Valley on a mission from the Earldom of Ek. Reports from the hamlet of Berrystand in the north of the Valley have grown increasingly erratic and seem to speak to some kind of imminent disaster, and our four heroes are sent to investigate.
Among the mice is Holly, a priestess of the Grand Brotherhood of Rodents; Ambrose, a bat cultist; Eared Pipp, a dim-witted troubadour; and Cassia, a dam builder who seems to secretly harbor some loyalty to the bat cult.
The mice sail down the river that connects the Earldom to the Valley, but their raft capsizes and they are stranded in a large forest. They find lodging with the Fraternal Order of the Hedge-Knights, a group of mouse knight-errants who protect the Valley's residents from harassment by fairies, the tyrannical fox Firefur, and the impish Trashratz.
The mice must cross the river to get to Berrystand, and travel to a nearby dam rumored to contain both malevolent spirits and treasure. On the way, a gnarled face in a tree tells them "The Baron is their puppet." At the dam, they are hassled by ghosts and beat a hasty retreat, but not before concocting a plan to retrieve a shiny human time-dial (a pocketwatch that fell down a well).
They head to Berrystand and find a hamlet recently established by escaped lab mice. The (literal) berry stand that makes up their central plaza is collapsing, and many mice are deciding to move away. Cassia and Ambrose investigate, finding evidence of termite infestation as well as a Clockwork Cat hidden in the structure. The cat attacks, and Cassia is knocked unconscious, though Ambrose heroically plunges a lance into the Cat's wheels to stall it while he brings his friend to safety.
While the cat besieges the berry stand, the mice devise a plan to tangle its wheels and immobilize it. The plan is a success, and the mice of Berrystand burn the wooden automaton. For supplies, the mice travel south in the direction of both the hub city of Swampdale and rumors of an abandoned bat temple, which may contain guano. They stop off at the dam again, fight a ghost, and claim another treasure, a large golden saw (a housekey).
The mice arrive at Swampdale just in time to hear its ruler, Baron Dungaree Algernon, has been kidnapped by Firefur. They sell their treasures, find a guide who knows the way to the bat temple, and Pipp buys a giant beetle for a mount.
At the ruined temple, they find more ghosts. These ghosts tell Ambrose, a fellow bat cultist, to clear the temple of life and destroy it so that they may rest. The mice find a portal to the fairy realm and encounter a large snake. Pipp baits the snake into slithering through a mouse trap, which kills the creature. But that section of the tunnel collapses around Pipp, potentially ending his life as well (the cliffhanger we ended the campaign on).
The System
I really, really like Mausritter as a system. It's based on Into the Odd, which is one of my favorite skeletons for an RPG system since it's pretty much the perfect level of rules-density for me. I was worried the game would come off like it was trying too hard to be cutesy, but it really didn't. The tone was lighthearted and humorous but always remained somewhat grounded.
After thinking about it for a bit, I think the premise of Mausritter, a dungeoncrawling game where the heroes are mice, is a truly interesting and inventive spin on the old-school formula. Whereas your average old-school D&D character is a villager who has decided to do one of the most dangerous jobs possible, your average mouse is in quite a lot of danger regardless of what steps they take. It also reduces the burden of explaining a lot of the elements of the world: things like dragons and goblins have infiltrated pop culture for the most part, phase spiders and displacer beasts less so. But even someone with no fantasy experience intuitively understands the threat that a cat poses to a mouse.
On that note, one of my only complaints is that there is an implied setting for Mausritter that you have to do some detective work to figure out. We know from the character generation tables that there is such a thing as a bat cult, that magic exists and certain mice can cast spells, and that mice can use beetles as beasts of burden. But these setting elements (and things like the existence of ghosts) are not explicitly addressed outside of their explicit mechanical effects, which can be a bit confusing. On the other hand, you could see that as a benefit. A recurring bit in our game were theological discussions between Pipp and Ambrose, where it was never clear if Ambrose was lying about the bat cult or that was their actual doctrine.
The Module
Riverbend Valley is made by ManaDawn Tabletop Games, whom I discovered through the Bastardized Classics. They publish supplements for bastards. and Mausritter, including the Bernpyle zine. I like the design sensibilities of a lot of their stuff, which looks pretty polished (less so for the Bernpyle zines honestly). In any case, while I was looking for stuff to run in Mausritter, this jumped out to me due to past exposure to ManaDawn's work.
For $5, I think it's pretty good value for your money, though I did have some problems with some of the layout and presentation. The document looks great at a first glance, but some things did make it harder to run in the actual session1.
Some of the hexes have multiple things in them, and it can be difficult to figure out which features described later in the book are in each hex. For example, hex 2, the first hex the PCs ended up in, is described thus:
2: Hedge-knight's Tower
Dense forest with thick underbrush covering the ground. Overgrown ruins shrouded in moss. Amidst the thicket a regal spire rises. It is home to a chivalrous order.
The bolding around "chivalrous order" indicates that the GM should consult the "Hedge-knight's Tower" entry in the "Other settlements" section, three pages later. The bolding around "overgrown ruins" indicates that the GM should consult the "Dry Shelter" dungeon with its own page, five pages later. The bolding around "forest" indicates... nothing, as far as I can tell? When I was running this, I missed the importance of the bolding and though the overgrown ruins was describing the home of the chivalrous order. This caused problems when the PCs were trying to look for the bat temple, which was at that aforementioned Dry Shelter.
Another problem was some of the dungeon maps, which have these very attractive minimalist maps with numbers superimposed over realistic drawings or photographs, but this can make it very difficult to see how rooms in these dungeon environments are supposed to connect. I still have no idea what the structure of the dam is supposed to be, and will have to wing that if the PCs ever go back.
One last thing which is maybe not an issue is the fairy portal in the bat temple. Beyond noting that this is a portal to the fairy realm, the module contains nothing (not even a "check out Bernpyle Zine #5 for ideas about seeding the fairy realm"). My players, of course, immediately wanted to go into this portal. Fortunately, this was near the end of our scheduled sessions so I just told them that I didn't have anything prepared and offered to schedule a few more sessions so they could go nuts in fairyland. On the one hand, not providing any guidance on what to do if the PCs go through the portal feels a bit unhelpful, but the portal itself is obviously a source of excitement and interest to players.
On principle, I try to avoid prep as much as possible, so this is arguably my own fault. Nevertheless, I have no plans to change any time soon, and will continue to be mad at modules that don't let me run things on the fly.↩