Post Session Thoughts Double Header: Mausritter and Shadowdark
I had the fortune to get to run two games this past week despite not GMing an active group right now (we’re on extended summer break while I start a move). Theses were two separate groups that I have played with before.
One note is the comparisons to D&D 5e are not intended to disparage the game or people who enjoy it, it just makes up a large part of my groups’ gaming experience and my baseline game.
Mausritter
Intro and preparations
I came across Mausritter a little over a year ago and thought it would be a great investment for my daughter and I to bond. She had just been born, so this was a long-term investment. But while I’m waiting for her to grow up, I’ve been dabbling with it and have come to enjoy the Into the Odd game system.
Our normal DM was away so I stepped up to host so we could keep our regular biweekly rhythm. In our last session we had just entered the library of a sunken city so I felt inspired by that theme and ran the Drained Temple of the Brackish Basin by brstf.
I sent the 2 page spread on mouse creation and the 2-page spread on rules as optional read-aheads but planned on fully explaining everything at the session. I decided to run the adventure, more or less as written, especially since this was a 1-shot and I didn’t need to connect it to a larger world.
How the session went
As with many OSR systems, character creation was fast and the players commented on how they were still able to get a “feel” for their character without all the options you get in a D&D 5e game. Like any good 1-shot that wants to end on time, we started right at the dungeon door and let them have at it with the first puzzle.
Early on, they explored a room with a patrolling guardian, and to my surprise, they actually decided to flee! It had spotted them and without knowing it’s capabilities (it certainly looked magical), they backed out barricaded the door and headed off in the other direction. These aren’t OSR players so it was surprising to see them backing out.
They worked through a room of puzzles and I did my best to adjudicate when to call for rolls. In retrospect, I feel like I called for too many but I think I was also shielding them from the dangers of their plan. For example, they were looting clams that would clamp down for d20 damage (very likely to incapacitate, if not outright kill a PC). They wanted to Raiders of the Lost Ark the pearl with a stone so I had a saving throw for that, and if that failed then another mouse would roll to yank them out. If that also failed, only then they took the damage. This is only my 3rd session of Mausritter (or any Into the Odd game) and I’m still developing my GM’ing style, so maybe this is fine and I do enjoy putting one character’s fate in the hands of their companions.
Eventually, they make it to the final encounter and after some dicey rolls, manage to accomplish their goal. They see the monster they released take out a giant guardian in one hit and with seemingly little else to gain, decide to book it. They left the dungeon with a nice bit of loot, a nice new weapon (they crafted with materials they found in the dungeon), and a unique spell tablet, so overall not too bad. During the brief epilogue, I explain how the dam breaks and the basin refills, sealing off the temple once again so this was their only chance for glory.
Overall Thoughts
The players enjoyed the adventure and more specifically, the simplicity of the system. This group certainly aren’t Min-maxers and didn’t seem to lose out on any of the story with fewer combat options. One of the players even mentioned that their partner and their friends were interested in trying D&D but was reluctant to introduce it based on how complex it is and not having the confidence to run it. Seeing Mausritter renewed their interest in being to teach a system and then also GM a game.
Getting a different group of players in to mess with Mausritter showed a different aspect of the system and I really like the speed at which obstacles and conflict can be resolved. The range of effects your actions can have in a turn are smaller so you don’t feel as penalized for taking a sub-optimal but outside-the-box approach. We were able to get through 75% of the name locations and still end our session early. While I didn’t design this dungeon, I was happy to see the PCs exposed to most of the written content. I hate designing a dungeon for the parties to get bogged down by two combats and only uncover a portion of what I had written before the session ends.
One issue I noticed was what to do with a downed PC during combat. One of the mice went down fairly quickly in the final fight and there wasn’t much for her to do. The rounds were short so it wasn’t an excessive amount of time waiting for other players but when it came to her turn I described what happens, she doesn’t really have any choice to make and then move on to the next. I need to think about how to prepare options to still include them for the future.
Overall it’s a great system that I’m excited to run more games in.
Post script
I drafted this over the weekend and today read a blog post from Explorer’s Design on their Mausritter Haus Rules. One line that struck me was “If I can replace mice with regular humans and the adventure looks almost exactly like an Into the Odd adventure, to me, that's a sign the best part of Mausritter has gone un-nibbled.” I think this is something I have underappreciated in my first few plays; without the dramatic irony that we know this fortification is actually just old shoebox, Mausritter starts to merge into anthropomorphic D&D (or Redwall). Not a bad thing on it’s own but not sure that is the intent.
For the Drained Temple, it was missing this human scale. The town was built of woven reeds in the lee of a waterfall (could also apply to a human settlement) around a lake with a submerged temple built by ancient ones (could also apply to a human settlement). The only hint of humans is the hermit crab merchant that’s offering fishing wares recovered from the lake.
How I would fix this is to lean into the fisherman’s lake idea. The temple is a large tackle box that went overboard. The fishfolk can still have enchanted it and the trapped the jellyfish inside but all against the setting of plastic instead of ancient temple with aquamarine and shell mosaics. The whole world of Mausritter lives in the remains of our world and creating something entirely new isn’t in the spirit of my version of the game.
Shadowdark
Intro and preparations
I GM’d for this group for a few years before we eventually lost our critical mass of regulars and ended it. We had a player return to town so we decided to get the gang back together and run a 1-shot. I needed an easy system because the group didn’t have a strong grasp of the D&D 5e ruleset, even after years of play. (Coincidentally, it was my frustrations with this group that originally brought me to the OSR temple.)
I elected for Shadowdark since it was close to 5e but with a lot less character options for them to forget (attacking with your crossbow as a wizard isn’t wasted action in Shadowdark as it is in 5e, for example). I grabbed the quick start rules and used the character generator to quickly port our 5e chartacters to Shadowdark (or at least close enough).
For the adventure, I went with a homebrew that was heavily inspired by Descent into Avernus (a previously attempted campaign with this group that had fizzled). I had originally planned it as a simplified hexcrawl based on the Hexcrawl Toolbox Rules from Games Omnivorous that would end at a small dungeon. They could encounter some of the NPCs and locations we had reached during the original campaign as nice throwbacks and in some cases as updates to what changed since the PCs’ visit. It was your standard, simple encounters in the hexes and random encounters along the way. I was planning on a consolidated supply system to maybe force them to look for fuel for their infernal war machines, food, etc.
But I have run enough 1-shots to know that we would be lucky to get to the dungeon entrance by the end of the session if I left all that in. So the night before I scrapped all that and decided on a more direct approach.
The hexcrawl became a series of scenes on rails to ensure we would have plenty of time for the dungeon. The supply system and random encounters were cut and I just left the callbacks to our previous campaign.
For the dungeon, I followed Sly Flourish’s advice and printed a smaller map from Dyson’s Logos and annotated room descriptions by hand. For the dungeon design, I fused Dyson’s text description of the map, the lore from Descent Into Avernus (the Crypt of the Hellriders) and tried to incorporate Chris McDowall’s 3-Step Dungeon ideas into it.
How the session went
After a decent chunk spent catching up, I gave a quick refresher on the rules and story so far then started off in medias res, climbing down the giant chains into hell. We then moved through the narratives fairly quickly and the players were well behaved and happy to stay on the rails because I had promised them a dungeon at the end of the trail.
It has been almost 3 years since Descent Into Avernus but they really enjoyed the callbacks especially finding out one of the players had abandoned their devil lover (and their child) to become a warlord of the Avernus wastes. They were able to make some decisions and if they made good choices (or rolled well) then they got some sort of magic item to play with.
Attempting to follow the 3-Step Dungeon advice, I came up with two concepts to introduce and then combine in the final room. The first concept was the shadows of the Hellriders being weak in the light and would prioritize extinguishing torches. The second concept was the desecrated holy symbols scattered through out that would radiant a holy light if consecrated. The final room was a Wight and two shadows (well above the group’s capabilities) but also a large holy symbol on the sarcophagus in the center of the room to balance it out.
The players cautiously explored and interacted with the puzzle pieces. While I don’t think they ever fully connected it, there were several “A-ha!” moments, so I was happy. They had managed to miss the rooms with the shadows so only had a conceptual idea of how they would fare in combat. When the got to the final room, the priest had a light spell on that the shadows could not extinguish and he went to work on consecrating the holy symbol in the center. While the two other thieves fought off the shadows, the priest just could not roll well on his consecration and when the Wight emerged, he was priority target (”We turned from that god long ago heh heh heh”). A well rolled Turn Undead looked to even the odds until the Wight scored a critical hit and dropped the priest (fun fact, I rolled a 20, one of the PCs used an ability to force me to reroll and I rolled another 20 right out in the open for them witness). From there, the thieves made a quick attempt to revive him with a soul coin but ultimately decided to get the McGuffin and get out. The priest died, was turned into a shadow by the Wight and chased his former companions out of the crypt where we ended the session.
Overall Thoughts
We played fairly loose with the Shadowdark rules, not really keeping Initiative order or torch timers but it never really impacted our group. We used blocked initiative to cover the group that goes before the monsters and the group that goes after the monsters. Probably our biggest rules issue was the players being conditioned to fear opportunity attacks from D&D 5e and I reminded them a few that they had freedom of movement on their turn.
Cutting all that material and the fact that they only explored 4 of the 6 rooms in the dungeon had us end about an hour earlier than our drop-dead stop time. As I’ve matured as a GM, I lean into this “end earlier than to rush through the dramatic reveal” mentality, so this was fine with me. Although we weren’t anywhere near the plot of Descent Into Avernus, they felt it served as a good close to an unfinished chapter.
Mörkborg’s black humor style has rubbed off on my version of Avernus so their shenanigans and tendency to push the boundaries of what their character can do worked well. It makes me wonder if we had shifted to a different system and setting sooner, then maybe we would have retained more players and still existed as a group. This is why it is important to find the right game for your group!
Thoughts on both games
Running two OSR-style games has confirmed my preference for this style of game right now. I love that we weren’t rushing to get through most of the prepared material and still ended in a spot where most but not all had been encountered (leaving some mystery on the table). As we all get older and priorities change, the time at the table gets to be more precious. As a GM, I appreciate being part of the player’s discovery process, watching in anticipation as the pick up the pieces of the world and put them together and this is what happened during my two games this week.