Mausritter
Both WFS and I have written favorably about Isaac Williams' Mausritter in the past, especially its mechanics, so this will be a brief review of Mausritter's adventure generating tool, found on the last few pages of the book.
The recommended campaign structure for an ongoing Mausritter campaign is a hexcrawl sandbox, where each hex contains a landmark and a complication that potentially makes interacting with the landmark more interesting. The recommended hexcrawl map is 19-hex region formed by a central hex with two rings around it. It's the same map structure as in In the Light of a Ghost Star, the same structure as a Hex Flower, and as Dungeon of the Brain Jar notes, it's a structure that's become a popular template for hexcrawling recently, sort of a wilderness analog to the jewelbox dungeon.
Mausritter's hex flower sandboxes are centered on a peaceful settlement, and each contains two main adventure sites. The player character mice don't start in the settlement though - they start in a hex with an adventure site. Getting to town is your second goal. Surviving the adventure is your first. The example hexcrawl in the Mausritter book actually only details 11 hexes our of the 19, but referees are encouraged to fill them all.
The first roll in each hex determines the terrain - countryside, forest, river, or human town. A second roll generates a landmark specific to the terrain type. These are mostly geographical features. The kinds of landmarks you might navigate by, but not necessarily anything to invite further interaction quite yet. The final roll generates what Isaac calls a "complication". These are mostly additional sites within the hex, places where mice live, and thus places where the player character mice can interact with NPCs. Example complications include religious sites, places where a lone mouse lives, even settlements. There are also ruins, abandoned places, and various naturally occurring locations. Each complication includes both a prompt and a leading question to encourage the referee to develop it further. There are also a few tables to begin generating the central settlement.
As I said, Isaac suggests placing two primary adventuring sites in each hex flower sandbox. There's one set of tables for generating the adventure sites, and another for generating what Isaac calls the "adventure seeds" - the client, their problem, and a complication. So you could pick your adventure sites by looking at the map so far and deciding where you think the two most promising locales are, or you could start by generating the sites and then deciding afterward where to place them. However you decide where to put them, you then pick one to serve as the starting point for the campaign.
I think these tables probably work best if the referee mixes some random results, some results chosen using the tables as a menu of options, and some of their own creation. There are 20 landmarks for each terrain type and a total of 20 complications - so repeated across 19 hexes, pure random generation might look a little strange, especially in a setting that's intended to be less gonzo and more naturalistic. Besides, even if you trust the dice to the maximum extent, you'll still have to make choices, turn the complications from starter ideas to actual locations and place the two adventuring sites. So my sense remains that these tables work better as sparks for the referee's creativity than as full-on stand-alone procedural generators.
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Blackpond Manor and Waterland Environs - click here to view |
I used the tables to generate a hex flower sandbox. It ended up being very heavy on rivers and human towns. Let's call it Waterland. It's centered on the fallen mouse aristocratic manor of Blackpond. The two adventuring sites are both home to rival cat lords, one of whom obviously believes the other is their star-crossed lover, and the other who is just as obviously a faerie disguised as a cat. Since I generated this map for a review, I didn't exercise any of my own choice or creativity in placing the hexes or developing any of the prompts. This is the start of a sandbox, but it won't be ready to play without a little more work from the referee.
This post originally appeared on Bones of Contention.
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