Mice & Bats & Witches, Oh My!
Originally posted on my newsletter, November 2022
There are many TTRPG blogs, but this is mine. I’ve been planning to make a newsletter/blog for a while to share my thoughts on TTRPG writing, design, and add additional comments to my 60 second TTRPG reviews. So welcome! This is a good place to get updates on what I am up to, from new releases, appearances in streams, and sales and discounts.
For example, I recently released Tomb of the Slumbering Queen, a Mausritter dungeon about vampire bats which I made for the Crossword Dungeon Jam!
What started as a solved crossword with some spooky words circled, evolved into me learning how to draw isometric maps and frightening my playtesters with my best Dracula impression. Check it out on itchio, and DriveThruRPG
Similarly, I also released a murder-mystery for Brindlewood Bay called Knit One, Kill One. It is inspired by knitting and the petty politics found in village craft fairs.
yes I did learn how to make animated gifs for this and I’m very pleased with myself, thank-you-very-much
The Mavens are attending a local craft fair organised by the Brindlewood Bay Small Business Committee, and set up in St. Brendan’s church hall. There are various stalls filled with cakes, handmade cards, free samples, and crafted items of varying quality. But when Pearl Darrington, the local yarn shop owner, is found strangled by her own knitting, the Mavens must investigate who committed this crafty crime!
While I love the official New England setting of Brindlewood Bay, I will always run my games in insular English villages full of retirees hashing it out over who gets to run the fundraising tombola. This actually happened in my parents village, and led to a stand off between the church roof white elephant stand and the village hall new boiler jumble sale, with villagers being asked to pick their preferred fundraising method as a test of loyalty. There is also a constant and fierce competition over who makes the best coffee cake (it’s Olwen, and she will not be replaced!) If in five years someone mysteriously vanishes, we will never know why because there are just too many feuds to keep count.
Check out Knit One, Kill One on itchio or DriveThruRPG
GM’s Notebook:
For the past 5 weeks I have been running my first streamed campaign, The Mice in the Herb Garden, a Mausritter actual play, over on the Girls Run These Worlds twitch channel. I’ve been playing with 4 wonderful players (Ru, Taylor, Ella, and Angela) and we have covered a lot of ground, especially given they are playing tiny mice. One thing I have tried hard to achieve is a balance between danger, and cute and cosy moments between the characters.
Looming foxes and vicious insects have provided the peril, but I’ve found some fun ways to add cosy little moments to our game.
1. Expand your world beyond the ‘dangerous bits’
While I spent plenty of prep time designing encounters and dungeons, I also spent time planning the market set amongst roots of a Willowtree, designing the star charts at the Observatory housed in a fallen long, and planning the autumnal menu at Basildon Hall. This allowed there to be time spent exploring and engaging with a world not solely intent on killing the characters.
For example, here are 8 meals being served at Basildon Hall in late Autumn:
Herb crusted roast courgette
Butternut squash soup
Apple and pear crumble with cream
Swiss chard and potato hash
Eton Mess (eggs traded with the water voles, from some local chickens)
Borsch
Tatties & Neeps and onion gravy
Elderberry Cordial and raspberry tarts
2. Allow extra time for roleplay between players
I build extra time into each session to allow for plenty of roleplay, including back and forth between the players. I try to not rush them if they start talking in character. I want to encourage it and see more of it. I find it can take a little while for people to settle into the characters, but when you allow space to explore how the characters connect to each other, it can lead to wonderful moments like this one in session 5.
3. Roll those reaction checks!
In Mausritter, as in many OSR/NSR games, when you encounter creatures you often roll on a table of ‘Reactions’ to see how they feel about the party. This ranges from helpful to downright hostile, with a nice range in the middle that will encourage talking and exploration rather than rushing to stab everything that moves (and possibly being eaten in the process.) It also brings out the ways different characters might handle a situation. I don’t use the Reaction table for every encounter, but I use it a lot, and it’s led to chats with a talkative ghost, a messed up message given to a confused frog, and a ride on a hungry slug.
If you need some naming inspiration for new NPCs, I created a list of names for my water voles, which were inspired by venetian merchants trading in willow bark gondolas. Just make sure to roll on your Reaction table when you talk to them!
Oregano
Rosemary
Vanilla
Mozerella
Gordon-zola
Ricotta
Polenta
Peppercorn
Conchiglie
Rosa
Margherita
Penne
Reviews:
I looked at a variety of games over the past month over on my tiktok, but one that really stood out to me was Cantrip by Misha Panarin.
Cantrip by Misha Panarin. Cover art by Celeste Cruz
Cantrip by Misha Panarin is a cute and peppy GMless game where you play as witches attending a magical academy. It’s all about coming of age stories, getting into magical mischief and building friendships with your classmates.
It uses the Belonging Outside Belonging system which means you collect and spend tokens to progress the narrative. Everyone shares control of the elements that make up the school such as the staff, students, the nearby town, and even The Weave, the source of magic itself.
Pick playbooks inspired by shows like Little Witch Academia and Witch Hat Atelier. I can especially see the influence of these shows in playbooks like The Hedge -a mushroom loving recluse happier in the countryside than in the flashy hall of the academy - who clearly draws inspiration from Sucy, who is reclusive and obsessed with mushrooms and poison. (I mean… aren’t we all?)
I’m not always a fan of Belonging Outside Belonging (BoB) games because balancing the weak and hard moves can be difficult. It’s easy to unbalance the token economy and make it either too hard or too easy to earn tokens, making them obsolete. It can also be difficult to get new players into BoB games as it requires a lot of confidence to push your ideas forwards with no dice to fall back on to justify your actions. I think the moves in Cantrip really shine here and would make it easy for newer players to get used to the rhythm of the game.
For example, sticking with The Hedge, we can see the moves are really flavourful and could work at many points within a session. For example, in the weak moves, The Hedge can earn a token when they ‘jealously guard knowledge.’ What a great set up for a story revolving around revising for exams, rushing to finish a magical assignment, or perhaps taking part in a competition! Similarly, for Strong Moves, The Hedge can open up their character a little and ‘Freely Share Knowledge.’ You can see how a whole satisfying story arc could hang on these two moves, but also how they could fit nicely into wider stories with other characters.
My only complaint about Cantrip is I want more! It’s a lovely and compact book; I have the physical copy and it slots nicely between the chonkier books that jostle for space on my very small bookshelf. But I can’t wait to see what other people make as they expand beyond the base game. I’d like to see third-party creators make more Playbooks, more events in the academic calendar (each terms event has a special move you can do), and more Aspects of the school please!
For example, what if we expanded beyond the initial influences and bring in some more magic school aspects, such as elements from W.I.N.X? Obviously, Flora could be The Hedge, Stella could be The Posh (play as a witch descended from a long and prestigious bloodline), and Musa could be The Sybil (a playbook where you commune with spirits, fate, and the Weave), but what about Aisha? A dedicated athlete as well as a spell caster, perhaps there could be a Playbook all about the tension between pushing yourself to be the best you can be, and the need to relax and spend time with your friends. Somebody make it or I’ll have to!
That’s all folks…
Thanks for reading, and you can expect more like this next month. Let me know what you think!
In the mean time, if you want to keep up to date with my various goings on you can also follow me on twitter, tumblr, and tiktok, and remember you can find my games on itch.io, DMsGuild, and DriveThruRPG.