Hey all! It’s Tuesday—(or, in my case, it’s “you had a migraine last night and your vision is still blurry day” but it’s still Tuesday)—which means let’s talk nerdy gaming stuff. And this week, I want to talk about a one-shot I got to play in last week of the adorable—but also deadly—Mausritter.

Sorry, Did You Say Adorable and Deadly?

I did! Okay, first off, let’s do the overview: Mausritter is like playing “The Secret of NIMH” or something like it, where you and your fellow players are wee little mice in a deadly world. You’re adorable. You’re so freaking precious (the artwork in this game is really cute, is what I’m saying) and you’re anthropomorphic but also still it’s the world (well, at least, that’s the set-up we played, to say that Mausritter has a bajillion support documents out there for different styles of play would be understating, and they’re also right this minute hosting a massive month-long celebration/game-jam on Backerkit which that link should have taken you to but instead will remind you Cloudflare is down and we really shouldn’t have allowed the internet to be balancing in the hands of a few rich people).

Sorry, where was I?

Ah! Right. Cute and deadly. Mechanics wise, making your self a mouse is as easy a few dice rolls. You roll three Attributes in order using 3d6 (dropping the lowest) for Strength, Dexterity, and Will. Yes, this means you could end up with pretty low scores—7ish being average. I had the opposite experience, though, managing to roll an 11, a 10, and a 9 for my first character, whereas my husband got a 6, a 7, and a 10. But, as it mentions elsewhere in the rulebook, if you’re rolling dice? It’s already dangerous. Clever plans are better than rolling dice.

After you roll your three attributes, you roll two more d6s, one for Hit Protection (yes, we not once remembered that’s what it was called, and always referred to them as Hit Points, but they’re not), and once for “pips” (Mausritter currency), and then you cross-reference the two rolls to get your background on a big chart with the 36 possible combinations. This will provide you with your background and two items you’ll be carrying. (Also, there’s a bit of rubber-banding/compensation here. If your highest Attribute is a 9, you get to roll a second time on the Background and pick one of the items from your second roll to add to your starting items; if your highest Attribute is a 7, you get both the items from your second roll on the Background table.)

I once again had great luck, rolling a 5 for my HP and a 5 for my pips, so I was a Grain farmer, which gave me a heavy spear and a whistle. Husband’s 3 HP and 6 pips made him a Merchant, and our third player became a Mendicant Priest (which meant he had a magic spell, but did I mention this game is deadly, because hold on to that thought).

A few more rolls for your birth sign (I was born under the Star, meaning I am Brave and/or Reckless), your coat (I was solid chocolate), and a physical detail (I rolled a prehensile tail which was flipping awesome for holding a torch while I was wielding my spear) and you’re ready to go.

Your character sheet has a grid on it, which is a 2×3 area for inventory, and a 2×2 area where the left column is your main paw above your off paw and the right side are two “body” slots. All the equipment in Mausritter is printed on sheets and cut out, creating squares or rectangles that take up one or two (or sometimes more) of these slots. If you want to wear armor and carry a shield, it will cover the bottom row: your “off paw” and your lower “body” slot. I had a large spear, so it took up my “main paw” and my “off paw.” As you pick things up, you need to have a slot for them, or you’ll be dropping stuff. It’s a great little way to simplify equipment and carrying capacity that does go into equipment wonkage, but also shields are little buttons and helmets are thimbles and at one point we picked up a “heavy club” that was a golf tee and listen, it’s so freaking cute, okay?

And Deadly…

Once we had our characters, we got into the game, and we three mice were checking out on another mouse community that had fallen silent. They lived in a big windmill castle among a strange land of twisty paths of odd grass, round holes, and strange statues (read: They lived in a windmill on a hole in a putt-putt mini-golf course!) and we were there to make sure they were okay and restore the trade between our two people.

Fairies were swarming around their windmill, so we decided on recon, spoke to some grumpy gophers, had to broker a deal with some rats, and then things got rough when we were noticed by the fairies and they send a fey fox after us and we ended up using gopher hole bombs and our own cleverness to get the heck out of immediate danger, but ran afoul of a snake and it took one swipe at us before we could react to it and—

That one swipe was a one-hit-knockout of my husband. My brave (reckless) August (call me “Gus”) Snow managed to drag him to safety in time, and we had to spend a while holed up and recovering after we used our second gopher hole bomb on the snake (RIP Mr. Slithers, but not really because you nearly killed Mr. Figgin Whistletwitch), and long story short, we did manage to come out of our adventure both (a) alive, and (b) having restored trade with the community of mice we’d come to speak to, but also at one point our Mendicant was terrified of the giant alligator (it was plexiglass and fake, but we did have to crawl into its mouth) and he decided to use his spell to restore his mental balance and instead reduced himself to a drooling shell of his former self because magic carries a 1-in-6 chance of basically frying your little mouse brain.

And he rolled a 6.

Like I said, deadly. I mean, he’ll get better, but I don’t know if he’ll ever use magic again.

Definitely Recommended (Especially for a One Shot Palate Cleanser)

Mausritter is perfect as a one-shot, and I’m thinking of running a Hexcrawl as well (the rulebook contains a bare-bones but still enough set up to roll up a 5-wide Hexcrawl), where we can choose to keep the same mouse or roll up a new one as we feel like. Given the life expectancy of the mice, having another waiting to go is a smart idea anyway.

The mechanics, which I barely touched upon, almost entirely come down to rolling checks against one of your three Attributes (which is rolling a d20 and trying to get less than your Attribute, which is not generally on your side for most mice), and gameplay is definitely centred around avoiding those checks if you can possibly do so. Yes, you could risk setting off a trip, but better you use your twine and some cunning to lasso the cheese on the trap and yank it and let the trap go off with no danger to you than to risk the Dexterity check. If things turn to combat, you better hope you get a first shot in, or that enough of you survive to drag the rest to safety, because almost everything out there is tougher than you.

I mean, of course they are. You’re a mouse.

There are ways to gain advantage on rolls (roll two dice, doubling your shot at success) but you can also have disadvantage (the opposite), and again, cleverness trumps all: if you can gain advantage in a combat situation, you get to upgrade your usual damage roll to a much better dice, but I think what it really comes down to is this wonderful portion of the Rules reference page I have to show you:

That, to me, sums up the whole vibe of the game. (And look at the cute wittle mouse!)