Exchange of Realities

Do I begin the story with finding a book while on vacation, falling for a game system, and realizing that running something else for the next few weeks would be a perfect way to buy time to make my next plot arc in my primary game sing? Or should I just hit you, like I did my players, with two walls, one of text and one of water?

The idea had been simple enough. I know I’m likeliest to get ideas for one thing when I’m supposed to be concentrating on another, and—well, what better way to get ready for a writhing mass of conspiracies than to run another game for a while and let the subconscious work on my primary? And having picked up the Mouse Guard rulebook as an impulse-buy while on vacation in Oregon, I had just the thing to use as a bridge game.

It worked. Quite well, in fact. By the time I had the group together, I had several strong ideas for my primary game and one extremely strong image for my second mission. But the first? I wish.

The logical thing to do, of course, would be to go straight to the second. Only… well, the second wasn’t so much a mission as it was a post-first-mission “Oh, no, now what?” They were supposed to be caught in the middle of the flood, not sent as disaster relief with supplies pre-planned. And between the importance of rolls to advancement, and the fact that you’re supposed to begin with the group being sent out, it didn’t seem quite right to do a true in medias res beginning.

So, the day of the first session, I improvised a little. Before starting the game, I told the group the mission they’d been on that got me to the flooded zone (grain delivery, pretty simple), and asked for each of them to make two rolls they thought might be useful on a run like that, from whatever skills they felt like, then follow it up with one Health roll. They gave me a fun little mixtry of assortments, I did some arbitrary reverse engineering and came up with a summary of the mission beforehand before launching into the beginning of what I had planned. (And incorporated the fact that one of our players was conspicuously absent.) The result looked something like this:

It seemed like a normal mission at the beginning. The mission: to escort a grain shipment to the frontier town of Honeycomb. And during the run, it didn’t seem that bad; Cale did a pretty good job of finding the trail.  Except for the squirrels, anyway. Hungry little nuisances had slipped past Shackton when he was scouting. Thanks to some fast-talking from Erwyn and Cale, with Finn as translator, you were able to bargain with them for safe passage, but you did lose a bit of the grain, and it took a bit for the somewhat late-returning Shackton to salvage the bits that had been in the other broken vessels. (Though Erwyn should probably note that attempting to convince the caravan leader that the whole mess couldn’t be pinned on any one mouse while the tenderpaw was apologizing is generally considered a bad idea.)  But without too much of a delay, you arrived in Honeycomb.

 

The place was a cheerful little community, nestled in a not-quite-cavern that had been hollowed out around the roots of an old yew.  In the time since it had been settled, the local mice had carved staircases into the roots, built houses on and under them; in fact, the only dwellings above the ground line were the mayor’s residence and the archives, themselves built into a largish knot in the tree itself, about a foot up the trunk. Against all predictions (and yes, Finn, this includes yours) the sky outside was rapidly graying up, and rain beginning to fall, when you arrived.  As you met with Mayor Dana, and her daughter took over making sure the grain got into the storehouses, the rain grew stronger and stronger, its pounding against the earthen roof above reverberating through the cavelet.  After a bit, the roof even seemed to be sagging, but the locals were unconcerned; apparently this happened at least once every spring.

 

Arrangements were made, time was taken to get off your feet and freshen up, and in the evening, with the rain still pounding above, the mayor invited the lot of you up to dine in her residence. After a trip that long, it was hard not to accept. Her daughter would be joining you, she said, as would her son, who was now apparently off aboveground checking the depth of the rainfall and would return shortly. But as you were making the climb up, just before the staircase would have gone into the yew’s trunk rather than just climbing among its leaves, there was a last groan from the roof far above, and a crack. A wall of water flushing down from what had once been leaves and sticks and solid earth. A brief sight of a leaf-boat, and a young mouse scrambling to both cling to it and keep his tail around a long, notched and painted stick. And then the water hit.

 

Somehow, all of you managed to make it to somewhere that wasn’t water. Shackton seemed to be fine; he’d caught onto the railing and managed to stay there until the water receded. Erwyn and Cale came up soon as well, washing a little ways but ending up safely in an eddy where a root curled around another roof. Finn wasn’t so lucky; when he finally got clear of the water, he was in the shallows at what had originally been the village entrance, and the initial cough for breath had only seemed to bring on more. Of the fifth-member-of-your-party-whose-name-I-forget, and of the mayor, there was no sign.

And the village itself–where five minutes ago had been a bustling community, now was water, and debris, and waxy leaves covering almost everything, and drenched mice scrabbling up the few non-flooded areas at best and clinging to sticks in the water at worst. This, you could all agree, had not been in your briefing.

By writers’ standards, it’s probably a bit too exposition-heavy to be in medias res, but given that the game doesn’t really start until the players begin to make their move, I’d say it fits. And certainly, they liked it.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS