I spent a good two weeks fretting over what to run for my group’s Halloween session and then with Mausritter. I was going to present this as a questionable choice until I gave it a few minutes of thought and realized that the scale of things gives it a ton of potential to be absolutely brimming with horror.
Suffice it to say, I did not think of that before I ran my Halloween Special, but I will be keeping that in mind going forward. Oh yes.
Mausritter has had my attention for the longest time and I have been aching to run it, but scheduling woes and ever-shifting moods and whims have pushed it off the top of the list again and again. Enter Shattered Rain, an adventure brimming with the potential for a spooky time exploring the depths of an abandoned power transformer in an area plagued by an unending storm. It dropped just in time to sway me back to Mausritter—the perfect introduction for my crew. From here, there are some spoilers for Shattered Rain, so read at your risk if you intend to play it. In case you do stop here, just know that I whole-heartedly recommend the adventure.
I love the simplicity of games derived from Into the Odd. Character creation took a handful of minutes and then we were on our way. The mice trudged their way through the rain and muck to the entrance of the abandoned power transformer. I completely blanked on the potential for this to cause a condition, but we don’t need to start this new experience off on a bad paw anyway.
It is interesting watching his group develop as we move away from playing 5e and into more indie directions. We all might be new to Mausritter, but I have ran various flavors of Into the Odd in the past and they have learned that the murder hobo approach isn’t going to go well for them. They are cautious and don’t rush, but I’ve wholly adopted the idea of describing everything in detail without obfuscation and we manage exploration at a good pace.
The atmosphere of Shattered Rain has a ton of spooky potential if you want to take advantage of it. There’s a storm raging outside that can cause the lights throughout the dungeon to sputter and dim with each boom of thunder. Inside the dungeon, arcs of electricity might flash with a crackle and buzz while automatons clank and clack, announcing their presence in the halls before they are ever seen. The entire place reeks of ozone, but the tunnels might also smell of damp and dust. Weave the atmosphere into your descriptions and use them to dramatic effect and you can crank the tension.
There’s some silliness from my players and I am here for it. One mouse hears an automaton coming up a tunnel and, having seen that there are “Frankenmice” mining, decides that the best course of action is not to hide, but to take his mace in both paws and start “mining” the closest tunnel wall. I make him roll a luck check, not to see whether the automaton catches on to the ruse—I figure that this might be somewhat odd, but not particularly out of place—but to see if his ruse rewards him with some unprocessed fulgurite.
It does. Some randomly rolled positive reinforcement to encourage not rushing in and killing everything in sight, I suppose.
They encounter a room filled with water, see glimpses of a treasure lurking in the murky water and encounter an electric eel “guarding” the treasure. They could fight it and maybe win, but decide to talk it out instead. The eel isn’t hostile towards them and they manage to shake out a deal: it’ll get the treasure and they will return it to the sea. This eel is probably quite large, but they tried so the eel shrinks himself down small enough fit into a bucket and the mice start dragging it through the dungeon with them. I create an opportunity for them to betray the eel and throw him back into the water before moving forward, but they stay true to their word.
I am a proud GM. The players have started addressing the eel as Mr. Bzzt. He is a potent little bugger and willing to zap some fools for a share of rations.
The mice get in a few fights they can’t figure out a way to avoid, take some licks, but manage to stay up. They all try to climb up a statue for a treasure and fail so bad at their rolls that the whole damn thing topples, creating an excellent mess that they fight and improvise their way out of. The mice limp away from that dust up, but they’ve got their paws on a fancy new spell and rest just long enough to finally head through a puzzle door that they solve with ease but also somehow consistently fail to apply a solution to.
Not long after they waltz out of the dungeon to clear skies, having busted a ghost, mashed a brain, and saved a missing wizard apprentice forced to pose as a mad scientist after he ended his cackle by squeaking out a plea for help to the haggard group that stumbled into his lab.
It was a very successful introduction. I had a great time running Mausritter with Shattered Rain and my players had a ball, as well. So much, in fact, that we plan to continue! The Estate’s hex crawl will be a first for the lot of us, but we’re all excited to give it a go.