Mouse Guard

Thanks! I wish David Peterson would get back to a regular writing schedule. I'm beginning to give up hope that the spring of 1153 will never arrive. 

You've missed the spring already.

Winter is coming.

I moved this so I could talk. Mouse Guard is phenomenal. Not to mention, the most successful RPG I've run in the last few years was MG.

I've never read the actual graphic novels, though I know they exist - I was in an unfortunately short-lived RPG over on RPOL a couple of years ago (RL stuff came up for the GM so he had to give that priority instead :() which is where pretty much all my knowledge of the Mouse Guard setting comes from. I have the PDF of the rulebook and I like the way the skills and stuff are done - pretty much all of char gen is aimed at getting your fluff sorted, with all your stats and skills plugging in in such a way that they enhance your character's backstory rather than just being numbers on a page or whatever. I wish I could have played my character longer - that's what frustrates me most about RPGs that fizzle after a short time (which pretty much every game I've ever played in has) - I spend all this time coming up with a character and her detailed backstory and stuff, but then can't take it anywhere because the game suddenly dies, and I'd've liked to have spent the time playing the character, levelling her up (well, Mouse Guard doesn't really have "levels" as such, but I'm speaking generally), developing her personality and all that.

It's super easy to get attached to characters in the Mouse Guard RPG. Perfect example: I GMed the last game I played (ok, every game for the last 6-7 years. I like to GM), and I had an owl villain that I actually tried to convince my players not to kill in the end. I never do that, because I fully believe in player agency. But I got so attached to this owl, his motivations and life that it seemed sad to kill him. However, in the fiction, they really had no choice, so my pleading fell on deaf ears.

The only NPC I've ever been that attached to.

As far as the graphic novels go, they're good, and I highly recommend reading them. The RPG system was perfectly suited to the stories, really. Those characters all have life beyond the pages, and it's easy to fall into their shoes.

I tend to get attached to my characters anyway - I've played plenty of RPGs but only a couple have really lasted more than a few sessions/weeks (depending on whether tabletop or forum-based), if that :P. I've been mooching around on RPOL lately to see if I can find a DnD 4th Editon game I can get into, but so far no luck :(.

True, but I don’t want to accept a one-shot as the last thing I get from that storyline. I neeeeed more graphic-novel-length collections.

Did you see the two-player abstract game on KS?

Swords & Strongholds? I might have backed it at a level completely inappropriate for my pocketbook… 

And in other news...
https://twitter.com/Archaia/status/489103155095810049
 

(!)

[Edit: More complete information at http://www.newsarama.com/21576-mouse-guard-returns-for-new-hardcover-petersen-looks-back-on-series-so-far.html ]