This is part 2 of an ongoing series of play reports. Click here to read part 1.

Hello! When we last left our patrol, they had managed to bring their prisoner, Wulfrid, to the port town of Darkwater. Now all they had to do was get him safely across the bay to Port Sumac, where they could drop him off and carry on to their next mission. Seems pretty straight forward, right? Of course, if it was straight forward, it wouldn’t be interesting!

Party Like It’s 1199

While the rest of the patrol had been busy with other things, Finn decided to spend his turn looking for a boat which would take them to Port Sumac. Unfortunately, though he spent all night talking to various captains, it wasn’t until the early morning that he managed to find someone who would be willing to take them across the water, and even then they would need to pay. The next morning, our GM Turn began with the patrol haggling with Tupp, the captain of the boat. Though they came close, the characters just couldn’t convince Tupp it would be worth her while to transport them; she argued that since Darkwater had adopted currency, she needed something to make up for the lost revenue.

Now, I flubbed this a little bit. The let it ride principle says that unless things change, you should move onto the next obstacle. The patrol had failed to haggle with Tupp, and I should have closed that avenue. However, in searching for a way to accomplish their goal, the characters hit on a great idea — since Aengus was all about finding a good party, he offered to put one together for Tupp; temporarily turning her cargo ship into a party barge. Rules be damned, that sounded like a fun plan, so I let them run with it. We used a linked test so everyone could contribute, and in the end they put together a good enough party to compensate Tupp for delaying her run by a day, and for transporting mice instead of cargo.

Early the next morning, the patrol set out on their voyage. Rather than describe the monotony of the trip, I asked the characters what they were doing to pass the time. This was another place where I went astray from the rules; naturally some of the patrol wanted to interact with the prisoner or advance goals, which meant that this turned into an impromptu Player Turn. In the end it worked out, as I decided to run it as one (no one had any extra checks, so each character only got to do one thing), but I hadn’t intended for it to happen, and I might have unnecessarily slowed the pace and tension of the game down.

With the Player Turn ended, the ship found itself battered by a sudden storm! Quinn — the only mouse with the boatcrafter skill — made a check to help keep them afloat, and failed. Then Finn rolled a health test to see how they fared after being tossed overboard. The patrol awoke the next morning to find themselves on the beaches of Port Sumac, with everyone alive, save for one of Tupp’s crew.

Looking back, I’m not sure why I killed this “red shirt” off, as I’d made no effort to build up the crew in any meaningful way. It was forced, and not one of my finer moments as a GM, but at least now Tupp can be used as a potential character in future games. After all, there’s an insurrection against the Guard brewing, and perhaps they might find her sympathetic to their goals…

The Play’s the Thing…

Having made it safely to their destination, the patrol made a final attempt to achieve their second set of orders — interrogating Wulfrid to find out who had been pulling his strings. Now, Quinn had made a concerted effort to get the prisoner to talk since the mission began, and I decided that would make things a bit easier for the patrol. This was the perfect place to use Mouse Guard’s conflict system, but we were nearing the end of the session, and I didn’t want to get bogged down and not finish. In the end, I set a fairly difficult persuader test against the patrol, which they managed to pass with the use of help, Fate and Persona. Wulfrid admitted they weren’t the callous despots he had made them out to be, and told them who had gotten him started in the insurrection; an actor calling herself Honeymeade, who he said was going to be in the town of Dawnrock for the summer.