House of the New Zodiac

Mausritter x Winter's Daughter - Session 1 - Report

players

summary

one player had a lot of experience playing and DMing RPGs, while the other two had little to no experience with TTRPGs in general. I was DMing for the first time in over 10 years, and since I didn't have that much experience to begin with, this did felt like my first time as a DM.

I chose Mausritter as the system because I thought that the idea of playing as mice would be enjoyable and friendly for the new players (one of them is a biologist, so I figured they would like seeing an animal world). the system also belongs to the OSR/NSR family of systems, which I had been reading up recently and seemed very interesting. Mausritter has a lot of official modules for it, however they seemed excessively short, and I was afraid that I was going to improv a lot at the table, which I didn't feel very comfortable doing in a first session like this. so instead of running one of these official modules, I ran Winter's Daughter, a 5e/OSE adventure from the Dolmenwood setting; I did this because

  1. WD has a heavily hand-holdy structure that made me feel wayy more safe, like I wasn't going to need to improv that much,
  2. I watched Questing Beast's commented actual play of WD on youtube, and it made me feel like "I can do this",
  3. WD was recommended a lot on reddit and other places like that as a good newbie player and DM experience,
  4. there were a few stories of people successfully playing WD as a Mausritter adventure (including Mausritter's creator, Isaac Williams).
  5. I felt that perhaps adapting WD would not be that hard, and would give me more familiarity with the module than simply reading it.

so I basically took Cairn's WD conversion and changed a bunch of animal references (owls became dragonflies, horses became lizards, sheep became beetles, etc). I think this worked out quite well, it really helped sell the idea of this world as something magical and mystical, without losing the magical eeriness that Dolmenwood also possesses. there are some things that did not fit quite well (for example, one of the dungeon's treasures is a pearl necklace, which doesn't make a lot of sense since pearls would be much larger to mice, and I couldn't find a sensible mouse-sized analogue for pearls), but in general the players did not dwell on these details that much, for which I was thankful.

the main takeaway is that the session ran quite long -- we started at 5 PM and ended at 11 PM, so that's basically 6 straight hours of playing. I was not expecting that, and neither were the players! thankfully, I do not think that any of them felt forced to continue playing -- I straight up asked them after 3 hours or so if they wanted to wrap it up and continue another day, but they were all very invested in the game and wanted to keep playing. I was very fortunate in that regard, since I can easily see how someone else would get tired after a couple of hours and ask to stop playing (for which I wouldn't blame them). the question that remains, however, is this: how can we have taken 7 hours to play through 60% of an adventure that people finish completely in 2 or 3 hours?

I have some ideas. one of them is that I didn't pressure the players as much as I should: they felt that they had all the time in the world to explore the dungeon, basically. here, three things happened:

  1. I attempted to apply this pressure by running the random encounters table every three turns (as written in the module), but there's only a 4-in-6 chance of these encounters happening, and throughout the whole session they only ended up encountering 4 random encounters (only one of which was a fight, the wormtongue one). upon reflection, I think I did a poor job of letting the players know that these encounters were happening because they were taking too long; they felt that these things were an example that they needed to be more careful and attentive, sure, but not faster.
  2. I kept reducing their torches, but I don't think they quite internalized the notion that there is a limited amount of these, and that it will be a problem if they run out of them. this is on me, I think. I'm also not very confident that I'm counting dungeon turns very well - I'm trying to mark a dungeon turn every time they explore a room, but there are some rooms where they spent a lot of time inspecting every nook-and-cranny, and I only marked one dungeon turn when I should've marked multiple. so there's that.
  3. I also don't think that the module fits very well with the notion of applying pressure to the players; this is a tomb that has been sealed of for centuries, and the random encounters are mostly non-violent... most dangers here come from the players interacting with stuff, instead of having stuff "wake up" in the dungeon and "react to their presence" even before being interacted with. I will pay more attention to this in the future when running modules -- having means to apply pressure to the players and hurry them up.

I also want to mention that neither the players nor myself thought that the session was slow, exactly -- a lot of things happened, and all of the time, they were doing something interesting, like being careful inspecting a room or anything of the sort. they always had a mystery in their hands, and were thinking about how to approach it. this, I feel, is very positive: during these past few weeks, I've been reading a lot of TTRPG stuff to prepare myself, and I remember that in Bryce's review of WD, he says that the module has "a lot of stuff to interact with". although at first glance this seemed a little strange to me (isn't everything interactable in a TTRPG?), I now realize what he meant: every room does really have something interesting that makes the players go "humm..". the first room has a bunch of religious objects that seem weird, as well as a mosaic that can be seen on the floor if they clean up the dust; the next room (that my group explored) had a mirror that petrified when anyone passed in front of it, and which required some problem-solving since one of the players was petrified; the third room had a bunch of coffins with people's names, floating slime, and dancing skeletons... there wasn't a single room where they went "that's it?". when reading the module I noticed this and thought that perhaps it would feel forced, like na artificial funhouse that is made for the players to explore; however it really didn't, because it is all neatly tied up by the fiction. it makes sense to have the family's skeletons somewhere. it makes sense to have religious objects in the entrance hall. instead of feeling forced, it feels fun. there's something important to be learned here, I think.

so they were never really "dawdling about"? I really need to re-watch QB's WD actual play and compare our experiences to see how he does it. perhaps I'm committing some mistake that I'm not even realizing.

one thing that I really struggled with was "telegraphing danger" to the players (a principle of OSR play, as I understand). for example, there is a room in the dungeon with a mirror, and everyone that passes in front of the mirror must make a WIL save or be paralyzed in-place; during our session, I described this mirror exactly as is written on the module (a silver mirror hanging on the wall), and what happened was that one of the players passed in front of the mirror to investigate, failed the test, and was frozen in-place. the other players did not really know what to do, and I felt conflicted about the event. was the player being justifiably punished for rushing forward into a trap? should I have described the mirror as "giving off an eerie, magic feeling" or something of the sort, contrary to what is written? should the WIL test be easier? I really don't know.

another example happened outside the crypt: the players found a large hole in the ground with slime trails leading to and from it. after discussing what to do for a few minutes, they decided to use a large pole to poke the inside of the hole; since the module describes that there are 3 wormtongues in the hole that would attack if they heard loud sounds, I made them jump out at the players, starting combat. the ensuing battle lasted two turns and resulted in one of the PCs receiving the "Injured" condition, which gave them disadvantage rolls for the rest of the session. my thoughts are: were the slime trails enough danger telegraphing? should I have said to the players that they hear something squirming inside the hole, and getting closer? at which point does "telegraphing danger" turn into "handholding"? I hope this becomes clearer as I attain more experience as a DM.

the group consisted of: the hook was: after Gerald's distant great-uncle died, he inherited some property rights to a crypt in Dolmenwood, which he decided to go visit. he took with him old leatherworker Valerie, his friend and motherly figure, and Bernard, a down-on-his-luck troubadour whose impressive muscles would allow him to gain some coin by working as the team's bodyguard, in case anything weird happened.

the session started with the group arriving at the Whything Stones clearing. the clanking sound made them very curious, and Bernard wanted to climb onto one of the trees to see what it was, however I described to him that the trees did not seem inviting, and indeed seemed to sometimes move out of their way to block their passing, so he quickly changed his mind and decided to move forward instead, with tons of caution. Gerald's beetle was described as being very scared, hiding between their master's legs.

after entering the clearing, the group noticed the large stones, with the gecko (originally stag) twitching skeleton in the center. this seemed very off to them, and they told Gerald that this was not a very nice place to inherit. Gerald took his pole, and after much deliberation, they decided to touch the gecko carcass with his long pole, also toying with the strange green slime that encompassed the body. after realizing that touching the carcass did not have any effect, they got closer to it, and noticed the runes on the inside of the stones; however none of them were familiar with magic enough to decipher what was written.

here, they also noticed that the clanking metal sound was coming from metallic fireflies (originally owls) clinging to the trees. the fireflies being rusted and having pentagram carved in their eyes made them very curious, and Gerald proceeded to touch one of the fireflies with his pole, but nothing happened. they moved forwards, and (as per the random encounter table), they saw a tiny beetle (originally toad) look directly at them, whisper in their minds, "Betrayal", and fly away. this in fact did not unsettle them, and they thought it was very random and funny. they moved onto the mound (I think 40 minutes had passed by this point, fyi).

on the mound, they noticed the stone slab sealing the entrance, and discussed about how to move it. however, Bernard separated himself from the group and decided to circle the mound, just to see if there were any other entrances; lo and behold, he found a hole full of transparent slime around it, trailing off into the woods. he went back and brought the rest of the group to evaluate this possible second entrance; Valerie said she had tons of experience tracking animals for their leatherworking activities, and decided to go into the woods to see where the tracks led. however, the tracks simply went into the woods and back, so this really didn't give them anymore information. they took a small stone and dropped into the hole, trying to measure its depth, but it was not exactly clear; Gerald then went closer and started to poke the hole with his pole. the module stated that inside the hole there are 3 wormtongues that will attack voraciously if they hear loud sounds, so I decided to make 2 of them jump out at the players (I figured that dropping 3 of them at the same time would be excessively lethal for a session that had just started, therefore the little fudge).

the combat was short but hurtful. every player missed their DEX saves, so the worms attacked first; Gerald was closer to the hole and the first worm attacked him, rolling a 4 (out of 1d4) damage that completely obliterated his measly 2 HP, bleeding into his STR which dropped from 8 to 6. he failed the STR save and dropped unconscious on the ground; I roleplayed this as the worm biting his leg with such intensity that he fell and hit his head. this scared me so much (are they really going to die now??) that I made the other worm do nothing in their turn, moving closer to Bernard and "preparing to attack". Bernard, being the group's muscle, successfully rolled an 8 on 1d8 and chopped the worm cleanly in half; Valerie stabbed the other worm with 3 on an 1d6 and brought it down to half its HP. Gerald's beetle, Thomas, attacked the remaining worm and brought it down to 1 HP, which I (again) fudged and roleplayed as "rolling the worm and leaving it belly-up, vulnerable". Bernard quickly chopped it up.

now things were interesting, because the module says that the worm's bite is acidic, and must be washed off quickly lest it keep burning the victim's skin. but where would they obtain water? in my nervousness, I forgot that the rations they were carrying probably included bottles of water, so I did not give this "hint" to them. thankfully, because what resulted was much funnier and interesting: Gerald asked me: "isn't milk alkaline?", to which I replied, "I think so, why?", and then he proceeded to tell me: "I milk the beetle on top of my wound".

now, there are a lot of things very wrong here. first of all, I don't believe that insects produce milk, exactly -- some of them produce nutrient-filled juices which are vulgarly called milk (feel free to google "cockroach milk" if you're brave enough), but that are in fact very different from the mammal milk which is in fact alkaline. is insect "milk" alkaline as well? no fucking idea. furthermore, wasn't this beetle named Thomas? do male beetles also produce this so-called milk?

lots of issues. but, the idea with curing an acid burn with beetle milk was so fucking interesting that I simply said: "okay. describe to me how this whole scene happens." and he described how the tender bond between beetle and beetle herder saved him from losing his mouse leg to a worm bite. all players were relieved, and they all felt incredible. it was fun.

after this experience, they decided the hole was too dangerous ("I think that was all of them? perhaps it's safe to go down now", said Bernard, to which Gerald replied, "perhaps, but I'm not betting my life on it"), so they went up to the slab, and moved it out of the way, entering the crypt.

yes, 1h30 had passed and they hadn't even entered the dungeon yet.

they descended the stairs, ending up in a hall with four holy objects perched atop the corner plinths. the module states that the objects will attack anyone with cruel intentions, but since the group was not looting or anything, I decided that the objects were harmless. if they had bad intentions, I'm also not sure that I would run this encounter as written, because it looks like a very bad telegraphing of danger to me -- what, is entering the first room of the dungeon a crime now? I dunno man.

I described to them how the floor seemed to contain a mosaic under all that dust, and they decided to use their mouse tails to clean it up, which I thought was very interesting. in the original module, the mosaic depicted a knight fighting an elf-fae, but when adapting to Mausritter, I decided that the knight would be a mouse (what else would it be?) while the fae was a human. however, since the players were mice and did not know what humans were like, I described the fae as "similar to a naked rat, but without his long nose, and somewhat monkey-shaped", to which they replied, "do we know what monkeys are?". yes yes, my players are very smart and this is one of the examples were converting to Mausritter just bit me in the ass. I tried to handwave this stuff by telling them that it looked like an unconfident painting, made by someone who had not seen the stuff they were painting first-hand, but I could tell they were very intrigued (or confused, depending on how charitable you want to be).

they moved onto the next room and saw the mirror and the empty statue pedestal. Bernard took his torch and stated that he would circle the pedestal looking for clues; since he passed in front of the mirror, I asked him to do a WIL save as per the module describes, which he failed, and so he ended up paralyzed. here it was very interesting because the players did not know quite exactly what to do: Valerie wanted to go ask Bernard what happened, but Gerald said "I think it's the mirror", and Valerie replied OOC: "I don't think my character knows that it's the mirror... I was paying attention to the pedestal as well." at this point, Bernard's player wanted to pitch in with their own theory, but was unsure if they were allowed to opine since their character was completely frozen in place. upon reflection, I should have said something to the sort of "here, player skill is more important than character skill, so all of you don't need to worry about that", but I was taken aback, and decided to simply watch what they would do.

Gerald and Valerie decided to take the mirror and turn it towards the wall, which allowed them to move Bernard to safety -- which to them, was the initial room, "since Bernard was unfrozen when he was here, I dunno", said Valerie. obviously they did nothing. now, when describing the mosaic in the initial room I said that there were scratch marks leading from the pedestal to the stairs, and indeed if they moved Bernard up the stairs and back outside, the sunlight would unfreeze him. however, they did not make this connection between the scratch marks and the paralyzing mirror, and I was unsure if I should tell them something to facilitate this connection ("you clearly see that the scratch marks on the ground lead up the stairs..."). they were clearly unsure how to proceed, and indeed considered just abandoning Bernard and exploring the rest of the crypt. after experimenting some other things (such as taking the crucifix and waving it at the mirror, or at Bernard), they decided to simply break the mirror, which I decided was enough to undo the paralyzing spell. it's interesting because the module did not say anything about breaking the mirror being sufficient, however it is described that the Ring of Binding can be destroyed to dispel the binding, so I figured that destroying the mirror would dispel its magic as well.

Bernard said: "what if we take some shards of this mirror with us, to aid us in battle?", to which Gerald responded: "I don't think there's any magic left there". Bernard argued: "how can you be so sure?", and Gerald answered: "well, you're talking, aren't you?". I love watching them argue like this.

this took some time, so I decided to roll another random encounter for them, and it ended up being the sound of crawling reptiles (in the original, "hounds howling"). this made them feel uneasy, so they moved forwards through the double doors, into the family crypt.

what happened here was very interesting. I described the coffins, the waltzing floating skeletons, and the fissure at the center of the room, and they immediately tried to chat up the skeletons. they liked that the skeletons seemed friendly, and the group had a whole "we have a right to visit, Gerald here's the legal heir", etc, which I thought that the skeletons would appreciate, so I told the group that the skeletons became a little more eager in their dancing. so the group had the idea of starting to loot the coffins, and here I did something that I think was very nice textbook example of telegraphing danger, which I should try to repeat more often: I said that when one of them touched the coffin, the skeletons suddenly slowed their dancing and started watching the offending player. the players immediately got that they should not loot the coffins lest there be consequences, which is exactly what I think should happen in these kinds of situations; it also felt very non-forced, which I think is good. anyways, I described that one of the skeletons was wearing a pearl necklace, so Bernard, being a troubadour, had the idea of playing a song to make them "shake their booty", so to speak. I liked the idea a lot but I wasn't going to give him exactly what he wanted, so I had (another great idea, if I may say so) of telling them that the necklace indeed flew right off the skeleton's body, but fell in the middle of the fissure, getting tangled up in the blue slime. Gerald used his pole to "fish" the necklace, but although he was successful, his pole became a lot lighter, and the necklace started floating on top of the pole. I was interested in seeing where they would take this, but they decided to be safe and instead of trying to steal the necklace from their ancestor's bodies, Gerald decided to present the necklace to the skeleton, in an "I think you dropped this" gesture of good faith. then the players asked where Sir Chyde was, and I used all the good faith that they bought from the skeletons to make the skeletons point towards one of the doors. the players thanked them for the information and moved onwards. later, one of the players told me that this was their favorite part of the session, and that they were sure that this wasn't on the original module, and that I added it myself lol. thanks I guess?

they moved onto the hall of geckos (originally "hall of hounds"). I described the columns to them, which I had to improv as having "each a depiction of a different battle", and the two gecko statues at each of the door's sides. I described that the geckos were enormous and seemed to be sculpted with a very angry look, like they were ready to pounce at something, and the players immediately said "ok, if we open this door, these mothafuckas gonna jump at us", which I again took as a nice example of danger being telegraphed correctly. the module states that the door's inscription reads "call to the companions", but when I originally read the module, I thought: why would a magic door have this inscription? it does not make any sense. so I changed it up to "we will protect you until we are called", which sounds way better to me, like it's the geckos talking. lo and behold, the players ignored this inscription, moved onto the next room, and Valerie suddenly said: "holy shit, I think it's from the perspective of the geckos! we need to speak their names or something!", to which both other players exclaimed "THAT'S IT!", and high-fived each other.

in the statue room, they inspected each of the statues, and the weapon that each one carried. here, something very funny happened: in the mosaic floor of the starting room, I described the knight's weapon as a spear, and quickly corrected myself to sword. I thought no one noticed, because there were no reactions at the time and I think players were still processing previous information on the room description, but here in the statue room, Bernard told me: "I take out the sword, because it's the safe one -- it's the one from the mosaic, right? I remember you said spear and then corrected yourself. so the weapon matters. it's the sword here guys", to which I laughed out loud. it was a bit embarrassing to have a mistake pointed out this way, but I figure it's a good sign, since it means that the players are paying attention. Bernard took the sword, but they seemed to think that taking any other weapon would activate the statues, a notion that I did not do anything to dissuade them from.

they immediately thought that it was very strange that there was a portion of the wall without any statues, so they tried inspecting it. I told them that there was a lot of mould on the wall, and that they could try to remove it. the module states that removing the mould releases spores that cause 1d4 STR damage in the whole area, so I was paying attention to that. however, I think I did a wrong call here: Gerald told me that he was going to try to remove the mould with his pole, from as much a distance as he could, but I told him that the pole was not that long and that the mould might end up falling near him anyway. I told him he could run a DEX save to see if he was quick enough to react to whatever happened; he accepted the challenge, but failed the DEX save. since the other players were specifically outside the room, I told them that the mould ended up falling on the ground, releasing tons of spores in the air, which clogged up Gerald's airways and dealt him 2 more STR damage, bringing him down to 4. I think I did a bad call because he had time, he had a tool, and he was being careful; I do not think he really needed that DEX save. I should have rewarded them with simply clearing the mould and taking no damage, you know? on the other hand, they really shouldn't have let the player with lowest DEX and lowest HP make the dangerous DEX save, so that's a little bit on them, too. anyways, they saw the mosaic and I described Sir Chyde as having two geckos, one of which had the name on the collar still legible. "maybe it's like a videogame and the other name is on the symmetric room at the other side of the dungeon", said Bernard, and so they went to the chapel.

the chapel really bugged them because there's nothing that interesting happening there, except the statue of Saint Sedge and the tapestry of Saint Sedge welcoming Sir Chyde into heaven. Valerie took the candle from the starting room and tried to put the candle on top of the statue's hand, which I thought was interesting and smart, but did not have any effect whatsoever. she also described herself as making the same pose that Sir Chyde was making in the tapestry, which again, interesting but innefectual (I thought about maybe rewarding this with something, but with what? I wasn't even sure). another bad call by me: Gerald told me that he was going to search the room, and I told him "search where? be more specific", and he told me: "I'm going to take my pole and knock on the tapestry". so I clearly told him that he felt something strange behind the tapestry, like there was a section of it without a wall or something. I think I made a bad call here because I should just have told him: "you search the room and find something strange behind the tapestry", you know? perhaps it's because I ask them to describe specifically what they're going to do that these explorations take so long. but, at the same time, you can't go into a room and say "I search every nook and cranny of this room. what do I find?"... can you? tough question -- something for me to reflect on, I think.

they entered the room behind the tapestry. they saw the hole on the wall and were met with another wormtongue, which Bernard quickly dispatched (I surmised that it was the 3rd one, which I didn't put on the encounter up above). I rolled a random encounter table after combat and rolled a 4, so I made it that another wormtongue fell from the ceiling. this felt also a bad call at the moment -- the combat had ceased to be interesting, I was just extending it out in a boring way --, but it ended up with an interesting consequence that I didn't predict: the group concluded that this room was going to keep spawning wormtongues, so they told Bernard to investigate the table at the corner of the room as quickly as he could, while they killed the worm. he found a drawer on the desk but did not try to open it; after combat, they all took a look at the drawer and Valerie tried to use her leatherworker shears to remove the lock. another bad call from me: I asked a DEX save to do this, but I shouldn't have, because this would not have any bad consequences whatsoever, the drawer was simply stuck. she failed the save and I roleplayed that the drawer fell to the ground and made a lot of sound, perhaps alerting further enemies, so they took the book, read the name of the second gecko, and rushed out of the room -- without exploring it any further, which would have revealed the flagstone to them.

they rushed to the double door on the gecko hall, and gave the candle and sword to Gerald, the rightful heir, and asked him to pronounce the two names: Chedr and Flaegr. they clearly did not know if the entire procedure was necessary, but it seemed like it wouldn't hurt, and I thought it was cool. inside, they met the ghost of Sir Chyde, and I realized two very important issues:

  1. Gerald couldn't have been the descendant of Sir Chyde because Sir Chyde's only lover was fae. that's why the module tells us that the player is a descendant of Sir Chyde's brother -- something that seemed unnecessarily complex to me at the time, but now made total sense.
  2. the players did not see the lady statue, nor the lady random encounter, nor had any vision of the lady before this point. they didn't have the slightest clue that the fae princess exists.

so taking these two issues in consideration, I decided to roleplay as the knight. this being the first character I roleplay as a DM in 10+ years, I did not do a very good job at it, I think, and Sir Chyde ended up sounding more like a pompous noble asshole, and less like the sad broken spirit that the module intended. in retrospect, I also should have commented upon the candle and sword which Gerald was holding, but that did not cross my mind at the moment. despite these hiccups, Sir Chyde's whole deal was: at first he thought these were common tomb robbers, so he tried to scare them and sound impressive, and knowing that one of them was his supposed descendant (which he had none) didn't exactly alleviate the issue. however, he realized that he could use them, and asked them to bring his ring to his lover, which is "downstairs". I was really unsure if he should tell them everything he knew, because I feared it would be too exposition-heavy and take out most of the fun of finding out that his lover was fae, but I couldn't think of many reasons for him holding out information, either... so he ended up being this pompous asshole who told him only what they needed to know to complete the quest. another bad call from my part: they asked him if they could remove the bracelets on his corpse, and I roleplayed him as being against the issue, since the module states that he hates tomb robbers; however, it would be more interesting if he said that they were allowed to take whatever they wanted if they brought he and his lover together, since this would give more reason for the players to complete his quest, and also would highlight that Sir Chyde's love for his lover is stronger than his hate for tombrobbers, therefore making the character more interesting... live and learn.

so this is where it all ended up! will this adventure be concluded? are my friends eager to continue playing, or did they fake enjoyment for over 7 hours in an attempt to not hurt my feelings? let's find out!

#session-report