HillTown Studio Longform Content

This is my analysis of what ended up being a playtest of Dead I Am the Rat. There are spoilers ahead.

When I set out to make a “kill the cat lord” adventure using the Mausritter rules, what I thought I was making was a heist game. Some design choices turned it into a semi-tactical time crunch with a glaringly easy ending, or at least that's what played out when I ran the adventure for my local Spookyfest RPG fest.

As a reminder: Dead I Am the Rat puts the players in control of zombie rats, raised for one night only with a goal of killing or driving away the cat lord Behemoth.

Along the way I saw things I want to improve with some additional work, but I'm considering how much I want to change the ultimate outcome.

Let's dig in.

Structure

The overall structure of the game itself is modeled on Bakto's Terrifying Cuisine, which I have run now three times. I've used Troika! as the system each time, but that just adds to the surreal flair of the game and provides some very interesting character options via backgrounds. Invariably, for instance, someone chooses to be a monkey monger, with a ready supply of monkeys they can add to the dish they prepare for Bakto.

Bakto's is a game about gathering ingredients to put together a dish for the demon, and racing against time to get it all done. Time counts down per a timer, which in early versions of the game had a fairly loose structure. The main problem, something pointed out in the Between Two Cairns episode covering it, is that because the players don't have a map of Bakto's house, their choices about where to go are more or less arbitrary. I wanted to correct that.

Dead I Am the Rat preserves the countdown timer and is explicit about what counts as a turn. This aspect was a smashing success in my book, since the goal of time pressure here is to keep the game moving so it fits in a one-shot format of 3-4 hours. To counter the issue raised by Brad and Yochai, I created a player-facing map of the region (called Greater Muenster Hill). Once I explained the procedures, the players had a moment to devise a travel strategy to track down the rumors they remembered.

To summarize the structure: The player rats travel from point to point in the region, racing against time, their main currency, in search of items and alliances that will help them defeat the cat lord. They can't die, but can be delayed. And among the items they can collect are bioluminescent fungi (“witches”) that both fuel their car and heal them to save time.

Setup

This section discusses what went right and what could have been improved in setting up the game.

Character creation: Creating player rats according to the regular Mausritter rules worked just fine. The mouse backgrounds and other accompanying concerns mapped well onto zombie rats. To improve: Nothing.

Things remembered: The player rats (five in the playtest) each rolled on a table of eight possible things they remembered from life. This served as something of an initial rumors table. To improve: Add more memories! Turns out eight is too few, and even though some where incomplete, they were all true. I should consider having some misleading ones, which will offer the players ambiguity in whether to pursue them, but still offer them meaningful choices.

The map: I messed up here. The text is very clear on where the exits from each location lead, but I inadvertently left a road on the map that was no longer in the text, and that ended up shortening the potential routes. Additionally, the starting location on the map is listed as “Toad Farm”, but in the text is listed as “The Graveyard”. To improve: I really need to redraw the map, not just to account for the erroneous road and misnamed location, but also to really push the flavor of the adventure via artwork. It's player-facing, and so it should look pretty.

Gameplay

This section details the gameplay, from opening to close. It dissects and reviews each location and NPCs along the way.

The NPCs: Overall, I still liked the mix of NPCs I included. I think they're all interesting enough and have their wants spelled out just fine. To improve: What they needed was a better sense of what it would cost for them to aid the player rats. I felt myself at times stretching, a bit uncertain as to how they should react to the player rats. More guidance there is necessary, and that comes from a bit more focus and perhaps some procedures.

The opening: This part appropriately sets the tone and provides the players a chance to introduce their player rats. To improve: I needed to make it clearer that the mice that had summoned them fled the moment the player rats came to consciousness.

The Graveyard: AKA Toad Farm. The confusion of the location was a slight hiccup, and some of the location description was unclear. The ghosts ended up being less of a threat than I had anticipated. And the player rats found too many “witches” in the dug graves. To improve: I need to make sure the location is named properly, edit the description a bit for clarity, and consider some kind of default or randomly determined ghost reaction in case the players trigger a random encounter here. I also need to decrease the number of “witches” the player rats can forage here to put more time pressure on them.

Muenster Hill: The players seemed delighted by Pica Pica, and with ready mouse backgrounds, someone in the party had the capacity to play a new song for the magpie. The ability to spend time atop the hill scouting the keep wasn't terribly attractive given the time crunch. To improve: Remove the road from Muenster Hill to Widowmaker Lane. For the item Pica Pica had, I should consider spelling out how to find out what it can do.

Stilton Warren: Unvisited during play. To improve: Probably should add more to interact with here. A patrol by Reeve Chicory Thorne and a cultist or two might add pressure. Otherwise need to find out how it plays!

Yarrow Marsh: A lot going on here. Bramblebark was easy to bribe into distracting the vampire rabbits. The hang gliders worked well enough. To improve: I guess just make it clearer that the hang gliders are big enough for rats?

The Wyrdstone: Unvisited during play. Out of the way, but it could be necessary for player rats who have empty tablets. To improve: I can't think of anything here.

Widowmaker Lane: Occupied a good deal of time. Player rats stole silver from the church to have Thimblehammer make them a sword, which he delivered to Muenster Hill. To improve: Getting silver was a tad too easy. Could use a rumor for the bell.

Foxtower: Player rats were able to offer Zerda a battery powered lantern for information. Once again, this is where Mausritter backgrounds really sing. They collected musk but ultimately didn't use it. To improve: I can't think of anything here.

Sassafras Grove: Unvisited during play. To improve: I can't think of anything so far.

Churlwood: Unvisited during play, but the players really debated whether to spend the time to go there. To improve: In retrospect, the hourglass mechanics aren't that clear.

Copperford Mines: Unvisited during play. Since there was not an easy hint about the mines being useful for anything but silver, the players didn't see much need to go there. To improve: More rumors.

Behemoth's Keep: Mostly worked. Could have been an actual dungeon, mapped out. To improve: While it worked okay theater of the mind, I actually think structuring this as a dungeon would have worked. That would require tweaking the turn counting, though.

Behemoth: Ended up being a pushover. He certainly would not have if the players had been less prepared. The challenge here is to strike a balance between adequate preparation and time. Behemoth got off one shot, but the amount of magic the party had was sufficient to overcome him in two rounds. To improve: More hit points. I actually wasn't expecting the player rats to inflict so much damage so fast.

Other Notes: Slightly more time pressure, perhaps in the form of random encounters, seems necessary to force harder decisions or force recalculations, and as observed above, the player rats started with a few too many witches.

Summary of Improvements

The following improvements are probably necessary: 1. Tweak the time pressure settings a bit. 2. Make the NPCs a little more comprehensible. 3. Adjust the map. 4. Increase the number of rumors and distribute them around where the player rats could pick them up by interacting. 5. Consider additional pressure via random encounters. 6. Clean up some descriptions. 7. Map the keep (lightly!) 8. Buff up Behemoth

Conclusion

This ended up being an easy win. While my players assure me this was a fun time traipsing around in the dark, pretending to be zombie rats, I remain convinced that a slight increase in the overall challenge is warranted. Still, there is something quite satisfying in the idea that presenting a powerful, united front against an authoritarian is enough to expose that ruler as a paper tiger who will fold the moment any real pressure is applied. It could have been a bitter, deadly fight, and with less preparation, that was a distinct possibility. But maybe it doesn't need to be. Maybe the struggle to gather strength and present it is enough. Maybe, in this case, the easy win is the reward.

++++ Like what you just read? You can subscribe to new posts on this blog via any ActivityPub platform (Mastodon, Pleroma, etc.) at @aaron@blog.hilltown.studio or via RSS at https://blog.hilltown.studio/feed