Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Mouse Guard RPG Boxed Set:
At the NYCC we announced that there will be a Boxed Set of the Mouse Guard RPG to be out later this year. We have currently sold out of the Hardcover (though your local shops and online retailers may still have some in stock) and with plans to reprint, we thought we would offer a deluxe package as well that is full of stuff fans of the game asked for. Also the cover art is the piece I was working on a few weeks back when I was ustreaming the ink-flatting-coloring process and Photoshop crashed on me and I lost everything. (I rescanned and colored the piece the next day)

Among the items to be included in the box will be: a softcover edition of the 320-page Mouse Guard Roleplaying Game, a pad of character sheets, a pad of GM sheets, a folding GM screen with handy reference charts, a map of the territories, 5 mouse pawns (which I carved the master for) to mark locations on the map, and a few more items I'd like to talk about in more detail:

A brand-new 44-page supplement* with new missions and adventures. Luke and I had said from the start that we didn't want to expand the game and make supplements unless we had very good reason to. So in the booklet we cover a few new rules including riding mounts, 'weapons' for conflicts, & three new locations: Flintrust, Grasslake, and Sandmason. The pre-made characters from the main RPG book have been advanced, Celanawe has been added to Kenzie's patrol, and an entire new patrol of characters from the Mouse Guard comics has been made into template characters. With all of that AND three new missions, we feel like this was a supplement worth making.

Dice: In the Mouse Guard RPG, the dice rolls are almost binary: failure( 1-3) and success (4-6) ...with 6 being noted as a 'bonus' success that you can re-roll to gain even more successes. So we designed special dice that are included in this set(x10). The failures are represented by a snake eating it's own tail, the successes are crossed swords, and the '6' is replaced by the Black Axe. The image shown here is a photoshop mockup I made, so the final product may vary slightly from what is pictured.

Cards: Three decks of 12 Action Cards each, 15 Condition Cards, & 21 Weapon Cards. All of the cards are designed to help players streamline play. Instead of having to re-reference the book, or pass it among the players every turn, players can refer to their cards of options with rules noted on each. Playing them also saves writing and erasing over and over on your character sheet and/or scrap paper. The weapons cards (of which I did new artwork for..though the cards shown are not the final design of the card layout, but rather to show the artwork) help players understand the rules for their weapons. Mace was also added with special rules for the boxed set.
*The plan is to release the supplement booklet as a .pdf purchase so that players who already have the original RPG hardcover are not forced to buy the boxed set in order to take advantage of the new rules.
Upcoming Appearance:
Mid-Ohio Con: Nov. 6-7

42 comments:

Iohannes said...

Great news! :D

Tim Bolton said...

The box itself is absolutely gorgeous! And the contents sound fantastic, looking forward to the extra booklet. Stunning David, very very impressive.
In the UK Titan has "published" the rpg and the hardback collected comics, will they be involved with this or will it be an import straight from Archaia for UK peeps?

Anonymous said...

Any chance of getting details or a preview of the new character sheets?

Aside from being 8x8, are they significantly different (in content and/or organization) than the original char sheets? Are they color?

Thanks!

Jesse Hutchinson said...

It looks amazing! I recently got my wife into wanting to play Mouse Guard and I think the guards will make things a lot easier for us!

TwiceBorn said...

This is great news. I'll definitely purchase.
On thing: Did you say there would be 10 dice? It doesn't sound like ten will be enough. Player are easily tossing ten each in some conflicts. Other than that, I can't wait.

Anonymous said...

I will definitely buy this!

But I would also definitely buy extra dice if you guys sell them. 10 isn't enough and I'm sure most of my players would want to buy them as well!

Peter dyring-Olsen said...

Looks amazing.
Will it be a limited edition?

Ken O said...

Looks like I'm going to have to upgrade. Any idea of the price?

Unknown said...

WONDERFUL box! :D

Unknown said...

LOVELY! i have to echo the call for a separate dice product! 10 is generous but i want MORE!

M Althauser said...

Does "later this year" mean I should start dropping Christmas present hints at my fiancee? =) This is great news, and I'm super-stoked to get my hands on the box set! Also, the dice are a *great* idea!

Anonymous said...

Beautiful!!! I've wanted to buy the hardcover for some time, now glad I waited.

What's the ETA?

Anonymous said...

I've been toying with the idea of picking the system up for a while (the difficulty is in convincing my gaming group to give it a try), and this might just give me that final push. Cool!

The one criticism I'd like to offer - you mention this as a "deluxe set", and it seems awfully odd that your "deluxe" product has a softcover book and the standalone normal product is hardcover. Is the point to make this a premium set, or simply to make it a "complete" set?

Paul said...

@baxil More than a couple of the original books I've seen (including my own) have kind of weak binding. That's probably not the reason, but if I have the choice between slightly worn/rounded corners on a paperback and deteriorating binding on a hardback, I'm going with the paperback.

Plus, if it means a little more money back for the awesome creators, I'm all for it.

Anonymous said...

Sweet jesus I'm a happy camper right now!

Anonymous said...

Just want to confirm that the hardcover is being reprinted in addition to the new box set? I want both.

DPetersen said...

Tim: I do not know. My guess is that it will eventually be published by Titan, but I don't have any guess of a date.

Anonymous: Re Character sheets: I know Luke redesigned the sheets to have more reference info (still monochrome though). The old sheets are perfecty useable, so the new sheets will be exclusive to the boxed set for now.

TwiceBorn: 10 dice come with the set. We are looking into making sets of dice seperately available from the boxed set.

Peter: We will produce stock based on pre-orders numbers. If sales go well, we would plan to produce more units..so not limited in the signed & numbered fashion

Ken: I don't have a confirmed price yet.

Onii: provided the manufacturing and shipping go smoothly, yes, Christmas-time

Baxil: complete doesn't really desribe it either...since this is the first time some of these items have been offered (it's not like we are collecting several older items all in one box). It is also not the last time we will produce material for the game, so it's not complete in that sense either.

Paul: the softcover was to keep the price down for the final product. cheeper to produce, cheeper to ship.

Anonymous: re: hardcover: yes, the Hardcover is also being reprinted. We are not forcing people who missed the boat to buy the boxed set.

Anonymous said...

The box looks awesome! i bought the rpg book last year and have played a few test games but really dont have a group of players together (but its worth just buying the book for the stunning pictures!). I would really like the supliment (to add to my growing MG collection) but already have the rpg book, will the supliment be avalible by itself? Im sorry if you've already answered this question.
Thanks! DAB

Amanda said...

Is there a website that the current mouse guard pdf can be bought at?

Anthony N. Emmel said...

I have heard a lot of good about this game and really want to try it out. I'm a Redwall fan and, as much as I enjoy running 1e AD&D for my kids, I'd love to run this game for them.

I'm old enough now to follow C.S. Lewis's advice about from his dedication to LW&tW:

To Lucy Barfield

My Dear Lucy,

I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books. As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still. But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it. I shall probably be too deaf to hear, and too old to understand, a word you say, but I shall still be

your affectionate Godfather,

C.S. Lewis
*********

At 40, I like fairy tales again. :)

Anonymous said...

Hi. Why Amazon.com says "[Hardcover]" in their pre-order of this product? I thought it includes a softcover edition of the 320-page original rulebook and a softcover supplement as well.

Patiently Waiting said...

Amazon estimates that it will be ready in July of 2011. Can we get an updated comment on this?

DPetersen said...

Currently ther are problems at the printer and the delay is on the plastic pieces (dice & pawns). I think Amazon tends to bump their release dates by 6 months (without consulting the publisher) if an item doesn't become available at the correct time. I anticipate a release much sooner than July.

Anonymous said...

Any chance of Boxed set + Hardcover? o_O Seriously this looks so promising and yet the softcover instead of hardcover rulebook in boxed set is imperfection hard to miss.
Or maybe boxed version deluxe+ with HC :P

Anonymous said...

This really looks amazing! I can't wait to buy a copy to supplement my hardcover. It would be nice to have more than one book at the table, to that the players AND the GM can look stuff up. It will also be cool if we players could buy just the dice and/or cards. I tried making my own cards. They came out ok, but not quite the quality I expect that professionally produced cards would be at.

Still trying to find another copy of the hardcover. How many were in the initial print run? This seems like a really successful "indie" game release.

DPetersen said...

Anonymous: I'm blanking on the print run of the original hardcover, but I know that it certainly was a very good number for an "indie" RPG.

We did the softcover in the boxed set to keep costs down and because we figured many of the people buying it would perhaps have already bought the hardcover.

We have looked into parting out some of the components, but I don't have details on those yet.

TredHed said...

Wow...All I can say is wow.

Ok maybe a little more....I cant wait to get my hands on this. I have all the hardback collections of Mouse Guard and the rpg. I cant wait to add this to my collection.

Anonymous said...

Is there still no release date decided?

((If I spelled something wrong it's because I'm a swedish teenager))

DPetersen said...

Sweedish-Teen: I do not yet have a date as the issue and the printer and it being resolved will dictate when the product is ready. I wish I had more info for you.

Anonymous said...

So you can't even say if it's gonna be before summer?

DPetersen said...

I certainly hope it is before summer and am pushing forward for as quick a release as possible but I won't have any date until the printer resolves the problem.

Silverpaint68 said...

Oh my god ! I'm waiting for it ! I just discover Mouse Gards Books (in french version, because I'm... but I read English too ;) ). I like this world and these very good and funny stories.

The RPG box seems very wonderfull. Some of my friends want to try this !

Saeblundr said...

somehow i hadnt heard of this until just now... I would almost consider re-buying the box set - for the wooden pieces and the dice...
Cant wait to at least get my hands on the pdf (if thats still happening! *crosses fingers*)

The Enigmatic Baron Trapdoor said...

No further word on a release date as yet David?

Many thanks
Anton

Mäster Johan said...

The box looks pretty awesome. Really looking forward to get my hands on a copy of Mouse Guard. Keep up to good work!

Any plans to release just the softcover book without the deluxe components?

Anonymous said...

Still no release date?
I don´t mean to push you but I´m thinking of buying the hardcover book (yes I found it:D) and I wanna know if I should wait for the box set or not.

Gabriel said...

Hi there! Looking forward to this awesome product! Any news about when it will hit the stores?

DPetersen said...

Looks like the release is set for August! I knew a while ago the sets had been manufactured, but still needed to be packed and then shipped from Korea where they are manufactured (which can take up to 2 months!) So August is what Archaia is saying, we will go with that!

Anonymous said...

Would you know if the supplement will be available to be purchased as a download around about the same time ?
I usually use Drivethrurpg and/or Rpgnow, or would it be from the company site ?

Thanks

DPetersen said...

The supplement won't be released until later & I'm unsure of what sites we will use. That's more of a Luke/Archaia question.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the prompt reply, seeing as I'm impatient I may just have to go for the whole boxed set in August then !

castenskiold said...

I love these news! The new material looks like a perfect fit to the Core Rule book. Can't wait to order it from amazon(co.uk) when it arrives! :-)

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