In an RPG that is somehow even cuter than the One Ring hobbit adventure, we quickly rolled up mouse characters hanging out in a tavern, drinking mushroom wine. We were approached by junkie mouse-Gandalf who needed special black sunflower seeds from an abandoned giant's settlement.
I rolled the most WIL and decided to try and talk to everybody. This despite me being a black mouse with glowing green eyes and 1 HP.
After a couple days travel through the forest, we reached the abandoned farm and sneaked through a hole in the fence. Points of interest: several sunflowers, including a giant black one; an abandoned house with the door ajar; and a great rotten log. As it was getting dark, we decided on exploring the house and inspecting the sunflowers later, possibly after the bees constantly buzzing around go to sleep.
As expected, the house was populated by a sect of weird mice. The sentries, garbed in discarded candy paper, were buzzed out of their minds and decided to ignore us.
We ascended into the stove, the headquarters of the Cult of Sweet Tooth. 10 mice were laying around, seemingly drugged into oblivion. We sneaked into the workshop, where Brother Glaze, head of the cult, was cooking up something. I approached in a friendly manner and mentioned joining the Cult, at which point Brother Glaze turned from downright hostile to quite friendly. He initiated us by giving us black candy to eat, which meant an immediate condition/debuff. Then he told us all about the setup.
The bees live in a hive in the rafters and they make honey from the black sunflower.
The mice are constantly sneaking up into the rafters to steal honey from the beehive. Many have died in the attempt. The constant flow of honey enables Brother Glaze to experiment with making candy. Once he achieves a perfectly hard consistency, he believes Sweet Tooth will return to them.
The rotten log is inhabited by a huge mouse eating monster, called Shig. It mostly eats the sunflower seeds fallen to the ground, but it eats literally anything, including any mice foolish enough to walk around the yard.
We pretended to take in everything and then go and help steal more honey, but we actually went into the storage to "find" some equipment and then headed out to inspect the yard for ourselves. The sunflower was indeed hard to climb, and while we were pondering the best way to go at it, Shig made an appearance. We ran for dear life, but the slowest of us was eaten.
With Shig now content, we moved back to the sunflower, accompanied by a new recruit, Brother Snickers. Using some twine we found, and several successful checks, we managed to climb up to the flower - only to find 11 bees standing guard. Curse the dice. I cast a spell to talk to them, and immediately took half my WIL in damage. And obviously, the bees were unable to agree to any deals, as this is the queen's job. And they were too many to fight. Desolate, we ran back to the house to sleep off the day.
The next morning, I approached the beehive to talk to literal Bee Karen.
The good queen wasn't really in the mood for any deals I proposed in exchange for seeds, accepting only us pulling the sunflower closer to her hive so her bees could gather more honey faster. Workarounds were not acceptable, until Tarradon Tunneler suggested they move into the log instead. The queen then bade us dispose of Shig. And gave us 1 bee soldiers as aid. Curse the dice.
We just talked to the GM about game mechanics, and learned that we need at least 20 beings of our size to take on Shig.
The. Biggest. Sigh. I. Ever. Sighed. I almost gave up on the adventure. Alas, we turned Brother Glaze to our side by mentioning that the bees moving out means all the honey in the hive for the taking.
We prepped by going out to find a poisonous mushroom. Glaze gave us some sugar to smear the mushroom in and we left it for Shig to eat. Then Glaze ordered his cultists to attack.
At the same time, I lent my runestone to Brother Snickers who then talked to our bee guy, convincing him that we already talked it out with his mum. He went along with the plan of alerting the sentries in joining us, thus netting 29 small beings. We received a stat block and fought it out against Shig. I rolled for the badger, and as always this session, I rolled only 1s. Shig died swiftly, the bees moved out, we got our seeds and returned to claim our treasure from junkie mouse Gandalf.
The end.
About the system: I dislike systems where characters die easily. I was playing at 1 HP. Any combat would have meant death. That made me roleplay my worrying mouseling effectively.
A simple system doesn't mean simple gameplay. When you don't have a persuasion skill (or anything resembling it), you have no idea how to approach a conversation. With some learning, we could take this somewhere... but a one shot was jarring.
On the other hand, constant roleplay and talk (because combat means death) was fun. Except when the NPCs cannot be persuaded and they have a singular goal in mind. Which will probably kill you.
Sigh. I'm ambivalent about this.
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