Indulge me. I wrote this review before. I don’t think I said what I thought I was saying, or what I wanted to say. I want to try again.
Questing Beast is a youtube channel of some renown in the TTRPG sphere. Ben’s videos get a lot of views. His newsletter has lots of readers. His opinions are well-respected when it comes to a large audience with purchasing power aiming their money at a certain work. This is something that Questing Beast grew and grew over a long period of doing flip-throughs/reviews for OSR-adjacent books. I myself watch a lot of his videos because I genuinely enjoy hearing criticisms, analysis, and reviews. Even if I don’t agree with everything said.
And when it comes to Questing Beast, I don’t agree with a lot of what he says.
QB, as a reviewer who has an opinion, typically has a very clear focus on usability. Two-page spreads, readable maps, and art that is clear. There have been a few times when he strays from this, such as his review of Fire on the Velvet Horizon, or Vermis, but the bulk of his work reveals his opinions on tabletop game books (as with all reviewers). And that’s also something you can see reflected in his design work as well, with Knave (and now Knave 2e) and Willowby Hall.
Where does that leave Mausritter? By all measures given to us by QB, Mausritter is a perfect book. It has everything you need, it’s simple to understand for newer players, and easy to use at the table. The illustrations are beautiful and representational, the layout is clean and straightforward, and the rules are organized cleanly per two-page-spread.
And I would agree that Mausritter is perfect. There is nothing to complain about when it comes to this game. It set out with a clear and obvious goal of replacing Mouse Guard in everyone’s brains, and I think it more than succeeded. The folks at Games Omnivorous have leveraged Kickstarter in a way that you’ll never be left wanting when it comes to being a cute little mouse, fighting back a giant snake while foraging for food.
But, and there is always a but, I can’t help but feel like something is missing. Or, that there is something I’m desiring that isn’t present. And I have to be honest, I do not know what that is. Be it a more characterful writing voice (though that could remove from it’s ease of use), or a more abstract form of illustration (thought that might take away from it’s current beauty), or maybe it’s a different method of layout (though I do think Mausritter’s layout adds to its rustic charm).
I simply do not know. I only know that I don’t feel like Mausritter is daring. It doesn’t have that extra something.
In school, when it came to writing-focused assignments, both creative and analytical, I had a teacher that would often award B’s and very rarely reward A’s. And she would always say that, “If you got a B, it means you wrote a perfect paper. A’s meant your paper had that special something.”
And I think what she meant is that it resonated with her? Or perhaps it was only a matter of opinion, and the A represented a work that just happened to hit her in that special way that works can when they align with your sensibilities or even attack your sensibilities, but in a way you enjoy. It’s something hard to pin down because maybe there is no reason. Maybe it is only a matter of opinion. Maybe sometimes a B is just an A to some people.
That’s how I feel about Mausritter. It is a perfect book. Perfectly designed. Easy to run and a blast to play. But it’s missing something. For me. Some inalienable quality that elevates it in my brain to not only being perfect, but being perfect for me.
And if I were to try and pin that down, to try and find words for it, it would come down to its adherence to these things I see in Questing Beast. These things that I would call “The Questing Beast School of Design.” These things that I see as good building blocks but not as a full thing on its own. These things that I don’t think you can follow alone, as tools for creation. Because they are a rubric of one singular voice in the scene, and to make stuff for that voice is to create Ben Milton’s favorite game. Not anyone else’s favorite game.
I have a worry that I have seen realized (it was only a few moderately successful kickstarters ago that someone said they only wrote the thing they did because they knew it would sell to QB’s audience) that with this one rather dominant voice in the reviewer scene, that works would be or could be catered to those sensibilities. And while that’s great for the people who deeply enjoy and relate to the things Ben Milton enjoys and relates to, those things don’t work for everyone.
And I don’t have a solution to it because it’s not a problem that needs to be solved. For most (including me) it’s not even a problem. It’s just a trend and one that I feel like I can see the effects of. I can see it in Mausritter. A game that uses the building blocks excellently and comes out the other side with what I would consider the gold standard for what a tabletop roleplaying game should be. Which is an achievement!
But it doesn’t surprise me, or excite me, or tickle me in a way. And if that’s the worst thing I can say about a book? If I gotta dig that deep to be critical? That speaks to its quality and only shines a light on the rubric by which I graded it.
Find Mausritter for free here: https://losing-games.itch.io/mausritter
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