WinterCon 2025

 The Discord group TTRPG in Korea is in the middle of their WinterCon 2025 online gaming convention. I got late notice of this event (last Sunday) so I didn't have a lot of free time this weekend. I've got my face to face TS&R Jade game this afternoon, and due to family stuff, I only had time for the afternoon session yesterday. And that meant I got to play another game of Mausritter. 

Looking through my old posts quickly, I don't think I blogged about playing Mausritter with Justin a few months back. We tried it, and it was a lot of fun. You roll up a mouse adventurer defined by your gear rather than by a character class or a truckload of skills to choose from. Besides your gear, you have three ability scores, hit points, and pips (money) to keep track of. It's a simple game, but it really gets you into the problem solving mentality. Yes, there is combat, but it's hazardous (Into the Odd style no attack rolls, if you attack, you just roll damage). You're also a tiny mouse. So problem solving and careful investigation is in order. 

Yesterday, our game was run by a guy who goes by Fakesauce John on Discord. Four players, myself among them, gathered and John went over the rules briefly while he led us through character creation. That took about 40 minutes of our 4 hour slot, but we had quite a few technical issues to work out. 

My character was Adrian F. Cheddar, blacksmith mouse with "delicate features" (a.k.a. the pretty boy!). My mouse joined up with Clara June, a bold take-no-guff mouse (player: Elizabet), Brutus, the big but dumb bruiser (Evie), and Nibbles, the snarky message-runner (Frankie).

After characters were created, we were given our mission (rescue Lady Cheddar who had gone missing in the mine). We did a bit of shopping, then took a quick break and got the tech issues sorted. 

After that, we were off on our mission. The mine was an interesting place to explore, with multiple entrances (we ended up taking one that John didn't expect us to take of course!), interesting encounters that didn't demand combat (but could have turned into combat), and a mystery to solve on top of the mission to rescue Lady Cheddar. 

John said he didn't have much experience as a game master, but he ran the session well. He kept things going, described things in detail, answered questions, adjudicated the rules when necessary, and managed to bring four mostly strangers together to form a team that used creativity and goofiness to solve the problems put in front of us. 

Chatting with the organizer Amae, I'd mentioned that when they do it again, with more advance notice, I'd be happy to run a game (or two?) the next time they do this. He said this has been a challenge, and he's not sure he will. But people seem to have had fun yesterday, and hopefully the games that happen today will also be fun, and they will make this a tradition. Amae did invite me to run games through their Discord at any time. So even if they don't do another online convention, I may take him up on his offer.