Review: Honey in the Rafters
Note: This review was originally on August 5, 2021 at the collective RPG review blog, Bones of Contention. If you want to read more in-depth criticism and analysis of TTRPGs by the absolute top-notch bloggers in the field, there is no better avenue in which to begin your search.
2nd Note: This post coincides (but not by coincidence) with Mausritter Month! Go back one or two or perhaps seven adventures from various indie creators in support of a great game.
Honey in the Rafters is the introductory adventure location included in the original Mausritter boxed set. The keyed location for the example hexcrawl included in the Mausritter rulebook, it serves two purposes: to provide an out-of-the-box (literally) experience for an initial session of Mausritter and act as an implicit guide for how to prep an adventure for Mausritter. More than anything, it is that second purpose that I value in a starting adventure. Starting adventures are instrumental for training referees to the type of prep best suited for the game. When I started playing Dungeons & Dragons, much of my early prep emulated the bloated adventures of the 3.5/Pathfinder era. I wish I had instead cut my teeth on something like Mausritter. Honey in the Rafters says to the burgeoning referee that all you need to run a game are a few d6 tables, a couple of factions and a mental map of the location. This simplicity and elegance are befitting a system like Mausritter.
A cursed sunflower sprouts outside an abandoned cabin. From this flower blooms the adventure’s various factions. The flower and its pollen attracted a colony of bees and a hungry skunk (as an aside, bees and skunks sound harmless enough to you or I, but imagine how deadly those foes would be for a party of adventuring mice). The honey from the bees attracted a cadre of mice belonging to a sugar cult. Each faction presented sounds fun, but I would have liked to see more explicit connections between them. For instance, maybe the skunk wants to eat the sugar cultists in the cabin but is afraid to enter because of the bees, the bees want to drive out the skunk from the sunflower field and are distrustful of the sugar cultists’ leader, and the sugar cult wants the honey (that is made clear) but is blissfully unaware of the skunk. These types of connections are particularly helpful for an adventure where factions are such a central component.
Honey in the Rafters not only demonstrates how to write a Mausritter adventure, it is also useful for would-be homebrewers curious about adding spells and items to the mix. The adventure includes a handful of spells and items that are absent from the Mausritter book (such as Taffy, allowing a mouse to stretch its limbs to unnatural proportions). Particular standouts here are the weapons—what self-respecting mouse wouldn’t wield a candy cane or lollipop instead of a sword or axe? After reading Honey in the Rafters, I am like those sugar cultists, left wanting more, more, more of the sweet stuff.
