Mechritter: An Expansion for Mausritter

Hi! Gustavo here! 

First of all, I'm really happy with all the support for this project. To know I'll have the chance to design a bunch of mechs and draw urban scenarios from the perspective of adventuring mice still makes me grin from ear to ear. So again, we truly appreciate everybody for believing in this project!

Today I want to talk a little bit about the internal art for this game. I don't know if you noticed, but everything I'm making for this game is first drawn by pen and in. What you see in our mockups and images are the scanned versions which I later colored digitally!

This is my usual process to work with games to achieve a more vintage look, but for Mechritter it was even more special, as I was trying to incorporate a '90s cartoon aesthetic as well. When I hear about mice duking it out in mech suits, that sounds like a saturday morning show to me!

At the same time, I tried to be really careful with the mech designs. I don't know the first thing about engineering, but I wanted to look at them and have some idea of their functionality. Extending the mice limbs seemed important to give a more imposing silhouette, but I didn't want it to feel artificial.

Finally, after the designs are done I scan them to add colors and make small fixes on Krita. I always like to work with a limited color palette. It may be from my experience with pixelart or just because it is easier to harmonize colors when there are fewer of them, but I think the vibrant colors here really collaborates with the cartoonish look!

I hope this helps people to understand all the work that is behind these illustrations, I'm hoping to revamp everything I've made so far for the final material, added to many other illustrations that will be on the booklet!

Thanks for the read and for following the project! It will be super helpful if you share it around in these last few days of campaign.

Cheers!

Hey. Kayla here again with another faction preview. This one looks at our poll winner, and one of the games mech capable gangs, the Skeleton Keys.

I knew early on that Mechritter should have factions with their own mechs, to offer players the chance for mech vs mech combat. I decided two mech factions was better than one. One reason for this was if Mechritter is played as part of an ongoing campaign there's one gang to give you mechs and one gang left to fight.

The other reason was to model how and why gangs with mechs would be opposed. A fact of the setting is that the greatest danger to each gang comes from humans above, rather than the other gangs. Some gangs might be more privileged with resources and hostile to outsiders, but their grievances with each other are more petty in nature or born of desperation.

So to talk about the Skeleton Keys is to talk about the Blinged Mice too, at least a little. I figured the mech gangs would need to be based out of stores with small tools that could go missing. There's both a jewellery exchange and a locksmiths on my high street so they felt like good locations to steal.

Laurie's initial proof of concept doc had some bullets about how the mice's mechs differ from traditional mecha. About the size of a biscuit tube rather than titanic. Useful and functional rather than combat focused and overpowered. Fragile, made of scrap, rather than sturdy metal. The initial idea for the two mech gangs was they'd be focused on overcoming a shortcoming of the mech. The Blinged Mice would want to get more durable, the Skeleton Keys would want to get more powerful. Those exact wants faded a lot but were the beginning of the gang's current shape.

The Blinged Mice wanting to get more durable evolved into being more defensively focused. Their backstory involves having moved from multiple bases, either due to closure or discovery. Their goals focus on securing their base and slowly acquiring more assets.

In a write up for the pre-launch page I had a line about the Blinged Mice seeing the Skeleton Keys as hyperactive daredevils, which ended up influencing their characterisation more than the original seed. They've lived a more secure life than the Blinged Mice, and don't really understand their contemporaries' caution for that reason. Their goals increase in their daringness, and increasingly step on the toes of other gangs.

The intention behind the Skeleton Keys is that they're an easy gang to like, but a difficult gang to deal with if you're trying to keep the high street gangs from exploding.

The D6 names for the Skeleton Keys are the most "Connections category" coded off the gang member names. Can anyone tell me what connects them?

Additionally, what else would people like to see covered in future updates? I can keep things focused on faction deep dives, or talk about shops or enemies? Let me know if you have any requests in the comments!

Hi everyone! We've funded, and we've done so with 23 days left to to hit our stretch goals. Mechritter is happening! This must be how those industrious mice of the high street felt when they first taped a chippy fork to a lego brick.

I think I speak for everyone involved in the project when I say it feels great to fund and we're really grateful for all the support. We had a higher goal than many and a longer climb to it, but I think we're on track to do well with our stretch goals.

As already mentioned in the main page, for every £500 over our original target up to £10k, we will add a new sticker sheet to the pack, designed by either Gustavo or Yanahn.

I'm also here to announce our £10000 goal. If we hit £10K the illustrious Hodag will join the project to create some alternative mouse characters for the character sheets.

Word of mouth is a massive help to crowdfunding projects, especially as we enter the middle of the campaign. Please do recommend Mechritter to someone who'd love it, you can help us make the beat version of this book possible.

In terms of future updates Gustavo will be talking about the process for the game's art, I'll talk about the Skeleton Keys, and there's something I can tease involving our friend Reese here coming soon.

Until next time,

Kayla (Setting & Adventure/Layout)

Hey everyone, how are we doing? Mechritter is not far off hitting our initial goals. Once that happens we can start working towards expanding our sticker offerings. For me personally hitting our initial target will make this the most successful crowdfunding campaign I've been part of and I'm very touched by the positive response to the project.

Anyway, I'm here today to talk about the factions in the game. For me they're the heart of the setting. The starting point for most of them was what shop they were based out of. I plotted the high street from the one I live on, the shops are equivalents of places around me. That gave me and indication of what kings of resources they'd have, but also what problems they'd face.



The Junk Foodies are based out of a fast food shop (named MacDougal's, with their iconic slogan "Mmm, I like it!"). Obviously, they have plentiful food stores. The challenges they face lie in extended opening hours and increasing automation. Their routines and knowledge are disrupted and that influences their goals. It spurs conflict with the other factions as they've decided to call off their usual deals in the face of disruption.

The personality of the gang grew out of their theming. Junk Foodies was actually inspired by song called Fast Foodie by Fishboy. It implied a degree of snobbishness which with the setting lead towards a hipster-esque direction that I think Gustavo really nailed.

There's an element of posture with the Junk Foodies, styled as having a very sophisticated palette but subsisting on the same trash as most every else, threatened by the same decline. Their posture is contrasted by another gang, the Flock, rulers of the market and the only gang content with their status quo.

The five gangs mentioned on our story page are the starting point. The hexmap of the high street will be further developed by contributions from Titanic backers, and new gangs may spring out of those contributions.

Hopefully our next update brings exciting news of hit goals. In future updates I can also preview more around other gangs. Who are you most excited to learn more about?

Hi Mausritter Month people!

Hope your day is going well! My day is going great.

Launching this project with Kayla and Gustavo has been so gratifying. We'd hoped to be 50% funded by the end of day one, and we reached there with many hours to spare, which is brilliant news. We're also about to reach our 100th backer, which is a big milestone! We're on track to fund this week, which is brilliant, but of course, we'd love to get over the line earlier.

There are still a couple of hours to go before we have to remove the early bird/first 24 hours discounts from the Kickstarter. If you were planning to back this project, definitely do it now! We will be removing the option to pledge at an early bird level by the end of the day!

 

I wanted to show off some of the sticker illustrations for Mechritter in more detail. My favourite is the Park Trash one because I love the little water bottle helmet.

I also looove this never-before-seen Chinese restaurant set; what little objects can you spot?

Actually. Which one is your favourite? From left to right: Office Supplies, Chinese Restaurant, and Park Trash.

I put up a poll, so head over there and vote!

How's the campaign going?

I'd be lying if I said I don't feel a tiny bit bad about being the last unfunded project of Mausritter month. However, we are well on target to fund and hit a bunch of stretch goals in the process. The truth is that our "ask" is bigger than many other projects because:

In the next update I'll ask Kayla to write something about one of the factions in the book. If there's any you'd like to hear about, please comment on the update!

One other thing!

If you like OSR stuff, please support the other Mausritter Month projects. However, in addition to that, some good friends of myself and Kayla gave us the opportunity to come on their stream to promote Mechritter, and they're also in the last 24 hours of their project, Danse Macabre, which is a great historical/horror/OSR game set in medieval Constantinople and its environs. I've linked to it here in case anyone is curious! We had a blast playing it on their stream this weekend.