Mauritter Calendar

I discovered Mausritter recently. A lovely rule-light role-playing game of tiny mice and the fun they get up to. I'm planning to run a game, the first game I will have run for quite a few years. I'm looking forward to it a lot.

Recently, I came across a tweet from @traversefantasy linking to a an article about the lifespan of mice, the excellently named "Death & Taxes in Mausritter". As a former accountant, how could I not read this?

In the post, Marcia talks about the length of time that mice usually live, the implications of this on long-term play and mouse society. I'd definitely recommend reading it, there's a lot of thought gone into it, more than I've mentioned here, where I've stuck to the bits that I think will immediately add spicy flavour to my game.

One suggestion was that, in a more civilised community of mice, lifespan might be more than average real-world mouse life expectancy of around 12-18 months, maturing at around four months old. I liked the idea, and wanted to use the assumption that at 30 months a mouse would be the longest-lived mouse and worthy of note.

I think that works well with the idea of character longevity, though I'm also intrigued by the idea of your next mouse being the offspring of your current mouse and the possibility for noble lineages of mice and the atmosphere that could add to the long game. Who doesn't want an impressive family tree of their foremice hanging on the wall of their abode?

To keep with the spirit of the game, time switches from 'months' to 'seasons'. The game outlines six seasons that make up a year, so each is two months long. Linking that into our 30 month maximum life expectancy idea, I suggest that the ages of mice would be:

• 0 seasons: birth

• 2 seasons: maturity

• 6 seasons: 'experienced', sufficient to be a renowned Master at a craft

• 9 seasons: an older mouse, planning for their legacy

• 12 seasons: an elder mouse, worthy of respect due to longevity

• 15 seasons: the oldest of mice

Those are broad brush terms, of course, but it provides a way to figure out how old a mouse (character or NPC) should be in the game. For example, one of the NPCs in my game is the Burghermouse of the town, a well-respected and knowledgeable individual. Working backwards from the current season of Wheel (equivalent to March/April), I decide that he was born in the season of Moon (equivalent to November/December) of the year before last, making him 8 seasons old.

So how do mouse seasons compare to our months?

Season	Months	Our seasons	Days
Mother	Jan/Feb	Winter	61
Wheel	Mar/Apr	Spring	61
Storm	May/Jun	Spring/Summer	61
Star	Jul/Aug	Summer	61
Acorn	Sep/Oct	Autumn	61
Moon	Nov/Dec	Autumn/Winter	60

That gives us 365 days, but why 61 for most and why 60 for the Moon season?

My first big assumption, is that mice have a six day week. The days of the week are First-Fair, Second-Fair, Third-Fair and so on. In large settlement, different markets are held on different days, so the markets for fish might be held on First-Fair and Fourth-Fair for example, or household goods on Fifth-Fair.

That means that each season has ten weeks of six days, which would give us Second-Fair of the Third Week of Storm, if we wanted to name a specific date.

At the end of each season is a Feast Day. The day is outside of the normal run of days, and no markets are held on those days. So the end of Wheel would be Fifth-Fair of the Tenth Week of Storm, Sixth-Fair of the Tenth Week of Storm, The Feast of Storm and then the First-Fair of the First Week of Star.

Different sections of the community will do different things on the feast days. Particularly devout mice will spend the day in thanks for their blessings. Less devout mice will feast and carouse. The feasts for different seasons will also have a different atmosphere, so the Feast of Acorn is similar to a Harvest Festival, while the Feast of Wheel celebrates the warming of the sun as the days grow longer.

The exception is the season of Moon. Rather than have a single feast day at the end of the month, the Tenth Week of Moon is the Feast of the Moon and is a whole week marking midwinter and the cycle of one year finishing and another beginning. Communities celebrate and make merry, for good food and comradeship is an effective shield against the darkest and coldest weather and the fear the sun will not return.

In order to keep track of time, the seasons and the fairs, I quickly put this sheet together (link to the PDF version below:

MausritterCalendar

.pdf

Download PDF • 397KB

I'm sure that it can be improved on, but for now I think it will help me keep track of the calendar.

If your character want a birthday (remembering that they will be Experienced by the time they get to celebrate it) then you can roll a d30 if you have one to hand. Failing that, a d3-1 and a d10 will work to give a birth day between 00 and 29. On a 00, roll a d6 - on 1-4 your birth date is 30th, on a 5-6 it's the Feast Day. For the season Moon, a result of 00 is the 30.