NSR Lane Final
Who doesn't want to play a tiny creature hunting for matches in a study, trying not to get caught by the family cat? Under the Floorboards puts you right there. Mausritter puts you in the same basic situation and hands you a magic sword.
Both games knocked out higher seeds to get here. Under the Floorboards sent Cairn home in round one. Mausritter edged out Mothership. Two different takes on tiny adventures in a big world, and two very different ideas about what the table needs to make that work.
Under the Floorboards
The scouting phase is still the thing that sets this game apart from everything else in its lane. You build a mental map before you go in. Then the space surprises you. The gap between the plan and the reality is where the game lives, and no other dungeon game I know manufactures that gap as reliably.
The cozy register keeps doing work. Small stakes produce real tension because the creatures living them are so vulnerable. A flooded cellar is a catastrophe. A cat in the hallway is a boss encounter.
Writing a supplement for UtF taught me what the game is asking of its designers. A room for UtF needs description, complications, obstacles, changes over time, and goals. It's a toybox for the Narrator, layered and alive. The game is fundamentally about the place.
I'd go back to this game with new tools now. Years of running narrative games have given me a sharper eye for complication and escalation. I know things about pacing and reincorporation that I didn't know in 2019. The study with the cat and the missing matches is still waiting. I want another run at it.
Mausritter
The faction system remains the game's quiet infrastructure. Factions pursue their own agendas, create pressure the players didn't generate, and make the world feel like it exists between sessions. That's harder to build than it looks.
The magic system compounds across play in ways that keep sessions surprising. Spells as items, items as spells, recharging as a decision point: it rewards players who pay attention to what they're carrying.
Writing two collections of magic items (here and here) for Mausritter taught me what that game is asking of its designers. Mausritter needed fuel: objects that spark adventure, that players pick up and carry and use and argue about. The game is fundamentally about what you find. Put enough interesting things in the world and the fiction generates itself.
A crew of adventurer-mice outfitting themselves for the cats of Zyan (hat tip to Ben Laurence) is the campaign I keep turning over in my head. The faction system and the magic items and the sheer weight of a strange city at that scale: it's all there waiting.
The honest case for the loser
Mausritter is the better game for a campaign. The faction tooling, the magic system, the way the world accumulates pressure between sessions: all of it compounds over time in ways UtF isn't built for. If you want to run six months of mouse adventures with real stakes and a living world, Mausritter is the answer. The cats of Zyan aren't going anywhere.
The pick
Under the Floorboards, and the designer lens tipped it. What UtF asks of its Narrators and its supplement writers is a deeper engagement with space and place than Mausritter requires. That depth produces something I keep wanting to return to and push harder. Whichever of these I play next, I'll borrow tools from the other. But the study is calling, and the cat is somewhere in the hallway, and I want to find out what changed while we were planning.
That's my pick. Who got robbed? Tell me in the comments.
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