Michtim, and Emotional Numbers

Michtim is an RPG inspired by any number of tiny-furry adventurer stories, like Redwall, Mouseguard, and The Secret of NIMH. You play as the hamster-like Michtims, experiencing their society and the adventures these fuzzy little heroes get up to; including the sabotaging of human factories, swiping human technology, and protecting and healing the natural world. There is a youthful exuberance about the game; the book is written with a gentle delight that is reminiscent of old children’s cartoons, where your character’s abilities might stem from being a great tactician, cook, wizard, or cyborg.

The system itself is intriguing, and not exclusively because the Michtims do not have physical or mental stats like most games. They have emotional stats.

Most RPGs use stats as a starting point that can be layered on top of. A spy can have a high dexterity, but what they can do with that dexterity depends quite a bit on traits, skills, or special abilities. Michtim takes it in a different direction, creating an economy of tokens and dice.

A Michtim’s “moods” function similarly to stats or skills in other games. Anger, for example, is used when trying to hurt someone else, while Fear is used if you want to dodge or hide. To succeed at a task, the player rolls d6 equal to the applicable mood, and try to get above a seven total. If any of the dice show a 6, the character gets a token of that mood’s type. (Ex: Cornelius has 3 Anger. When trying to bite a dog’s nose, they roll 3d6. If the total is over 7, they succeed. For each of the dice that come up 6, if any, they receive an Anger token.)

But, that’s only one “hit.” If a task is hard, it may take more hits to succeed. To increase the number of hits, you set aside dice from your pool. So, for Cornelius to scratch a dog’s nose as it jumps around, they may need to set aside one die and roll over 7 on 2d6 to get the two hits needed. If they have to set aside two dice to get three hits, they’re in trouble, because you can’t hit 7 on 1d6.

Remember those mood tokens? Tokens give automatic +1s to any comparable-mood roll, or -1 to any opposing mood roll. Or, you could spend a mood token to receive an extra die on a roll. If Cornelius had two anger tokens, they’d need to roll a 5 or 6 on a single die to reach 7, or they could spend them both to roll 3d6.

This economy of mood doesn’t stop there, because each character can have a Calling (read, class). Each Calling has a set of special actions, one for each mood, that specifically affect the action/token economy. Artists can steal tokens from enemies and give them to their friends. Cooks can set aside dice to give away to their allies. Daredevils gain tokens when wounded. Sorcerers allow actions to happen at range. Tacticians can affect multiple targets.

On top of that, Callings are both modular and augmentative. If your Michtim is both a Sorcerer and a Tactician, your actions can affect multiple targets at range. Artists trade tokens while Daredevils get tokens from wounds, so a Michtim who is both can trade wounds between allies.

The game is full to the tear-ducts with mood.

Roleplaying is about emotions. It’s about characters feeling and reacting to the world around them. It’s about getting mad at our enemies, crying over our wounds, and laughing as we delight in each other’s company. If the synchronization is strong, we feel as our characters feel. If not, we may laugh when they scream, or cry when they smile.

Michtim’s mood system integrates character actions and roleplay with their emotions. If you dodge, you become more afraid. If you attack, you get more angry. If you need to, you can manipulate the emotions of your friends and foes; the more frightened they are, the better they are at dodging and the worse they are at attacking.

It turns roleplaying into a part of the action economy. Similar to FATE, it blends the game-, meta-, and ludo-narratives together to create a system about how our feelings affect what we want to do.

Michtim isn’t the only game trying to do this. The Veil, for example, also uses character emotions as stats in a Powered by the Apocalypse system. Visigoths vs Mall Goths doesn’t use hit points; instead, damage is represented by “hurt feelings.” Even being impaled by a spear affects your emotions more than your body, and gamifies the dramatic over-reactions of teens in a mall.

Now, there is one little thorn in this system: If attacking is anger, then where is the room for the woeful swashbuckler, sighing in melancholy as they parry and thrust their way through the drinking hall? Where is space for a grumpy healer, who fumes over reckless warriors as they apply salves and bandages?

It’s perhaps more accurate to consider the mood economy symbolic of emotion, rather than accurate or precise. A Michtim who fights their way up a tree doesn’t have to be seething in fury when they reach the top, nor does one have to be sobbing as they patch up a friend.

But at the same time, you can’t fight someone without a bit of anger in you, can you? You can’t heal someone without feeling sympathy to their pains. Besides, just because you feel something doesn’t mean you have to display it: the biting and sarcastic remarks of an angry medic could be little more than cover, an emotional shield to protect their weeping heart. A sad warrior could delight in their melancholy, only really feeling complete when they bemoan the futility of combat. And feelings aren’t permanent. Just because your character may be happy or sad at the moment, that doesn’t mean that after a few good sword-swings they won’t be shouting their rage at their foe.

Sometimes I wonder if we get too wrapped up in the idea that characters feel a certain way. Whether in film, books, or RPGs, I see characters who are “angry” or “melancholic,” and react that way to everything that happens. Stories tend to exalt symbols, rather than real people with real lives and real emotions. Our heroes tend to mask anger, fear, sorrow, and joy behind masks of “bravery,” “devotion,” or “a mysterious and tormented past.” We tell stories of how our heroes react to sad or terrifying situations, instead of stories about how they feel sad.

With an emphesis on mood driving action, Michtim pushes away from these cliche one-note characters. Your Michtims can’t be stone-cold dispassionate hamsters, unflappable even in the most unnerving of situations. They have to feel, and more importantly, feel differently. Your happy Michtim’s will still shed tears or run in a panic from time to time.

Frankly, it’s a breath of fresh air. I’ve played with characters who have never been frightened, sad, or even happy; at best they’ve been sympathetic to the other characters with a wider range of emotion. I’m no sociologist nor psychologist, so I can’t comment on why this is, but I can say that I delight in the game which demands more range. Sure, your character might be naturally a little fearful, but that doesn’t mean they can’t get angry when they’re pushed. It can be fun to find out exactly what it is that pushes them far enough.

But that brings up another interesting point, doesn’t it? Because it’s a fine line between having your character’s emotions connected to their actions, and having their emotions influenced by their actions. At some point, we have to ask if the game is forcing emotions on the character.

Next up, let’s talk about games that occasionally act out your character for you.