Hello, and welcome back!

People seemed to enjoy hearing me ramble about my writing journey a little bit, so I’ve got one more active project that I thought it would be fun to talk about, in addition to a quick review.

Let’s get started!

Bloggyness Review—Milo Murphy’s Law

This was a bizarre watch. Season one, anyway—I haven’t finished the first episode of season two.

Milo Murphy’s Law is a children’s animated series set within the same fictional universe as Phineas and Ferb, sharing a lot of features—Danville, the Tri-State Area, some voice actors, a general animation style, a comparable sense of humor, and so forth. Despite these shared traits, Milo Murphy’s Law is entirely unique, in that it has its own characters, own stories and themes, and is structured fairly differently than Phineas and Ferb was. In short, you don’t need any Phineas and Ferb experience to appreciate Milo Murphy’s Law.

As for what Milo Murphy’s Law actually is, it is a comedic, episodic series with some serialized elements. Most episodes center around Milo Murphy, a kid whose very existence causes everything around him to go haywire—the show describes this as an active and extreme application of Murphy’s Law, but it feels more like raw chaos and entropy out to kill Milo and everyone around home. There’s a very Looney Tunes energy to the unmitigated, episode-long chaos, paired with a clever (and sometimes dry) sense of humor as often verbal as visual.

In addition to the above, there is a time travel–related subplot that tests the water a few episodes into the show, then very gradually grows to the point where it begins taking over the show.

I loved Weird Al as Milo in this series. Despite being about 60 at the time of recording, his voice just… naturally fits his 14-year-old character. Tons of energy, tons of optimism, maybe a little naïveté, definitely a bit dorky—on another character this might have gotten obnoxious, but Milo’s life is made so difficult and unpredictable by his condition that seeing him overcome his obstacles with cheer instead instantly makes him likable.

I also loved the time travel subplot, and its characters. Dakota and Cavendish are very odd additions to Milo Murphy’s Law, and initially feel somewhat out of place—but once you learn what they are doing, and why, it’s easy to get more engrossed in their missions than Milo’s misadventures. (In fact, it didn’t take long before I wished that the entire show revolved around Dakota and Cavendish.)

And that’s about the extent of what worked for me with this show. My wife absolutely loved it—which is why we kept watching the show. As for me, I had a hard time getting engaged with Milo’s primarily episodic adventures, and the more serialized stuff involving Cavendish and Dakota was too few and far between to keep my attention. I also struggled with the show’s internal logic. For example, Milo Murphy’s “curse,” let’s call it, is that Murphy’s Law is always in full force around him—if something can go wrong, it will. Except when it doesn’t and Milo can briefly live a normal life. And when things do go wrong, it’s almost always to an immediate and extreme degree, like a lit rocket showing up out of nowhere, attaching itself to the vehicle Milo in, and forcing Milo to engaged in high-speed hijinks as a result.

It’s a kid’s show. It’s supposed to be ridiculous and silly. It just didn’t work for this adult in addition to its intended audience.

I also struggled with the time travel rules that Dakota and Cavendish followed. Milo Murphy’s Law gleefully and chaotically embraces full-paradox time travel, with no set “default time”—meaning any time can be changed in any way, with effects that sometimes immediately ripple through the time stream, sometimes take their time to change the future. That’s all fine—at first. But then you realize that there really are no limits on time travel, meaning almost literally any problem can be very easily fixed with time travel, and you’re left wondering why that doesn’t happen. For example, there’s an ongoing mission to prevent the extinction of pistachios—but it keeps failing in timelines where pistachios still exist. Well… why not get a box of pistachios (uncooked, so you can plant and grow them) and just take them to the future for growth? Problem solved! Other things are resolved in a similar fashion, so it’s not like there’s a lack of precedent within the show itself.

I also have very mixed feelings about the “mostly episodic but with serialized elements” approach to storytelling. Some shows make it work, others don’t; for me, I enjoyed the serialized parts of Milo Murphy’s Law much more than the non-serialized parts, and it results in a show that I only like half of.

Milo Murphy’s Law is a very silly show that’s not asking to be taken very seriously by a serial world builder. If you approach it on its own terms, it can be a great time.

Mouse Tabletop Role-Playing Game

And here’s talking about me again!

Last week I mentioned that I like cross-pollination in my creative projects—I build a world or story for one thing, if I can adapt it to another thing that I enjoy I probably will at some point in time. I also mentioned that, years ago, I played Call of Cthulhu 7e, generally liked it, but wanted to change many of the basic mechanics and make my own game, more to my style.

Well, that TTRPG—with the placeholder name “Mouse TTRPG”—is what I want to talk about today. It’s the version of the game that I think will see far less large revisions than previous versions of the game, and I’m hoping I can get it to a point where a PDF of a solid alpha or beta version of the rules could be included in my eventual Hazel Halfwhisker Kickstarter.

Here’s the quick: Mouse TTRPG is a skill-based, roll-down, d20 game set in the world of Whiskerroot. “Skill-based” means that most of what a character can do is defined by the game’s list of skills; each skill has an assigned number value, and a character succeeds on an action using that skill by rolling that number value (or lower—hence roll-down) on a twenty-sided die (d20). This number value can be increased or decreased to represent more or less difficult tasks.

A big focus of the game, from the beginning, was creating some sort of balance between any direction a character wants to focus—meaning, I want warrior-type characters to be able to meaningfully contribute in dialogue-focused encounters, and the reverse, and both in exploration-focused encounters along with explorer-type characters. This doesn’t mean a character should excel in every area of the game—specialists are both important and fun—but I don’t like it when any character ends up in a situation where they can’t do anything. Even if a player is only in a supporting role, he or she should still be able to contribute in a fun way.

I wish I had a character sheet to share, because I think those are pretty powerful in showing the gist of the game—at least, one side of it—and provide something tactile when going over talking points. I could tell you about the Hit Points/Vitality/Wounds system, Ego Scores and Attitude, the nature of actions and skill checks, but everything I type down feels too much like it’s in “white box” of sorts. Eventually I’ll have time to finish the character sheet, and then I’ll share it at that point.

Here are some other traits of the game:

• Level-Less Skill Improvement and Talent System: Skill-based systems, in my experience, often lend themselves well to game systems with no levels, but that still have some sort of progression, and Whiskerroot TTRPG is no exception. Characters get better at skills by using them, and as they improve their skill progression they gain the opportunity to earn Talents, which are unique abilities that can’t be emulated through skills. Many of these talents are part of a Path progression with many branches.
• Streamlined Dice Rolling: Rolling dice is fun. The uncertainty of what a die is going to do always leads to tense game moments. But I no longer enjoy games that use lots of different types of dice and constantly adds more and more dice to each roll. So, in this game, the only die you need is a d20, and you will only rarely roll more than one d20 per action.
• Streamlined Results: Related to the above, it can be a bummer, in many games, to roll really well to determine whether or not you succeed in a task, but then roll really low for how much you succeed or do. A common example, in many games, is to roll a critical hit, but then get a “1” for damage. Kinda takes the air out of the room. So, in this game, success for different tasks has a set value (determined by a character’s attributes), but rolling higher than necessary for success can add bonuses to progress.

All of this, I hope, will come together into a game with lots of exploration and gritty, high-consequence action, particularly where titanic foes are involved—after all, what good is a game where you are playing mice if you never face off against dragon-esque cats?

I’ve got a few other ideas I’d like to implement, but they all come much later down the line. For example, making big “monsters”—like cats and dogs—be fun, but very dangerous, fights will be important. I think this game will be highly elevated by a really engaging, collaborative system where players can make a home together, and protecting and building up this home will be what many adventures are about. Things of that nature.

Writing Updates

Hazel Halfwhisker is at about 157,000 words, a 5,000-word increase from last week. If I’m guessing the final word count will be around 225k, that puts us almost 70% of the way to completion.

Send-Off

Have an excellent day!