I've played Mausritter twice. First, in a short-lived play-by-post campaign, and second, in a theatre-of-the-mind one shot over Discord. I feel like when people talk about Mausritter, they talk about how cute and tactile the inventory slot system is, and playing online obviously loses that. But the game than that! And it's also much more than just another three-stat OSR game.

For one thing, it features mice. And that's more of a selling point than I realized. I do not have much connection to the bucolic small animal fantasy subgenre (though I do recognize that it is a thing!), and I wondered if the tone was right for a deadly OSR game. It turns out, the fact that these hapless adventurers are mice makes the chaos rather funny. I smiled throughout most of the one shot. (And that comedic contrast was harder to bring out in play-by-post, as it turns out, so I'm not surprised that particular campaign tanked.)

I would need to play a full campaign to experience Mausritter's coolest feature, which is an almost strategic layer of rival factions making moves and taking territory. But the game works just great as adventurers doing their thing in isolated spaces. After reading the book and playing, I do feel like I understand OSR play even better.