Mausritter is The Borrowers meets Mouseguard, with a wonderful oldschool feeling to its art and layout, some modern convenience in its deisgn, and a ruleset inspired by Into The Odd.
And let me say, if you're not familiar with Into The Odd yet and you like OSR, get Mausritter first, then buy Into The Odd next.
Basically, this game's really good. And it's a master class in economical design.
There's a background system that implies the whole mouse culture without having to spell anything out, but it's also the reference chart for getting your starting items AND the counterbalance for rolling low on your starting stats.
There's an inventory system with card-slots and charges that feels like it would be perfectly at home in a ccrpg, but which also handles upkeep on your gear ala Red Markets, and status effects ala Slay The Spire, and which lets you basically have a tactile inventory system where you as a player can pick up and put down any part of your character's current kit.
Spell-casting is item-based, flexible, easy to track, recharges in flavorful ways, and has probably the most graceful system I've seen for casting at variable levels of power.
Somehow there's even a weather table that is a) genuinely useful, and b) not terrible.
It is criminal that this game is free.
Admittedly, there are still some minor critiques I can make of it. It likes making you calculate percentages for prices, warbands require so much money to maintain that they sorta do weird things to the inventory system, Grit is possibly abuseable and lets you hot-swap Conditions unless controlled with a house-rule, and the book doesn't use the Oxford Comma.
That's basically me being as comprehensive as I can, and it's all nitpicks.
If you're used to 5e, you'll have an easy time getting into this. There's short rest/long rest, advantage/disadvantage, and a lot of the other trappings you're familiar with. Likewise, if you're used to OSR, there's that same quick-to-build-quick-to-die mindset here, and plenty of simplicity without sacrificing too much crunch.
I strongly recommend picking this up and at least flipping through.
Tip if you can. This game is great.
Typos And Unexplained Terms:
- page 6 says "wit h"
-page 8 says "actions can anything from negotiating"
-page 13 in the List Of Creatures Example box that says "wraps the him up"
-Hit Protection And Damage on page 8 references something called "exploration turns" which is maybe meant to mean turns outside of combat but I couldn't be sure since the rules never clarify
-Warband rules are unclear how they should be rallied if they break