A New House for Ms. Bixby: The Secret of NIMH (1982)

1982, I was nine years old. By then, I had already seen Star Wars, Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, The Empire Strikes Back, Clash of the Titans, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. I grew up hearing my family talk about fantasy classics, especially The Lord of the Rings. However, I was still too young to read Tolkien.

One movie showed me what epic fantasy could be. The movie was The Secret of NIMH.

From the animation to the music and the story, this film remains a favorite of mine. Here’s a relatively spoiler-free summary of the plot:

The Secret of NIMH follows a widowed field mouse named Mrs. Brisby who must quickly relocate her family before a farmer's plow destroys their home. Desperate because her son Timmy is dangerously ill, she seeks help from a colony of highly intelligent, genetically altered rats living in a sprawling society beneath a nearby rosebush. These rats escaped from brutal testing at a facility called NIMH and have built a wondrous but fractured civilization torn apart by internal political strife. Through her perilous journey, Mrs. Brisby discovers her late husband's heroic connection to the colony and must find her own inner courage to wield a powerful, magical amulet.

The movie feels epic and dangerous, and the excitement is as palpable to me today as it was when I first watched it. My memory is a bit fuzzy, but I think there was a promotional picture-card album for the movie, back when they weren't stickers, and you still had to apply glue to them! (The kids don’t know how good they have it!) I seem to recall you got a stamp in the newspaper, and you could get the album at the supermarket. I desperately searched for them to complete the album.

Don’t be fooled by the fact that this is an animated movie about mice, rats, and other creatures; this is a great blueprint for a campaign, no furry animals necessary.

The plot was a major reference point for my early games: a magical item, an old and wise wizard, and deep political machinations. This was one of my absolute core reference movies as a young Game Master.

I loved the fact that the protagonist was a mother. I always say that Alien was my introduction to a strong female protagonist, but Ms. Brisby is a strong female lead. The challenges she faces to save her family are personal and drive her final triumph. As I developed my ideas for epic fantasy, I learned early on that making it personal matters.

The Great Owl is a mysterious, dangerous, oracular guide. Nicodemus is the old, wise leader of the rats. He gives the magical amulet to Ms. Bixby; he isn't a spellcaster per se, but to young me, he was the template for the wise wizard. To this day, whenever I think of a wizard, Nicodemus comes to mind first.

Jenner, the antagonist, is also memorable. Cool, smooth, cruel, and thoroughly evil. I can see his DNA in many of my villains, proving that the best threats often come from ambition and betrayal from within.

When you run a TTRPG, you use shortcuts, tropes, and shorthand to communicate ideas to players. The GM's NPCs don’t need to be as fleshed out as the player characters, and to young me, these characters were part of my Imaginarium, just like the characters in the other movies I mentioned at the start.

The Secret of NIMH (and I’m keeping it vaguer just in case you haven’t seen the movie) is also great because it delves into the idea of higher powers, so to speak, meddling with the setting’s society and the relation between these societies and their progenitors. These clashes and the idea of crater-created, disparate conflict are also ideas I keep returning to. I learned a lot from watching this movie, and literature reinforced it as I grew up.

All this, and the incredibly powerful opponent, the cat, was named Dragon!

Did you know the Brothers Hildebrandt made a movie poster for this one too? See below!

This movie can be even more inspiring for modern TTRPGs like Mouse Guard, Mausritter, Pugmire, and similar systems. If you have not seen it, I wholeheartedly recommend it.