“Old School” fantasy tends to refer to games tinged with elements of sword and sorcery fiction. These are your games with Conan-like vagabonds and dangerous magic. However, time moves every forward, and for many, old school fantasy now refers to films like Willow or Ladyhawke where magic can safely be wielded by the protagonists and everything takes on a medieval feel. Legend In The Mist by designers Amit Moshe, Erin Aviram, Itamar Karbian and Kelly Black bills itself as “rustic fantasy” aiming for somewhere in between the 10-foot-pole-from-death of OSR games and the high fantasy heroics of modern D&D. Son of Oak Game Studio sent the core PDFs for me to review. Does the game slay the dragon it set out to find? Let’s play to find out.
Legend In The Mist uses the same basic system as its predecessors City of Mist and :Otherscape. Characters are built from four themes which reflect an important element of the character, such as their training or relationships or a cool magic item they possess. These themes provide words or phrases called tags that affect the number a player adds when they need to roll the dice. The game uses a PbtA style level of success; 12 or better means you do the thing, 6 or less means you suffer consequences and 7-9 means you do the thing but also suffer consequences.
This isn’t too different from previous games in the Son of Oak portfolio. What it does is further refine the system. The game has always been a blend of PbtA mechanics mixed with elements of Fate. This time, the designers lean back toward the Fate side of things. Dice rolls are split into three kinds; simple, quick and detailed. Simple rolls are checked to see if the tag is strong enough to grant narrative permission. Quick rolls are pass/fail checks. Detailed checks total up the power modifier and use it to cause various effects. The system is fairly simple but for those looking for examples of the different rolls and what kind of consequences, there’s a giant book of examples that can break down everything from failing to climb a cliff to what you might get for impressing a duke.
Detailed checks are also how the game handles combat and conflict. Antagonists have specific status checks at a certain level to be overcome, such as injured-5 or scared-3. When players hit those thresholds, the conflict is over. Those effects are also how players reflect injury, which offers for interesting ideas if a character might be physically fine but hold their fear-3 of dragons for a long time after a battle. Much like tags, I liked this refinement to the concept of Fate’s consequences. It makes bottles faster but still provides options for players who want to do more than just grind out an opponent’s hit points.
Examples are one of the big things in the book and a subtle shift helps make this game more accessible. It kicks off with a long comic book style sample adventure that not only explains the rules but gives players a big chuck of the gorgeous art within the book to enjoy. Previous games assumed that players would build each of their themes from scratch and offered pre-built concepts as a construction aid. Here, the game leads with archetypes that have most of the themes pre-chosen to make it easier for players coming out of class based fantasy games. There are additional themes too, so if you want to swap out something from the knight archetype to give them some magic, it’s very simple.
The designers also offer a few options when it comes to magic. Most types of magic can be used directly as a theme to keep things pretty straightforward. But the designers also know that many players want different types of magic to feel different so they include a few different schools with different mechanics in the book. This also applies to the “power levels” in the game which tie in to the types of themes players can choose. Game masters could start a low power game by saying only origin themes are available to start or they could kick off something more fantastic by letting a player build a dragon PC and it would still be in line with everyone else’s characters.
The one area where Legend In The Mist shares something with Fate that some might see as a negative is how it handles character development. While using negative tags is rewarded by theme advancement which unlock special moves and abilities, this isn’t a game of linear advancement. Characters grow, themes change and the story moves forward, but if you’re a player that likes to see your dude’s numbers get bigger or your ability list grow, this is not a game where that happens much. I felt my characters grow and develop as we played but I know some folks really like spending XP at the end of the day.
Bottom Line: Legend In The Mist refines a design to handle an underexplored aspect of fantasy gaming.
