Myth Struggles to Overwhelm Real Life in City of Mist

Sometimes the mists part in the City and you see monsters behind the mundane. Then mythic power infuses your normal reality, striving to turn you from your normal life into a mythic legend. Can you walk a path between the two extremes while trying to see what is hiding in a City of Mist?

Kickstarted in 2016 by Son of Oak Game Studio City of Mist offers 512 full-color pages of superhero noir investigation and conflict also available in PDF. The action takes place in the City, either a real one or one of the GM’s devising. The characters are normal people and legendary mythic figures combined with both sides fighting to come out on top.

The basic mechanic is 2d6 roll high with 6 or less a failure and various levels of success from 7 up. Added to the roll is Power, the number of tags that can help a character. A character trying to jump across a gap might use the tags beastly athletic and thorny tentacles to add two Power using a beast like ability to jump and tentacles to help reach across and pull.

City of Mist also pits the character’s mundane life, Logos, versus her mythic life, Mythos. Each character picks four themes (Logos and Mythos), with no more than three of each. A character with more Logos is more grounded in real life and one with more Mythos has embraced legendary abilities that make her less than human. The PC, called a Rift, can also see a bit past the Mist which hides monsters and super powers from normal humans.

Throughout the game, each character will see her themes change and experience the pull between the mundane and mythical change. If a character ever gains four themes that are all Logos or all Mythos that player character risks being overwhelmed and lost as a PC.

As the PCs yen and yang through their themes, they also fight other Rifts with conflicting goals. Some Rifts have titanic power, given over completely to Mythos, and are called Avatars. PCs also struggle to unravel the mysteries the Mist itself is hiding and may come into conflict with agents of the Mist.

While many of these themes and conflicts sound lofty, PCs stay grounded by working together on cases. The PCs decide on a Crew theme and determines what the group is trying to achieve. This theme gives additional tags to every PC as well as relationships between PCs.

The GM creates the City and any starting Avatars that might come into conflict with the Crew. To keep things organized, the GM creates Dangers: challenges that have predefined ways to hurt the lead characters and ways that danger can be overcome. Having several Dangers on hand allows the GM to react more quickly to the decisions the Crew makes in pursuit of its goal.

GMs also develop Avatars, someone responsible for countless wrongs who must be stopped at any cost, or someone who directly opposes the crew’s agenda. However, Avatars are never just overpowered challenges; they are a mirror of what could become of the lead characters if they are taken over by their Mythos. Avatars are driven to achieve the goal of their Mythos’ agenda which likely directly or indirectly conflicts with the Crew’s goal.

City of Mist contains so many options, tools, and setting detail that one review cannot possibly cover everything. Despite its size, it is tightly focused on superhero noir violence and mystery in a City of Mist. The game is a treasure trove of beautiful art, comic panels, well developed rules, and an evocative make it your own setting.

This article was contributed by Charles Dunwoody as part of EN World's Columnist (ENWC) program. Please note that Charles is a participant in the OneBookShelf Affiliate Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to DriveThruRPG. We are always on the lookout for freelance columnists! If you have a pitch, please contact us!

 

[ruemere]

I'm about to start my third campaign at the demand of my players. The system splendidly works in the online, as all you need is to share photos of scenes (thank you, Google Street View, thank you Affinity Photo filters, thank you Artbreeder faces, and thank you Google Docs for working so well with character sheets).

Link to a sample character:

Samuel_Jarek

Samuel J. Jones STORY TAGS & STATUSES African-American male, of Yoruban descent, knows Atlo and music that allows to cross barriers, apostle of Oshun I-can-get-back-in-the-ward-4 Infected-1 Lightly-nicked-by-a-bullet-1 Guiding Notes A few minutes of listening to your humming or playing a tun...

docs.google.com

Campaign #1 The characters discovered that there was a conspiracy of mythical underworld beings who wanted to weaponize summoning of ancient versions of deities. The storyline ended with a chaotic Olympic games where most of the conspirators died at the site of Panorama hotel, and some of the PCs had to go into hiding permanently.

Campaign #2 Refreshed set of characters (only two carried over) have a four (nearly five) day long case, during which they follow clues as to why thirteen teenagers went comatose. It's 2-3 Celsius, drizzle and cold, and the hospitals are overwhelmed. The campaign aimed to answer what would have happened if the Covid epidemic was shrouded in the Mist - you have an epidemic, but you are unable to acknowledge it.
Ultimately, I played it down a bit, as the third wave hit at that time, and things became much more serious[*]. The players realized the connection only after the game was almost over. Anyway, there was a Third Commissar of Pestilence on the loose somewhere, and the PCs unmade that particular experiment.

[*] For those who want the details - during the height of various conspiracy theories as to Covid origins, I have brought them together using V is is for going Viral , and gave them a face of one of the Wenshen 瘟神, the Gods of Pestilence (www.chinaknowledge.de)

Campaign #3 is likely to be based on City of Mist: Nights of Payne Town - Son of Oak Game Studio | DriveThruRPG.com

Regards,
Ruemere

 

[Jahydin]

Just got my hands on a copy of this game for cheap. Looks really different from what I usually run!

Anyone here still playing? If so, have any tips for my first few games? Oh, and would running this game for just two characters work?

 

[ruemere]

Since every character has a relatable mundane side, try to get them, the players, to walk you through their typical day during session zero.

I usually try to establish their daily habits (and not just for assassination attempts), like what they eat and whether they eat out, what kind of clothes they purchase and where, whether and how they socialize, do they know or who they know among their neighbors, do they maintain contacts with relatives.

As I said, this is not just for sucker punches, it is also for providing comfort and shelter during darker moments (my campaigns tend to offer noir events).

Otherwise:

• make the players further their own agendas by awarding them questions.
• be epic, be graphic, use Kojima montage shots. This means that a tense scene should open with a perspective that only slowly pans toward a reveal of a scene. That statuses should come with graphic descriptions.
• the game system is built around degeneration spiral. You gain statuses and slowly become weaker. Be careful about not overdoing it.
• if something is vague, wait for a player to define it and then go with it.

 

[RenleyRenfield]

We run lots of City of Mist and feel it is a great game. The simplicity of narration of tags paired with PBTA moves makes for a game that is dramatic and rich.

We made our own version for a Changeling the Lost game using the City of Misty rules. I encourage folks to check it out, it also helps talk through some CoM concepts too. Changeling the Lost (link - its free!)

 

[ruemere]

We run lots of City of Mist and feel it is a great game. The simplicity of narration of tags paired with PBTA moves makes for a game that is dramatic and rich.

We made our own version for a Changeling the Lost game using the City of Misty rules. I encourage folks to check it out, it also helps talk through some CoM concepts too. Changeling the Lost (link - its free!)

Could you share a story of your campaign?

 

[RenleyRenfield]

Could you share a story of your campaign?

In City of Mist =
We decided to merge our Mythos into a group concept of South American myths. So the investigations were based around the way our Mythos was encouraging us to influence the city into a change of culture which would bring ideology back to old-world practices. It started mysterious enough with plots around calendar and astrological events, and then it moved into gang turf warfare which mutated into myths of rituals and rites.

Our Logos sides had to contend with how our families got caught up in the events, how some of them liked the strangely 'noble' changes in gang behaviour, while others were endangered by rites that might have otherwise empowered our character's mythos.

It all ended in a kind of solstice summoning, at least that is kinda how to describe it, not exact though. And we had to choose to drive out, contain, embrace, or go to war with the myth.

My character offered himself up as sacrifice in order to lend power to the other characters opposition of the myth, because his logos was "a good dad" and it was his family that was threatened and falling apart. (both literal and fellow mythos characters).

.....................

For Changeling =
We ran a plot in Rio de Janeiro around concepts of the healthy/unhealthy handling of Fear. The Myth in this case was trying to get people to embrace being fearmongers and spread terror in Rio. Again, this is a very inadequate description, but its some of the plot.

We struggled with the panic it was creating in our mundane lives. But in the end decided to embrace the Myth as it was causing people to become more bold. We found a way to turn their "fear" to "Wren" birds, which then led to the re-instating of a old tradition / holiday where people dressed up in spooky outfits to exchange fun tokens for tickets to a dance where fear was gone and joy and celebration were heralded in.

..........................

For both games the Tags were always at +3 but that didn't matter. The PBTA rules handled the drama, added snowball complications, and let the players address any given situation with any mix of power/magic or mundane that they wanted.

It became more about the narrative description of what you did, and less about some boring feat or attack. And let me tell you - the players were clever! It was far more fun to hear how someone was embracing their Tag of "Bloodlust" to solve a minor plot of hunting the moon-queen than any worry of how many bonuses they got for the roll.