City of Mist RPG Brings Comic Book Noir Fantasy to Life

Nov 29, 2017

A roleplaying game which looks really interesting arrived on the scene last month from a company I’m not familiar with, Son of Oak Game Studio. Just because I hadn’t heard of the company certainly doesn’t mean City of Mist doesn’t look mighty impressive. Built upon the popular Apocalypse World Engine, City of Mist seems to be perfect for those looking to roleplay their own versions of Bill Willingham’s Fables comic or the TV series Once Upon a Time as the game focuses on mythical characters living right here among us. The core book is huge and so far there’s been quite a lot of supplemental material released already.

About the game:

Hit the rainy streets of an enigmatic metropolis as a modern-day legend in search for the truth. Investigate unsolved cases, uncover the stories of the city residents, and confront the hidden forces pulling the strings from beyond the veil of the Mist. Make hard calls about which aspect of your life to promote and which to neglect; then suffer the consequences. And when it all falls apart, stop holding back and become the unstoppable incarnation of your Mythos…

The City of Mist Core Book contains everything you need to create and run City of Mist stories: rules for creating your own characters and crew, a comprehensive explanation of the roll+tags system, the Mythos & Logos character development rules, and a complete guide for the MC (aka Game Master) including tips on how to orchestrate the drama as well as guidelines and examples for creating cases, characters, locations, and story arcs.

The rulebook design is a homage to super-powered noir graphic novels with six comic strips, full-spread chapter covers, and staggering character and location art back to back.

WHAT’S IN THE BOOK?

Chapter 1: The Lowdown has the inside scoop on the life of a Rift (a player character) and the process of awakening, and describes some of the main City districts, locations, and local Rifts.
Chapter 2: Who Are You? is a guide to the Exposition Session, in which you create your series as a group. It includes the complete character creation system using themebooks (questionnaires), quick character creation with Character Tropes, a system of crew relationships reflected in Help & Hurt points, sample crew themes, and a crew themebook.
Chapter 3: Working the Case is a comprehensive set of player rules, detailing the rules of the conversation, defining the use of tags and statuses as well as resources such as Clues and Juice, expanding on all eight core moves, as well as on four cinematic moves: Voiceover Monologue, Flashback, Montage, and Geek Out During Credits.
Chapter 4: Moments of Truth describes the game’s character and crew development system, including Mystery and Identity rules, Moments of Evolution, Nemeses, expanded Avatar and Sleeper (“Denying the Beyond”) rules, and three extra theme types: Ally, Base of Operations, and Ride.
Chapter 5: Behind the Scenes is a detailed breakdown of the MC’s roles, a step-by-step guide on how to run sessions including a variety of tools to help make your game cinematic, and an in-depth walkthrough for creating your own cases and designing your series based on the Iceberg model.
Chapter 6: This is MY City! is a comprehensive guide to Avatars and their operations and includes Avatar profiles, rules for creating and handling Dangers with a Danger Profile directory containing ready-to-use Dangers, and a special section on creating and using custom moves with templates and ready-to-use moves.
Throughout the book: a host of colorful examples for every rule and a range of optional rules to allow you to adjust the game to your group’s needs, with a specific emphasis on controlling the challenge level of your game.

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Jeff McAleer

Founder/Editor-in-chief of The Gaming Gang website and host of The Gaming Gang Dispatch and other TGG media, Jeff tackles any and all sorts of games but has a special fondness for strategy, conflict sims, and roleplaying games. Plus, he's certainly never at a loss for an opinion...