I was wondering if anybody out there has run City of Mist.

I was wondering if anybody out there has run City of Mist.

I was wondering if anybody out there has run City of Mist. I have some questions that I need answered before I run a game of this next week.

1.) Mythos power tags don’t seem any different than the Logos power tags. For example what does “Super Speed” mean for Flicker other than just giving her a +1 in a situation that being quick would help her?

2.) On one podcast (One Shot), somebody who was playing L’Estrange said that “Mysterious reality bending” stated that it was the ability to open a door and travel to a different destination. I don’t see anything in the quickstart guide regarding this or other powers.

3.) What status level do the character inflict? If it is based strictly on the power tags then it seems like characters like most characters it will be one or two.

38 thoughts on “I was wondering if anybody out there has run City of Mist.”

  3. I don’t know enough about CoM to answer fully, but all your questions hinge on understanding fictional positioning.

    I said recently regarding Dungeon World that there are no rules that say a knife can cut through a rope – it is simply obvious in the fiction when it needs to be done.

    The same applies to all fictional positioning and it changes based on your play group. Maybe at my table super speed allows the character to run a mile in one second, but at yours, it’s simply inhuman reflexes and reaction time.

  4. I don’t think we are talking about the same thing. For CoM you get bonuses to your rolls based on the number of tags you can use. They have a direct mechanical bonus.

  7. If I’m being shot at, point blank range, an MC could make a spot on 100% solid case that “Quick” won’t give me a +1. Being “Quick” doesn’t matter if someone has their gun pointed at my face and they have me dead to rights. You’re not too “Quick” for a bullet to perforate.

    “Super-speed,” though, is a completely different kettle of fictional fish. Maybe I get to roll with a +1. Maybe I get to roll with a +2 because the MC says “okay, well, if you have super-speed then maybe being quick does matter — but literally only because of the powers you have.” Maybe I succeed on the roll and I’m not shot. Maybe I don’t succeed on the roll… but because in the fiction I was using Super-Speed, I’m not taking a “Shot Through The Face 5” Condition.

  8. So, for this particular example, there’s going to be cases where being fast isn’t good enough to get you a bonus whereas having Super Speed will. On top, it may allow you to attempt a move in situations where mundane fast wouldn’t – catching up with an enemy on a rocket, for example.

    As for L’Estrange tags, I assume that’s something the group has decided that tag means, rather than something they’ve read in the quickstart. Could be wrong though!

  9. So…maybe take a “Rattle by the close call” condition?

    Some Tags like L’Estrange’s “Mysterious Reality Bending” seems to be universal in its application. There really doesn’t seem to be any narrative guidance to powers like this.

    Also, what determines the amount “tier damage” inflicted by the PC?

  11. Yeah! A Rattled condition would be great to represent a missed roll where, fictionally, you shouldn’t have been physically hurt despite the dice.

    Tier of a Status is based on Power, and Power is defined as “# of tags that apply”

  13. The Declan ‘open a door thing’ is clearly based on the flavor text on the Declan pre-gen, where it specifically says sometimes he will open a door in his house and find himself elsewhere. The podcast used that as inspiration for how to use Declan’s powers.

  14. The problem as I see it, is that the characters would be way underpowered if Power=#tags. Consider the Aware Private Investigator (p. 66) whose pistol does “badly-injured-3). Then look at Exalibur whose Tag is “Can transform to any weapon”. If she is in a fight and the only thing that seems to apply is only that tag, she only has a Tier of 1?

    Mitosis on the other hand seems like he can easy and consistently tag 3 all the time.

    Lets say there are no tags that fit and you succeed…does that mean it does no Tier damage?

  17. I am not being snarky…but if all a player ever does is tier 1….it may take at least 7 success before taking out an NPC, a normal person…not a super powered…and they can take you out in like maybe 2.

  19. So, here’s a thing: NPCs don’t all have the same Spectrum that the PCs have, right? Its there in the rules. PCs have a Spectrum of 5, but not everybody else. If you look at the Demons at Cross End case, the rank and file mook enemies have a Spectrum of 2, while the big bosses — for a game about teams remember, the PCs are a team — have Spectrums of 4 or 5 or 6 for the biggest motherfucker.

    So, the PCs are big damn heroes, so they take lots of damage. Everybody else? Not so much. Even your Aware Investigator has a Hurt spectrum of just 2. That means two hits from a Power-1 attack (or just one if you select to bump up your Tier on Toe-to-Toe) and bam the Investigator is done and gone. Vice versa, you’re mistaken about “take you out in 2” and I would suggest re-reading how Statuses work. Two equal Statuses bump up, and then it gets weird. If I get hit with Badly Injured 3 twice, it becomes Badly Injured 4. Then, I would need to take Badly Injured 3 four more times before I hit Fucked Up 5.

    But, back to punching NPCs. Lets say we’re going up against Proximo instead with a Hurt Spectrum of 4. That is more serious, he’s twice as tough — roughly — as the Investigator. So, Excalibur needs to be smart about this. She’s got her weapon, so that’s Power 1. And if she can meet him in a social setting, she can probably use the fact that her weapon is Inconspicuous to get the drop on him. That’s Power 2. If she can appeal to Proximo with her Glamorous that would help, but an MC will probably correctly rule “hey, whoa whoa, that doesn’t really work for an attack? Like, glamorous is great, but that’s not going to make you stab better?”

    So that’s why we make Statuses with Change the Game. Maybe the way this meet up happens is, being a wealthy woman, Excalibur tries to arrange a meet to pretend to offer Proximo a job. See, Excalibur isn’t a fighty character. But she has other ways of getting what she wants. If she does want to hurt the guy, we could argue for her putting the guy at ease with her Seasoned Negotiation, her Glamorousness, her Cushy Bank Accounts, and her Powerful Friends if she is like offering him this really great deal to come work for her or whatever. Then suddenly we’re rolling with Power of 4 in this scenario, and if it goes well we dump all 4 of our Juice into an Unsuspecting 4 Status! Then, when we launch our attack from surprise… WHAMMO! Shapeshifting Weapon, Inconspicuous, and our Unsuspecting Status for Power of 6!

    If Excalibur can lure this guy in, get him to listen, make her deal, line up her allies to back her play, offer some cash money, play it cool, and get close to him, she can destroy him in one hit. Which… sounds so very right? Like, I just described a really solid night of gameplay right there. She’s not a fighter, she won’t be destroying people in one on one combat, that’s not her thing. She’s the socialite character, and she has to play the social game.

  20. But hey, why stack up so many numbers to murderize someone when you’re a socialite who believes in social change, yeah? That’s a lot of work to build up to murder when murder isn’t your thing.

    Proximo also has a Spectrum for being Threatened, and that is a much easier Spectrum to tackle. His Threatened Spectrum is only a 2, but he’s an army demolitions guy with Mythos powers… finding a way to threaten him will probably be pretty tricky, yeah? Like, Mitosis might be able to threaten him, but that depends on getting him to not disappear with illusions and probably not being armed, yeah? So, again, similar scenario above, Excalibur puts the pieces in place to lure Proximo in like she’s offering a job.

    But instead, in this scenario, she’s done her homework. She’s Investigated and she knows things about Proximo, and she leverages that dirt to go Toe-to-Toe (I mean, it could be the Threaten move, obvs, but maybe the MC rules “nah, Proximo isn’t going to take this lying down. You’re going to be scary but he’s gonna be scary right the fuck back, lady”). So, you’ve got your Negotiator, and you’ve got Tough as Nails while trying to intimidate this mad bomber. Maybe your Friends in High Places is how you’re threatening this guy, so there’s them too. Thats rolling +3 with a Power of 3. Even if you drop that last one, its +2 with a Power of 2. Either of those will knock out Proximo if you roll well, by damaging his Threatened Spectrum, where he’s weaker.

    Meanwhile, you could also always Burn a Tag and take a flat +3 from it, without setting up any other circumstances.

    Finally, on the ‘what if my power is 0?’ front: Page 20 of the PDF, the minimum benefit from a roll is always 1, even if your Power is 0. So rolling+0 to hit someone and succeeding makes a Tier 1 Status. Doing so a second time would be a second Tier 1 Status, which would roll up to a Tier 2 Status. This means someone with no tags that support violence could still punch out an investigator on two solid, good rolls.

  24. Ok…I think I mostly got it. Juice is one thing I haven’t read up on. I think the problem I was having with Excalibur was the name seemed kinda “fighty” and having the power she does, I made some assumptions (as well as for other characters)

    I think having a write-up on combat (social/physical) like you described here would be a good thing for people.

    I am rather excited about running this game am may take a bit for my players and it to grok it.

  26. Yeah, I don’t think City of Mist is going to be instantly transparent when it hits the table. Unlike other PbtA games, it has a lot more going on: Tags, Weaknesses, Spectrums, Statuses, Juice… I think with time and patience it will run just fine, but it will take some reading and careful consideration of the rules to make it sing.

  27. Aaron, I have run Dungeon World a few times and I do get the general stuff….but still not overly experienced.

    I agree that it would probably be wise to wait on this, but since I just plan to run the one adventure and the art looks so great – I am throw caution to the wind.!

  28. OK…new question. Let suppose The Beasts do a Buried-2 or The Stag Head does an (Entangled-4)

    It seems like the examples in the rules kinda state using tags as modifiers to rolls. Would it make sense to use the Tag to be something that needed to be overcome – at the level it represents? For example, lets say Excalibur is hit with Buried-2 …so she and/or her teammates need to do 2 tiers to free her?

  29. Yeah, the Statuses are also fictional things. If you’re buried, you’re buried! If you’re entangled, you’re entangled! You can’t fictionally do anything that is prevented by those things being true. There’s a little bit of Fate Core at work in City of Mist. So, yes, having players overcome these obstacles is 100% valid. I’m blanking on how exactly one would deal with this kind of obstacle, but I’ll check back in

  31. I’ve run my first City of Mist game with zero experience in PbtA and it went very smoothly. No need to worry. If you’re running V is for Going Viral, that is, because that’s a pretty easy scenario to run. Demons in Cross End, the Halloween scenario is great, but it’s also 10 times as much text. I’ve played it 2 times and couldn’t finish it in one session. It’s a very cool scenario, but if you are looking to start with City of Mist, my suggestion would be V is for Going Viral.

    1) Power tags mean the same mechanically, yes, but they give you an easy way to describe what your character actually does. Flicker and Excalibur could be looking for something around town. Excalibur could gather people up to look for it while Flicker just zips around the street all by herself. Both do an investigation move.

    It will not only tell you what they do to achieve their goal, it will also tell you what might happen when they fail.

    It will also give you an idea of what happens when they decide to burn a tag. Flicker might just drain herself and need some rest, Excalibur calls in too many favors at once and people won’t talk to her for a while.

    2) It’s in the description of the power. I’ve had a couple of players play Declan now, each one very different. One of them, for example, cured an infection by grabbing a random syringe and jabbing it into another character’s arm, because “well, this is how it works in dreams”. And it worked. You can easily let your players run a bit wild in this game.

    3) Yes, Power = Status-tier.

    Remember that the statuses you add to the roll don’t only affect the dice result but get directly added to your power. It’s easy to misread that in the description. So when you have 2 power tags, 1 weakness tag and a status-3 to add to a roll, you’ll have a power of 2-1+3=4. That can knock out a lot already. If you “hit with all you’ve got”, one option is to add one tier to the status you inflict.

    I’ve had Kitsune inflict an Eviscerated-6 status in one move.

    Excalibur is pretty weak in combat, but she’s a social powerhouse. Don’t underestimate that. In one game I ran, Excalibur took out Vector by talking her down and convincing her to let the people under her control go. That was a “convinced-5” status.

    Another Excalibur called the authorities in on a scene and we handled that as a “hit with all you’ve got”. She basically used all her social tags to attack. Works brilliantly.

    The game allows you to think outside the box quite a bit. Sometimes it’s not easy, but once you get the hang of it (I’m still struggling in parts) it works great.

    Excalibur is also a case of a character with vastly opposite mythos and logos themes. When you look at Mitosis, he’s made for combat. Excalibur not so much, and her mythos doesn’t really help with negotiations. Well, not always. But I find that characters with opposing mythos and logos are quite interesting, so she’s got that going for her.

    When it comes to attacks, “change the game” is a very important move. You can set your teammates up with additional statuses and tags in order to be able to hit better. Keep in mind that only the biggest positive status counts, so having a mix of statuses and tags in the game is quite important.

    There’s also a community for City of Mist:

    https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/113924020257745727937
    I’ve posted a few write-ups of my V is for Going Viral as well as a few other things. The creator of the game is also active in the community, so you can get direct help, if needed.

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