City of Mist Role-Playing Game Core Book Hardcover – January 1, 2017

TLDR: Amazing quality throughout, physical , mechanical and setting. The tips given to create your campaigns are a MUST read for any GM even if you dont intend to play this setting or use the rules, they are THAT good.First the book is HUGE, easily the biggest rpg book i own (not a bad thing), print quality is superb (defiantly the highest quality i have come across), thick paper stock, the ink used produces incredible depth of colour and makes all of the artwork pop.The artwork is astonishing as a hobbyist illustrator i find them incredibly evocative an in all honestly my favourite artwork in all my rpg books (yes even pathfinder), if they keep the artist through all supplements they would make me a very happy bunny.The layout is well thought out and approaches each mechanic and piece of lore in their own section, making for very quick reference and continuity so no annoying backtracking to find the rule to the sub-rule you just read.The mechanics are powered by the apocalypse but have a beautiful mix of fate tags injected in, for example if i had a sniper rifle and my mythos was the spirit of air i could add both those tags to my roll making my 2d6 a 2d6 +2. (tags can also be negative)this adds to the 2d6 system with a narrative grounding, making your decisions and your character mean something rather than "i have a +2 sniper rifle" so you advance WITH the narrative.Talking about narrative, the balance between your mythos (supernatural) and Logos (Normal everyday needs and personality / work etc) is something normally hand waved/ straight up ignored in rpgs ...but in city of mist it has effects, you delve to far into your mythos? you begin to loose your humanity, becoming more and more a pawn for your mythos agenda, but swing the other way and you being to loose connection to your mythos, until you become a "sleeper" again (the games term for people who are oblivious to the supernatural elements hidden by the almost sentient mist)The setting is evocative and full of scope, want to play American gods? done. Want to play as fairytales trapped in in our world? done. Want a horror esc game where dark myths are real? done. these are all options within the scope of the rules.The pre-made NPCs are so good that i will be using them in other systems too, Alice (in wonderland) is my favourite, followed close behind by Hades and Cerberus ...Cerberus is shown as three dogs being walked by a spectral dog walker! how awesome is that!The City is referenced as "The City" and they promote the use of this as the main name, giving an aura of mystery to the setting, though they provide ideas if you want to use real cities.The tips to great GMing can be used in any game, for example the IceBerg method of creating a campaign (and interesting NPCs) is pure genius and everyone should read this. Even if this is the only bit of the book you will read, this is well worth the money.Originally (even if i had the money) i was hesitant to buy this, but i can honestly say that if i had bought this i would be more than happy with the purchase.Just the NPCs present by the book will keep my campagin going for a VERY long time and the freedom to create any fairytale/myth/embodiment based character you can think of will keep me coming back to this system again and again.In all honesty, the only thing i dislike about this product is that it's only available via amazon.com and i live in the UK!Phenomenal product and if Son of Oak keep this quality up, I will be buying all their products and they will easily rocket to my favourite Game studio EVER. (i'm struggling to say that they are not already)[I will update this review once my players have had a couple of sessions with it, so i can give their opinions from a player's perspective.

This book is not what I expected at all—in a good way.When I first received my package, I was confused about how big it was. I knew that the final product was somewhere around 500 pages, but I didn’t expect the thick book cover which envelops itself around the large paper. It’s a huge book and it has a LOT of content to it.The first thing to note is that the book contains a series of easy to understand rules for a robust, complex system. As a person who is new to tabletop roleplaying games, even I am able to pick it up and understand the content that the book holds. Unlike other roleplaying games, City of Mist isn’t as concerned with numbers or stats (as characters in your City of Mist campaigns don’t have those). Almost like realist fiction, City of Mist is more concerned with what happens between characters and interactions between characters as well as NPC’s. From my own understanding, the system is based off of another system, but you don’t really need to have knowledge of the system that City of Mist is based off of to start your own adventures with this one.Not only is the narrative of story telling important to the overall campaign setting, but the book does a great job of narrating its own stories in the text and in the form of small comics sometimes present in the pages of the book. Not only are the comics examples of how one might set up their own adventures, they are also beautifully detailed and well thought-out constructions of how hypothetical situations in City of Mist might go down.What I really enjoy about the book is the fact that the rules are extremely flexible. Some systems are extremely rigid in their production of the rules, but I imagine that, with City of Mist, one might be able to create something that, maybe, doesn’t fit within the confines of the book by just bending the rules a little bit. For example, I know that the book deals with the concepts of being a detective or working towards an omniscient goal in a city of some kind, but I could also see this system be used for other types of stories that might not fit into an urban style. Because of this, I really want to commend the flexibility of the system.As other people have noted, the book itself is also beautiful. The colors on the cover show care and prowess to the design of the rest of the work and, because of how heavy it is, I wonder if I might also be able to use it as a book for my coffee table (probably not, because I’ve been intensely reading and annotating the heck out of the book with sticky notes, but still).Everything is ordered in a very systematic way and the separate sections on building your own City of Mist and characters are extremely easily to follow and important aspects of how a roleplaying system works. Some systems have a hard time conveying that message to readers and role-players who are just starting out, but everything from the simple character sheet to the complex examples allows for readers to engage with the text, even if they are new to roleplaying.I feel like a sleeper who has been awoken.

Reading rulebooks for roleplaying games often feels like reading instruction manuals. This book however was different for me for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, the concept of the game (investigating supernatural crimes with deep, multifaceted characters) really clicked with me. It’s different than most traditional RPGs, even than most games that use a similar rules engine (Powered by the Apocalypse). What sets the game apart is it’s clear focus on cinematic gameplay and style. The rules are there to facilitate this kind of gameplay but do not get in the way of the story. Some other highlights of the game that stood out to me positively:- Written clear and also entertaining to read- Great sense of cinematic action and drama provided through the setting description and game mechanics- Beautiful & clear layout with unique comic book style illustration and a neon-noir theme throughout the whole book- Lots of examples that help understand the somewhat abstract Pbta-styled rules- A lot of thought went into campaign play, with a focus on deep character interaction and developmentThe game is simply fun to play. The rules don’t get in the way of the action. The author seems to have had a very clear vision in mind of what kind of game he wanted to write. That shows in so many ways: The rules, the layout of the book, the backstory of the setting. I really enjoyed my first sessions of City of Mist.Only „negatives“ I could name: No pregenerated characters in the corebook. There are a bunch on the official website but it would have been nice to have at least four or five in the book. Also, there is no example case (adventure) - there are two on the creator’s website for free. Those things aren