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City of Mist: Player's Guide $19.95
Average Rating:4.7 / 5
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City of Mist: Player\'s Guide
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City of Mist: Player's Guide
Publisher: Son of Oak Game Studio
by Joshua W. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/03/2022 11:24:49

Angel's Citadel reviewed this product. You can check out our thoughts here: https://angelscitadel.com/2021/11/12/review-city-of-mist/

TL;DR - Incredibly unique game and one that we want to play in the near future. Fantastic production and value.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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City of Mist: Player's Guide
Publisher: Son of Oak Game Studio
by Terry R. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/12/2021 23:43:16

City of Mist is a beautiful game that I can't wait to have a second edition.

Criticism:

  • The core conceit of City of Mist is that you're in a noir giant city (or neon noir or neo noir or whatever version of noir you want) with a fair bit of mystery but the tone doesn't match. The mechanics do not back up this setting and the entire idea of "group noir" is hard to pull off and is not done here.
  • Players have the ability to help and hinder but no real incentives in doing such.
  • There's constant judgment calls on how many tags can apply and making everything a tag call or a juice call makes the rolls remarkably dull.
  • The power advances offered and small enough to want to keep track of but not interesting enough to want to remember to do advancement.
  • The tag burn and downtime mechanics will vary widely based on how often your group meets and the average length of the setting.
  • The language of film is used but without the step of training the reader how to think like one is in a movie. The idea of a "shot" is straight forward but with the exception of the credits and this framing this notion is not used which makes me wish it hadn't been included. It also demands players have a common cinematic language which won't exist for most people without a large shared background.
  • The nature of the city is too vague which would theoretically make it sandboxy but simply makes it uninteresting.
  • There is no sense of scale to the stories.
  • The milquetoast system used to coming up with various tracks that be habilitated or used are too generic and prove for unsatisfying encounters whether it be combat, wearing down someone to confess or social intrigue.
  • The system manages to take the notion PBtA and add enough cruft to it to make it no longer the remarkably sleek core of PBtA and the move names don't serve to be sufficiently evocative to inform you how to play.

Praises:

  • It is quite pretty.
  • The idea of tags for all things is kind of interesting but is not there yet. It takes the notion of Aspects from Fate and makes them less interesting while creating something a little more variable for what PBtA wants you to roll.
  • That one can be a rift of anything is a fine idea but there's not real way to pin it down which is unsatisfying.

The game is too diffuse. It needed to focus on noir or it needed to go towards a more generic system. As it lay now puts it somewhere that I just find meh.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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Creator Reply:
Thank you for your honest feedback. Like in any game, especially being our debut game, there are things that should be improved and it's good to be reminded of that. Having said that, sometimes a game just isn't for you, and it sounds like this is the case. Many of the points you criticized are actually what most fans of City of Mist say they love about the game, like its narrative focus, flexible setting, cinematic flair, conditions, character progress, etc. It boils down to taste and preferred gameplay style. We are happy to refund your purchase.
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City of Mist: Player's Guide
Publisher: Son of Oak Game Studio
by Patrick H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/28/2020 00:54:04

This is a really great game. It's the one good part of Fate grafted onto the PBtA system and it works perfectly. Honestly this might be my new model for future games, too. It will accommodate any setting that involves magic with basically no changes.

As for the setting, I love the glitzy surface level of it but I'm actually reluctant to dig any deeper. There's a lot going on in the lore expansion books but ... I just don't care? I don't actually want to know, and I say that as a Forever GM. We just play in a Dark City-style Quantum 80s where the cars have fins, everyone wears a trenchcoat, and there's Facebook, but no cell phones. The city is all there is and who cares about the rest?

Really, though, this book is all you need to play the game. There may be good stuff in the others, but they are optional. I recommend trying this out.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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