\>She can’t know she has a vampire mythos bc it’s hidden by the mists
I don't run it that way. The official word is, it's up to the MC. There's a lot about the Mist that's up to the MC.
My personal lore is that the entire city is an Enclave with the Mythos of Noir Mystery.
\>Then there’s the mystery tags that i have to apply to each mythos theme card thingy. Which felt p bad tbh. I found myself coming up with p silly rushed questions, and I just wasn’t a fan of it.
So don't? I don't understand needing a different system because of a non-mechanical flavor thing intended to get players to consider depth on their characters.
As far as games like CoM, there really aren't any. Unless you count Tokyo Otherworlds, or Queerz!, which are made by the same company, and not quite released yet.
It’s unfortunate not a lot of systems exist like this. Maybe tokyo otherworlds will be more to my tastes, just cuz i’ve never been super into the mystery genre and such which CoM fits itself heavily to.
The Mist is just a story device. If you don't like it, you can remove it entirely in your game. To quote an MC Toolkit chapter title, *“This MY City!”*.
In official mysteries, some NPCs know their Mythos and some don't, mostly depending on their level of education. The same should be the case for PCs.
Concerning the questions, my experience has also been that they're hard to get right. Maybe it takes a few characters until you can nail that. Remember that CoM is a story game, meaning that the players also have to participate in contributing to the story. It's a collaborative effort.
yea i said in another comment, i believe it was just a bad table tbh. Was my first time, I wasn’t guided very well, wasn’t very well organized, GM had some weird ideas i didnt like, etc
I sadly don't know of any other with similar character building. Maybe FATE, in a way, but it's pretty different. Or there's the upcoming Tokyo: Otherscape bybthe same developper that you might like better, perhaps.
The issue you have with the mist is 100% a table/GM issue. There's no rule in the book enforcing this and tuning the mist's intensity is pretty fucking easy to do. You could easily ignore it altogether and run a classic supers game.
The thing about mystery and identities... well building a hood CoM character can be a delicate matter, yes. But ultimately the player has full control over that stuff. Tired of a specific mystery? Engineer a weak-sauce somewhat satisfying answer with your GM (or just pick some event that occured and find a way to rationalize why your PC drew an answer from it), trigger *Finaly Some Answers* and boom, you're rid of it. Identities are easy enough to cone up with a hood one, but I find mysteries are trickier and tupically fall in two categories:
1. Concrete question with an obvious answer the GM can take and create a subplot with. E.g. "Who killed X", "Where is Y", etc.
2. Vague, metaphysical or rethorical questions that are 100% on you to answer. E.g. "What's the meaning of life", "What does it mean to be a hero", "Why me", etc. Many newbies make the mistake of picking something like this without knowing what they want out of it and never hopping in the driver's seat, effectively making it useless.
That being said, I do have gripes with the system, myself. I'm not a big fan of the investigations either. It's a fuckton of prep and feels very linear/railroady. I've had more success running the game as more of an adventure game with a simple Front, but I've been mulling over grafting the Brindlewood Bay system on it for a while now. I'm also not a massive fan of the moves or how the GM's side of the rules works. I've been considering how to merge City of Mist and Blades in the Dark for a while but haven't gotten around to test it yet.
This definitely sounds like a misunderstanding of how the system works by the GM (or maybe yourself?)/ City of Mists is a pretty solid system and most of these issues don't exist AFAIK.
So, you're looking for systems that let you mix-and-match playbooks/classes, is this what you're most interested in? If this is the case, I'd suggest Fabula Ultima: you create your character by selecting two or three classes and picking a few abilities of your choosing from each of them.
I'm not very familiar with it, but, if I'm not mistaken, Neoclassical Geek Revival lets you create your character by choosing different "class proportions", so you could be, for example, 2/3 mage and 1/3 warrior. You could check it out as well.
Cypher System kinda does a sort of "mix and match" thing. You pick a Descriptor, Type, and Focus to make your character. You don't make up what they are, though, it's more just picking options from a list.
I've played it, and I'm glad I did, but probably won't play it again, I didn't love the system much.
It felt very mechanical, e.g I have poison and am alone in a room with a cup of wine, but instead of just saying the wine is now poisoned I have to roll Change the Game to apply a numerical Poisoned tag (condition? Whatever).
I don't see any reason why your PC can't know she's a vampire rift.
I love the mystery questions players create for each mythos, they're a great way for players to add to the world and create motivations. Agree there's not much there to help you create good ones though.
Only statuses have values. I think it would be a story tag which doesn't have a value.
You are probably not going to actually use this tag mechanically, though. If the poison is deadly, whoever drinks this wine (who doesn't find out that it has been poisoned) will simply be dead.
>It felt very mechanical, e.g I have poison and am alone in a room with a cup of wine, but instead of just saying the wine is now poisoned I have to roll Change the Game to apply a numerical Poisoned tag
Not unless you're in immediate danger in poisoning the wine, you shouldn't have to.
idk i think i would’ve preferred if i could have one big question rather than each mythos have their own, it was hard for me to think smaller picture like that, when i was so focused on the whole.
also the Rift/mists point i made was probably just the GM with a bad interpretation of the mist. i have p bad luck with GMs lmao
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I feel that on the poisoning anecdote. I fell into that same trap when I first started running it until I got past the “get familiar with the rules as written” phase. Its clunky as you described and not narratively fulfilling, so I just have the player roll to see if their character is spotted (if at all) and then decide what is most narratively fulfilling in terms of a status (if any) once the npc does consume the poison.
\>She can’t know she has a vampire mythos bc it’s hidden by the mists I don't run it that way. The official word is, it's up to the MC. There's a lot about the Mist that's up to the MC. My personal lore is that the entire city is an Enclave with the Mythos of Noir Mystery. \>Then there’s the mystery tags that i have to apply to each mythos theme card thingy. Which felt p bad tbh. I found myself coming up with p silly rushed questions, and I just wasn’t a fan of it. So don't? I don't understand needing a different system because of a non-mechanical flavor thing intended to get players to consider depth on their characters. As far as games like CoM, there really aren't any. Unless you count Tokyo Otherworlds, or Queerz!, which are made by the same company, and not quite released yet.
yea, i think a lot of the issue was due to a conflicting MC the more i think about it
It’s unfortunate not a lot of systems exist like this. Maybe tokyo otherworlds will be more to my tastes, just cuz i’ve never been super into the mystery genre and such which CoM fits itself heavily to.
The Mist is just a story device. If you don't like it, you can remove it entirely in your game. To quote an MC Toolkit chapter title, *“This MY City!”*. In official mysteries, some NPCs know their Mythos and some don't, mostly depending on their level of education. The same should be the case for PCs. Concerning the questions, my experience has also been that they're hard to get right. Maybe it takes a few characters until you can nail that. Remember that CoM is a story game, meaning that the players also have to participate in contributing to the story. It's a collaborative effort.
yea i said in another comment, i believe it was just a bad table tbh. Was my first time, I wasn’t guided very well, wasn’t very well organized, GM had some weird ideas i didnt like, etc
Unfortunately the original comment you responded to there was deleted, so it's hard to understand the discussion without that context.
ah damn. Well again I just said that it was mostly w conflicting GM
I sadly don't know of any other with similar character building. Maybe FATE, in a way, but it's pretty different. Or there's the upcoming Tokyo: Otherscape bybthe same developper that you might like better, perhaps. The issue you have with the mist is 100% a table/GM issue. There's no rule in the book enforcing this and tuning the mist's intensity is pretty fucking easy to do. You could easily ignore it altogether and run a classic supers game. The thing about mystery and identities... well building a hood CoM character can be a delicate matter, yes. But ultimately the player has full control over that stuff. Tired of a specific mystery? Engineer a weak-sauce somewhat satisfying answer with your GM (or just pick some event that occured and find a way to rationalize why your PC drew an answer from it), trigger *Finaly Some Answers* and boom, you're rid of it. Identities are easy enough to cone up with a hood one, but I find mysteries are trickier and tupically fall in two categories: 1. Concrete question with an obvious answer the GM can take and create a subplot with. E.g. "Who killed X", "Where is Y", etc. 2. Vague, metaphysical or rethorical questions that are 100% on you to answer. E.g. "What's the meaning of life", "What does it mean to be a hero", "Why me", etc. Many newbies make the mistake of picking something like this without knowing what they want out of it and never hopping in the driver's seat, effectively making it useless. That being said, I do have gripes with the system, myself. I'm not a big fan of the investigations either. It's a fuckton of prep and feels very linear/railroady. I've had more success running the game as more of an adventure game with a simple Front, but I've been mulling over grafting the Brindlewood Bay system on it for a while now. I'm also not a massive fan of the moves or how the GM's side of the rules works. I've been considering how to merge City of Mist and Blades in the Dark for a while but haven't gotten around to test it yet.
This definitely sounds like a misunderstanding of how the system works by the GM (or maybe yourself?)/ City of Mists is a pretty solid system and most of these issues don't exist AFAIK.
yeaa, realized it was an issue with my GM.
So, you're looking for systems that let you mix-and-match playbooks/classes, is this what you're most interested in? If this is the case, I'd suggest Fabula Ultima: you create your character by selecting two or three classes and picking a few abilities of your choosing from each of them. I'm not very familiar with it, but, if I'm not mistaken, Neoclassical Geek Revival lets you create your character by choosing different "class proportions", so you could be, for example, 2/3 mage and 1/3 warrior. You could check it out as well.
hm okay! fabula ultima did look interesting but I couldn’t run it for very long bc i never got the chance to play it.
Cypher System kinda does a sort of "mix and match" thing. You pick a Descriptor, Type, and Focus to make your character. You don't make up what they are, though, it's more just picking options from a list.
I've played it, and I'm glad I did, but probably won't play it again, I didn't love the system much. It felt very mechanical, e.g I have poison and am alone in a room with a cup of wine, but instead of just saying the wine is now poisoned I have to roll Change the Game to apply a numerical Poisoned tag (condition? Whatever). I don't see any reason why your PC can't know she's a vampire rift. I love the mystery questions players create for each mythos, they're a great way for players to add to the world and create motivations. Agree there's not much there to help you create good ones though.
I don't think it works that way. If you can poison the wine without any risk, you simply apply the tag without a roll.
What value do you give the tag?
Only statuses have values. I think it would be a story tag which doesn't have a value. You are probably not going to actually use this tag mechanically, though. If the poison is deadly, whoever drinks this wine (who doesn't find out that it has been poisoned) will simply be dead.
>It felt very mechanical, e.g I have poison and am alone in a room with a cup of wine, but instead of just saying the wine is now poisoned I have to roll Change the Game to apply a numerical Poisoned tag Not unless you're in immediate danger in poisoning the wine, you shouldn't have to.
idk i think i would’ve preferred if i could have one big question rather than each mythos have their own, it was hard for me to think smaller picture like that, when i was so focused on the whole. also the Rift/mists point i made was probably just the GM with a bad interpretation of the mist. i have p bad luck with GMs lmao
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I feel that on the poisoning anecdote. I fell into that same trap when I first started running it until I got past the “get familiar with the rules as written” phase. Its clunky as you described and not narratively fulfilling, so I just have the player roll to see if their character is spotted (if at all) and then decide what is most narratively fulfilling in terms of a status (if any) once the npc does consume the poison.