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gorgonarcher · 5 months ago

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13th Game - City of Mist

All right, time to get to the third of my four favorite games. (The last is Monster of the Week and will likely do that one late this year or early next year because there's a thing I'm waiting for).

(and just so it is the picture in the thumbnail, here's a City of Heroes made picture for this character)

So, City of Mist is a game of noir superheroes takes place in a city where people are empowered by connections to a story. This story can be any sort of thing ranging ancient myths to comic books to overall concepts. As some examples, here are some other characters I've made or seen in games:

Arachnae

Arthur Dent

The concept of names

Count of Monte Cristo

Dracula

D&D Cleric

D&D Wizard

East India Trading Company

Echidna

Euryale

Evangeline A.K. McDowell

Evil Queen

Frankenstein

Gamemaster

Lamastu

Lilith

Mathematics

Medusa

Movie Monsters

Orpheus

Perseus

Peter Pan

Pompei (the volcano)

Puppet Master

Stheno

Tengu Swordmaster

In any case, the characters will have a combination of a Mythos, the supernatural aspect that gives them power, and a Logos, their day to day normal life. Though "normal" here is relative because you could be a "vigilante" or "lab test subject" as easily as "housewife" or "fire fighter". The only thing is that it is something that we could reasonably see being a situation that someone would be in, in the real world.

From there, you choose four themebooks. There are Logos and Mythos themebooks and you need at least one of each. So you would have one of these combinations:

Touched: 3 Logos, 1 Mythos

Borderliner: 2 Logos, 2 Mythos

Legendary: 1 Logos, 3 Mythos

Within the narrative, a Legendary character is substantially more powerful than a Borderliner or Touched character, but gameplay wise all three are balanced in the amount of bonuses they can get to rolls. As explained here:

Each of the four themebooks represent major character themes. Perhaps you have a signature piece of gear, that would be Possessions themebook for mundane gear like a sports car or a Relic for a magic weapon. You might have a formative event from your past. That's a Defining Event. If you have powers to alter the world around you, that's Expression. So on and so forth.

Step One: Concept

So, to start with, I've done a build of this before, and that was Yuri Ayler, a competitive archer whose sister had died recently. I don't want to re-use that because it will prevent me from actually thinking through the idea. So I'm going to make a new character and I'm going to name her Steffani Noel. She goes by Stef.

Now, for her mythos, the obvious choice would be Stheno, given the name. But we're not required to do that. We could have Stef's mythos be Stheno specifically, Gorgons in a more general sense, or even the specific gorgon of a different story like Clash of the Titans.

In this case, I think I am going to say her Mythos is the idea of Gorgons in general rather than any specific one.

So now, let's consider the Logos. Let's think of some real world roles or occupations that could work with the idea of an archer. Yuri Ayler was a competitive sport archer, which is an option, of course, but I want to do something a bit different. City of Mist also mostly takes place within an urban environment, but there's accounting for having nearby semi-rural areas. So park ranger isn't completely out of bounds, but feels a bit meh. What I think I'm going to do is have her as a sporting goods store owner.

So that presents the following:

Name: Steffani "Stef" Noel

Mythos: Gorgon

Logos: Store Owner

Step Two: Themebooks

Now, we have to choose four themebooks. The options are as follows (themebooks from the Shadows and Showdowns supplement are marked as such):

Mythos

Bastion - Defensive powers

Divination - Sensory powers

Expression - Alter the world

Mobility - Movement powers

Subversion - Stealth powers

Adaptation - versatile powers

Relic - magical artifact

Conjuration (S&S) - summon creatures

Destiny (S&S) - Luck, fate, curses, prophecies, etc

Enclave (S&S) - Magical location

Familiar (S&S) - Magical companion

Logos

Defining Event - Formative event or experience

Defining Relationship - Mundane relationship

Mission - A chosen duty and drive

Personality - Manner of behavior

Possessions - Signature items

Routine - A set sequence you engage in regularly

Training - Skills you have acquired

Struggle (S&S) - Personal adversity

Turf (S&S) - mundane domain or reputation

I think Stef is going to be a borderliner. So, two of each. I'm actually going to make her a very locational based hero and give her both Turf and Enclave. Yuri didn't have the gaze, but in this case I think I will go for that and give Stef an Expression. For the fourth themebook, I'm going to go with Defining Event.

So now, we complete each of the Themebooks answering certain questions associated with each book. So, for each Themebook we're going to have the following:

One title for the theme.

One Concept which doesn't have much mechanics but forms a guideline for what makes sense for you to be able to do with that theme.

One Identity/Mystery, a statement of self that anchors you to your life or a question that drives you. Mythos themes get Mysteries, Logos themes get Identities.

Three Power Tag questions

One Weakness Question

A relationship with one of the other crew members.

In addition, we will choose one Theme to get an extra Power Tag and extra Weakness.

For the purposes of showing the History, we're going to give her four Crew members, one for each theme. This is a fairly large group to play this game with those. Anyway, that Crew will be:

Maxine Itami - Rift of the First Person Shooter and Online Gamer

Kylie Swift - Rift of the Banshee and Street Musician

Ada Sainz - Rift of the Hell Hound and Veterinarian

Mika Lala - Rift of Blahaj and Therapist

I'll explain the mechanics of Tags and Weaknesses after character creation.

Step Three - Use the Themebooks to choose theme components

So, we're going to start with the Logos themes.

Logos Theme - Turf

So, the themebook gives some basic questions to help inspire you about your concept for a themebook. I'm not sure I really need them and they don't particularly have mechanics attached, but I'll look through them anyway to see if it gives some ideas. Rather, there's a single question and three example answers.

The question is "What is your Domain?" and the answer is going to be a variation of "I am the head honcho at _________". And we're going to use the name of the shop as the title of the Turf.

Let's see, the mythical Python was a great serpent associated with oracles and a child of Gaea. They laired at Delphi and were slain by Apollo who set up his own oracle at Delphi.

So, we're going to go with "Gaea's Girl - Sporting Supplies". With a concept of "independently owned sporting good shop."

For the Identity, we can't just say what the Turf is, we have to make a statement about our relationship to it. Ambitions for its future, strong emotions attached to it, or other sorts of statements that can be threatened in game play. I'm going to say "This was Mother's gift to me and I'll make her proud." So, I'm going to say that her mother funded her to buy the land and building for her shop.

So, now we get to Power Tag and Weakness questions. Each Theme has ten possible Power Tag questions and four Weakness questions. Of these, we will answer the question marked with the letter A and choose two other questions and then we will choose one of the four weakness questions.

So for Power Tags, I'm choosing the following questions. (Again, question A is mandatory.

A: What area or domain do you control?

D: Who in your turf follows your orders?

I: What advantage do you have over your competition in your Turf

And for the Weakness, I'm going with:

B: What negative behavior or quality did you develop in your role as leader?

So, the answers should short statements, things that can be easily quoted as a catch phrase, or easily worked into a narrative description. And I'm going with the following.

Power Tags:

A: shop full of sporting gear

D: enthusiastic and well-paid team

I: loyal customer base

So, if she has a need for rope, tents, pitons, ammunition, or anything in that vein. She can get it easy enough from her own shop. Her employees are friendly and well-paid, so they are eager to be there. Finally, she has a lot of repeat customers and they lead on to other customers via word of mouth.

Weakness:

B: "No time to relax."

I envision that Stef puts everything she has into her business. She's probably the sort of owner that will cut her own pay rather than that of her employees and she probably doesn't delegate nearly as much work as she should.

Now Crew Relationships will provide either a Hurt or a Help related to the named Crew member. A Hurt is used to give a crew member a -1 to a roll while a Help is used to give them a +1. As a note, there are times when you can use a Hurt to prevent a crew member from doing something that you think will be bad from them in the long run. And you can use Help to push enable them along a self-destructive path. But these do generally represent lingering emotions between the two of you.

For this case I'm going with

"You once caught one of them operating in your turf. Tell them what you said. If they complied, take a Help point on them. If they ignored you, take a Hurt point on them."

What I think happened is she caught Kylie Swift busking outside her store and asked her to not do it so close to the entrances. However, Kylie refused to do it. Stef didn't want to resort to trespassing her team mate, and people have started to chuckle at or ignore the repeated low-stake arguments between the two. So Kylie continues to busk there and the result is a Hurt on Kylie.

Now we do the same for the other three themes.

Logos Theme - Defining Event

The inspiration question here is "What happened to you that changed your life forever?" So, what I'm going to say here is that her shop was robbed by a man with a couple of thugs with a gun and a Molotov cocktail. When the cocktail was thrown at one of her employees she moved to shove them out of the way and was badly burned as a result.

Title: Robbery and Arson

Concept: I was burned in an attempted robbery.

Identity: I'd do anything to protect my people.

Now for the Power Tag questions I want to answer:

A: What kind of strong emotion did your defining event leave you with?

F: What skill or mundane ability did you pick up during or due to your defining event?

H: What approach to life did you adopt following your defining event?

Next, the Weakness question:

D: What is now broken within you, physically or mentally, due to your defining event?

And the answers to the Power tags will be:

A: fierce rage and protectiveness

F: mastered the bow

H: "I can't let them down."

The whole event set a cold, snake-like fury into her veins. She will protect her people and her territory as much as she can. To do this, she picked up the bow, figuring it was a quiet weapon that was less regulated than guns. Finally, she has burdened herself with the need to make sure she lives up to the expectations of her family, employees, and customers... even if some of those expectations are ones she decided they should have of her.

Finally, the Weakness answer:

D: severe burn scars

Stef's face and body was severely burned, which comes with occasional spikes of pain and a decidedly shocking appearance that new people aren't used to.

For Stef's crew relationship here, I'm going to go with the following question:

"One of them is trying to help you (or make you) get over your defining event and move on. If you appreciate it, take a Help point on them. If you resent it, take a Hurt point on them."

I'm going to say that Mika has been trying to be there for Stef and be someone to listen to. She provides counter points to some of Stef's most self-destructive arguments and thoughts on the matter and is basically trying to slowly chip away at the damage. Stef appreciates this and thus she takes Help on Mika.

Mythos Theme - Expression

So, where as Logos themes get an Identity that anchors things to the character's non-supernatural life, the Mythos has a Mystery which is a question that drives them forward into adventure. The Expression theme is all about how the character's supernatural power influences the world around them. This can include things like mind control, weather control, super strength, fire powers, or anything of the like.

The inspiration question is "What change does your Mythos wish to effect in the world?"

The phrasing of that is important. It is unclear what exactly the Mythos is. Possibilities include:

The truth of a supernatural being that has forgotten who they are.

The influence of an entity reliving itself through a human.

A metaphysical modeling of powers via a familiar tale.

The game calls the heroes "Rifts" but notes that the term is mostly for game-mechanic purposes, to have something in text to refer to, and that in-universe there's no common term that all the Rifts go by. Some Rifts have never even heard of the story they gain power from, while for others it is a well known story they have long thought about.

What is consistent is that the Mythos is more about repeating its story than about seeking the goals of the beings in that story. As such letting the Mythos rampant and override the Logos, called becoming an Avatar, is never something you want to last very wrong. An Avatar has lost connection to humanity and it will do everything to recreate its story on an epic scale. A Rift of a legendarily kind entity still becomes a monstrous danger because the Mythos doesn't have the entity's morals... it just wants to repeat the rehash the story.

So, how does the Gorgon wish to change the world? Let's say the Gorgon wants to punish everyone for her suffering.

That said, let's look at this:

Title: Gorgon's Gaze

Concept: The gorgon seeks to punish the world for her suffering.

Mystery: Why did this happen to me?

For the Power Tag Questions:

A: What is the most common way you use your Mythos to affect the world?

G: What additional expression, not necessarily related to the main one, does your mythos have?

J: How can you use your power to shield yourself, especially from similar effects?

And the Weakness:

A: What situations or conditions weaken or suppress your Mythos' Expressions

The Power Tag answers will be:

A: petrifying gaze

G: vipers for hair

J: bulwark of rage

So, of course, the primary expression is her ability to turn people to stone with a look, but she also has vipers for hair which she could attack with or use to spot trouble coming. Most people wouldn't notice the snakes because the Mist hides the supernatural aspects of the world from most people. Finally, she is protected by the vast amount of rage she now harbors in her heart. This makes it especially difficult to affect her with emotional attacks or to stop her through mere pain.

With the Weakness answer being:

A: They have to see me.

Unfortunately, if someone can't see her, they're not going to be affected by her gaze. They can still be bitten by the snakes, but a significant portion of her power has been avoided by people that can't see her.

Crew Relationships for Mythos themes talk about how the two crew members have interacted with or relate to each other's powers and Mythoi. Perhaps one Mythoi feels a kinship or suspicion with another. Perhaps one Rift has helped you protect or deal with your supernatural abilities. For this I'm going with the following question:

"To your Mythos, one of them seems like the modern-day version of a character in its legend. If they were your foe in the legend, take a Hurt point on them. If they were your ally or loved one, or if you were their rescuer, take a Help point on them."

I'm going to say that they have mixed feelings about Maxine Itami, they recognize Maxine's past and near death experience is similar to their own situation with the robbery. However, the Gorgon part of her (assuming it is part of her and not an eldritch other) looks at Maxine and is reminded of the various adventurers that come to their lair to slay the monster. So, she takes a Hurt on Maxine.

Mythos Theme - Enclave

The inspiring question for this is going to be "What location serves an important role in your mythos?" In this case I'm going to say it's a Statuary Garden full of the trophies of past victories and places to hide and ambush foes. As we want Stef to be a hero, I'm ambivalent on having the garden fell of actual petrified enemies. It could be that a representative trophy is made when a victory occurs. On the other hand, this game tends to be on the gritty side, so she might very well store the statues of people she found too dangerous to let live.

It's important to remember that every hero in City of Mist has the seeds to become a villain.

So, for the concept section:

Title: Statuary Garden

Concept: A place that carries reminders of pain and conflict.

Mystery: "How can I bring life to this ruin?"

So now we go to the Power Tag questions:

A: What or where is your Enclave?

C: How can you access your Enclave quickly, discreetly, etc?

J: What item, skill, or quality do you keep when you leave the Enclave?

With the Weakness question of:

B: What happens when you've spent too long in your Enclave?

The answers for the power tags are as follows:

A: ruin of dark shadows and terror

C: walk through lonely places

J: instinct for stalking

The statuary garden is a lonely place that appears to have been abandoned for centuries and allowed to become overgrown and falling apart. There are statues of people and animals in poses of terror all over the place. Stef can access the garden, or lead people to it, by walking through lonely areas, like an abandoned building, or an unknown alleyway. She probably has a basement storage mostly forgotten about in her shop that she can use to reach it as well. This means that if she plans her route, then she can lead enemies into the garden for a battle. Finally, she has learned how to stalk enemies through her time in the garden.

Finally the Weakness answer comes as follows:

B: depression and self-loathing

The garden as it currently exists is a place of death and destruction and does nothing to remind Stef of anything good about her life. Staying too long in the garden will deepen the negative ways she views herself. Especially as her Mystery drives her to find out how she can bring life to the place again and make it something different.

For the crew relationship question I'm choosing to answer

"When your Enclave was in danger of being discovered or damaged, one of them stepped up to cover for your or had your back. Take a Help point on them."

I'm going to say it was Ada Sainz and say that in an early case when some thugs managed to get into the Garden somehow while Stef was busy, Ada followed and took care of them.

Extra Tags

Now we come to one Theme that will get an extra Power Tag and an Extra Weakness tag. And I feel like I've got most of the Themes where I want them for the start of this character, but I feel like the Statuary Garden could use more filling out.

So, we're going to get a fourth Power Tag and second Weakness for Enclave. These are going to be:

Power Tag D: What protects your Enclave?

Weakness Tag D: What could hinder you from accessing or using your Enclave?

And these will be the Answers:

Power D: serpents and shadows

Weakness D: too many bystanders

So, now we can further see that the garden is full of shadowy places to hide in and many serpents which will help her defend the place by attacking intruders. Unfortunately, if there are too many people around, she won't be able to reach it. So if she leads enemies through what she expects to be an empty warehouse and instead finds a rave, she'll be stuck in the mundane world.

Crew Theme

A Crew theme is like any other themebook with some differences. Every character in the Crew has access to it and its Tags will "burn" when they are used. What this means is that whenever the team uses a Crew power tag to add a bonus to a roll or introduce something to the story then that tag cannot be re-used until something is done to refresh it. A character's tags can also burn, but usually that's as a result of making a desperate gamble or as a consequence of bad luck.

There's also only one set of Crew theme questions, though there are a lot of example ways to create them.

As with the other themebooks there are some inspiring questions before we get to Power Tags and Weaknesses.

What is our shared goal?

Who or what brought us together?

Why do we work together? What does each member contribute to the cause?

Where do we meet? Where do we collect our evidence or prepare for action?

What sort of resources do we have at our disposal?

Three of the stories I chose are related to violence or death, and are similar in many ways to each other. The fourth member I deliberately made an outlier to anchor them and made it a story about the kindness of a shark bringing food to an old man. I'm thinking the group is trying to resist the gentrification of their neighborhood and have found that there are supernatural forces at play in the situation.

Also, note, that for a Crew theme, you can give it either an Identity or a Mystery. We're going for an Identity in this case.

Title: Peach Circle Protectors

Identity: This is our home and nobody's going to take it.

Concept: A crew of superheroes resisting gentrification and other threats.

For the Power Tag questions, we can choose any three questions and are not required to answer the A question... but I'm going to anyway. I'm choosing:

A: How do you help, assist, or support one another?

C: Who is guiding, backing, or assisting your operation?

H: What sort of reputation or name have you made for yourselves?

The Weakness tag I am going for will be the following:

D: What places or situations do you find tough to handle?

So the answers to the Power tags will be as follows:

A: understanding and honesty

C: Countess and Princess

H: reliable and down to Earth

So, despite everything, the four have all experienced tragedy and initially came together through a support group before learning that the four of them all had some supernatural things as well as the public trauma. As such, they have gained a habit of trying to be honest and supportive of each other. It's not a 100% successful thing. Things are still hidden and feelings are still hurt, but they have a better connection than most.

The Countess and Princess are a reference to one of my past played characters (Patricia Althius, Rift of the Count of Monte Cristo and Lamashtu) and her girlfriend (Hayley Hayami, Rift of Medusa) who later in the campaign would have come back as mysterious rich people to start to carry out their revenges on various evil-doers. I felt these two in late game would make a good support for this vengeance-focused team.

Finally, the local neighborhood may not know everything the team has done for them, heck they might not even know who the team is if secret identities are going on, but there's an ongoing reputation that the local heroes have a good head on their shoulders.

And next is the Weakness:

D: "There's never enough money."

Even with patrons like The Countess and The Princess, there's only so much money the team has available. And most of their backer's resources are mythical and supernatural anyway, that's hard to convert into a bank account.

Tags and Weaknesses

So, what do tags do? Whenever you apply a tag to a roll you gain a +1 bonus to that roll. When weaknesses are applied then you instead apply a -1 to the roll but you also grant that Theme one Attention and after three Attention you can give the Themebook an Improvement.

Tags also apply narrative justification for certain things. For example, Stef is going to have snakes for hair, and that will justify her attacking someone and giving them a venom related status as a result. Other characters would have to explain where the poison came from first.

Now, what's stopping you from using all tags on every roll? First of all, the tag has to apply, "petrifying gaze" isn't going to do anything to help breaking down a stone door, for example. Second is that you can't apply the same tag twice to the same situation. For example, say you had the tag "Bomb Disposal Expert" and added that to a roll for disarming a bomb but the roll doesn't completely end the danger. Well, you won't be able to use that tag on the next roll, because you've already applied those skills to this problem.

For Stef, she could apply the "petrifying gaze" to attempt to turn a hitman to stone, but perhaps she doesn't quite finish him off. On a future attack she would still be applying the petrifying gaze narratively, but she couldn't use the tag for a bonus to the roll because she's already thrown that in there. The stoning is still happening, yes, but the roll needs support elsewhere.

In combat, we tended to work this out by saying repeatedly attacking with no variation was just doing the same action over and over again and thus you would have a slowly dwindling supply of tags to use in the fight. Every so often, we'd then try to change up the strategy and create a new situation to justify refreshing all those tags.

As another note, it is possible to use a Weakness for a +1 (doing so would not grant Attention) or a Power tag for a -1 (doing so would grant Attention) if it makes sense. For example, Stef could use her "severe burn scars" to help her out intimidating someone or maybe even empowering her "petrifying gaze". Or the GM might poke her tag about "I can't let them down" as a -1 due to her being worried about someone getting hurt because she failed.

As a note, the same Tag can't be used for both a +1 and a -1 on the same roll. Similar to the "Bomb Disposal Expert" example above on using the same tag twice, that fact is already influencing matters.

Breaking Themes

It is also important to note that themebooks can go away and change. Mythos themes can Fade as that part of your legend is forgotten and Logos themes can Crack as that facet of your life is shattered or left behind. This is not a bad thing and exists for the most part at the control of the character.

When a theme cracks, the character will receive some "Build-Up" which allows for taking a global improvement called a "Moment of Evolution". Unlike with Attention to improve a themebook, global improvements require five Build Up and the only way to gain Build Up is to lose a theme.

Once a theme is lost, it will be replaced with a theme of the opposite type. A Mythos theme will be replaced by a Logos theme and vice versa. If the last theme of a type is lost then it will not be replaced and the character will instead have three Logos (becoming a Sleeper) or three Mythos (becoming an Avatar). These are both meant to be temporary states of being and once the character comes out of them, they will vanish for a while before returning as a basically an entirely fresh character, rebuilding themselves from scratch. A character who went Avatar will come back as a Touched and a character who went Sleeper will come back as a Legendary.

This mechanic allows for some of the deepest mechanical support of character development I've ever seen in any RPG. Look above at the two pictures of Patricia and Hayley to see the gulf in how they begin the game and how they end it. And the best part is that these changes are very very rarely dictated by the dice. They almost always come as a result of informed player choice. And even when dice cause it, the player is informed of the possibility of the risk before they roll.

All that said, here's the collection of themebook cards for Stef Noel. I used the character sheet template on Roll20 for this graphic. Also note that I write down the letter of the questioned that is answered for each tag so that if there's question of what context the tag exists in we can look it up.