When it comes to fantasy tabletop role-playing, it can be easy to think there’s nothing new under the sun. It’s our oldest and still most popular genre, and after 50 years it can be hard to see what fresh spins are left to put on it.
So thank the gods for games like Legend in the Mist, the new game from Son of Oak (City in the Mist, Otherscape). Not only do its tag-driven, narrative-first mechanics feel like an exciting new direction, but its warm and welcoming “rustic fantasy” aesthetic is unlike any other game I’ve seen before too.
For more on why I think it’s so interesting and unique, check out my interview with Son of Oak from last year. The key points are super flexible character creation, accessible rules that emphasise the narrative importance of characters and items rather than purely their mechanical strength, and an atmosphere of mystery and folklore.
And it’s out today! At least in PDF form. You can pick up the digital version both on the publisher’s own website, and on popular digital TTRPG platform DriveThruRPG.
Buying the Core Book actually gets you two volumes—The Hero and The Narrator. The former is for players, laying out all the basic rules, how to create a character, and the rules for magic. The latter is for the GM, covering how to run the game and a whole set of ready-to-go perils and encounters, along with a starter adventure.
You can also get the Action Grimoire, a reference guide of different possible actions characters can take in the game and good ways to resolve them. Legend in the Mist’s rules are very freeform in terms of what you can do in play, so this extensive collection of examples and frameworks is really helpful in understanding what’s possible—and taking a bit of pressure off new GMs still learning the mechanics themselves.
If you’re curious about Legend in the Mist but not sure yet whether it’s the game for you, the good news is that it has one of the best and most interesting free demos I’ve ever seen for a tabletop RPG.
From today, you can now download a 50-page interactive comic that takes you through the rules of the game. It’s basically like a choose-your-own-adventure book, complete with dice rolls, moral choices, and combat. Not only does it do a great job of introducing the system, but it’s also just an absolutely gorgeous comic, with full-colour art throughout that perfectly sells the atmosphere of the game.
You can grab it either by signing up to Son of Oak’s newsletter (hit the Play Demo button) or downloading it from DriveThruRPG, and I really recommend giving it a try.
Still to come for the game is a campaign setting book, Hearts of Ravendale, estimated to arrive in October 2025. In the meantime, I’m reading through the release version of the books and getting ready to post some more detailed impressions—look out for that soon.
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