Second Shot City uses the City of Mist system developed by Son of Oak Game Studio. However, we’ve changed the rules in a couple of ways to help with player experience and story flow, at least with the context of creating a smooth flowing narrative podcast. Also, I am really bad at following rules.
Taking a page from the difference between Critical Role and Dungeons and Daddies (one is super professional, rulesy Dungeons and Dragons while another one is a comedy podcast that uses Dungeons and Dragons as a setting), the direction for this specific podcast is more on the rules-light end.
This page is to sort-of teach you the rules and why we’ve decided to take a few of the mechanics in the game and change them a bit to fit the podcast setting.
City of Mist has a fantastic, deep system and I continue to learn about it every single day. As the podcast goes on, mechanisms will change, and most likely, we will be adding more City of Mist mechanics as the podcast goes on. We’d love your help in understanding the rules! I’ve only DM’d City of Mist and have found these mechanics make the game easier for first timers.
Lore
The rules for City of Mist allows you to keep the city vague and has great location descriptions if you need to make a fantasy city. Boston is already kind of a fantasy city so we decided that this podcast takes place in a fictional version of Boston Massachusetts. You can tell it’s fictional because no one can do a Boston accent in this podcast.
A mythical organization called The Department recruits people who have been mythically murdered and fixes them up for a fee. The individual, or “fixed” person has to then do odd jobs around the city to pay back their debt. Usually these odd jobs have to do with either eliminating or closing mythical issues in the city. The department calls these Rifts.
HP System
City of Mist forgoes HP and replaces it with tags and spectrums. Spectrums go from 1 to 6, with 6 being you’re dead. There’s a sort of interesting way spectrums are stacked. For example, if you are shanked, you can get 1-light cut, 2-bleeding cut, 3-deep wound, 4-eviscerated, and 5-incapacitated, and 6-dead. When done right, spectrums allow you to quickly control the narrative in both a DM and player perspective but we do things wrong here on this podcast all the time! However,
Second Shot City is designed to be more cinematically combat based, so getting damaged is pretty regular. Having an HP system allows players to quickly understand the risks and rewards to taking an action. Since combat spectrums can’t be really used to your advantage, having a simple numerical value made combat more streamlined.
The HP system is similar to the Harm system in games like Monster of the Week, and giving players just 10 HP allows them to understand the risks more simpler than the spectrum system, especially new players.
Why 10? It’s an easy number, but it also aligns with the spectrum system a bit. If you parse out the Tracking cards, each square represents one level one spectrum. Essentially, once you get ten 1-light cuts, you’re technically knocked out.
So how do you calculate damage? A simple way is to treat a player’s roll for say, Face Danger is that failure as 2 damage, a mild success as 1 damage, and a success as zero damage. Have fun with this structure! If you want to add more pain to the game, double the damage!
Theme Swapping
The point of City of Mist is to evolve your character by balancing Mythos and Logos. Do you embrace the mystery or do you embrace your humanity?
Generally, players collaborate with the DM to make a compelling backstory for your characters.
To make the game more fast paced, we took a different system: Persona.
With Persona, you meet special people, or confidants. Investing your time into Confidants allows you to get cool stuff and special skills. In this case, every person can be invested into and you can learn something interesting about them, or a special skill that they are good at. For example, What if Marcelus invested in doing squats?
Like Persona, there is a random mechanism that allows you to get a certain amount of points. So I have people roll to see how far their relationship will progress. With a Failure=1, A Mild Success=2 and a Success=3. Players need 6 points to successfully replace a Theme.
Mythos themes are a little less structured but involves certain choices or solving their mystery if they choose to pursue it.
Dice Rolling
Everything is a 2d6 in this game so it can be confusing to understand the core moves. For the podcast, the context of the move gives direction. To roll well in City of Mist, your character starts out with 12 tags that are used to describe context in what you do. Tags can be found in the Cast and Characters page and will be updated every Case.
Clues and Juice
Both are currency mechanisms in City Of Mist.
Clues are a currency that players get in exchange for rolling a good investigation roll. When a player exchanges a clue, the MC tells them a clue.
Juice is a mechanism that allows you to flavor the scene to boost your rate of success in a certain situation. If that sounds vague, it’s designed to be.
Due to just so much juggling around in the podcast we’ve decided to omit these two currencies.