A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement City of Mist Master of Ceremonies’ Toolkit

City of Mist Master of Ceremonies’ Toolkit by Amít Moshe is a role playing game supplement published by Son of Oak Game Studio. This is one of the two core books for the City of Mist system, the other being the Player’s Guide, an Apocalypse World Engine game.

The supplement is available as a 247-page PDF for $19.95 from DriveThruRPG and is also available in printed form from sites such as Amazon. The PDF is the version reviewed but it was purchased at a reduced price as part of a bundle. One page is the front cover, three the front matter and one the Table of Contents.

The first few pages explain the Master of Ceremonies, which is this system’s GameMaster, and their role as writer, referee, host and narrator. It gives recommended principles for City of Mist games, how to make characters’ lives interesting and to think cinematic when playing the game. There’s a summary of what’s in the supplement and an explanation of what highlights on text mean.

Chapter 1: Word on the Street: About the City of Mist is taken up by The Cinematography of the City. This starts by explaining that the City is the backdrop for adventures; it may be open to question as to whether the City is real or a figment of the Mist, but the City has all the aspects of a modern major urban centre. It explains how to describe the City and how to use the districts in game. The parts of the City hide a story and there’s effectively nothing beyond the City itself; a central premise of the game is that characters never leave the City.

Following the introduction to the City, parts of the place are described. Four of the districts that make up the City are covered in detail. Each district has an overview and what’s beyond the Mist, followed by places of interests and locals. Other Districts gives brief overviews of other places in the city whilst Just Out of Town are areas and locations that are technically outside the City but close enough to still be incorporated without disrupting the idea that there is nothing beyond the City. Finally, What the Characters Don’t Know Yet is what the MC knows about the City but the players and characters do not.

Chapter 2: Behind the Scenes: How to create and run cases starts with the quick reference sheets. The first is Running a Session, which gives an overview of the different parts and the appropriate page numbers. Writing a Case is similar, but covers adventure creation.

Let the Game Begin: The Exposition Session references the section The Exposition Session in the Player’s Guide. This is where the series starts, with some tips as to how to create the series in combination with the players, though not preparing game content in advance, just immersing yourself in appropriate genre material, might not be suitable to every MC. This session revolves around asking questions, creating characters – together, called the crew – and taking notes.

Running a Session looks at prepping for a session and what’s needed, the case – adventure – that will be played, improvising, Dangers – which are any threat, including NPCs and objects, to the player characters or their investigation – looking at the case’s relation to the series and the character development of the lead character. It then moves onto the structure of a session, which start with a Voiceover Monologue, initiating scenes, and a sidebar references the cold open from a television show, playing through them and the importance of thinking cinematic, with scenes cutting like they would in a television show, finally wrapping up sessions and cases.

It next covers MC actions during a scene, the intrusions and moves an MC can do and how they are triggered. Intrusions are intruding into a player’s spotlight in situations as defined in the rules. Moves are soft and hard; soft moves introduce a problem, though one that isn’t currently a serious one, whilst hard moves are when a player misses a move. The moves are described and, again, there’s a recommendation to choose the most cinematic move.

Following this are instructions on how to narrate and describe the City of Mist, covering the atmosphere, making NPCs real, keeping elements a mystery, asking questions of the players, the importance of consistency and making the city seem alive, like a real city would be. Again, a sidebar recommends thinking cinematically.

The final part on running a session covers adapting the challenge level based on the characters.

Writing a Case is on adventure writing for City of Mist. First, it covers what’s in a case and the motives of people involved. The Iceberg is how a case is perceived; the hooks are the parts of the iceberg above the surface and as the investigation proceeds, more and more of the iceberg is revealed. A flat case has only one depth below the top, through to an involved case having four. The iceberg can go sideways as well; each depth can have side branches of clues. A sidebar explains that this allows a more sandbox effect to an investigation, a type of adventure that is known for its linearity.

There’s a three-step process to writing a case, starting with a detailed backstory, which is intended to answer the question of what happened before the crew got involved. This then leads to things such as who did it, what is at the centre, the story’s theme and hooks to get the crew involved. There are some story seed examples; one example used is fleshed out fully later in Sample Case: Gambling with Death. Once the backstory has been put together, a trail of clues and locations are used to build the iceberg. Finally, Dangers are added.

Following on from this is series design, which is a series of cases. Creating a series requires taking a look at what has already been created by the MC and players, and what the characters are like. A series is thus built around the characters and such things as story element, plot ideas and style guides are designed. The main component of a series is a story arc (or myth arc); a series of related cases that revolve around a major threat. Though there may be several story arcs interwoven. This is again likened to an iceberg, with the cases making up the different depths. There is some advice on using more than one story arc; doing such makes a series more involved (i.e., complicated, longer and harder to keep track of). It’s up to an individual MC, but probably no more than one major and a couple of minor arcs would be best; just think of any television series that had so many investigative arcs that the plot was lost track of by the viewer.

Chapter 3: This is My City! About Dangers and Avatars starts with some quick reference sheets with a summary of Danger rules and pages where they are described. Dangers themselves follow; these are challenges that have predefined ways to hurt or influence the lead characters and also predefined ways to overcome them. A sidebar explains what can be created as Dangers, and when they should be created. Spectrums are what happens when a Danger continues to take statuses of the same nature; each spectrum has a maximum, from 1 to 6, after which the Danger is overcome. A Danger can have multiple spectrums and spectrums are used to make a challenge more gradual and difficult. Some spectrums, such as for a bomb, are countdowns; these still increase but when the end is reached, something bad happens. Spectrums can be added on the fly, Dangers may be immune to some spectrums and a status can be taken even if it isn’t on a listed spectrum.

Danger Moves are predefined MC and player moves representing how a Danger interacts with the story. These are divided into Custom, Hard and Soft. Custom moves are unique rules representing special abilities or circumstances of a Danger, occurring when circumstances trigger their condition. Hard Danger moves are predefined variations of hard MC moves whilst Soft Danger moves are predefined variations of the soft MC move Complicate Things. A sidebar covers Collectives, groups of NPCs or entities acting together as a single unit; a mob would be an example.

Using Dangers starts with how to create a new Danger on the fly, before covering how to introduce a Danger and how to add spectrums and moves on the fly. How statuses affect Dangers is next, how tags relate to Dangers – they have no power or weakness tags, but can create story tags – and Dangers that are not a threat. Finally, there is a section on creating new Dangers.

Custom Moves are rules that have been tailored for a specific story element; a sidebar explains when they should be used. There are three different types of custom moves; custom Danger moves, which related to the Danger, situational custom moves that come from specific circumstances and improvement, which grant the character expanded use of existing moves – character theme improvements are essentially custom moves. The MC can decide when to reveal a custom move. Following this are instructions on creating custom moves and then templates and examples of common custom moves used in City of Mist. A sidebar looks at four defences Dangers can erect using hard MC moves and custom moves.

Danger Profiles contains various dangers that can be used in the game. There are mundane Dangers, which are city residents, criminals, law enforcement and security and locations & hazards, Mythos power sets and Rifts and other mythical dangers, given by district. This is essentially a collection of stats.

Avatars are the rulers of the City, each of them running operations intended to manifest the story of their Mythos Citywide. How to use Avatars – they can be an obvious Big Bad for a campaign – and how to integrate them is covered; though they may be a Big Bad, they shouldn’t be treated as a final boss with a bunch of stats. Avatar creation is covered, followed how they operate and creating their operation, again using an iceberg.

Avatar Profiles has details on four different Avatars. As well as the Avatar themselves, the Avatar’s operation, important characters and locations, story seeds and Dangers are all given.

Appendices starts with different indices; Dangers by Danger Rating, Dangers in Alphabetical Order and Mythoi in this Book, followed by a list of Kickstarter backers. After this are an MC Moves Sheet, Iceberg Sheet, MC Tracking Sheet and Series Resources Sheet. Finally, there is Sample Case: Gambling with Death is an adventure which has been referred to earlier in the book whilst explaining how to create a case. That case has been fully fleshed out here.

The final four pages are colour maps of different locations.

City of Mist Master of Ceremonies’ Toolkit in Review

The PDF is bookmarked, though not to the depth that would have been appreciated. The Table of Contents is to a similar level of depth. The indices are located in a peculiar place, not being at the back of the book, and there’s no overall index. Navigation could be a lot better. The text maintains a two-column colour format and appeared to be essentially free of error. There are many full colour illustrations, up to two pages in size for the chapter openers. Presentation is very good.

This book is perhaps best read after the Player’s Guide, as there are concepts in that book that are referenced, but not explained, in this one. As the game is based on the Apocalypse World Engine, it may also be a completely different style of play to what the player is used to; those familiar with AWE games will fare the best but those unfamiliar with them will likely need to read through several times to get to grips with the game. Moves, a fundamental part of the game, can be rather narrative based and sometimes the impression is given that dice are more of an afterthought than an integral part of the system; d6s are a basic dice to begin with and only two are needed to play.

This is not the only supplement needed to play the game; it’s not the only supplement needed to run the game. City of Mist is a two-book game (except for the All-Seeing Eye Investigations Starter Set) and it needs both to play. The concepts behind it are interesting, and it is set up in such a way that anything from any myth, legend, story or similar from anywhere can be incorporated into the game, as a character, NPC or other Danger. The game is definitely not for everyone, though, as both system and setting will not be to everybody’s tastes. Perhaps the main problem is that even the starter set isn’t exactly cheap so finding this out won’t be cheap either. City of Mist Master of Ceremonies’ Toolkit is one of the two main books for the system and it can be found by clicking here.