Godslaying in Two Rolls: a Legend in the Mist Retrospective
Zentro awoke with a start. He'd overslept and found his roadside camp empty, no signs of where the rest of his fellowship had gone, save for the strange, ethereal voice he'd heard in his dreams—one from Yulia, goddess of dreams and "you can't tell me what to do," calling for aid. The Dragonlord quickly swept up his gear and took to the skies, soon buffeted by gale-force winds, following only his gut—and perhaps a thread of fate—to the rest of his companions. He found them kneeled before a rival god, one that thought himself king of these lands. Dragonlord Zentro did not hesitate. He drew his short swords, coating them with frost pulled from his cold-heart, and plunged straight for the so-called Godking's head. The two clashed, swords singing against one another before Zentro expertly disarms him. In a final attempt to regain control and composure, the Godking's skin sparked with electricity, meant to engulf the countryside in a brilliant burst of power, but the Dragonlord acted first. Off went the Godking's head. Arcs of electricity frozen by the winter dragon's cold breath...
Am I Big Mad that a Big Bad was slain in a scene meant to taunt, provoke, and humiliate the PCs before disappearing as swiftly as he arrived? Naw. Not really. There's a fun opportunity in myth-making here that I might explore in another post. I've got ideas and machinations for the players—just you wait!
No, instead, this post is going to be about how to curve power (what modifiers are known as in this system) in a way that is satisfying for everyone when running a Mist Engine (:Otherscape, Legend in the Mist) campaign.
Context going into this: This was the 8th session of Legend in the Mist game where the player characters are fledgling demigods. Godslaying was going to happen eventually.
So what happened? Our player-character, Zentro, was able to pull together a few amazing rolls, packing +7 and +8's between burning Tags for power and drawing on Statuses! These were "Tracked Outcomes," so power was markedly spent on things like disarming the Godking, inflicting harm and intimidation statuses, etc.
A 7 or 8 is a lot of Power. Some MC's for the system might exclaim that it's too much! All of the Mist engine games have always had optional rules about how to curve this power, but the most powerful thing the books do is harp on interrogating the fiction: what Tags or Statuses are DIRECTLY HELPFUL. At this point in the session, I was trying to wrap up and gave Zentro the go ahead just go wild with Tags, skipping the interrogation bit, not putting every status or tag under the magnifying glass and asking that question—so things played out the way it did.
It's really that simple.
If I really didn't want the above to happen, I could have not phoned it in, I could have asked Zentro to give me a more detailed go around as to what he was doing and what the Godking was doing (see: Making Threats as an MC), and maybe Zentro would've just rolled a +6 instead.
But the beauty about the Mist Engine, about Legend in the Mist, is that there's a lot control in everyone's hands to make any given scene a part of the story they want.
That said, that doesn't help the burgeoning MC or players worried that this is a game where situations are trivialized. So, let's dig in and see how else this could have been handled.
Now, It's important to know that Zentro is a very combat-oriented player, his Themes chock full with combat-related tags. So, while he's floundering in social or investigation scenes, he's a rockstar in combat.
He also had help. All three of his fellow demigod PCs are decidedly not fighters. They helped where they could, like our dear Eckhard building a lightning rod in anticipation of lighting strikes and Yulia using her dream-sleepy-time-divine-powers to inflict stupified-3 on our Challenge, the Godking. Another bit of context is that the Godking was really just a pent-up demigod who'd been doing this whole shtick longer; in another system, say, Pathfinder 2e, he'd be "4 levels" higher than the rest of the players, so he was always within the ballpark of beatable per the fiction.
Curving Power
The fun way is, sometimes, also the hard way. You don't want a player rocking +8's (even if they did work for it)? You sometimes have to work to curve power. That means narration and deciding on what kind of Action a player gets to take. The two back each other up.
If a Challenge is bullet proof and a player goes in with a gun, you're either:
Not rolling at all; the bullets flatten against the Challenge (Simple)
Or rolling because of something else. Instead of harm, the player is rolling to distract, the consequences of ricocheting bullets high in the air when they do so but they need to do it (Quick or Tracked outcome)
If we applied this attitude to the Godking, I could've glanced at Zentro's sheet a few moments earlier and tackled some of his Tags through narration (remember: Estasblish, Action, Consequence is the cycle here; the MC sets up Threats and delivers Consequence).
Let's look at an alternate span of events.
Some of Zentro tags used previously as part of a single roll for attacking the Godking: Frost-Tipped Blades (burned for +3 power), Glacial Dominion, Draconic Strength, Short Swords...
Consequences from the previous cycle (aka something I should have done in the original version of events but didn't): The Godking gains eletrified-skin-1 (players ignored threat Established). An Alternate Establish (after the first surprise attack): The godking huffs and suddenly the sun reveals itself from behind the steel sheet of gray clouds, the air beginning to heat up from the frigid winter's embrace to the sweltering heat of summer (Threat). Disarmed of his legendary longsword but not unarmed by any means, the Godking shifts his footing and holds his hands in front of him as he squares up against Zentro (Threat). Action: Zentro (as it was in the actual session) decides to end this and charges the Godking; he uses his Glacial Dominion in an outward burst of divine energy to cool things down—he has a weakness against fire that he's worried I'm acting on. All the while, he's preparing to cleave the Godking in two with his Frost-Tipped Blades (burned for power) + Short Swords and Draconic Strength.
Remember: Players declare their Actions, but it's up to you the MC to decide how those Actions are resolved and how those Actions breakdown. A player can be very dramatic about how much they're doing in an Action, but you can force them to slow down by breaking their declaration into component parts and handling those how you want. Players depend on you to do this for them, and aren't always thinking about how the game system might handle things.
Zentro's action in this version of events is really two: (1) doing something about the rising temperatures (Simple Outcome) and (2) attacking the godking as a Detailed Outcome.
Zentro's use of Glacial Dominion here is fine. I would argue he's trying to proactively get ahead of a potential consequence. In this breakdown, I'll say it's handled as a Simple action. It works! The air becomes lukewarm, sweater-weather; the Godking has weather under his purview, not actual fire/heat, and he can't (or just won't) pump juice into making it immediately scorching so this was a threat that would've paid off after a few "rounds."
With the above, I've peeled off -1 from Zentro's attack power in a way that's (1) debatably interesting and worldbuilding and (2) arguably better than saying "hey bro, I see you want to use that but please don't" or leaning on, say, City of Mist's grit rules or doing a heavy-handed power cap. If I want, I could be sneaky and say that the effort is stiffling-1 (or something similar, just a way to say that its a concentrated effort to keep it cool); personally, that's a tad too "gotcha," for me, but I don't hate it and, to raise tensions, I go for it.
That's still +5 Power on the action that Zentro wants to use. We're going to subtract one more: our Godking is going to rely less on strength and more on Zentro's momentum, rendering his Draconic Strength not directly helpful. +4 for Zentro so far! Finally, we look at Statuses.
The eletrified-skin-1 status is explicitly there to counteract frosted-tips (melting the ice, etc. etc), but it doesn't rule it out. Zentro's at +3. At this point the Godking has stupified-3, wounded-3, and intimidated-2. This is really where, in the original events, I should've stepped in and interrogated things further but I'll make a ruling on now in this alternate course of events:
I genuinely believe stupified, as established and inflicted, and in the context of the godking having a "legendary warrior" tag, could be applying this in a lot of other situations except combat. I think a combination of pure reflexes and the divine would be enough to handwave that as not relevant for a clash roll.
Intimidated I'd handwave personally. In this new Establish, I have them on the defenses. Too intimidated to lunge forward but not in a position to simply fallback, our god-warrior-king takes a different tactic. This is an expression of how Statuses and Tags can simply exist to inform the narrative, even when dice aren't rolled (see "Respect the Tag")
Wounded. Woof. That's a doozy. Here I could argue that the Godking relying less on his own strength (and thus not exerting himself in a way that his wounds immediately matter), instead offloading that bonus to Zentro's reaction roll if Zentro has to make one. If I got that route, Zentro's at a +3 (58% of a 10+, no consequences) or at a +6 (92% at a 10+) if I just give him the bonus.
Note: I don't math too good, so I don't know how to parse the auto-failure of rolling nat 1's
Either way we cut it, we wind up with a situation that was maybe harder to arrive to but arguably more colorful for it. We could spend precious gametime adding this and that, milking the session for worldbuilding questions... or just keep the momentum going. There's opportunities to be found elsewhere. Getting a tier 5 or 6 doesn't automatically mean dead, whether it's a PC or a Challenge. I can do up a whole thing about how hard it is to kill a god, even a demigod, and wrap it up in the very narrative stuff that makes up real life myths and legends.
But that's a luxury for my game specifically. Yours... would be harder if we're talking a more mortal foe.
Another thing to remember
No "double-dipping." I remind my players constantly that they can use a given Tag, but if they have to make a reaction roll to mitigate some consequences, they can't use a Tag or Status again for that. That's very often enough to get to be a little more reserved. You do bump up against tipping points where an astute player is mathing it out in their head and realizing that they have a very high chance (if not guaranteed outside of rolling snake-eyes) of getting a 10+.
If this happens, reconsider the narrative. Sure, the villain is intimidated-3 and wounded-4, but if the villain is on the backfoot—they're only clashing swords because the player-character is swinging—does intimidated-3 directly help? I wouldn't say so. That Challenge-pending, being intimidated-3 could actually make the Challenge fight harder and be a penalty to the roll, which may be a bit of a stretch depending on what's been established; a peasant probably wouldn't necessarily benefit from this but a hardened veteran fighting for a cause he believes in could be said to fight harder (in self-defense) when the PC comes charging.
Another angle here that I practice as an MC: I follow this rule, too. Sure I never roll, but I do pick and choose Tags/Statuses that Challenges have and when they apply. So in the above example, maybe I forgo allowing a player a +4 from the Wounded status on their to-hit roll and instead give that player that bonus on the possible reaction roll. "The warrior's thrusts the blade toward your neck, but his wounds slows his momentum, telegraphs his attack!"
