I recently started a new campaign using the Legend in the Mist system. This system is completely new for my players. I've run one campaign using it before, but if I'm honest, I don't feel the experience was super successful because none of us understood the importance of creating good characters. And Legend in the Mist needs good characters.

But with this campaign, we started with much more robust characters. We poured over sample characters and I helped them prepare four themes which matched their concepts, but also included tags which would be genuinely useful during play. I think our first session made it clear their tags would be applicable in a variety of situations.

This week, pursuing a lead on a conspiracy, two players found themselves wandering out into the forest despite the Saint Livia Board of Tourism's admonishment: "Don't ask us about the man-eating plants in the forest". I guess that's what happens when one character is a Botany PhD student and the other is a sports star retraining as a Naturalist. After overcoming two challenges on the trail, our heroes found themselves in a clearing with the distinct feeling something followed them.

Floral Roper

Watcher, Sapper

Roughly humanoid in shape, these creatures appear to have a large petalled flower for a head connected to vines forming a body covered in leaves and smaller blossoms. They may have two or more arms, but usually only have two legs. They prefer to restrain foes with the long fibrous vines that form their arms, however, some vines have wooden barbs which the Floral Ropers use to harm foes.

Limits

  • Harm 2
  • Avoid 2
  • Scare 3

Tags & Statuses

  • Tracker
  • Camoflaged–2
  • Surley–2

Threats & Consequences

Track You hear leaves rustling and you feel like you’re being followed.
Close in on the heroes (remove two tiers of hiding status or avoid).
Find the heroes (Exposure) and get into position to strike (gain poised–2).
Hunt The creature crouches down, preparing to strike.
The creature sprints towards you and lashes out with a long fibrous vine tipped with a sharp wooden barb (wounded–2).
The creature braces itself and lashes out towards you wrapping a long fibrous vine around you (restrained–2).
The creature dives into the underbrush (camoflaged–2).
Trap A creature leaps up from the underbrush around you — it’s a trap!
The creature lashes out with a long fibrous vine tipped with a sharp wooden barb (wounded–3).
The creature braces itself and lashes out towards you wrapping a long fibrous vine around you (restrained–3).

The Floral Roper starts off by tracking its quarry. The heroes knew something was there, but they didn't know how to respond. This was when things started to go off the rails a bit.

When the creature finally burst from the foliage, because of the differences in the game loop with Legend in the Mist, the players didn't immediately know what to do. I described the scene as follows:

A tall, humanoid flower with a broad blossom where you'd expect to find a head bursts from the foliage. Its body is made from thin, fibrous vines. It appears to have two or three arms — they're moving around wildly — and it crouches down preparing to strike.

They understood the creature was hostile, but because they're both plant nuts, they didn't really want to hurt it. Maybe this was all a misunderstanding? So they waited until it made the first move. By then they were stuck responding to the creature's attacks.

After a few rounds, when the creature had restrained the Botanist, my recommendation to assess the creature found fertile soil. She rolled well and discovered its limits: Harm-2 and Scare-3. Shortly afterward, they managed to scare the critter off.

I think the ability to discover aspects of a challenge is unusual for a role playing system. When I've played D&D, no amount of competent rolling on Perception, Nature, or Investigation will reveal the hit points of a monster. Maybe you'll recall a weakness of a creature, if your character might have heard of them. But with Legend in the Mist, investigation feels meaningful.

For example, if a player is a Botanist with a command of Esoteric plant facts and a specialty in Arcane lore, then it makes sense for them to be able to look at a Floral Roper and intuit details about it (with a successful dice roll). But if they happen to encounter a creature that's not plant-based, they're hosed.

The lesson for me, as the Narrator, is to incorporate the step of learning more about something into the Session 0 scene I play with each group. That way they're familiar with the flow of a challenge and how they can find out more about it.