Interview - Amit Moshe - City of Mist

Today I talk with City of Mist RPG creator Amit Moshe, we explore the 'City' and look behind the Veil to reveal big things approaching. We discuss lore and game mechanics and how the game is drawing from diverse cultures to support the core gameplay. Recreate your Noir Netflix and Action genre in a world of hidden Myth and Legend, leave the sleepers behind and enter the City of Mist.

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Host: Adam Powell

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Transcript

Snyder’s Return : 0:28

Hello, and welcome to Snyder's return a tabletop role playing podcast. Perhaps you're just in from out of town or you've been living in the city for a while. But is everything you're seeing really the full truth? we delve into this as I try and not create a rift with city of mist creator amid mushy net Welcome to the show.

Amit Moshe : 0:50

Thank you for having me. I'm happy to be here.

Snyder’s Return : 0:53

It's an absolute pleasure before we dive into the game itself, would you let us know how you got into sort of tabletop role? Playing games and just your experience up to up to creating city of mist please.

Amit Moshe : 1:05

Yeah. I mean it was like I guess I started like everybody was 10 years old and I picked up or a bunch of friends picked up dungeons and dragons and that went on for a while but actually very fast started looking into other games I got into superhero games that curious system hero system that are very kind of crunchy in my teens and and I guess the only only after many years I mean, I've always been creating games for myself and for my friends and I've explored different systems. I came across the apocalypse world, which was a big turning point in how I see you know, gaming and I realised that I'm looking for games that are more cinematic and are more you know, more rules light or more, no more their rules or support the narrative rather than just like calculating hours. And eventually when I, after I got some experience in the professional world as a, as a, as a product manager I kind of felt like I was ready to come out with something. And you know, Kickstarter was a big, you know, a start the to become pretty big and I realised that it became a possibility that was definitely not there in the past. And that's when city admis was started, I guess. All

Snyder’s Return : 2:32

right, so you've mentioned it there. Could you tell us give us sort of your introduction to what city mist is and and sort of the the outline of of the game for those who may be unfamiliar with this amazing role playing game?

Amit Moshe : 2:47

Thank you. Yeah, so city of mist is cinematic new our role playing game that said in supernatural, you know, Modern fantasy kind of setting where ordinary people gain the powers of Legends so you can play you know, a modern incarnation of the Monkey King or Snow Queen, you know whatever what kind of fairy tale or legend or myth you're into, you know Gods from the mythology that puts in Boots whatever and and all these amazing legendary characters are kind of reborn or re manifested in modern day people. And however, the city is a very mysterious place. It's all these powers are masked by some kind of mystical veil. And so that normal people on the street called sleepers, they don't know about everything that's going on. So you end up playing this kind of character that's living two lives. One is there, her legendary life and one are ordinary everyday life and that is a big part of the game. How do you balance these two things? What happens when you push it too much in either direction? And of course, not just the drama of your everyday life but you know, classic noir investigations. But now they're kind of touched with this supernatural, you know, energy to it or vibe to it. Yeah, so pretty much. It's very cinematic. It's very, you know, narrative trying to give you that feeling of almost like a Netflix show, which were many of them were inspirations for this game. I think that's about it.

Snyder’s Return : 4:45

Yeah, that's, you know, that's, that's great to hear and a good explanation of what it is my, my lead on question to that, as you mentioned, how its cinematic and a narrative driven. How does the game mechanics support this? The gameplay and how the the See source stairs and guides the Rift.

Amit Moshe : 5:03

Yeah, so rift is Yeah, it's the name that we use for these people who have awakened to a legend inside them. And to answer the cinematic part, it's so there's a couple of things first of all the system is very open for creativity because it's based on tags. So there are no stats and there are hardly any numbers involved in the game. However the few numbers that are there really help it kind of still stay very concrete. So it's not free form, it's not hand wavy. And that was the main goal. You know, you want to assist if you want to tell a cinematic story. If you want to be, you know, getting into the description and the style, you really don't want the system to get in the way. So you don't want lengthy calculations. You don't want you know, complex actions. I mean They're great for other games. But in this case, we want to, you know, kind of get them out of the way. The second thing is what I said, it's, it's very much supports creativity because everything is based on tags so you can have any power set. It's not about power levels. It's more about what happens to the characters, we often get this question of what if I choose a tag that's called invulnerability? And, you know, they're very, very good ways in the system to handle that. So that's another thing, but we also have purely cinematic moves things like you know, a montage and what does that do for the characters? So when you have downtime, usually you go through a montage, and you can choose what your character did during the montage and get certain benefits out of it. Every session starts with a voiceover monologue and it ends with kind of like geeking out about what happened, which we call geek out during credits and There's some flashbacks involved. So every all of the biggest, you know, cinematic tropes, and it's for the MC or the master of ceremonies, we kind of the MC toolkit, that book for the MC gives you a lot of information of how to construct, you know, story arcs that are more like TV shows and how to use cinematic tools like in your descriptions like using the simple word of cut or using all kinds of effects to create that new are feeling that detected feeling, or that gritty kind of modern fantasy Netflix show feeling. So yeah, we put a lot of emphasis on that.

Snyder’s Return : 7:41

Yeah, I did reach great. And you've mentioned sort of the DMC toolkit and things where can people want to go to connect with you, the game and its community? And a follow on question. We'll be working the GM purchase the game and The rule the books potentially required to play.

Amit Moshe : 8:04

Yeah, so I'm happy to say that we have a really great community built around the game over the last couple of years since it's been out. And I guess the biggest three places to get information are facebook facebook group, the discord server, and the subreddit for city of Miss. So these would be where you would be able to get the most, you know, kind of community and feel about the game and ask questions and they're very active and people are, you know, kind of champions of the game have been very helpful. When someone wants to jump in and they have questions. It's also a great place to obviously find other players interested in the game. And we are also on roll 20 so we run regular intro games, free intro games on rule 20. So you can always just if you're interested in the game and you don't have anyone to try it out with, you can just, you know, pop into one of those intro games. And you know, play for three hours, four hours online and just come out with the experience. And if you if you're interested in it, and you found that you're into the game, you can pick it up on our website, which is really the main place. And we'll We're also on Amazon and other places. And you can also pick up the starter set on roll 20 if you are more inclined to kind of play online. Yeah, these would be the main places of course, drive thru RPG, but the main place would be our website, where we offer kind of the full range of everything and we're able to give all the, you know, benefits of direct sales. All right,

Snyder’s Return : 9:41

well, I'll make sure there are links to the various places in the description below the podcast. So there's a like a player's handbook. There's the MC toolkit and the starter set that you've sort of recently released. Is that fair to say? updated starter kit and A few other things.

Amit Moshe : 10:02

Yes, that was a first came out last year. And then this year, we're hoping to release the starter box which will have the pregenerated characters and the two booklets, one for the player and one for one for the players and one for the MC as well as dice and tokens and maps and cards. So that's going to be a really exciting product to get out there. And what the reason we did a second starter set is that we felt that we could I felt that I could do better with the design you know of basically the players journey so into the game. So now the starter said is, is this kind of play as you learn as you play experience where you, you know, you read maybe one page or half a page every time there's a new concept of the game that's introduced as you're playing this really cool case Fighting supernatural mobsters. So yeah, this pretty excited about this book coming out. And on top of these two core books that you mentioned the player's guide and the MC toolkit. We also have expansions coming out. So we have shadows and showdowns, which is an expansion and knights of paint town, which is like a book with a campaign that you can play through. All right. So

Snyder’s Return : 11:27

there's there's loads coming out. Is there anything you've recently released a preview for, for a new book that's going to introduce some new aspects if dreams could kill, would you like to let people know more about that?

Amit Moshe : 11:44

Yeah, so we've been rolling out shadows and showdowns for a while. So we've been rolling out a chapter every month or so. So it's dreams could kill is the latest one that we we've previewed and we're going to roll it out next week. And that is kind of expanding your character creation options and allowing you to, you know, add more things to your character. There's, you know, a list of not just a list, but a kind of a directory of relics and familiars that you can add to your character there are new moves, and character creation instead of Miss works using theme books. So you kind of choose four themes for your character, and the theme books help you create your tags for that theme, so if students could kill also includes six new theme books, so that's really expanding on the original 14 of the game. So it's, you know, it's it's more resources for people who are, you know, looking to expand what they can do with the game. And shadows and showdowns also includes a lot of setting expansions that we've released in previous months like overlooked attractions which are kind of plug and play locations. For emcees that they can just immediately introduced into the game as they play. And then there are other chapters about the Council of avatars that's kind of controlling the city from behind the scenes, and the organisation that is behind the mist, which is the name of that mystical veil that is hiding the truth from everybody. So, yeah, that book is pretty much packed with different expansions that help you, you know, kind of enrich your your CD Miss game. Oh,

Snyder’s Return : 13:31

well, that sounds really good. And definitely one that I'll be looking to pick up in the future along with the starter box you you're releasing soon, say if a new player new MC brings this to the table, the group play it for a while and say, Yeah, I love these counters. But are there do you have extra sort of playbooks and new characters that they can sort of look to?

Amit Moshe : 13:55

Yeah, so that's another thing that's coming out this year. We're releasing an New pack of playable characters or pre gens, so you can pick that up we also sell them in PDF format. So basically there's it's starting to become we have, you know, something along the lines of I think 20 or 30 characters that you could pick up and play with seven of them are free, they come with our quickstart rules, so you definitely get a variety to start from. Then you get another five in the starter box. And then there's a bunch of others that are available in PDF and are going to go to print soon so you'll be able to expand your array of playable characters, and people really love those. It's I didn't expect I thought people also really like creating their own characters in this system because characters are so unique. You know, you don't really just pick from a list of options even though you could you can just create something super customizable because all your tags are words so you can create whatever you feel, you know, your character really is. But people also, you know, they really liked it from the start from the get go. So you didn't miss these, you know, we were trying to create characters that reflect that kind of inner conflict and greediness of, of this neon Noir, modern fantasy kind of universe. So, yeah, you'll have a lot of options to choose from.

Snyder’s Return : 15:28

Yeah, definitely. So slightly sideways question with respect to all these releases and things like that. Who is your when you get to play cuz I'm sure you incredibly busy. Who would you like to potentially play as a rift as or which riff? Do you prefer to players? Or do you prefer the MC seat? Or how is it that you? Yeah,

Amit Moshe : 15:52

I usually end up emceeing because when I get to play the game, it's usually in some way or form of play test, which is great. Right. And I really enjoyed their recent set of play tests that I did. I mean, it's not so recent anymore. It's almost a year ago that we did four nights of Beantown. So this isn't the upcoming book of 10 cases that you can play either individually or as a campaign. And that was a lot of fun. And I really enjoyed him seeing that for a group in Boston. That I'm where I'm where I live part time anyway. And yeah, so that was a lot of fun. But when I played when I you know, when I got the chance to play, I usually play actually the sample character from character creation is the character that I played. So this guy is Lance Sullivan, he's based on he's a kind of an investigative reporter, who's based on the legend of Don Quixote, which is the Spanish legend. You know, the guy that chases windmills. Fights giants so it's a really cool combination because he's, he's, it's you know, in the in the context of city of mist this character is chasing windmills. Everybody thinks he's chasing windmills but actually there's something real going on under the you know, under the veil of the mist so it was really fun playing this character. And this is one of the characters is going to be also available for picking up later this year. And I really another thing that I really like about this character is that you can you know, it start this character particularly starts off very, very much to the ordinary side. So there's a balance between ordinary and legendary and your character, and you kind of start in this character with kind of a three to one balance. It's way more legendary than it is sorry way more ordinary than it is legendary so you focus more on his life as a detective. And so on and so forth and his personal life and but you know, sometime during one of the places when I was playing this character, I lost one of these themes. So you can this can happen in the game, you can actually lose an ordinary part of you and gain a legendary part of you. So the balance changes and vice versa. And that happened and I got to add more legendary powers. So I went for the Giant Slayer, which is kind of kind of a theme in this story because he thinks these windmills are giants and he's fighting windmills. So he got more legendary powers and that was fun to play.

Snyder’s Return : 18:43

That song It sounds a lot of fun. What you mentioned that this character is based on or tied to Don Quixote under a city. Regardless of which city we speak of this city is a wide and diverse place, whatever Was city of Miss broin to diversify and give, give new areas to, to the city at large.

Amit Moshe : 19:07

So in general, I think we've been trying, you know, with with certain success that we can't really say that it has been perfect, but we've been trying to really bring out every possible culture that we can find into the array of legends that we have included in our products. So, we've been we've been we've been really trying to borrow legends from, you know, vary all over the globe, which has been a lot of fun because you get to discover amazing mythologies and folklore, and alongside of course, some of the more obvious things that are kind of serving as a core or, you know, a quick kind of way of introducing the game to our core, you know, audience Which is obviously more, I guess, European and American and and, you know, Western and that kind of sense. So we're trying to create that. That combination and we're really, though that has been really enjoyable. We're also constantly expanding the city with new districts. So we have a Colonia de sombras, which is a kind of a working class district based on Mesoamerican legends that was written by Mark Truman DS, sorry, Mark deist, Truman from magpie games and we have independence that was written by Chris Spivey, and who wrote Harlem and bound. So that's kind of another district that's kind of focusing on oppression but at the same time, it's just A very thriving African American focused community. And there's really a lot of interesting district there. We're expanding some of the districts are like casino gambling district casino districts with a lot of spirits and gods of fortune and luck. And we're having a lot of fun with it. Now we're doing the sunken city, which kind of explores more of the aquatic realm and myths and legends. So yeah, it's just great. It's been great how the city has been gradually building up and it's it's kind of becoming its own universe. I guess. At this point, even though it's just focused on one city This city is said.

Snyder’s Return : 21:47

So, having sort of scoured the globe, to a certain to a certain extent, in introducing and looking at new legends and folklores What has been your personal favourite? Might be a time question to ask answer on the spot. But what's been your, your personal favourite legend or piece of folklore that you've?

Amit Moshe : 22:07

You've said, Well, yeah, I mean, we've had some really beautiful ones. I really, it's really, really hard to pick because there's so much discovery. I know that is a personal favourite Mo, I'm always attracted to kind of like Green Man green night stories. And what was interesting to see was that many, many cultures have this this archetype in different ways. I mean, really many. So one of my favourite versions of it. I mean, you see it in the green night in King Arthur's, and you see it in there's cooroy McDarrah Who's this Irish version of this and that's what that's basically what our company sun evoke, is named after this character, and you see it in I hope I'm pronouncing it right but it's a hater. Which is like the the green one in the in the Quran and or sorry in the Islam so or Arabic legend so it's just really interesting you have detective in Kedah which is a playable character in the starter set she's based on in q2 from the story of Gilgamesh, The Epic of Gilgamesh. That's a very famous, I think the first written story, and that's also a character that's kind of a wild character that's being tamed. So, you know, this like this archetype, it's very broad, you know, you can you can look at it from different directions. But my favourite guess transformation of that archetype was Iren Hans from the German folk tale, which is, it's this wild man in the forest that the king and the queen are trying to are trying to bring in Basically because everyone that goes into the force ends up dead. And eventually, after a lot of difficulties, they're able to capture this creature slash wizard because it's also very powerful and put them in a cage and he begs the prince to set him free. And they kind of go on an adventure and the prince, you know, kind of comes into his own and whenever he needs help, he just says are enhanced three times and are enhanced shows up with his magical abilities. So we've transformed this character into Lily Chow. So Lily Chow is the prince. And she's, you know, she can summon this Green Giant with magical powers, cold iron hands whenever she wants to. And she also has a story very involved story with her parents who are very, very big influencers in the city, probably the biggest. So it was fun. Transforming that into a modern day tale, I guess.

Snyder’s Return : 25:03

It sounds a lot of fun and certainly a character that I'm sure many people will enjoy taking on and playing that role that rift of we've mentioned the city, where in your mind, because the city is, is neither one place nor everywhere. Where is it in your mind when you project the city? Where is it, you place it?

Amit Moshe : 25:27

That's interesting. I mean, we've obviously tried very hard to avoid, you know, very clear references or, you know, choosing this feature that will make it necessarily any specific city. But I mean, my influences came mostly from news or stories that were set in New York. If you think about it, I mean, fables and the Wolf Among Us. That was a big influence. I believe. That's it news. Or the the Marvel? Netflix shows like daredevil, Jessica Jones that's in New York. So I think, yeah, when you when you a lot of the times, I guess some of the art direction is kind of inspired by that, you know, the tenement buildings you might see in some of our books that's very new yorky or American or so. Well, parts of America. So, yeah, there's definitely an influence from American cities. But we're also trying not to go too far with that. So that really I can see this being played in sail or Tokyo. You just kind of have to, or obviously London or Paris or anywhere around the globe. You just have to kind of give it its flavour. Yeah. So I think I mean, we'll, for example, we have an Old Quarter in the city that was very important for me to have that even Though Yes, there is an older, there is an older part of the city for American cities, but many of them don't have a like a very, very distinct Old Quarter as you might find, for example, in Europe, I guess maybe New Orleans has a little bit of that. But yeah, so that was important to also give that some elements that are very common in cities around the world, but aren't necessarily found here. So that's, that's just to give you an example of what we've been kind of like the thought process.

Snyder’s Return : 27:35

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So, we've spoken about sort of what the game is and touched on how to play and the things you're bringing into the world and how to expand the city as as the emcee describes and delivers it as scenarios to to the players or the riffs. So if Someone wants to pick up the starter set. What advice would or just the core rule books and gather round? What advice would you give to new MCs? Looking to bring the city alive for their plays?

Amit Moshe : 28:15

Good? That's a good question. I think first of all, the first thing I would advise new MCs who are actually coming from more traditional role playing games, is to kind of set that aside, and maybe, you know, arrive more open to a story. Not it's not a storytelling game. It's a role playing game, but more kind of like more of a focus on storytelling or character, and things that you might expect really from a kind of a Netflix TV show or movie, you know, really sink into the cinematic atmosphere and then general for MCs, new MCs, I would recommend that you know if you're inspired by watching media, really comic book watching TV and movies go and do that. It's just all I mean, I'm, I've been inspired by things of obviously, but I also kind of like, dreaming about it, you know, and kind of making it all up in my head. So yeah, kind of create your own view of what is cinematic for you, and, and also city misses very much. And in some bulka cast game, it's about the characters and what is what happens to them. It's not just about the adventure, so to speak, even though the case is always at the centre of things and pushing the plot forward. You want to take time to have scenes where your characters can, you know, it's basically giving them airtime or screen time for them to develop and because it's it's really built into the mechanics and there's a lot of rewards built into the mechanic. For not just like improving your character, but kind of like getting a payoff for, you know, bringing your character into the limelight. So, yeah, I would, I would remember kind of remind myself to stay open to that. All right, well, if

Snyder’s Return : 30:20

those listening aren't like I am inspired to sort of pick up a copy. Would you like to just remind everybody where they can get the

Amit Moshe : 30:29

copy from city of miss.co not calm.co. So that's our that's where our store is. So you're welcome to come out and also check out all the other media and videos that we have there about the game and you can pick it up there at the store.

Snyder’s Return : 30:50

So look more about about you personally wanting you do for downtime away from from the office, obviously dreaming about city of mist. You've said that but Do you

Amit Moshe : 31:02

play Star Wars? Yeah, so this is one of my favourite systems that the the Fantasy Flight game systems I really like it it's a it's a good balance, very good black balance of crunch and narrative mechanics and I just really like obviously the the universe and I just enjoy playing it with my friends. I guess that's pretty much it. There's, you know, a little bit of physical activity and when you spend your time in front of the screen all the time, it's, it's really important to kind of balance that with something. So that's fun to get out and move about. Yeah, yeah, you have to you have to get those breaks from from the content. I mean, it can vary. It can be very consuming in many ways, so yeah, it's good. It's good to get those breaks. All right,

Snyder’s Return : 31:59

well, Thank you for taking time for toward discussing city of mist and all the fantastic work you guys savoca doing to soar open out of this, this city in this role playing game for us to, to enjoy and have many more things to look forward to in the future. So I really thank you. Thanks for

Amit Moshe : 32:20

having me.

Snyder’s Return : 32:22

I'd love to say that we get to speak again in the future if you're if you're interested. Thank you for your time today. I mean, it's been an absolute pleasure learning more about you and the game. So thank you.

Amit Moshe : 32:36

You're welcome. Thank you.

Snyder’s Return : 32:47

Thanks for listening. If you want to hear more of us or to get in contact with us, you can find us on Twitter at Return Snyder. You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, and Also if you wish to support the channel on patreon@patreon.com slash nice return music and sound effects provided for this episode are from epidemic sounds calm Transcribed by https://otter.ai