Intro

With your Hero cards in hand, it’s time for your Heroes to go on an adventure – whether it’s a daunting trip to the village healer in the swamp or a quest for the sword that would save the realm. And when your Fellowship is exploring the wider world, inevitably they’ll come across dramatic situations and face a variety of Challenges they’ll want to overcome. So when it’s time to take action, here’s what you do.

Recap: The Game Loop

During play, every scene follows the same game loop: Establish -> Action -> Consequences, which repeats itself with a different player getting to act each time. At the start of each such turn, the Narrator establishes the scene. If there are Challenges in the scene, the Narrator can make a Threat with them, which means describing what they’re about to do, usually endangering your Hero or your Hero’s goals. Then, the Narrator gives one Hero the spotlight and asks, “What do you do?”

Choosing Your Hero’s Action

The player in the spotlight takes action and describes what their Hero does. How you describe your action is especially important in this game because, among other things, it determines which tags and statuses apply to your action. If there’s a Threat at hand, it’s also important whether your action addresses the Threat or not, as we’ll see later.

The Narrator then decides how to resolve your Hero’s chosen action, in one of three different ways: Simple, Quick, and Detailed.

Simple Outcome - Narrator’s Call

A Simple action has a certain outcome or is not yet dramatic enough to require a dice roll; instead, it’s resolved with the Narrator deciding its outcome. If you’re a noble with an established lineage, the Narrator can decide having these tags is enough and rule you can just have an invitation to the latest royal banquet and move on without rolling for it.

Quick Outcome - Roll

If things are more tense or uncertain, the Narrator will choose a Quick action, which requires a dice roll. Everything from diplomacy to discovery to combat can be resolved through one roll: two six-sided dice + your Power for this action. 

Counting Power

Before you roll, you count your Power by invoking every tag and status that could affect this action – yours, your target’s, and around you. Let’s say your thief Hero is leaping over a tomato stall to get away from a pursuer. You invoke your tags and the Narrator can also invoke tags, including your weakness tags and the Challenge’s tags. You gain 1 Power for each helpful tag and lose 1 Power for each hindering tag. You also add the tier of the highest helpful status and subtract the tier of the highest hindering status.

Going back to the fleeing thief, you would get 1 Power for being nimble and lose 1 Power for both your weakness tag slips under pressure and for your pursuer being athletic, because they both work against your action. Here, your total Power would be -1. If you were hastened-3 by a magic spell, this helpful status would add 3 to your Power, bringing your total Power to 2. And if you were hobbled-1, this negative status would subtract 1 from your Power, ending with a total Power of 1.

Quick Outcome Cont.

Once you have your Power, roll 2d6 and add the result to your Power. If the total is 10 or higher, you Succeed with no Consequences. If the total is 6 or lower, you fail and receive Consequences. But if you total 9,8, or 7, you Succeed but also take Consequences. Keep in mind that, no matter your Power, if you roll two 1’s, you automatically take Consequences without Succeeding. But if you roll two 6’s, you automatically Succeed without Consequence!

A Quick action ends there, when you discover whether the action Succeeded or not, and whether it had Consequences, without getting into the details. This is handy for quick checks that involve a roll but keep the story moving.

Detailed Outcome - Roll & Spend

A Detailed action takes things further. The Narrator calls for a Detailed action when they want to see how much you succeed, or when things get really tense and a conflict is played blow-by-blow, word-by-word, etc. You make the roll in the same way you would a Quick action. However, on a Success, you can spend your Power on different game Effects:

• You can add or scratch a tag for 2 Power,

• Add or reduce a status for 1 Power per tier, 

• or Discover a valuable detail per point of Power.

There are a few more options, but we’ll cover those in our Advanced Actions video.

Your chosen Effects must match the action described – you can’t describe yourself healing another character and choose to craft a saddle as an Effect – but you can mix and match different Effects as long as it fits the action.

Keep in mind that when you Succeed, you always have at least 1 Power to spend, even if you roll with a Power of zero or less. 

Consequences

Once the action is resolved, we move to Consequences. Your Hero’s action will have Consequences if you ignored a Threat Established by the Narrator or if your roll generated Consequences. The Narrator can also invoke one of your Hero’s weakness tags to deliver Consequences if the other conditions didn’t happen.

Consequences can be narrative, like a merchant refusing to sell you their goods, or a monster becoming aware of your presence. They can also create negative Effects, tags or statuses. They can give you negative tags and statuses like sad, tired, or bleeding; take away your good tags & statuses like a potion or sword; buff Challenges with positive tags or statuses like blessed; or remove negative tags and statuses from Challenges – basically healing them. Just as your actions can be anything, so too can the Consequences.

Consequences are how Challenges get you – your adversaries don’t get their own turns but instead their actions manifest when you ignore their Threats or slip up in your actions.

Reaction

But there is still hope! When you take Effects from Consequences, the Narrator may allow you to make a Reaction roll to lessen these Effects. This roll works the same way as with action rolls; count your Power for this reaction and roll two six-sided dice, adding your Power to the result.

• If you get 6 or below, you suffer the Consequences as-is.

• On a 7 to 9, you can spend your Power to lessen the Consequences and only to lessen the Consequences: 1 Power to cancel 1 status tier, and 2 Power to cancel a tag Effect.

• But on a 10 or more, not only do you get +1 Power to spend, but you can also use that Power on any Effect – you could use your reaction to counterattack or learn something about your enemy, if it fits the description.

Note that with Reactions, there is no double-dipping of tags used in the preceding action. If you used an axe to attack someone, you can’t use that same axe to defend yourself when they hit back. But you could use a shield if you have one! For this reason, it’s a good idea to pick some reactive or defensive tags at character creation.

Outro

So there you have it – now you know how to take actions, suffer Consequences, and take reactions – which is all you need to play Legend In The Mist!

If you want to know more about the actions you can take, check out the rest of our How To Play series. And while you’re going through our channel, be sure to like and subscribe for more Legend in the Mist videos. 

Until next time, good fortunes on your journey!