Have you ever wondered what it’s like to be an ordinary hero? One with humble beginnings, a mundane job, and a family of four to feed? One that has a dog named Scratchy, back pain, and only heard about dragons once at a fair? If so, I invite you to explore the rustic, mysterious world of Legend in the Mist on StartPlaying.

To begin, you need only one thing: an understanding of tags—short descriptors that define key details about your character.

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Your Hero

Your Hero’s details are recorded on three types of cards, enhancing the game’s magical and cozy feel.

• Hero Card – Contains general details such as your (the player’s) name, your Hero’s name, their Fellowship relationships, backpack, and other aspects of their progression.
• Tracking Cards – Show your Hero’s current conditions and statuses, which measure how the world affects them.
• Theme Cards – Shape the Hero’s four core aspects. These are the most important

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Theme Cards

A theme is a tag that describes a major aspect of your Hero, such as their temperament, backstory, or abilities. Some examples include Strong as an Ox, Village Healer, Goat Herder of Milkrest, Brave, and Satchel of Herbs.

Each theme can have additional tags attached to it, representing minor but related secondary aspects. Usually, a newly created theme has two or more positive tags and one negative tag called a weakness. Tags serve a dual role: they define what’s true in the story—for good or for bad.

You can think of the tags on your own, or you can choose from the book. The examples are wonderful even as a springboard for brainstorming.

Let’s say you want to play a hardened farmer who’s spent his life tilling the land and protecting villagers from forest monsters. Your tag, Strong as an Ox, could have two additional positive tags: Lift a Heavy Load and Clobber a Bully, and one negative—Tongue-Tied.

This means you would get +1 Power when performing an action of strength and -1 Power when your Hero is singing, for example. A tag’s relevance and usefulness are always determined in the context of the current scene. Just because you can lift a fallen tree doesn’t mean you’d be brave enough to stand your ground if the tree suddenly turned into a horrifying monster.

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Theme Categories

There are 20 theme types divided into three categories.

1. Origin Themes

Describe your background and beginnings—who you are as an individual. Some examples include Circumstance, Devotion, Past, Personality, and Skill or Trade.

Perhaps when you think about your character, the first thing that pops into your mind is a ragged orphan who wants to become a knight. In that case, the first tag/theme you’d create is Devotion, then add two contributing tags, such as Become a Knight and Heal the Sick. With just three different tags, we’ve already painted a picture of an orphan trading all their savings for a rusty sword. Humble beginnings of a great heart. 

2. Adventure Themes

Adventure themes describe what makes you a hero—something that stands out from the crowd. These give you the power to explore and impact a greater, more dangerous world. Examples include Duty, Influence, Knowledge, and Relic.
Perhaps in the Duty tag, we add A Light Against The Dark, and suddenly, a picture of a shaman apprentice appears. It is up to her to continue the work of the tribes.

3. Greatness Themes

These describe what makes you a force capable of shaping the course of history. Examples include Destiny, Dominion, Mastery, and Monstrosity.

Below the Monstrosity tag, we can add Dragon, and we end up playing a local villager whose bloodline descends from an ancient family of dragons. Once upon a time, they ruled the skies and cities, but today they pay taxes. That is until your hero unlocks their potential through an epic campaign.

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Endless Customization

All of these themes fall into three broader classifications—Companion, Magic, and Possessions—which means the same theme can originate from different sources, allowing for endless customization of your character.

Let’s take the Strong as an Ox, for example. In the Origin category, the theme could fit into a Trade—a scrappy farmer who loves nothing more than using his strength to harvest potatoes. But if we shift the category from Origin to Greatness and change it from Trade to Magic, we get a different hero. This hero didn’t earn their muscles working the land—they were gifted. As a child, they fell into a magical cauldron that granted them strength. If we switch Magic to Companion, we get a legendary stag who bestowed Strong as an Ox upon our hero.
Although in that case, Strong as a Stag would be more fitting. 

Same tag, three completely different storylines. 

There are numerous guidelines in the game’s core book to help you create your character. You can go as deep as you like, thinking about tags’ nuances and their connections, or you can whip up an adventurer in five minutes and discover them through play.
That’s it. This is all you need to start playing the hero of your dreams—four tags, four seeds from which the story grows.

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Developing Your Hero

Development means change, and that applies to themes as well. Your starting themes are not set in stone. They will evolve as your hero grows. This is Legend in the Mist’s greatest strength—player agency. Not just agency over the world and your actions but also over your hero’s progress.

Throughout the game, you will reach milestones, at which point you will mark your Quest progression. Additionally, when choosing which tags apply to an action, you can opt to count in your weakness—this will give you minus Power for the scene, but allow you to mark Growth on your theme card.

Once you mark the third Growth on a theme, it gains an improvement, which usually means you can add a new tag to the theme.

Let me quote a perfect example from the book:

“Imagine a Hero who begins as a Miner, taught to keep their head down and avoid making trouble. They defy this norm and lead a revolt in the mines, replacing their Miner theme with a Revolt Leader theme, learning warfare and politics. Later, they may choose to return to the simple life of a miner—or evolve into the leader of a realm-wide rebellion.”

I don’t know about you, but I would love to play such a character. Preferably, my miner would have found a sentient magical crystal that speaks of ancient times—when dragons were bankers and ruled the world. This is why people rebelled and toppled the wretched flying lizards, and why the land has lost all its former glory and might. My miner, of course, wouldn’t know any of this. He would just have a Companion theme labeled Magical Crystal strapped onto his Backpack.
One tag—countless opportunities.
Grab a pen and paper and dive in.

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Nikko is a professional game master and writer who chases clouds in faraway worlds. https://www.elvenfirefly.com/