Hey all,

I'm Amit, creator of Legend In The Mist (LitM) and founder of Son of Oak Game Studio.

I'm 45, I live in Boston with my husbear Mark, and I just had a delicious chocolate croissant (I know, it's not what it's called) from a great local bakery/coffeeshop (Tatte).

So with that covered, I'm ready to answer any questions you may have, especially about Son of Oak, our games, the Mist Engine with its stateless tag-based mechanics, future plans, Legend In The Mist and its creation process, the Hearts of Ravnesdale setting, indie publishing or anything really.

About Legend In The Mist

If you haven't been following, Legend In The Mist is a rustic fantasy TTRPG that is also a universal, description-based game engine which can support any fantasy (or other) setting and includes solo/GMless play in the core rules. It was Kickstarted in 2024 to the tune of $855,000, was voted 2025's Most Anticipated TTRPG, and was the Top-Rated TTRPG of 2025 on DriveThruRPG (the most 5-star reviews). You can try it with the free comic book tutorial , a free quickstart (demo) game, as well as a free 5e crossover guide.

LaunchFest!

Legend In The Mist coming in print next month (yay!) and we're having a big party to welcome it, titled LaunchFest, with daily content drops and lots of events. Ending June 17th, LaunchFest is the last chance to preorder the game at up to 40% off retail price after which you get an instant download of the PDFs and can start playing. (There are also bundles for retailers!)
Check it out here: https://sonofoak.com/pages/legend-in-the-mist-rpg-launch-fest

One of our most interesting upcoming events is a stream this Thursday with YouTube legend Dungeon Dad, discussing the differences between DnD and LitM: https://youtube.com/live/w4mWzQEtAAs

Thank You!

The TTRPG community's reaction to Legend In The Mist has really touched the Son of Oak team so deeply (myself, Alejandra, Eran, Manuel, Kelly, Itamar, we're too many to list...). As creators, especially of a game that's quite different from traditional RPGs, we were just incredibly delighted to find so many players wanted that - a simple, narrative, yet highly flexible and customizable game, where you choose the crunch level in every action and where any conflict can take center stage, combat or not.

This week I was really moved by this review by Darren on DriveThruRPG:

It took a while to work out the rules, which did not seem anywhere near as easy to follow as the book proclaimed. But, wow, when it clicked this product suddenly became fabulous. Character creation is adorable. Superbly presented. I think this is the best game in decades.

Switching to a statless, classless game is definitely a paradigm shift for most traditional TTRPG players (not so much for new players, we've found!), but I was so thrilled that Darren found the magic and creative freedom that await once you make that leap...

Anyway - now to your questions!

**Come here and talk about anything!**

This post will stay stickied for (at least) the week-end. Please enjoy this space where you can talk about anything: your last game, your current project, your patreon, etc. You can even talk about video games, ask for a group, or post a survey or share a new meme you've just found. This is the place for small talk on r/rpg.

The off-topic rules may not apply here, but the other rules still do. This is less the Wild West and more the Mild West. Don't be a jerk.

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I am a 30-year forever GM that decided to try being a paid GM on SPG around December 2025. This isn't a self promo, and my SPG name isn't my reddit username. I wanted to give my take on SPG and paid games so that people may get a fairly neutral view of what I've encountered over about 40 sessions during that time.

EDIT: There was another discussion thread mentioned in my post that has since been removed.

The Good:

• Honestly, one of the best things about SPG is the fact that it even exists. It's definitely not for everyone, but many of the people I've met through there are more than happy to pay for a game because they don't have any other options. We all know that schedules, people moving in and out of town, and other commitments are the death of a large portions of campaigns so paid sites allow people to keep gaming when they don't have any other options. There are even free games available from time to time, although admittedly fairly rare. Would be nice for SPG to sponsor some games so the GM gets paid while bringing in new players that don't want to spend money on a game.

• Second, it allows people to try other games. I run primarily 5e and Pathfinder on there and every one of my PF games has had at least one player that just wanted to try out the system. If I want to try out Shadowdark or Lancer I can either buy all the books, learn the rules, and beg people to play or I find a paid game and just try it out. SPG is very strict on ensuring safety within games and GMs are supposed to have clearly defined ways for players to alert the GM if the session starts to get uncomfortable.

• Third, at least in my experience, people willing to pay for games are much more involved with the game and seem more excited to join each session. It has also held me to a higher standard, making sure that I have really prep'd my games and VTT tech. I can feel the difference my paid games have just due to the extra few hours of prep I put into each game. I understand that this is now a business transaction and make sure that I deliver a professional experience not only in-game, but also with communication and OOG logistics.

• Last, the money side is totally legit and you do get paid from the site. I run 3 weekly games and a one-off every once in a while, and I make about $600/monthly. I price my games around $15-20 each and have 4-6 players per. It took me about a month to get my first game started, but after that I got the others going pretty quickly. I'm not doing this full time, so I think I'm happy doing 2-3 games weekly indefinitely for some extra cash. There's youtubers and stuff saying they are making $70k+ and it may be possible, but even though I love RPG's there's no way I'd do that. For one, unless you're running the same module 10 sessions/week there'd be no time for any prep or follow up. Second, I don't know how your voice would survive 40 hours a week in GM mode. I don't do crazy voices or anything but even after 3 games fairly close together I don't feel like talking about anything else. SPG takes 15% which I think is totally fair.

The Bad:

EDIT: Taking out my first point about number of sessions being inflated. My numbers don't totally line up for some reason, but it seems that should in fact be paid games.

• There is an active discord for GMs and I may just be missing things, but there doesn't seem to be any tools to make me and my games stand out. There are some special games that get flagged and promoted like 'learn the system', but when I asked how to join I was told that it was invite-only, piling on top of the above mentioned nepotism. This seems to be a new process so maybe they'll eventually have like applications or tryouts for those types of games, but for now you pretty much just try to make your game ad as catchy as possible and hope for the best.

• The system seems to heavily favor long 30-50 session games. I get it that as a GM I'd like to have a solid group that's going to be together for the next 6 months, but when I was trying out the site as a player it was very hard to find short or one-shot games. I even tried to join a few games that the GM responded were nearly over so they weren't taking new players. I don't know if there's any rules around that, but I feel like if your game has a slot open you should be open for players to jump in anytime. They really do need to focus and incentivize GMs to run shorter games to get players interested that are intimidated by the idea of signing up for a year long campaign when they've never rolled a d20.

The Ugly

• Just like everything else, there are awesome GMs and horrible GMs. The bad thing is new players sometimes don't know the difference until it's too late and they give up the hobby. Reviews help, but there needs to be more ways for players to vet their GMs before play. I have a youtube vid for an into and always host my games with a free session zero or first session for just such a reason, and SPG should support that more easily. Maybe something like refunding players no questions asked for the first couple of sessions or something (within limits) would allow players to test things out a bit more. Allowing a spectator mode would even be great. I'd be happy for someone to join on my game just to watch how the game is going to see if they'd like me personally or even the system, but of course that'd be up to each GM and their players. By the rules, I can't invite someone to sit in a game that's hosted on SPG if they're not signed up for that game (which I agree with). Players have told me horror stories about the GMs they've played with on SPG, but I've heard and experienced all of those GMs and worse IRL.

• The other thing is there's really no other option out there. I've seen a couple of sites with a few straggling games and I hear there's some facebook and discord groups, but afaik there's no site that is nearly the quality or popularity of SPG. I don't know any of their numbers, but there's thousands of people in their discord and there's always dozens of games ready to start. There's a hundred under that that have 0/0 players, but if you wanted to just play something later tonight, you probably could.

I'm certainly not affiliated with SPG and don't want to sound too much like a fanboy, but I don't want people to just totally shit on paid games because of word of mouth from a few people with bad experiences. If anything we need a dozen MORE paid gaming sites so there's better competition out there. I won't get into more specifics on $ or my account, but I'd be happy to answer any general questions to get more people out there playing games!

For those of you have are opposed to Pbta but have gotten and read or ran Stonetop what are your thoughts? Off the bat for me, Stonetop addresses a lot of the gripes I had with Dungeon World. I also like the setting personally which heightens my interest.

I've noticed a lot of former DMs and players of Pathfinder and D&D 5e on here that occasionally bring up why they left those games or why they cut back on playing those games, so I have to ask, what other games do you guys recommend over D&D 5e and Pathfinder and why do you recommend them?

The first four Spotlight settings too. This is pretty much what needed to happen with Cortex from the beginning, I'm glad that Cam Banks was able to orchestrate it.

Im a teacher who runs my schools D&D and Warhammer Club. The kids want to play dungeons and dragons but none of them want to learn how to play dungeons and dragons. I cant DM a game for all of them because theres too many of them. Ive noticed that the DMs arent even picking up the rule books. The players dont have their character sheets in front of them. Theyre just making up anything and rolling a random dice to decide an outcome. Its gotten to a point where the students who actually know how to play are getting fed up and the students who dont want to play refuse to learn how to play because it bores them. Ive suggested playing simpler games like dungeon world but then they stop showing up to the club because its "no longer dnd" even though they werent playing dnd to start with. Additionally a campaign seems unviable because A if they refuse to learn how to theres no hope of them ever leveling up and B there turn out numbers are inconsistent. Everyone needs to be playing the same game other wise "oh no our GM isnt here today we cant play and cant join the other group because theyre playing a different game to us." Help. How can i dumb down dnd to a level that is engaging and can be learned quickly in a way that a campaign can actually be played.

I started looking into Stonetop (yes Quinns), and I noticed Stonetop world is very flashed out, but I found no rules about how to dynamiclly change it in the background.

For example in Blades in the Dark there are rules about the factions agenda, relationships, and how to have them acconplish things in the backgroun so the world feels alive.

This system seems to be great for this, what with the seasons changing, how everything is connected to one another and the in depth details about the other cities.

Am I missing official ideas/rules regarding this in the books? Or a reason this won't work?

In any case if anyone has any ideas on how to incorporate these concepts I'll love to hear them.

The Warden's Operational Manual is widely praised, and arguably a best-in-class guide to building space/corporate horror adventures.

What similar products exist for other genres and settings?

What TTRPG do you think should’ve been marketed more as a tactical game or boardgame than a roleplaying game?

I'm thinking about games where the mechanics lean so heavily into combat, tactics, builds, and optimization that the actual roleplaying feels secondary (like Lancer, from what I heard). Which RPG gave you the feeling of “this is basically a tactical skirmish game with RP attached”?

\ Edit: meant to write “tactical” in the title.*

Hey,

So I'm thinking of launching a short roguelite campaign at my club. I really like the idea of sending characters on an adventure during which they'll probably die, only for a new generation to carry on with the mission. Trouble is: which system to choose.

I've basically only found two systems: A Rasp of Sand and Rhapsody of Blood.

A Rasp of Sand is based on Knave, and you need the latter to play it. It's an OSR game, it uses a d20, it's 400 pages long. Three reasons that are individually enough to make me not want to play this game.

Rhapsody of Blood is a PbtA game, which is both good and a source of question. I'm an experienced PbtA GM, so that's good, I won't be lost with RoB. But on the other hand I wonder if it's the right ruleset for a roguelite dungeon delving game.

Has anyone played this game, and would you mind sharing your experience?

I've been playing in a D&D campaign since March, so really not that long (especially considering we've been having less than 1 session per week).

I made what I thought was a pretty interesting, fun character, but by this point I'm bored of them and fantasizing about what kind of character I want to play next.

I don't think this is a problem of me not liking the character's class or abilities, because this has happened in the few other times I've played long form games, even when my character has been wildly different. This has even happened when I've played non-D&D systems.

Is this fixable? I love longer form campaigns because they allow you to uncover and build on the story over time. But I'd probably enjoy them even more if, within a few weeks of starting, I wasn't fantasizing about getting my character killed so that I can play the cool new guy I came up with 🤣