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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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.

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.

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.

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?

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?

As it says in the title; how important is art (by this I mean images in pdfs, zines, books etc.,) to you when it comes to your enjoyment when dealing with TTRPGs? This is very much a 3AM thought I have been mulling over.

For me it is important that the art be decent and have some bearing to the text. I find that art, especially art that designed to synthesize with the text is essential to establishing moods and themes within a game. This is not to say that there cannot be good text only games, only that if there is art in a game it should at least be relevant to the text. It can even be done really well with public domain art! Hellwhalers and The Devil Jonah's Whale both from +1 EXP are good examples of just that.

I am curious what people think.

Also if I made some sort of error in my post please let me know. I am new to doing anything other then lurking.

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?

For the GMs out there. I have a fantasy scenario that I want to run at some point (The Town Where Nothing Goes Wrong Right). It is a systemless scenario, however, it occurs to me that I don’t have a fantasy ruleset to run it in! What’s a nice, simple fantasy style ruleset that can create characters and has the capacity to run a whimsical and somewhat silly scenario? No complicated D&D please - the simpler the better! 😁
I’m an experienced GM, and have run many games in many systems (including D&D back in the day - red box edition when you had to colour your dice in with crayon!), but nowadays much prefer a simple system that fades into the background and lets you tell the story without having to look up tables and stuff!
TIA.

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 🤣