Guest post by Coleman Gailloreto
Want to tell a new story about characters from your Dungeons & Dragons campaign in a more narrative-focused RPG? Son Of Oak's new 5e crossover tool is perfect for D&D 5th edition veterans who want to roleplay in exciting new ways, and provides gamers and dungeon masters with tips on how to translate their favorite characters to the rules of Legends in the Mist and create adventure stories steeped in a “rustic fantasy” vibe.
About the rustic fantasy genre of Legend In The Mist
The term “rustic fantasy” often appears in promotions for the role-playing game “Legends in the Mist,” but what exactly is the rustic fantasy genre?
Game developers at Son of Oak Game Studio frequently cite works such as The Lord of the Rings, The Wheel of Time, Fairy Tales, and Studio Ghibli films as major inspirations for Legends in the Mist in promotional videos and blog posts. Specifically, I was inspired by small, surprising moments in fantasy stories, such as the magical light that shines in the forest at night when a young hero leaves home for the first time.
It's rustic fantasy in a nutshell, a genre that encompasses secluded villages atop towering castles, witches' huts full of medicinal herbs atop floating wizard's schools, and enchanted forests atop trap-filled dungeons. That's not to say castles, wizarding schools, and dungeon crawling don't make an appearance in the Mist of Legends campaign. Rather, LitM's rules and themes seek to emphasize the intimate and beautiful details of magic, nature, and community that bring great fantasy stories to life.
A question arises here. How can the Legend In The Mist 5e Crossover Tool help D&D veterans tell stories in this rustic fantasy genre?
The 5e Crossover Tool helps D&D players master the rules of Legends in the Mist.
Although both are fantasy role-playing games, D&D and Legends in the Mist have very different rules.
Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition traces its roots back to the tabletop war games of the 1970s, blending tactical rules with clearly defined character classes. Born out of the indie RPG boom of the 2000s and 2010s, Legend In the Mist focuses on role-playing and storytelling by using “theme” descriptions and keyword “tags” to describe characters and challenges. In other words, we define the world in words instead of numbers.
The 5e Crossover Tool helps D&D players port their characters to Legend In The Mist by providing a detailed list of themes and tags that closely match the powers of character classes in D&D (5th Edition 5.1 SRD). It's also full of sidebars that teach players how Legends in the Mist works by contrasting it with D&D rules (for example, items in a LitM character's inventory are only tagged if they're an important part of the character's persona).
5e crossover tools give D&D players new ways to grow their characters
By default, character development in Dungeons & Dragons is fairly linear. As the player character levels up, new abilities are unlocked from the character class list. This makes character upgrades fairly quick, but can limit the range of heroes players can create (even with leveling options such as backgrounds, feats, and multiclassing).
Legend In The Mist takes a more free-form approach to character generation, allowing players to create all kinds of heroes by combining four different themes that describe their abilities, origins, relationships, and powers. It gives players a lot of freedom, but it also puts a lot of pressure on them to be creative and come up with characters that are fun to portray.
The big advantage of using the 5e Crossover Tool to transform D&D player characters into Legend In The Mist is that it gives you the freedom to grow your PCs in directions that the D&D rules don't support. Traditionally, you can “level up” by increasing the Might Rating of your character's theme, expand your character's range by adding tags to the theme, and even rewrite your character by replacing the theme after a specific player action (for example, breaking a magic sword to save someone's life).
5e Crossover Tool allows gamers to run campaigns with parties of different levels
Fantasy stories like The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, in which a small hobbit like Frodo is more instrumental in saving the world than a powerful wizard like Gandalf, were a major influence on the original Dungeons & Dragons. However, in most fantasy RPGs, simulating such a plot can be difficult. This is because in a “mixed level” adventuring party, a player controlling a “lower level” character may feel useless or irrelevant.
One of Son Of Oak's big goals when designing Legend In The Mist was to create an RPG where “underdog” heroes like Frodo were just as fun to play as powerful heroes like Gandalf. They accomplished this by making the Legends in the Mist character themes a double-edged sword. Each core theme comes with a “weakness tag” that can penalize certain character actions, while themes with high Might levels can be a blessing or a curse depending on the story (for example, a character with a high Might theme called “Ancient Dragon” may be powerful in battle, but will have a hard time making friends with grumpy villagers).
Thanks to this approach to character design, D&D players who use the 5e crossover tools to port their characters to Legend In The Mist can easily assemble adventuring parties like the Fellowship of the Ring. Player characters with high levels of Might are truly powerful, but they are also limited by that power. PCs with lower levels of might, on the other hand, are more versatile and have more freedom in a wide range of non-combat situations.
Conclusion:
Son Of Oak's 5e Crossover Tool is a great resource for D&D players who want to try out Legend In The Mist without abandoning their current campaign or cast of characters. It's also a great tool for dungeon masters who want to run side adventures for groups that focus on the backstory, relationships, and charm of the communities the adventurers pass through.
To get your hands on 5e crossover tools, visit this DriveThruRPG page.
