Isles of Mist is a tabletop role-playing game designed to be easy to learn and exciting to master. Choose your Mist Mark and enter into a magical setting of wonder and adventure where the world is a mystery even to those who live there.
Chart a path through the Great Forest, past trees as large as skyscrapers. Make friends with the bumblepigs without getting stung. Fly through the mists over The Lost Lake where air pirates wait in the darkness riding their fire-breathing pufferfish. Uncover secrets forgotten before The Awakening. There are so many adventures to explore!
About
Isles of Mist's History
Isles of Mist is a tabletop roleplaying game originally designed by educator and gamebook writer, Ashton MacSaylor, for use with Story Tables, a tabletop roleplaying youth enrichment program that has been running for the last eight years. Since its original conception, both children and adults have enjoyed the system's unique next-generation game rules and magical setting. After twelve years of play-testing and improvement, it is finally time to bring Isles of Mist out into the greater public.
Patreon coming October 26th!
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The World
Isles of Mist takes place in a world of islands and continents floating in a vast, unending sky. All known lands used to be a single massive continent, then, a little over ten years ago, at the conclusion of the devastating Prophet Wars, a terrible destructive energy was unleashed that destroyed over a third of the total land mass, shattering the continent into two smaller, crescent-shaped continents and hundreds of islands, large and small.
As for what lies beneath... that remains unknown for the mists grow darker and thicker the farther down you go, and the air becomes hard to breathe. Legend holds that at least one chunk of land sank into the mists in the Shattering and people still live down there, in the dark depths beneath the mist.
Mist Walking and Mist Marks
Mist Walking
Sometimes the mist closes in upon a person and whisks them away. It’s unknown exactly where they go or why, and memories of mist walking are often fuzzy and indistinct, fading quickly, as memories of a dream.
Mist Marks
The first time any person goes mist walking—typically around puberty—they come back marked. There
are five “Mist Marks,” and they each come with special powers and tend to be associated with certain personality traits. (Choosing your Mist Mark will typically be one of the first steps in creating a new character!)
Mist Marks seem to be a phenomenon that is unique to humans. Some other intelligent beings are known: scaled Dragonkin, animal-like Faen, and the mysterious Mountain People, to name a few. But none of them exhibit Mist Marks.
System and Rules
Isles of Mist attempts to learn from the successes of its predecessors while advancing past their mistakes. It presents a wholly-original ruleset that is not bound to any preconceptions from earlier generations of tabletop roleplaying games. In the minutiae of the rules, we have attempted to make several quality-of-life upgrades, without entirely re-inventing the wheel.
The ruleset is easy to learn, and while it was designed to be approachable to kids, it is complex and challenging enough for even the most experienced adult players. As you level up, the gameplay and character advancement is designed to become more challenging. The main system is best for those who are ages 9+ with rules incorporated to adapt the system for playing with younger children.
We believe that by making roleplaying games more accessible from the onset, you can create a life long love for tabletop roleplaying games.
Flexible Magic System
A magic system that has clear rules and boundaries but also leaves room for imagination. The “Universal Magic Chart,” presents consistent benchmarks for range, damage, number of targets, which can be applied universally.
Easy to Learn, Difficult to Master
New players of any age can be overwhelmed by the complexities of a full-fledged tabletop roleplaying game. To meet this need, Isles of Mist is designed to start easy and gain difficulty as your character levels up through the system.
Opportunities for Reflection
To capitalize on the opportunities for learning, Isles of Mist pins character growth to real-world reflection. Characters can advance through earning experience points (xp), but the way that xp is earned is through reflection on a variety of topics
Reduced Graphic Content
This game uses the concept of “Aura,” a magical force that protects people from harm. When a character is reduced to zero, they are knocked out an no longer a threat. Injury and death are possible, but fully killing an opponent is not always necessary.
Pet and Animal Friends
Compared to other common roleplaying games, Isles of Mist makes it easy to start the game with a wide range of fantastical options for animal companions, both magical and mundane.
Imagination Enablement
Character options in this game, from magic, to special powers, to enchanted artifacts, to pets, and more, are presented as “examples."
If a player wants something that isn’t supported, there are rules and guidelines to help the player and Story Guide work together to make it up
Creators
When an award-winning game-book writer and english teacher meets a professional video game artist and illustrator, you have the makings of a TTRPG Dream Team.
Ashton and Callie MacSaylor are both professional Game Masters and the co-founders of the youth roleplaying game enrichment program, Story Tables. It is their dream to bring TTRPGs to a wider audience by not only developing the games, but by providing safe spaces for people to engage with the artform in a more accessible fashion.
