Weaknesses in City of Mist

I’ve been playing and running the roleplay game City of Mist this summer. It is a narrative game by Son of Oak studios that you play by leveraging tags. Tags are short descriptions of an aspect of your character. For instance, my character has the tag “Drop Dead Gorgeous”. She gets a plus to the roll for any goal that is easier to achieve for someone who is Drop Dead Gorgeous.

City of Mist characters also have negative tags called “weaknesses”. That same character has the weakness “Vanity”. Anyone playing up to her vanity has an easier time manipulating her.

I am finding that it is often unclear to new players what makes a good weakness. The rules don't really explain this and I've fallen into the trap myself of creating weaknesses that are very thematic but "don't play."

Weaknesses are important. Having a weakness invoked either by player or MC (Gamemaster) is the only way you get character advancement points. So, although it may seem counter intuitive, from a rules perspective you want weaknesses that get invoked a lot.

It is also important to match your weakness concept to the mechanics. A weakness is just a -1 tag. Its effect is to give you -1 to your roll. Thus, a weakness makes something more difficult, but nothing impossible. For this reason, all or nothing weaknesses really don't work well in this environment. As an example: "Power doesn’t work in the dark" is a fine HERO system limitation but not a good City of Mist weakness. Its too binary.

A better weakness would be something like "powered by the sun" or "less effective in the dark."

Also avoid weaknesses that require the MC to do more bookkeeping or are out of scope of your particular game. Anything related to time such as "power can only be used once a day" is going to require your MC to keep track of time. Its also a binary weaknesses which, as explained above, is bad.

"Requires a rest once a week" is bad both because you have now loaded your MC down with day-keeping AND most cases are unlikely to go a full week. If you must put a time limit on something, you should use game-timing not simulation timing. eg "Full power only once a session" could translate to a -1 tag after you have used the abilities for the first time. In general, City of Mist is already a bit futzy with rules tracking as compared to other narrative games. Unless your MC is experienced, confident and willing, don't introduce extra mechanics into the game.

Character traits like "Vanity" or "Quick to anger", make good weaknesses. It is very clear when they apply and the MC can create situations around them. Physical limitations like "Missing an arm" or "Weak" are also good. Again it is clear when they apply and they apply over a wide range of situations. "Power" limitations like "Powered by sunlight" or "less effective against fire" are trickier to get right. Its easy to either make them too common or not common enough, but they can work if thought through.

A good source of weaknesses can be the negative aspects of power tags. For example, the weakness "Vanity" comes from a character of mine who has the tag "Drop dead gorgeous."

The questions to ask IMO are "How does this impede but not stop me?" and "Does this cover a wide enough range of situations that it is likely to become part of the story without always impeding me?" Crafting good weaknesses is one of the trickier parts of character creation in City of Mist. I hope these guidelines are helpful for others interested in this interesting and unique game.