Waycross, Mara, the grove, the Marquis Players — all of it carries over. What changes is everything that kept stopping you mid-story.
Angela's about to interrogate Fez — peak drama — and we stop to find her cantrip. Yssala saves Mara from across the grove with a brilliant metamagic call, but it takes four minutes of slot-counting to get there. Kaeleus ends the boss fight with a Michael Jackson number and we spend thirty seconds arguing Deception vs. Persuasion first.
The game you want to play is already happening at this table. The system just keeps interrupting it.
"I don't know why D&D doesn't make everything just an attack roll."— Josh, mid-session 2, apologizing for the system in real time
Before you roll, ask: "Which of my tags apply?" Every tag that fits gives +1. Roll two regular dice. Add them up. That's it.
It works. Describe it. Move on.
It works, but the story twists. Most scenes live here — this is where drama happens.
Josh makes a move. Not "you failed" — "the story got interesting."
The entire vocabulary. If you know these four things, you can play session one.
Short phrases that describe what your character is and does. They replace stats, skills, spell lists, class features, and companion stat blocks. If a tag plausibly applies to your action, it gives +1. No thresholds, no DCs, no "but what's my modifier?"
Your character sheet is four cards. Each card is a theme — a part of who your character is, with three power tags, one weakness tag, and a Quest. You pick up to three tags per roll from anywhere on your sheet. Everything that matters about you is face-up on the table.
What your character is chasing. Quests replace experience points — you grow when your story moves. Accomplish something on your Quest? Mark Improve. Your weakness makes things worse? Also mark Improve. The hard moments pay off.
No hit points — for you or for enemies. Instead, you pick up narrative conditions like winded-2 or shaken-1 that subtract from rolls they'd plausibly affect. They clear with rest, not arithmetic. Enemies work the same way: you're chipping at their story, not their number.
And what stays:
Each page shows what your specific character looks like in Legend in the Mist — your tags, your Quests, a replay of a moment from Session 2, and a dice roller to try the system yourself.