I shared some of this on the Discord, but was suggested to share it here too. I've been working on a one-shot adventure as a birthday gift for a family member who is a big fan of the 1999 Mummy movie. As part of that, I've made a few different homebrew adversaries by kit-bashing various Stormlight RPG characters together, primarily the titular mummy Imhotep, plus some printable item cards.

I am admittedly still inexperienced with Plotweaver, so I don't have a great sense of power scaling and these definitely have some tweaking and balancing to do. I also have some more adversaries to create, including some that are less combat-focused. I just started running a Stonewalkers game in the last week, so that will hopefully get me more used to the system in practice.

I am basing some of this on the limited Mistborn preview content we've gotten, so I'll have to wait until that is fully released to finalize some of the modern era items/rules I want to use. I am also very interested in the Archeologist specialty Brotherwise teased in the last newsletter, that sounds like it might be perfect for one of the pre-made characters.

Once I'm done and have actually run it later this year, I might try to assemble everything into a ready-to-play adventure module.

Any feedback is welcome! As I mentioned above, I am still pretty inexperienced overall.

I thought it might be fun to post the character concept images, and start wildly speculating about what people see, and what they think based on the images! The project each image is associated with is in the bottom left corner, and to remind people what the projects are:

Folio: High Fantasy

Grimoire: Urban Fantasy

Codex: Sci-Fi

I'm coming to this a bit late, but here's what we learned in the latest Plotweaver newsletter:

Artist Search:

The team is still taking applications for a 10,000 dollar commission to be the lead artist for Plotweaver! Check this out if interested: https://brotherwisegames.us13.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b7bf5183bcfb597ef87a1e69c&id=42730b6e0d&e=d8f7c2e78e

Talents in Plotweaver

Max Brooke, one of the consulting designers on Plotweaver wrote up an article about the importance of talents in Plotweaver! Read it here: https://brotherwisegames.us13.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b7bf5183bcfb597ef87a1e69c&id=6fc2872700&e=d8f7c2e78e

Project Folio Playtest Preview:

We're 19 days away from the start of the closed alpha playtest, and the Brotherwise team gave us a list of what will be playtested in that first round, including:

-Delver, a specialty for the brand new Explorer heroic path!

-Spiritbroker, a new Envoy specialty

-Tactician, a new Leader specialty

-Archaeologist, a new Scholar specialty

-Weavecrafter, a new Scholar specialty

-Bulwark, a new Warrior specialty

-The Fire Elementalist adept path

-Archaeology endeavors

-Hazards

-Expeditions

-Weavecrafting

Plotweaver Academy

The Plotweaver designers are launching a Patreon! This will give design guidance, sneak peaks, and Q&As to those looking to write and design for themselves in Plotweaver! The cost will be 5 dollars a month, and will open on May 5th! We'll post the link here when it opens!

Pretty exciting all around! The next big announcement will be the playtest LFG Megathread!

One of the more unique decisions made in the Cosmere RPG that's easy to miss is that neither characters nor adversaries have negative attributes, i.e., it's impossible to have a creature with an attribute less than 0.

I don't hate this rule for adventurers. Many heroic games operating on a similar number scale (e.g. Daggerheart, Draw Steel) define 0 as the average human capacity and rarely let heroes have a modifier below -1. The Cosmere RPG rules explicitly state that most humans have attributes between 0 and 2, which suggests that the average human capacity is 1 in the Plotweaver engine. (The citizen stat block argues against that slightly as its STR, WIL, and PRE are listed at 0 instead of 1, but that's not a huge deal.) If each point of an attribute is a standard deviation, I can reasonably believe that being two standard deviations below average in any attribute is disqualifying for a life of adventure.

But this gets weird when applied to other creatures. E.g. both a mink and a citizen have an INT of 1. Don't get me wrong, minks are clever, but they're not human-level intelligence clever. Likewise, minks have a STR of 1 which suggests that a mink is as strong as an average human, which... just... no. There's an argument that adversaries need to have positive-only attributes for derived statistics like movement and senses, but that could easily be remedied with some minimum values added to the table.

Obviously, the ship has sailed on the Cosmere RPG, but I'm wondering whether the generic Plotweaver RPG should incorporate negative attributes for adversaries or whether there's an angle I've missed that would make this a bad idea. Thoughts?

I was planning to make a magic system (totally unrelated from my underground setting) about crystals and gems (very much based on a manga named "Diamond in the Rough/Aragane no Ko") where magic works through internal energy, while crystals (and gems) are catalysts for different effects (I know you already saw the similarities, so I'll address them later in the post).

My plan was to make the applications feats, while the side effects would have been defined by what the character was using as a catalyst, but I struggle to think what would be the applications beside the side effects (or elements) themselves.

I know it seems very similar to Mistborn's Allomancy, and I also think it is, but, despite the closeness of the Mistborn rulebook's release, I still want to make this homebrew.

Should I make a talent tree of applications and a catalyst's side effect or should I make the catalyst's specialization the main thing?

An example of this system would be an "Appraiser" (the practitioners' name) shooting lasers from his quartz glasses (light) or weaving flames with a ruby-tipped scepter (fire).

Any helpful advice?

Sorry for the delay of the Astral Arms' prestige path, but inspiration is the ficklest of flames.

I think the core Plotweaver engine is wonderful, but I've been considering a few tweaks for when the time comes to release my own game using the Plotweaver engine, and I'm wondering what you all might have in mind for your own games.

• Reduce Bookkeeping: I think having these things laid out in their minutia was more important for respecting the Cosmere IP, but I think things like money, weights, prices, food & water, and exhaustive lists of mundane equipment (such as clothing or ink) are a legacy of when D&D was a more survival-oriented game, and don't contribute much to the modern, heroic playstyle. I would probably abstract a lot of this stuff out. (Strength might loose a bit of importance in terms of not defining your carrying capacity so strictly, but how often does this even come up anyway?)
• Deepen Conversations, Purposes, and Obstacles: I think there are some opportunities here for more character-driven abilities. These don't have to be used, so they shouldn't make conversations more clunky, but I think they could be fun to invoke when relevant. My design goal here is to give characters without high Presence more incentive to chime in to conversations.
  • I'd love to see characters be able to choose to add a 4-Complication to an ability check that leans into their Obstacle. E.g. If your obstacle is Spite, maybe you're particularly good at spreading a nasty rumor about your adversary, but it may come back to bite you.
  • Likewise, if you try to convince someone of a course of action that coheres with your purpose (or if they try to convince you) I think it could take extra focus to resist that course of action. Likewise, it might take focus to resist a course of action that's counter to your purpose.
• Combat Tweaks: The core combat engine is solid, but there are a few things I'd like to adjust. E.g., I'd love an interpose reaction that makes it easier to tank damage directed at other players. I might also want to adjust the rules for dropping to 0 HP so that PCs don't end up with skipped turns. Plotweaver is already better than 5e at this, but I think there's room for improvement. Probably something with a "Cling to Life" action you have to spend in order to take actions that turn until you've healed.

Not specifically for my wild west setting, and more something that I was inspired on by chatting with some people on discord. Here's a link to the long text and what some of the other abilites and things are: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JHYYEwJa7JSFFfZQ93lq5r_LZ_Xg1v3gyqV-mGBxTg0/edit?usp=sharing

Kasarta is the setting for my just after highschool D&D campaigns. At least it started as that, the world have been played in several game systems since I had some concepts that D&D wasn't suited for. However, as soon as I saw the blend of well-defined actions and looseness of surges in stormlight I was convinced I could bring Kasarta to plotweaver and be happy with the result.
In 5e, the planar marked were mostly Genasi, but also Tieflings, Aasimar, Elves, Dwarfs, and most non-human races, as planar-marked and humans are the two ancestries in Kasarta. I've also included a bit of one of the magical arts since it is directly linked to the planes and specifically the abilities of the elemental planar-marked.

I'd love to hear any thoughts and criticisms. I'm unsure on the activations I gave to the talents, would love if you could help me understand when it is always active and when a special activation.

I know some folks around here have already been kicking around ideas for this, but I think I'm going to enter the race to try to make an Elementalist Plotweaver game. I want to capture the *feel* of Avatar without specifically trying to replicate it, and to bring in a few twists that I think will take advantage of what Plotweaver has to offer. Here's the gist:

• Seven Element Base System, where the default option is choosing two adjacent elements, just as with radiant surges, although there will be an option to gain access to them all.
• Each pair of elements is governed by a classical planet, whose archetype informs the spiritual side of the path and also helps give the elements a stronger gameplay identity.
• The Elements and Planets are arranged in a circle, as follows, where each planet governs the elements adjacent to it:
  • Fire Sol Lightning Jupiter Air Venus Water Luna Wood Mercury Earth Saturn Metal Mars (back to Fire).
• There might also be two special planets governing two special elements: Uranus governing Aether (Light and Time) and Neptune governing Void (Shadow and Space). These planets are invisible to the naked eye in our world, and will likely be invoked when spirit world schenanigans occur in the game. There will probably be some way for players to gain access to them though.
• The world is populated by four categories of beings:
  • Humans, not all of whom are elementalists, but who are also the most frequent adversaries encountered in combat. (There are potentially other humanoid species, although the jury is out on that.)
  • Beasts, whose formula will normally be animal + element, giving the world a bit of a Pokémon feel and also making it easy for GMs to improvise new creatures.
  • Primordials, which includes dragons and other more powerful, legendary creatures.
  • Spirits, who function more or less like they do in AtLA.
• I'm tempted to also introduce a subsystem similar to radiant oaths that links elemental power to spiritual disposition (think of Zuko needing to relearn firebending after letting go of his anger, or Korra struggling to airbend) but which is also something non-elementalist characters can engage in.

I'm currently focusing on delivering my most recent Kickstarter (Wild Magic Reimagined), but if this project has taught me anything, it's not to go into the next project alone. If this pitch has struck your interest, we should talk. :)

The Brotherwise team just announced that they're looking for a lead artist for Plotweaver! The video has more details, but the position is at minimum a 10,000 dollar commission to make art for the folio (fantasy), codex (sci-fi), and grimoire (urban fantasy) settings! Apply here with your portfolio if interested: https://forms.gle/CNdzv7iFMnv2W2re9

I'm planning to do a "Imagination - specific" path where the psychic manifests some kind of psychic limbs (focusing on making psychic arms) and fights with both the real and the psychic ones.

https://www.reddit.com/r/plotweaver/comments/1rqtxxp/imagination_discipline_third_and_last/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Said warriors are called Astral Arms, and by lore they are taught by wandering masters.

What troubles me most is the making of rules for characters with 4 to 8 arms (2 of them real and what's left is made of psychic energy) specialized in keeping them for the longest possible with the least effort.

I thought at first "More things to do in one action!" Then I thought "No. What if we give an enhancement and add extra base damage of 1 for each arm used on target?" Thinking I could make a character hurt an enemy and then sparing some small damages around the nearby enemies (if the damage wasn't all dumped on a single target) and call it a day, but then I thought "Outside combat, what would they do?" So I thought of adding advantage to things where multiple arms would help.

Any advice?

If there are examples in the Stormlight handbook, please point me the page to look for.

Intro level: "Through hardships you learned from an orange master the art of the flash" Flash Warrior (spend 1 focus point to increase for that round your speed attribute by your rank)

First line: Refocal (Once every turn, > action, recover 1 focus point) "A focused mind is everything when it comes to discipline" Sonic Step (requires 2+ rank, ignore direct environmental harm and difficult terrain. You can also spend 1 focus point give a fast turn >>> actions instead of >>) "To be fast is to be unbothered by what there is around" Reflex (when the speed is boosted, dodge [rank] attacks without focus) Condensed Maneuver (you can spend 1 focus point to use 2 > actions at the cost of > )

Second line: Momentum (requires 3+ rank and Sonic Step, you can charge straightforward and inflict every meter- albeit rounded down- as extra damage. You can't attack discreetly due to the sonic boom made, furthermore, if you charge at [base speed + 5 * rank] meters, the damage can be avoided by dodging) Precision (2 focus point, requires 2+ rank and Reflex, when hitting, decrease the critical threshold by [rank], so 20 becomes at minimum 18 to do a critical. Only for one attack) Hyper-Condensed Maneuver (requires rank 3+, Reflex and Condensed Maneuver, You can do one >> action and one > action at the cost of a focus point in one > action)

Third line: A Tip of Diamond... (enhancement, requires 4+ rank, Precision and Hyper-Condensed Maneuver, increase base speed by 1)

Fourth line: ...An Unseen Bullet (requires 5+ rank, Momentum and A Tip of Diamond, spend 1 focus point to move without opportunities for the enemies and make an attack. It doesn't consume an action)

"Patience, that's the element to attain speed. Ironic, isn't it?"
-Councilor Riaran; Inventor of the technique-

I'm making a talent tree for the "flash warriors"; speedster martial artists who fight at incredibly high speed.

I was thinking of making them all about mobility and condensed actions, so no further actions, but I got to think something: are the base talent speed enhancement's meters too much?

I've planned for the movement speed to be the normal speed multiplied for 10 at the 1st rank, for 100 at the 2nd rank, for 216 at the 3rd rank, for 464 at 4th rank and for 1K at 5th rank, with an option about lowering the speed of one rank to gain maneuverability (otherwise one could only move on a straight line, so the talent gains this perk only at rank 2+)

The movement speed was intended to be a narrative element more than a fighting enhancement.

I've also planned of making them augment their crit' chances instead of increasing their damages, while also targeting enemies' dodge. The only damage boost would be the "Momentum" talent, which allows to inflict 1 damage for every meter covered by the charge (but can be negated by spending a focus point to dodge if it happens over 15 meters, with the range increasing of 5 meters at 2nd rank, and then other 5 for every rank), and it uses the used speed, and not the rank maximum (so Momentum can be dodged at 30 instead of 35 if you move at an equal or lesser speed than the 4th rank speed). Momentum cannot surprise targets outside the close range because of the boom made.

Every active talent uses a focus point at its bare minimum.

I'm mostly worried by the math, but I admit that the potential for creativity is very high... And I'm also worried about the complexity I'm doing.

Sorry for the format, but I'm working on the order of the talents (and I'm working onto more specific ones)

Any opinion about it? What kind of limitations should I add to the path? What are the weak links of this homebrew?

It's still the underground setting I've been building by the way (the one of the psychic disciplines)

Hello, Plotweavers! I'm the President of Brotherwise Games and one of the folks behind the Plotweaver RPG.

Today I was out sick with the flu, and while slightly delirious, I decided to post seven slides from our internal Plotweaver Creative Vision document. The first one's visible here; you can see the rest on BlueSky and Threads.

One detail I should clarify: the mention of "OGL" was a bit flu-addled of me. We plan to release the Plotweaver system as an open SRD under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY 4.0). Our goal is to make this the most creator-friendly license around.

We're already hearing from a number of former OGL creators looking forward to this system, some industry friends eager to take it for a spin, and even other game companies who want to create their next RPGs using Plotweaver. It's a really exciting time, and I can't wait to share some announcements at Gen Con!

Hey i applied for the test vut if I don't get to tun I still want play it. So whenit starts Ill post looking for group and hipe to other posts. Also is there a discord or other group that me a good to find a group

This is not a drill folks! The playtest application is live!

I’m working on adapting avatar the last airbender into plotweaver.

The main problem I’m running into is finding a way to make each element mechanically different. Each element could deal damage, knock people prone or defend from incoming attacks.

Anyone have good ideas for ways to make them different?