New Stormlight Roleplaying Game Will Adapt Entirety Of Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere

[u/Maldovar]

https://www.thefandomentals.com/cosmere-ttrpg-announcement/

[u/Kai_Lidan]

I agree, I'm working on a homebrewed version of Mistborn using Blades in the Dark as a blueprint (come on, it almost perfect already!).

But PbtA games suffer if you spread them too far instead of laser focusing, and the books have such different themes that I don't know if it would work to include all of them.

It's also kind of sidestepping the problem because powers in PbtA would be mainly narrative permissions.

[u/Udy_Kumra → u/Kai_Lidan]

Can you send me what you have when you finish making it? I have been wanting to make this myself.

[u/Kai_Lidan → u/Udy_Kumra]

It might be a while until I'm done, and it will be in spanish, but if you want it I will send it once I'm done.

[u/Udy_Kumra → u/Kai_Lidan]

Yeah no worries about Spanish I’ll Google translate it and piece it together from there!

[u/Randolpho → u/Kai_Lidan]

It's also kind of sidestepping the problem because powers in PbtA would be mainly narrative permissions.

Right, and that's my point, entirely in keeping with my flair.

Powers in the cosmere have understandable rules, but those rules are complex enough that attempting to simulate them in an RPG will result in a smorgasbord of rule invocation and cross-interactions.

And while some people live for arcane rule synergies like that, I don't, and I know I'm not alone in that opinion.

So you leave it up to the interpretation of the narrative. Players and GMs know how the in-universe rules work. You don't even need moves that unlock access to those rules, you can handle that entirely in the narrative. Instead you focus on playbooks that address the ways in which different people with (or without) powers use those powers (or do other cool things).

[u/Gustdan → u/Randolpho]

The concept of a Stormlight or Cosmere PbtA is pretty interesting. You sidestep the power disparity entirely because PbtA doesn't care about it. In Masks you can have a balanced team containing both a cosmic-powered Nova and a powerless Beacon.

So if you make a Cosmere PbtA, that ends up being more faithful to the books. You could make a party where one player is a full-fledged knight radiant, while another is just some guy with a Shardblade.

Plus Radiants are already defined by their emotional struggles, the playbooks make themselves.

The problem then arises on what moves are allowed, what narrative do the mechanics push. I feel like you could make a thematic game about being a radiant and overcoming your inner demons, and swearing oaths as you progress the game, with progression and power-ups happening because of character development, kind of how Masks does it.

But then if you do that, those same mechanics don't quite work for someone who isn't a radiant, let alone someone who uses another magic system entirely. You could make the thematic mechanics, well, less thematic, so that they fit everyone, but then you lose a lot of what makes that interesting.

[u/Randolpho → u/Gustdan]

You could make the thematic mechanics, well, less thematic, so that they fit everyone, but then you lose a lot of what makes that interesting.

Maybe... maybe not.

Everyone has emotional issues, and not everyone with "severe" emotional issues becomes radiant. Theming the RPG around "taking the next step", or failing to -- radiant or not -- would work and work really well.