Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive TTRPG Makes $1M In Under An Hour

The highly anticipated Stormlight Archives TTRPG Kickstarter--now renamed the Cosmere RPG--broke the million dollar barrier in under an hour, joining the million dollar Kickstarter club.

Published by Brotherwise Games, the game encompasses Brandon Sanderson's entire universe of novels. It includes a world guide, a rulebook, and an adventure called Stormlight Stonewalkers. It's a new game system, based on a d20 mechanic with talent trees and skill-based magic.

The question now is whether it can beat the Avatar Legends TTRPG's almost $10M record? Avatar hit the million dollar mark after the first few hours, so--at least at this point--the Cosmere RPG is tracking ahead of it. Brandon Sanderson already holds the Kickstarter record for the most funded project ever--his novel series made over $40M on Kickstarter in 2023!

 

[GMMichael]

The question now is whether it can beat the Avatar Legends TTRPG's almost $10M record?

I hope so. After reading about the Disengage action, it's not doing well on my Can It Beat D&D as a Fun Ruleset metric.

 

[Baumi]

Uff 200$ as a Player and 300$ as a GM to play it? Thats insane!

 

[robowieland]

Per their FAQ, they wanted a non-Class based progession, so while this is heavily 5E ("d20") based (Advantage/Disadvantage, etc) they are making something quite new here.

I played a demo of it at Gen Con. There's a lot of cross pollination from other d20 games like Shadow of the Demon Lord and Pathfinder 2e. The lead designer said they wanted to do their own thing but also be close enough to 5e to not completely scare off people reluctant to learn new systems.

They have quite a few folks who created FFG's Star Wars line on the design staff. It shows in the Plot Die which distills that games "success with complications/failure with opportunities" mechanics into something much, much slicker.

 

[Argyle King]

I'm not familiar with any of the names involved.

What's the elevator pitch about the setting and about the playstyle?

 

[Parmandur]

Uff 200$ as a Player and 300$ as a GM to play it? Thats insane!

So, the tiers:

• $60 for PDFs of the 2 art and lore books
• $95 for hardcovers and PDFs of the 2 lore and art books
• $195 for 4 hardcovers and PDFs, to privide the lore and rules, plus dice and a card deck
• $295 for 6 hardcover books, dice, a DM screen, 2 card decks, encounter maps, tokens, and a thin paperback vharabuilder guide.
• $385 dor all thst, plus more dice and minis

$295 for 6 large and art heavy hardcovers is actually pretty good.

 

[Baumi]

It has enough materials to explain 295$, but that should have been a luxus tier not a minimum to play it?

 

[Parmandur]

I'm not familiar with any of the names involved.

What's the elevator pitch about the setting and about the playstyle?

The playstyle is D&D-ish, but Classless talent tree progression and with a Skill-based magic system replacing Vancian casting. The magic is the thing Sanderson is most known for as a fantasy writer, very distinct as written, "hard magic" that is rules based.

There are two Settings involved, and they are extremely different, I put Sanderson's own elevator pitch for Stormlight below. honestly it is hard to explain some of what makes it distinct without spoilers, but one of the two playable species in the Stormlight RPG are sentient crab-people. It is a setting at the start of a magical industrial revolution, think Eberron at the start start the Last War when things are starting to build up and new magic is being found (and the PCs will be part of that).

 

[Parmandur]

It has enough materials to explain 295$, but that should have been a luxus tier not a minimum to play it?

It is possible to pledge $1, an a la carte it for desired pieces at a lower cost, if dice and cards are not desired.

 

[agrayday]

Could explain why so people are jumping on this (>2Million today) and why its popular? I don't have any relation to the IP (I haven't read any of his books).

I know about most things in the sphere of fantasy & sci-fi media (I am more targeted/picky in relation to books) but for whatever reason this has never hit my radar.

FYI: I know about the Wheel of Time.

 

[Divine2021]

It’s always so funny to me that people get surprised at how popular Brandon Sanderson and his works are.