Cosmere RPG Gets Physical Release Date

The first volumes of Brotherwise Games' new Cosmere RPG will be released on October 29th. Brotherwise announced plans to release physical copies of its new RPG, which is based on the works of fantasy author Brandon Sanderson. The Cosmere RPG was the subject of a $15MM Kickstarter last year, with digital copies going out to backers late in July.

The first three volumes of the Cosmere RPG all focus on the world of Roshar, as seen in Sanderson's Stormlight Archive series. The books include a core Stormlight Handbook, which contains character creation rules and system rules, a Stormlight World Guide, which details the campaign setting of Roshar, and the Stonewalkers adventure book, a Level 1-8 adventure set in between two of the Stormlight Archives books. The Stormlight Handbook and Stormlight World Guide each have a price of $59.99, while the adventure has an MSRP of $49.99.

Additionally, a new Starter Set for the Cosmere RPG will also be released on October 29th. The boxed set contains a truncated set of rules, an introductory adventure, pre-generated characters, battle maps, ant tokens, plus dice needed to the play the game. The box set has an MSRP of $24.99.

 

[Parmandur]

I've been reading over the PDF rules for the past few weeks, and the material is excellent.

 

[Akodoken]

Sweet! Looking forward to getting my hands on those books.

 

[dave2008]

I've been reading over the PDF rules for the past few weeks, and the material is excellent.

Any interesting innovations?

 

[Parmandur]

Any interesting innovations?

Quite a number, honestly!

The designers are mostly veterans of Fantasy Flight Games, so the basic gist is if FFG Genesys system (the one used for Star Wars, based on FFG Warhammer FRPG) and D&D 5E had a baby. Everything is basically a 5E style d20 Skill checks, with the same math essentially (6 attributes, 3E style skill ranks but within "Vounded Accjracy" style math), including combat and magic.

It has 4E style Skill Challenges (called Emdeavors), which allows for "social combat" rules based social encounters, as well as stuff like full-scale mass combat that is resolved as a series of Skill checks.

The unified resolution mechanics are combined with a unified Level progression, so a Level 7 character has the Skill and "Talents" (combo of Feats and Class Features), with Classes being replaced with "Careers" that consist of Talent trees that make multiclassing a simple matter (which is important, since the main major character of the book series is at least quadruple classed based on these rules). This also means a powerful magic user type character and a social Skill focused character like a veteran Diplomat can contribute to the game, since the flying magic spear warrior won't be as handy in a delicate treaty negotiation Endeavor.

It is an E counter based resource system, too, so the game is built on the level of the scene rather than an Adventure day, so no attrition based dungeon crawling is necessary for balance.

I really love 5E D&D, but the Setting aside entirely (and I do love the novels, so that helps), this game ruleset really leans into the areas where I could see improvement to the formula while keeping what I love about current d20 play...but also changing things WotC literally cannot and probavly shouldn't change, like Spell Slots and attrition centered gameplay.

Lots of cool monsters in the world book, like this:

 

[EthanSental]

15m kickstarter and I haven’t heard anything about it since the kickstarter ended until this thread….i must be missing out on the discussion of it or something I need to get the pdf to look over like Parmandur did!

 

[Parmandur]

15m kickstarter and I haven’t heard anything about it since the kickstarter ended until this thread….i must be missing out on the discussion of it or something I need to get the pdf to look over like Parmandur did!

I was a backer, so I got the whole set when the digital dropped which wqs only a few weeks ago, but it is also now on DriveThruRPG, Roll20 and Demiplane (free starter rules, below) at least.

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There are quite a few streaming actual plays and reviews at this point, here is one I thought was a good overview from somebody who hasn't read the novels but read the rules and ran a 4 hour session to kick the tires (disregard the clickbait title):



And this in-depth review from a novel fan was good:

 

[Parmandur]

Any interesting innovations?

Oh, another interesting innovations is the "Plot Die", a d6 roll that a DM can call for to accompany a d20 test that can either do nothing, or generate an Opportunity or a Complication (you can see those mentioned in the giant lobster Kai just stat block in my prior post). The Complicstion actually improves the d20 roll, so the Plot Die can actually help pass a test but introduce a new narrative wrinkle. This brings in some of the narrartive mechanics from the FFG system, but with less obtuse funny dice:

 

[EthanSental]

Although looking at the other thread and the art above, I’m still burned out on Wayne Reynolds art style…

 

[Parmandur]

Although looking at the other thread and the art above, I’m still burned out on Wayne Reynolds art style…

As far as I know, he only did the Starter Set box art, which originally appeared as the cover of Chasmfiend Magazone #1 (Chasmfiend having rhe same font as 80s Dragon Magazine...Chas.fiends being giant crab-dragons).

The art in the books is actually quite varied, but of uniformly excellent quality: the default mode for the Stirmlight Setting is "80s Heavy Metal Album Cover" though. These are some of the most gorgeous RPG books I have seen.