Does Anyone Care? (Cosmere RPG)

[bedir than]

since this can be explained by the Kickstarter fulfilling… If you can say that after the biggest TTRPG kickstarter, this won’t change a thing

That would only be true of ICV2 used a differently quarterly calendar than most Western companies. Fall is Oct, Nov, Dc.

Fulfillment of digital was in July. Physical fulfillment started in Sept.

 

[Parmandur]

That would only be true of ICV2 used a differently quarterly calendar than most Western companies. Fall is Oct, Nov, Dc.

Fulfillment of digital was in July. Physical fulfillment started in Sept.

Yeah, hard to say: probably won't be entirely clear how Cosmere is holding up at retail until they start shipping the post-Kickstarter products, to be honest. Their Lan, for the Cosmere proper, is to bring everything after the Mistborn core straight to retail rather than continue Kickstarters (though they are planning a Plotweaver generic Kickstarter in a bit).

 

[bedir than]

Yeah, hard to say: probably won't be entirely clear how Cosmere is holding up at retail until they start shipping the post-Kickstarter products, to be honest. Their Lan, for the Cosmere proper, is to bring everything after the Mistborn core straight to retail rather than continue Kickstarters (though they are planning a Plotweaver generic Kickstarter in a bit).

According to the official website Cosmere is already available in physical stores

Stormlight Handbook — The Cosmere® Roleplaying Game

www.cosmererpg.com

 

[Parmandur]

According to the official website Cosmere is already available in physical stores

Stormlight Handbook — The Cosmere® Roleplaying Game

www.cosmererpg.com

Oh, yes: I mean that it will be hard to get a handle on how successful it is until we start seeing the products post Mistborn, which will not be part of any crowdfunders and purely retail numbers.

They have a lot of stuff in the works, if it keeps tracking ahead of Paizo I would be impressed.

 

[zakael19]

Right, a traditional hobby space with merely a few thousand people, out of hundreds of millions in the country: conventions aren't even an accurate sampling of D&D players, let alone people at large. The Cosmere fan spaces are going strong for the game, however.

You bring up Draw Steel! and Shadowdark...bit those games aren't even hitting the top ten with retailers.

A widely spread Discord group-finding server with thousands of members in a major metro area of > 6m people in one of the most educated regions of the US (correlates with reading and other things) is probably approaching statistically significant sample sizes. I’ve seen Cosmere on the shelf in game stores & Barnes and Nobles here, but have not seen a single person trying to put a game together.

I think it has excellent penetration amongst fans of the series as you noted, I’m just not seeing it splash in the wider TTRPG realm much.

Edit: in fact, I just checked the sample size here. Of 3800 participants in the Discord, 1 person expressed interest in forming a group for Cosmere (lumping it in with 5e and 5e adjacent games).

 

[Parmandur]

A widely spread Discord group-finding server with thousands of members in a major metro area of > 6m people in one of the most educated regions of the US (correlates with reading and other things) is probably approaching statistically significant sample sizes. I’ve seen Cosmere on the shelf in game stores & Barnes and Nobles here, but have not seen a single person trying to put a game together.

I think it has excellent penetration amongst fans of the series as you noted, I’m just not seeing it splash in the wider TTRPG realm much.

Sure, but I don't take such a server as being a likely place for it.

 

[Cergorach]

Number 2 RPG in Fall 2025

People will still insist no one cares?

Remember the Exploding Kittens kickstarter? It was big, it was popular, but most board/card game enthusiast thought it was simplistic garbage... As the overlap between Exploding Kittens fans and board/card game fans tiny. The Exploding Kittens KS had 220k backers, the Cosmere RPG KS had 55k backers...

Something similar happened with the Cosmere RPG, only a very small part of the traditional pnp RPG fans are also Cosmere fans, but there's a large contingent of Cosmere/Brandon fans that were willing to spend a LOT of money on a Cosmere KS (on average $275/backer). So most traditional pnp RPG fans don't care and see this as another populist cash-grab with nothing that will rock their world, with many of us having a 'want-to-play' list that's already pretty long with from many a perspective, no place for a Cosmere RPG on it...

The game is buzzing hard in Cosmere fan circles (a couple million people strong), but less so in grognard RPG hobby spaces.

No need to add the 'grognard' to the equation, Cosmere is not buzzing all that hard in the RPG hobby spaces.

 

[Parmandur]

So most traditional pnp RPG fans don't care and see this as another populist cash-grab with nothing that will rock their world

Heaven forbid that cool popular things appeal to people...

If you look at any actual reviews oft he game, it is actually quite good design from a pure TTRPG side. I feel pretty comfortable with he grognard marker here.

 

[zakael19]

I think that we can accept that a) the game is very appealing to Cosmere fans and b) non-Cosmere fans are unlikely to look much at it without a friend into the thing easing them in, yeah?

Again, if a large scale metro group-finding discord entirely full of folks looking for TTRPG groups (most of whom are first-time players and under the age of 30) has (1) post about it I think I'm comfortable in saying that it's not escaped the core existing fanbase much.

As another random data point point, the Subreddits for Cosmere and Draw Steel! are both ~9k weekly visitors (this feels about right based on KS sizes? although I've seen a few DS! games form locally). Daggerheart has ~29k. PF2e has 125k. r/DnD has 893k.

 

[Parmandur]

I think that we can accept that a) the game is very appealing to Cosmere fans and b) non-Cosmere fans are unlikely to look much at it without a friend into the thing easing them in, yeah?

Again, if a large scale metro group-finding discord entirely full of folks looking for TTRPG groups (most of whom are first-time players and under the age of 30) has (1) post about it I think I'm comfortable in saying that it's not escaped the core existing fanbase much.

As another random data point point, the Subreddits for Cosmere and Draw Steel! are both ~9k weekly visitors (this feels about right based on KS sizes? although I've seen a few DS! games form locally). Daggerheart has ~29k. PF2e has 125k. r/DnD has 893k.

Well, sure, D&D is the TTRPG, everything else is a footnote.

Cosmere general fan spaces beyond that particular suvreddit are getting lots of images of original characters and memes about playing, and there is also an active Discord scene that is more relevant than Reddit in this day and age I reckon.