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!

 

[Parmandur]

I have found myself extremely invested in many Sanderson stories, and many Sanderson characters. I don't entirely agree with this statement, although I do completely agree that setting and magic systems are a core part of the Sanderson appeal, and thus very important to the majority of the audience.

I would say his biggest strengths are plot and character...his world-building stuff always serves plot and character.

 

[Vicente]

I would say his biggest strengths are plot and character...his world-building stuff always serves plot and character.

Agreed! While I love his workbuilding, I think it is there to serve the story, not the other way around. I really like the plots and characters of his books, but it is easier to talk about the setting to avoid spoiling anything.

 

[Parmandur]

Agreed! While I love his workbuilding, I think it is there to serve the story, not the other way around. I really like the plots and characters of his books, but it is easier to talk about the setting to avoid spoiling anything.

It is so hard to discuss these books in a way that helps set expectations but avoids significant spoilers, I hear ya.

 

[Parmandur]

New stretch goal just dropped: each hardcover gets gilded pages and a ribbon bookmark.

 

[bedir than]

Every Kickstarter is different. Different strategies, different plans, different goals, different scales, different promises, different reach, different plans, different coverage. The one thing they have in common is that they’re all Kickstarters, and that’s the one thing we can compare them by.

You don't think there's a significant difference between something that launches a system (say A5e) and something that is published once and disappears?

They're all Kickstarters is as meaningful as all sports that are at the Olympics are at the Olympics so they're the same.

 

[Morrus]

You don't think there's a significant difference

Take your opposite glasses off and reread my post.

 

[Von Ether]

It is so hard to discuss these books in a way that helps set expectations but avoids significant spoilers, I hear ya.

Honestly, I found many of the images in the KS to be spoiler-ly. Say what you want about Sanderson, he presented fully engrossing world AND then he revealed an even deeper universe.

 

[dbm]

The world book for Stormlight is focused on the time period after book 5, so I guess spoilers are unavoidable for the books. But as a person who has read 1.5 of them currently, the images don’t mean enough to me to spoil things. If you know what the pictures are showing I am sure they stand out as key reveals. But, not knowing, they lack that immediate impact for me personally.

 

[Tonguez]

Demiplane has a Nexus up for it already.
Free to try and a free adventure!

I've never read the book or the RPG beta but tried the character builder and it looks okay. The setting looks interesting, though I still havent got my head around the magic system of the Radiants. Rules look similar enough to 5e to be familiar but with some fun ideas expanding on things - though maybe a bit more crunchy than I like

 

[Aldarc]

This isn't a singular Kickstarter, but a multi-year project -- so quite different than Avatar

Brandon Sanderson plans to support the Cosmere RPG “for as long as he's writing books”

Brotherwise Games seems happily married into Sanderson’s fantasy empire, to the tune of $5 million and counting.

www.rascal.news

Magpie Games have published additional materials for Avatar Legends that were not part of the 2022 Kickstarter, and they are still writing for Avatar Legends: e.g., Republic City, Avatar Legends Starter Box, Uncle Iron's Adventure Guide, Movers & Shakers Supplement, etc.

Don't know what more to tell you. If you backed the initial Kickstarter, you should be receiving emails from Magpie Games telling you about their ongoing product support of Avatar Legends.

I think the disconnect you're running into here is that Sanderson's appeal is primarily about setting. You're getting details about magic systems and political conflicts and social setups because that is the selling point. His characters, like his prose, tend to be serviceable rather than compelling, and his plots can be pretty contrived,in service of letting him show off details or reveal secrets. I wouldn't call any of it bad, but the word I'd use is "sufficient."

In his writing podcast, he's talked before about how the primary draw of fantasy is setting, and that's clearly something embraced in his work. You're not hearing what the books are about, because that isn't what's interesting or important about them, what's interesting is the cool worlds and places and situations and magical interactions he's dreamed up.

If I'm being pretentious, I'd say Sanderson's found an audience in people who view genre literature as fundamentally being for escaping to other realities, not people who are invested in stories or storytelling.

I can immediately see why that's a compelling case to many people for a TTRPG. His books are essentially written a lot like metaplot in a campaign setting already.

I believe that in this thread there was an earlier comparison of Sanderson's works to the MCU. There is probably a great deal of truth to that for a variety of reasons, for better and for worse.