Cosmere Overtakes Avatar Legends To Become Biggest TTRPG Kickstarter Ever!

With a full five days left to go, Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere RPG has passed Avatar Legends' record of $9.5M to become the highest funding tabletop roleplaying game podcast ever! Just its first-day total of $4.3M put it at #4 in the official Million Dollar Kickstarter Club, and it looks set to comfortably set a lead of at least $2M. Backer Tracker currently projects a total of just under $12M, while Kicktraq predicts $12.3M.

Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarter Club

Avatar Legends leads the pack in an exclusive club -- Kickstarters for tabletop roleplaying game products which have broken the $1M barrier! It is currently the most successful TTRPG Kickstarter in history with a funding total of nearly $10M, and over 80,000 backers. [UPDATE--Backerkit started...

www.enworld.org

While the backer count is under half that of Avatar, the Cosmere dollar total is currently sitting at nearly $9.8M. Brandon Sanderson already holds the Kickstarter record for the most funded project ever--his novel series made over $40M on Kickstarter in 2023!

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.

It only remains to be seen how far it can go--but one thing is for sure: Brandon Sanderson has yet another world record to his name!

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[Parmandur]

agreed, which makes these more like separate but related TTRPGs, like you said. Kinda like 5e and its variants A5e, ToV, …

Wonder how that will work out, whether that then becomes one giant setting with lots of diverse races and classes or some people will focus on one and others on another.

Not sure anyone has done something like that before (maybe FFG SW did as mentioned, not familiar with it). As I said, ambitious, apparently even moreso than I originally thought

Well, the whole Cosmere sequence is building up to the currently theoretical Mistborn Era 5 (currently he is working on Era 3, which will have television, computers, and a Cold War)...which will apparently be a Star Trek/Star Wars style gonzo Space Opera about the conflict between civilizations with ideals in tension. They are definitely building this game to be capable of going full Cosmic, they've even teased that they already have plans for how to weave starship and other high tech into the system when needed.

"Ambition" is definitely one way to describe this for sure, lol. Sanderson laid out his Cosmere broadstrokes outline to his editor after selling his second book...and was told "boy, you sure are ambitious, huh?"

 

[dbm]

Yup, the design is pretty explicitly similar, bit made a bit more close to trad D&D aesthetics

I’m specifically talking about the publishing strategy rather than the system itself.

 

[Parmandur]

I’m specifically talking about the publishing strategy rather than the system itself.

Fair point, but the system itself has some pretty obvious similarities, once you dig into it.

 

[mamba]

"Ambition" is definitely one way to describe this for sure, lol. Sanderson laid out his Cosmere broadstrokes outline to his editor after selling his second book...and was told "boy, you sure are ambitious, huh?"

after the second book? Man, that guy is planning ahead Hope he can keep up his output and does not turn into the new GRR Martin once he gets busy with TV and everything

 

[Parmandur]

after the second book? Man, that guy is planning ahead Hope he can keep up his output and does not turn into the new GRR Martin once he gets busy with TV and everything

Unlike Martin, Sanderson is an outliner, and certainly the biggest thing that can be said of him is that he keeps a consistent schedule for writing.

 

[SteveC]

I think people were expecting this but it's still amazing to see. Bravo! Congrats on an amazing campaign.

 

[Skywalker]

Wow, the backer pledge averages at $288 That's impressive to be able to get so much money consistently from so many people. That's almost three times what Avatar Legends averaged per backer, though its offering three times as much product than Avatar Legends did.

 

[Parmandur]

Wow, the backer pledge averages at $288 That's impressive to be able to get so much money consistently from so many people. That's almost three times what Avatar Legends averaged per backer, though its offering three times as much product than Avatar Legends did.

Yup, moat people backing are going for the GM tier or top Collector tier: the price on the top tiers is pretty good, honestly, for what they give.

 

[beta-ray]

I never heard of any of these series until very recently on these boards. I looked at the Kickstarter but I dunno, it just didn't catch me. Maybe it was so much of the terminology was not familiar to me, I did not get excited for it. It's doing gangbusters though so it won't need my money haha. Hope it plays well, if it is anything like Edge of Empire I probably couldn't get interested in it.

 

[FEADIN]

So, all this talk has made me curious. If I wanted to read something, would the the first Misborn trilogy (assuming I'm reading the Wikipedia page correctly) be a good "entry" point?

Hi, Yes Mistborn is easier to read than Stormlight Archives where you follow 3 or 4 characters at the same time with some flashes from the past sometimes a bit confusing.