Does Anyone Care? (Cosmere RPG)

[Neonchameleon]

Good job at being another person who didn't give a good reason. And made laughably wrong assumptions. With good friends of mine co-authoring Daggerheart, quite the opposite - we had high hopes.

It's laughably wrong to say Daggerheart didn't click with you? Because that was one of the choices I gave.

But seriously most of your list of tastes are reasons I wouldn't consider you to be in the right headspace for Daggerheart. Fundamentally it's designed to be the game that streamers like Critical Role and Dimension 20 have been trying to force 5e to be for the past decade.

Compared to 5e it's, faster playing, (with group character creation that is an utter joy), more character driven, more cinematic, more chaotic, easier to hack, and far far easier to run from the DM's chair while still allowing the familiarity to cross over easily, even using the same DCs. It even manages to be more tactical despite not needing a grid. But basically it's a game I'd recommend to pretty much every DnD 5e group for their next 5e campaign unless either they were planning to go level 13+ or there was an obvious different recommendation (like Shadowdark, PF2e, or Draw Steel or even getting out of the D&D adjacent realm entirely).

And coming back to Cosmere, Cosmere has a lot of the same 5e-adjacent energy, with a d20 based stat and skill system and 5e difficulty levels. Like Daggerheart it adds a FFG Star Wars style "with consequences" mechanic; Daggerheart does it through its 2d12 "duality dice" replacing the d20 for players while Cosmere uses its add on optional plot dice (basically just a Fate/Fudge die).

The player side mechanics are also in both cases "let's fix 5e". Like Daggerheart you have six stats but Con isn't one of them and you only get the modifier not the raw number or the saving throws. And like Daggerheart it claims to be class and level based but in reality is much more open (Daggerheart uses a PbtA style "ticks" system with the only forced combat choice being that you get a free extra damage dice at levels 2, 5, and 8, while Cosmere uses an FFG Star Wars style talent tree with no necessary combat choices at all). And both have added a significant element of choice and deciding when you go to the initiative system.

 

[BrokenTwin]

They mean the TV series, not the books, but it's equally implausible. I'm not sure Sanderson actually hates anything, let alone that he has enough time with churning out implausible numbers of pages per year to get mad about TV shows.

I wasn't aware of him even being involved with the show, but I didn't stick with it past the first couple of episodes. Wasn't overly fond of the decision to give a certain character a wife just to kill her off. Especially with how that decision would impact that character's later plotline.

But that's immaterial to this RPG. Which I may or may not check out at some point, but I'm rather over saturated with choice for fantasy RPGs right now.

 

[TwoSix]

They mean the TV series, not the books, but it's equally implausible. I'm not sure Sanderson actually hates anything, let alone that he has enough time with churning out implausible numbers of pages per year to get mad about TV shows.

Most of what I saw was that he disagreed with some of the overall plot structure of the first two seasons; there were definitely acknowledgements that cuts needed to be made to fit the massive books into a TV schedule, he just didn't agree that they cut the right things.

And, let's be honest; the book series is really long and there was never any chance a streaming TV show was going to actually complete the series. It would have to have been a GoT-level hit to even have a chance, and I'm not sure that level of popularity is even possible in the '20s. If the series was really popular, I thought maybe it would have had a chance to get to Dumai's Wells, which would have been a great capstone but probably unfilmable.

 

[SteveC]

Good job at being another person who didn't give a good reason. And made laughably wrong assumptions. With good friends of mine co-authoring Daggerheart, quite the opposite - we had high hopes.

My suggestion: talk about your favorite game without putting other games down. There are a lot of people who like different games, and many are passionate about them. Just tell me why your fave is awesome and don't try and put down other games. For about three years now I've been following the "don't yuck anyone's yum," and I've had a lot of fun talking about games I like, and learning about games I might not have thought I'd like but found I did.

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

I wasn't aware of him even being involved with the show

Consulting producer, which means next to nothing.

 

[Neonchameleon]

This part intrigues me. I knew nothing about Cosmere before reading this thread and the only books I read from Sanderson is Skywards series.
Could Plotweaver be a good chassis to play a Shadowrun-like world in?

You've a lot of work to do. Shadowrun started as "Cyberpunk D&D" so I don't see why not but you've a lot of work for the adaption. And last I heard they were planning on kickstarting Plotweaver as a distinct entity from Cosmere at the end of 2026 so it's not there yet.

I'm actually going to throw you at Daggerheart here with its modular campaign frames that make hacking very easy. You'd need a weapons/armour table and possibly a Hacking domain and couple of classes but it's a pretty easy hack.