Does Anyone Care? (Cosmere RPG)

[definiteFreakyFishGuy]

I might've missed my chance to get the game from my LFGS. There were several copies of it when I was at the store a week or so ago, and it was listed on the website. It's no longer listed on their website. Sad.

 

[Parmandur]

I might've missed my chance to get the game from my LFGS. There were several copies of it when I was at the store a week or so ago, and it was listed on the website. It's no longer listed on their website. Sad.

Still at Barnes & Noble, and at least my FLGS will take requests

 

[SteveC]

I would say the answer, in a broad sense, is "no." Of course there are people who are interested in it, just like there are people who love the Avatar game, but in a broad sense, it hasn't attracted large scale attention. This is despite having everything you need at launch: core books in physical and PDF, a sample adventure, a sample campaign, and availability on VTTs. What it didn't have is a core audience in the main stream RPG world. I am sure there are places where Sanderson fans are talking about it, I just don't know any of them. And I roam around on the Interwebz, so I see a ton of game systems. Heck I think I picked up 20 RPGs outside of the mainstream communities, and about a dozen of them were really good. None of them have 1% of the Sanderson fanbase, but I find it easier to locate discussions on Mythic Bastionlands or Tresspasser than Cosmere.

I'm not saying anything bad about the game or the fanbase or the books at all but it doesn't appear that the game has landed in the same way as other games have. And that's not for having a smart staff creating the product. I think that someone in the group should have watched the video of Matt Colville on Community before launch.

If you love this game, I'm not throwing any shade at you. Run it and tell all of us why it's awesome.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

I think there's a kind of inertia working against specific licensed games like this unless the property is stratospherically popular, like Star Wars, and even then there's probably some. I think RPG players are more interested in their own settings and DND-Trope-Land. I think that part of what's happening is that the kickstarter for this and Avatar Legends found large markets, but they were markets of enthusiasts for the property-- which translates into people buying in to treat it as a collector's item, fantasizing about playing it but without an existing group infrastructure willing to play it, that sort of thing (but like, obviously a %age will actually play it too.) But it does have the side effect of having a disproportionately small buzz in RPG markets for how many people bought it.

 

[definiteFreakyFishGuy]

I myself have little or no interest in Sanderson, but I am very interested in the game system. There are elements of the game that sound cool, but I just don't know how to pitch this game to my group.

The folks in my circle are DND 5e folks with seemingly little to no interest in RPGs outside of DND. They are fans of Critical Role—though surprisingly (or not surprisingly), no one seems to care about Daggerheart (or Candela Obscura). Most have not read Sanderson, and have no interest in his books.

For folks like them, what would be the least technical / most compelling argument for giving Cosmere RPG a try?

Sorry if this was mentioned—I tried to read most of the thread, but I gave up after page 20.

 

[Parmandur]

I myself have little or no interest in Sanderson, but I am very interested in the game system. There are elements of the game that sound cool, but I just don't know how to pitch this game to my group.

The folks in my circle are DND 5e folks with seemingly little to no interest in RPGs outside of DND. They are fans of Critical Role—though surprisingly (or not surprisingly), no one seems to care about Daggerheart (or Candela Obscura). Most have not read Sanderson, and have no interest in his books.

For folks like them, what would be the least technical / most compelling argument for giving Cosmere RPG a try?

Sorry if this was mentioned—I tried to read most of the thread, but I gave up after page 20.

I'll be honest, right now, for that group as described, this would be a hard sell. I do know people who are playing and enjoying it who are not familiar with Sanderson, but it other people in their group are, and the Stormlight Archives setting is a bit intense.

However, that does not mean it is impossible. The gameplay loop would feel very comfortable to anyone familiar with 5E, so the learning curve for players would be low, while it is different enough to offer exciting possibilities with the more uniform Skill resolution mechanics and character design. The Starter Set us probably worth the price for the dice it comes with, and comes with a newbie friendly world guide and one shot Adventure with pregens.

 

[Senior_WotC_Janitor]

I mean, but presumably you do know he's described as having relatively darker skin than we'd consider "white"? And dark hair and initially dark eyes? Or is this one of these "Rue"-type situations where some part of the audience hears "tan skin" or "brown skin" and just thinks he's a white with a tan rather than that's his natural tone? Notably fan art gets it right as usual (the same is true of Wheel of Time - a lot of fan art showed the characters as darker than white-skinned, because in the books, notably Rand is paler than the rest, and the first city they come to, the author explicitly calls out everyone but Rand as being in the middle skin-tone range, neither pale or nor very dark).

I think what Sanderson is indicating here specifically is, based on Kal's description, he'd probably be played by a South Asian actor (Bollywood and similar have a near-infinite supply of handsome South Asian dudes, and Britain doesn't exactly have a shortage either), rather than East Asian, which may be what you're thinking (though I could be mistaken). Though another potential objection re: Cavill would be that canonically Kal is like 6'6" and Cavill is 6'1" on a good day (which means he's shorter than me lol and I don't think I'm hugely tall). Presumably that latter would be sorted out by just casting everyone like 6" shorter than they are in the books because it'd be pretty hard to find people as tall as they are in that.

I think most of the characters in Stormlight have skin tones which means few, if any, "white" actors could play them, apart from Shallan and Szeth (and Szeth, I get the vibe that he'd be played by an East Asian actor for some reason, but maybe that's just me).

You are over 6'1 and you don't think you're "hugely tall?" The global average for men is around 5'7 and in countries where men average more like Sweden it's around 5'11. As for your idea about casting everyone 6" shorter than Cavill, films have been using height tricks to make actors appear taller or shorter than they are since the inception of the media. If you have seen a single second of any Tom Cruise movie you have seen those tricks in action.