Brotherwise Games’ new Mistborn tabletop role-playing game spans two eras of the planet Scadrial and is designed to accommodate Brandon Sanderson’s next trilogy in the setting. The books also lay groundwork for bringing the wider Cosmere into future science-fiction adventures, according to the development team’s comments to Polygon.
The release includes the Mistborn Handbook, Mistborn World Guide and Mistborn Legacy campaign. It follows Brotherwise’s three tabletop RPG books based on Sanderson’s The Stormlight Archive, and expands the company’s Cosmere RPG into the Mistborn setting.
The books cover the two eras Sanderson has written about on Scadrial. During development, Brotherwise worked with Sanderson and Dragonsteel Books to add material to Era Two without constraining the upcoming Era Three novels, which will move the setting’s timeline into a period comparable to the 1980s. Era Two is described as resembling the Gilded Age.
Meric Moir, co-lead designer of the Mistborn World Guide, told Polygon that the team initially considered focusing only on Era One. As Sanderson developed his plans for Era Three, he was cautious about adding to Era Two in ways that might limit his options. Brotherwise and Dragonsteel later allowed the designers to propose additions for Sanderson to review, including lore about how the godlike Autonomy first discovered Scadrial and formed the secret group known as the Set.
Brotherwise co-owner and creative director Johnny O’Neal also held weekly meetings with Dragonsteel to review the books’ artwork for consistency with established canon. The World Guide includes depictions of characters who are expected to appear in Apple TV’s upcoming Mistborn adaptation. Moir said the team hopes some details approved by Sanderson, including characters’ ethnicities, may carry over to the live-action version, while noting that the adaptation’s creators are not bound by the RPG.
The game gives players access to 16 metals and 32 associated powers, offering more options than the 10 types of surgebinding in the Stormlight RPG books. The powers do not all receive equal mechanical depth: for example, gold allomancy’s ability to show possible versions of oneself has two talents, while pulling metal objects with iron has a seven-talent tree. Moir said additional trees could be added as more information becomes available.
The rules have also been tested with cross-world play in mind. The books include artwork showing aluminum being used to counter a surgebinder’s powers, and Moir said playtesting examined how Mistborn abilities could work alongside material from The Stormlight Archive, Warbreaker and Elantris. He said broader support for worldhopping is on the team’s radar.
Moir, who also directs RPG development for Brotherwise’s Plotweaver rules system, said its modular vehicle rules are being designed with future Cosmere settings in mind. The team is developing rules for spaceships for a science-fiction setting, with the intention that their core can later be adapted for the Cosmere when it reaches its Space Age and for a story set in Isles of the Emberdark.
The Mistborn tabletop RPG is available now. Brotherwise plans to announce its next Cosmere project at Dragonsteel Nexus in December.
Sources: Polygon.