Brandon Sanderson

I finally got around to reading straight through the Mistborn RPG book instead of flipping through looking for interesting bits, so here's the stuff I found in there that I thought was worth noting. And the thing's 585 pages, so long post is long.

• Brawling is an “old habit” of Dockson's. Don't fuck with accountants, eh?
• The game is so story-focused that playing is referred to as “the conversation.”
• The Outer Dominances have skaa deciding fuck the police and having their own noble-free pirate ships or frontier towns or bandit kingdoms. With shelldry and hookers, one presumes.
• I think I've mentioned this before, but part of chargen is figuring out the horrible thing that happened in your character's backstory (called their Tragedy). “I was a skaa” and “I was Terris” are not considered specific enough.
• On a brighter note, chargen also includes coming up with a grand dream for your character to pursue (called their Destiny).
• The GM for the example-of-play stuff is named Brandon. I wonder if he ever GMs for Jim, the guy who plays Harry Dresden.
• Nobles from the center or southeast have Frenchish names, the west has faux-Spanish, and the northeast has vaguely Germanic.
• “Paalm” violates the rules given for kandra names.
• Direct quote: “'because it amuses me' — this being one of the most powerful Narrator justifications of all —“
• Also direct quote: “short but especially willful people can sometimes rise above the impossible odds, surviving no matter the cost.” This is why commas are your friend.
• Sanderson disagrees with the guy writing in the back of the books: Hemalurgy is totally evil. He's a bit softer on using a hemalurgic spike that you just found somewhere, though.
• That sixteen-metal table is just a human attempt at classification, so don't read too much into it.
• Skimmers cannot actually squash themselves by increasing their own weight, so there goes one of the big quibbles I had about Mage's “black hole skimmer” thing.
  • Why, Harmony, why anyone would do that to themselves is still up in the air.
• Some copperclouds can share their resistance to emotion-fuckery allomancy with folks in their cloud.
• Copper and bronze are the only known metals you can go savant with and not be a little fucked up when you're not burning that metal thereafter.
• Brassmind abuse can protect you from burns and frostbite, but does not make you fireproof.
• Tapping enough makes you radiate heat, improving your popularity during wintery days. When you're this hot you can boil nearby water and increase the damage of your barehanded attacks, but not burn people or start fires.
  • It is not specified whether you can loophole around this by burning someone with your boiling water.
• A sidebar direct from Sanderson suggests that maybe aluminumminds can be abused to let you tap another feruchemist's metalminds and make me call shenanigans. Like so: “Shenanigans!”
• Tapping duralumin makes you feel as strongly for other people as they do for you, so I guess no assassinating people while they love you too much to defend themselves or whatever.
• Augers need to buy a stunt to be able to burn gold without getting a bit mentally and emotionally fucked up from it.
• “Unlike other roleplaying games, where the heroes receive tasks from a mysterious stranger in a dingy tavern or orders from a noble lord plying them with gold, the Mistborn Adventure Game features a rolling, dynamic narrative that unfolds through the course of play, much like that of a novel.” Yes, the game is a unique and special snowflake that's not like other girls. After all, Vin wasn't brought into adventure by a mysterious stranger giving her tasks in a tavern. And the running plot thread of the examples of play begins with two nobles plying the party with gold. These are obviously major changes that make this game distinct from all those others, which of course can only be used for mindlessly reactive kick-in-the-door play.
• The rest of the section isn't as bad, talking about how Mistborn games are supposed to be character-driven by proactive PCs bringing change into the world, but that quoted bit from the last bullet still annoys me.
• There's quite a lot of GM advice in here, reminding me that one of the intended functions of the game is to be Babby's First RPG for Mistborn fans. Which means the quote I keep harping on could bias them against other RPGs. Which I suppose is good business sense, but grr.
• You get bonuses on rolls to advance the subplot about your Destiny. Or, rather, on what the GM has decided your Destiny is going to be. (Like, Sazed's sheet might have “Recover the Terris religion” but the GM's decided his subplot is gonna be “Become the Hero of Ages.” On the other hand, Kelsier's got “Become a religious icon inspiring skaa rebellion” and that is indeed what Brandon the GM went with.) From my read the player is not generally supposed to know what the GM's got planned for them there, but I think those bonuses are going to be a bit of a hint.
• The subplot about resolving your Tragedy, however, gives you maluses on rolls to work through it. At least the GM's encouraged to give you loads of XP at milestones, same as with the Destiny subplot.
• The only canon characters important enough to get pictures with their writeups are Vin, Kelsier, Sazed, Elend, Zane, and Marsh. The only other characters who even get a writeup are the rest of the crew, including both their kandra.
• I don't like the way they do the character descriptions for the canon folks. Instead of providing the full biography, they give you a snapshot at some point in the middle of the story, and not in the same place for all of them. Like, Spook's bio takes place while he's being the Survivor of the Flames and being advised by Evil Ghost Kelsier, but Kelsier's bio doesn't detail his martyr plan. In fact, though they mention the Church of the Survivor in a couple places I don't think they ever explain what exactly that is. It's a very haphazard way of presenting information. If you don't wanna be spoiled, well fuck you Vin's not the Hero of Ages and her earring's a hemalurgic spike. If you wanna get a comprehensive understanding of these characters, well fuck you there's nothing about, say, how Sazed resolved his crisis of faith so you've got an idea of how to develop his character in play. I mean, it's not like these guys should be any more static in your game than they were in the books.
  • Oh look, it extends to having information that is flat-out untrue. Zane's writeup mentions that he's tried to kill his own father to play up how unstable and dangerous he is when, you know, that's not actually what happened. So basically two middle fingers straight up for this style and I miss the way the Dresden Files RPG did it.
• Elend's portrait shows him leaning against his koloss blade with a book open. Love that boy.
• Breeze is a brass savant, apparently. Which I hadn't realized but is really not a surprise.
• Non-mook villains get Tragedy and Destiny traits, same as the PCs. As examples I just made up:
  • Straff's Tragedy: My one non-bastard son didn't Snap, and turned against me to become not-a-terrible-person to boot.
  • Shan's Destiny: Get wrecked by Vin.

That is a lot to comment on at once, so I'll for now say "neat". Wonder how that thing with the Outer Dominances being all fuck your couch works, though, the Lord Ruler wasn't exactly the live and let live type.

And Hemalurgy is Not Evil, Just Misunderstood.

Dopants: He meant what he said and he said what he meant, a Ninety is faithful 100%.

Well, its certainly not a nice thing. Though i suspect Voidbinding is going to make it look so in comparison.

edited 29th Nov '15 2:11:39 PM by 3of4

"You can reply to this Message!"

That might be the point. You slowly figure out which way the universe is trying to push you.

As for Hemalurgy, it's difficult but not impossible to use it without rampant murder. Off the top of my head: Find someone on their death bed and get their permission to make a spike from them. Voidbinding, on the other hand, is probably going to involve fewer choices and loopholes. For example, the part where Eshonai changed to stormform was probably voidbinding. There was no choice there, no slow exchange of power for morality. It was just flat-out Demonic Possession. But we'll have to see more to be sure.

It does strike me as odd that the human sacrifice magic is declared evil in a series where the heroes have no problem killing their opponents, but I think the thing where the vic loses a bit of their soul to the spike is supposed to be part of the evil. Which might hold more weight if I actually knew how a dead guy's affected by having part of their soul removed.

What it mostly comes down to is the Outer Dominances being, as the name suggests, far from the center of power and the skaa groups in question not really being worth the Lord Ruler's time. A bandit king with enough power to be worthy of the name is totally going to eat a koloss band to the face as soon as the Lord Ruler finds about them, but some jackass with a dozen buddies can survive out in the ass end of nowhere by virtue of sheer unimportance. If nothing else, it can probably wait until the big guy finishes cracking down on all the thieves and Allomancer halfbloods in the very capital.

Edit: Oh, and the noble-free towns are only rumor, and only in the Eastern Dominance. In the east, you see, they're light on resources (save metal) and heavy on bandits (after metal), so the nobles there can't really afford to have skaa as beaten-down as elsewhere if everyone's going to pull together and survive.

edited 29th Nov '15 3:00:06 PM by rikalous

Well, there is an afterlife. Maybe our guy will get there all messed up? Or not at all, but whoever's running the place would have to be a pretty huge jackass not to let the spiritually disabled in.

Well, we do know from some oblique WOB that there is a "beyond" (cf. Kelsier refusing to go there after death because there was still shit to be done and he's goddamn Kelsier). If it wasn't obvious enough from Brandon's approach to theology in his works.

Dopants: He meant what he said and he said what he meant, a Ninety is faithful 100%.

I'm on a reread of the series, and after reading the epigraph on Allomantic savants (and getting the random thought 'are there Hemalurgy and Feruchemy savants?"), I've come to the conclusion that Vin became a Pewter Savant around after she and Kelsier heard the army was killed (which explains such things like how she manages to chug on with so little sleep even Ham comments in book 2, etc), when she was passed out for a week. From Sazed's description, becoming a Savant is either like sustained use of a drug (in Spook's case) or a second level of Snapping, where you're pushed to the brink and only burning that metal keeps you alive.

Per the stats, she just took the Pewter stunt "Inhuman Endurance," among others.

edited 29th Nov '15 4:24:24 PM by rikalous

You mean when she did her pewter dragging? Maybe, though it's just as likely it was in between the books, considering she was running bodyguard/one-woman security force all the while.

Incidentally, I rather like that in this setting you can addicted to non-evil magic.

Dopants: He meant what he said and he said what he meant, a Ninety is faithful 100%.

Random weird thought: how exactly would an Aluminum/duralumin savant work?!?!?

Poorly. None of the enhancement metals really have savants, since it's hard to keep a steady burn of something that burns instantly. The god metals don't have rules for savants either.

Too bad we will never see what a Lerasium Savant looks like.

edited 29th Nov '15 9:31:26 PM by 32ndfreeze

"But if that happened, Melia might actually be happy. We can't have that." - Handsome Rob

I just had an interesting idea. We know that Brandon's plan is for the second Mistborn trilogy to be set in modern-ish times, somewhere around a century after the Wax & Wayne books. Well, if he wants to have some characters from these books still be around for the second trilogy, it occurs to me that cadmium Allomancy could be used as a sort of quasi-suspended animation. You stock up on food and other supplies, plus a whole lot of cadmium, then you burn the metal for days on end, while years go by in the outside world.

Plus compound interest.

"But if that happened, Melia might actually be happy. We can't have that." - Handsome Rob

That's actually a pretty good idea. Brings with it the same caveats as other forms of suspended animation, though — namely that you'll never see your loved ones or really anyone you know ever again.

Dopants: He meant what he said and he said what he meant, a Ninety is faithful 100%.

Cadmium bubbles are pretty big, so you can bring a handful of friends with you.

And if you really wanna do the time capsule thing, you should probably bring along a nicroburst so you need a less obscene amount of cadmium.

Imagine accidentally doing a nicrosil burst on a cadmium misting. Whoopsie daisy, now it's a hundred years later and no one ever found your body.

...and that is how we get Wax and Wayne into the Space Trilogy.

Dopants: He meant what he said and he said what he meant, a Ninety is faithful 100%.

I don't think that would be an issue. In addition to the fact that it's doubtful people swallow a hundred year's worth of cadmium at a time, the bubble is visible from the outside. The climax of Alloy of Law hinges on killing all of Miles' mooks, because if even one is still alive they can interfere.

I've finished the Terris sourcebook, and once again I come to rain random scraps of information and observation upon you like ash from the sky.

• A rare few Terrisfolk are born free rather than from the breeding program. They tend to be active in the resistance, because shit, the government wants them hella dead anyway.
• Terris Dominance has near total literacy, since the products of the breeding program are put through school at least long enough to determine if they'd be worth making into scholars for the Empire.
• The scraps and tatters of information about the Terris religion that got discovered have inspired a new faith called, counterintuitively, the Old Faith. It's big on personal reflection, goes for simplicity in ceremonies, and promises a brilliant and learned messiah to save them from this time of oppression and general shittery. Which last turned out to be accurate, so well done.
• Terris Dominance is a popular destination for nobles looking to see the world in the safest way they can manage.
• For SOME REASON, the Lord Ruler's palace seems awfully Terris in architectural style. Except evil. No, seriously, “its spiderlike spires are a cruel and sinister caricature”.
• There's some neat stuff about sneaky sneaky spy activities. Like the Tathingdwen playhouse passing messages from the Synod through the lead actor's performances, or the waterfall where people wash clothes being a great place to quietly swap info and contraband, because nobody important pays any attention to it.
• Becoming a steward is, unlike most important things to happen to a Terrisfellow, genuinely voluntary. They're reminded that it's quite the opportunity, but that's as firm as the persuasion goes.
• The steward's code demands loyalty to knowledge, their house, and Terris, in ascending order of importance.
• If a steward and a kandra start hanging out, they might find a kinship developing for some reason, maybe because they hide in plain sight, maybe because they're lifelong servants, TOTALLY NOT BECAUSE KANDRA WERE MADE FROM TERRISFOLK WHAT AN OUTLANDISH IDEA.
  • And whatever the passage winks and nudges at, I really don't think formerly sharing an ethnicity is going to create much of a bond between two people who aren't even really the same species anymore.
• Prospective feruchemists are trained all sneaky-sneaky in the public schools with Obligators watching and not realizing that there's anything up with the record-keeping or metalwork coursework.
• Multisensory input, like reading a book aloud, provides the best coppermind memories.
• Feruchemists who slip through the Keepers' fingers and have to figure out their powers themselves tend to use random crap as metalminds instead of the usual jewelry. They often also have superstitions about how they have to use them, like needing to sing while they store memories. I'm reminded of wilder blocks.
• The codes telling people where and when the Synod's going to meet have two parts. That way, a codebreaker will hopefully stop when they break one relatively easy code and not catch on to the second, harder code that modifies the first.
• Vedzan, a former Keeper and leader of one of the more prominent Terris groups to go “this passive knowledge collection shit is for babies, let's give some Obligators an accident,” has found evidence that the Hero of Ages prophecies have been tampered with. He blames the Lord Ruler.
• There's a neat section on how it feels to tap and fill the various metalminds. (Respectively great and lousy, usually.) I'm gonna skip over most of them because cripes there's seventeen metals here, but if you're curious about any in particular ask away.
• Tapping or filling tin produces physical changes, like making eyes cloud over or pupils expand.
• Tapping aluminum and duralumin have pretty close to the opposite feel from each other. Tapping aluminum makes you disregard other people's views because they're not yours, while tapping duralumin makes you care more about other people than yourself. It's not perfectly opposite, but it's close enough that I bet tapping both at once is a hell of an experience.
• The Lord Ruler let his former people remain a distinct culture partially because them being separate and Other makes it less likely that they'd winknudge mingle with other folk and make it harder to keep track of the feruchemists he harvests for hemalurgic purposes.
  • Or mingle in the other sense and promote education. Tyrants ain't big on an educated populace.
• The Terris Dominance gets that name so that people looking for the Well of Ascension will go there instead of the capital. Which worked on Hoid, so well done.
• You can make hemalurgic spikes by killing animals, though they only work temporarily. Which, uh, kind of undercuts the idea that it's an inherently evil art.
• Holy shit soap opera of a plot hook. Let me break this down.

1. Nobleman likes Terris steward, gets told she ain't into that.
2. Nobleman kills Terris steward, has kandra replace her to conceal the death.
3. Two years later, nobleman's son likes “Terris steward,” kills father for trying to cockblock.
4. Nobleman's widow sends kandra the fuck off into Terris to keep this from spiraling even more out of control.
5. Kandra goes native, starts working for the Synod.
6. Nobleman's son takes a couple buddies, goes off in search of “Terris steward.”
7. Nobleman's widow hears about this, hires party to go kill kandra and end this clusterfuck.

• About have the book is taken up by a pregen adventure, a whydunnit about a Terris steward stabbing a Steel Ministry prelan to death in broad daylight. It turns out to be because the prelan was sleeping with his sister and eventually sent her off to the breeding compound where she committed suicide. Not before knocking her up a few times, though, which means that there's a passel of half-allomancer, half-feruchemist kids running around. Depending on when you set it, it could give you Twinborn in the world of ash.
• Besides the Spoilered Fun Stuff, the primary issue raised is whether it's cool to sacrifice an innocent (Well, sort of. Nobody really disputes he killed the guy, but by all accounts he's a lovely person and the Steel Ministry guy not so much.) in order to protect all Terris from reprisals.
• GM evil is encouraged. “Ramp up the paranoia through play. Ask the Heroes for a few Wits rolls here and there (pointing out an insignificant but suspicious detail when they 'succeed' OR when they fail), or roll the dice behind a cupped hand or screen, nod to yourself then carry on, ignoring the roll entirely.”
• Stuff mentioned in the adventure doesn't jive with stuff mentioned in the main worldbuilding section, like feruchemy being a dominant trait and prospective stewards being carefully screened for any hint of non-docility before even getting the offer. I harrumph in disapproval of this inconsistency.

That's a good point, though I think they might also bond over the fact that they're both stuck in a situation where they live directly under the thumb of an awful tyrant and don't have any control over what happens to them.

So, something like

In other news, the Alloy of Law sourcebook starts with an Allomancer Jak story.

Handerwym is my favorite character and he hasn't actually done anything but make footnotes yet.

Edit:

Best. Character.

Edit Edit:

I hope Jak shows up in the main story at some point. We already know he really doesn't like Wax. It'll be great.

edited 2nd Dec '15 10:36:15 PM by rikalous

Wait, so there's n Alloy of Law AND a Terris Sourcebook?

Available wherever Misborn RPGs are sold.

And now more Handerwym.

edited 2nd Dec '15 11:00:12 PM by rikalous