yeah, I'm from Valencia. Pm whenever you want and we can hablar tranquilamente 

The spoiler things is a problem for me too. I've 2 players like yours, have read the trilogy, and know the setting, and a third one that didnt event know about the books  before i proposed to give it a try. the day we made characters I tried to explain the most important aspects of the world to him, so he would figure out what kind of character he wanted... And he wanted a Disguise Master... so the other players told him to make a Kandra... I gave him a quick review of them, trying to not spoil too much...

At least what we told him convinced him to take my books and read them. I hope he is a fast reader 

A. This problem has to do with the setting, not the system. Scadrial is like that, and if the game didnt reflect that it would have been a very poor adaptation of the setting.  An adaptation has to get you the tools to play with what's in the sandbox already.

B. There's a sidenote about money, and how you, as a Gm, can give extra circumstance dice to the players to resources test while you think is appropiate, and take them away progressively when they spend it.

C. Personally, i would never give advancements to a crew whose method is killing everything in their path. Its not the spirit of the game, nor the setting, and therefore not a reason to get advancements.

Crews are not "thieving crews" per se. " This is a band of two or more Heroes, united by a common cause", according to the game terms chapter. Not the capital letter in Heroes.

As a Gm, in character creatiion, if my players tell me that the common cause for their crew is Getting Rich, I make sure that they develop on that.


D- You, as a GM, decide when to introduce a long breathers, not the players. They can ask for it, suggest it, but its you who decides. If they want to stay low for a little while, thats a long Beat, maybe days or weeks long, rolling to make sure they hide properly and don get caught.

E. Again, different opinions. To my is being faithful to the series, to the setting and the spirit of the stories in it.


What I dont understand is that you complain that the game doesnt give you more options beyond the ones in the original books, and at the same time dont want to do stories that contradict the continuity. If the designers had created new enemies, different empires, or given more diversity to the world, they would have broken apart from the continuity... something you yourself dont want to do...

I keep thinking that everything resumes in a problem of style, of the kind of game is Mistborn. If they had made a Fantasycraft version of the setting, it would have been different, and more akin to what you are looking for, I think. More options easily portable, and a more traditional story structure, maybe.

Really good idea! both the thread and the proposed setting

Scadriel right after the last book has One Mistborn from what I can tell.  Feruchemists are extinct or almost so as well and Sazed fixes this by making Ferrings.  At least that's how I've always interpreted things.  The Kandra are some kind of secret Spy Group beholden to Sazed, taking them away as a character option.  The Twinborn may not have come about yet, but even so It's still just not a comfortable place to run a game.  there isn't enough info given about the time period.

It's been a while since i read the books, but I dont remember that there's only a mistborn left. Spook is the only mistborn of the characters we knew, but not the only mistborn in the whole world. Feruchemist are the same. Lots of people got to the tunnels and were saved. From what Sanderson has stated in some Q&A that you can find around, allomancy/feruchemy gets diluted and eventualluy mistborn/full feruchemist become something of legend. Eventually. Ferrings appear because of that, and mistings are now far more common, and the interbreeding of terrismen with the skaa eventually also provokes the appearance of twinborn. but i agree with you, there's not information enough to play that era without plenty of work on the part of the gm...

I'm just frustrated because I know what my friends like, and I know what I like to write for them, and I can't do that in Mistborn without huge modifications and homebrew, something I just don't feel comfortable balancing because I've seen way too many DM's fail at it utterly.

There are some big flaws to the system.  Shouldn't they be pointed out?  

What you see as flaws in the system, I see as conscious choices. The style of the game is different than the usual. But that's my opinion, of course, and there's not problem in disagreeing.

The last real problem I have is breathers as a concept...  But that comes from the story structure I use.  I never end a session until the story is told If I can help it.  Most of my Dresden Sessions had in Game months or years between them, giving every session I nice episodic feel and the characters real lives beyond adventuring.  The characters grew and developed beautifully this way.  I can't do that with Mistborn without having Long Breathers between every session, something the system isn't designed for.  

Breathers are just a way of pacing the story and controling the spending and recovery of the characters. You decide when to use them. You can play 4 sessions without a long breather, no problem. You can use long beats to develop the lifes of the characters across a longer span of time... You can play a little bit with the duration of beats, and with the duration of short and long breaths.  I just think that is a clever way to manage the usual mess of establishing when your character recovers from his injuries, or the resources he has spent.
Take the first book. There's a moment when the narrative makes a jump of several months in the timeline, skipping all the tedious work related to getting the plan ready and the army started... And its not a different story, its the same. And in game terms... you could have that long breather in the middle of the session, and keep playing after that for as long as you want... and for as many sessions as you want... without another long breather, if you think is the proper way to go.

It's just so frustrating to love a system and a world so much but be unable to effectively write for it because the style of story isn't something you're comfortable writing.  I love Mistborn for it's easy character creation, elegant combat, beautiful social combat system, fun and diverse character options, dedication to story over everything, and a host of other things.  But While all of that is wonderful the system is crippled by some huge flaws in motivating characters and diversity.  

As to Destinies and tragedies, i find that many players write themselves into a character, deciding on their Destinies and Tragedies as they get involved in the larger story told by the DM.  When I ask players what is your destiny they look at me blankley and then eventually say, i want to get rich.  Or I want to kill this guy.  Starting players lack vision.  They want a character that does cool things and they build a character as they play.  This is true especially because few of them know the world and less know the city during the first session.  They need context.  To create that context I have to motivate them to start exploring and that requires me as a DM to provide something for them to do.  That something has to be interesting, challenging, low level, and something a thieving crew would do.(steal things?)  Wait nope.  System doesn't work for it.  I'm just saying the system has some flaws.  Large ones.  Ones that inhibit what can be done with something that is supposed to be an open book where anything can be done.  yes, tragedies and destinies are great storytelling things, but they come later after the players understand more of what they are doing, where they are, etc.

I think Destinies and tragedies are a a really good tool to motivate characters. Yes, maybe the player doesnt know much about the world, but you do. And you can take that "i want to kill that guy" and use that as a basis for a story which eventually will get the player invested in the world. the player dont need to develop them too much, they're hooks for you to use as bait.

I dont see Mistborn as a game about heist. Yes, it uses the structure of that kind of stories, but the goal of the game is not to just that.  The first mistborn book starts as a heist story, but soon leaves that style behind.

I've been watching lately a lot of heist movies, and a looot of episodes of Leverage. And something you get after a while is that the story is more about the scheme, about the complications, about the real reason for the heist, that about the supposed prize.

Please don't tell me-The system isn't for you, go play D&D.  That's not what I or anybody else here is looking for.  

Really sorry if that's the impression i gave to you. Not my point really.

I rather you go and play some Fiasco

I can't wait for the planned game-supplements because they should solve quite a few of my problems by explaining other sections of the world where the final empire has less sway.  And showing more things to fight.  And doing so without breaching continuity.  Now to make up some Hemalurgic creations to throw at people.

I'm hoping to see more sourcebooks as well, and it would be nice to have more background to play with, but from my experience with Crafty Games, it may take a while. They make really good games, but they also want to have the best book possible out there, and that takes time.

I think the kind of game Mistorn tries to be is not the kind of game you are used to, or like. So either you try to get used to it, or take what you like and discard the rest. This game has nothing to do with D20, with long list of equipment, with how much is this worth or how much is the encumbrance of the character... The stealing, the equipment, the money... it's just flavour. The really interesting thing are the Destinies and tragedies of your pcs, the Secrets they uncover...
This game is much more in the line of games like Fiasco and Octane that spycraft, fantasy craft or D&D... The reason things dissapear after a long breather is because they were not important. If they were, then it's time to use an advancement. If the scheme worked out ant the thieving crew got a big score, just give them advancements that they must spend in resources. Maybe let them use a small amount of advancement to get other things too..


And just to be clear, when i was speaking about the new world, I was speaking about how Scadrial is at the end of The Hero of Ages. They've to start from zero, but hey still have mistborn, and mistings and feruchemist. Koloss and Kandra are no longer hemalurgic creations, but true races (that would need a little of adapting, sure) and hemalurgy is gone for good. It's not until much much later that the twinborn/ferrings appear... In that moment you have a clean slate to do whatever you want.

Again, just keep the magic system and develop something else. Forget about Lord Ruler, and about the Final Empire, if you dont like it. Take a more traditional approach to the history, and make something with which you're comfortable.

Buenas, Thorontir

For starters, you can find a small intro adventure in the Primer located in the Download section. I think it's like a prologue for The Ninth house, which we dont know yet when will be released (Pat said a few days ago that Alex was rewriting some parts of the scenario). Maybe you could use that as a base to start your own campaign, and as Dreamstreamer says use the Scheme chapter to develop from there...

House of Ashes is a short fiction collection that comes along with the pdf edition of the game.
Not sure if it's avaliable by itself...

Hope you enjoy the book. I'm just a little ahead of you, having finished it a few days ago and having created  the pc  with my players, but I'm eager to start playing it   too

There's plenty of background information, its in the novels.

Yeah, but it's note practical to have to read the novels all over again to get that information. As I said, i can find that information online... I just wish the book had more of that information properly formatted, and expanded, in order to play. It's not so much to ask for, and plenty of the games that adapt licensed settings do that exactly. SGRPG has 100+ pages of Setting info before it gets to the mechanics. Babylon 5 has around 80+ pages about the galaxy and the stories that happened in the episodes... the old Game of thrones d20 rpg had a quite complete chapter about the world of westeros... And that's just from the ones i have near me now...
Yeah, that usually makes for massive books, so a Sourcebook with more detail about the setting could be a nice thing... still, it's a pity it's not there in the core book.

While true very little of that background is described in much detail and most of it relates directly to the story of the novels, if you want to step at all away from the social problems set by the novels-which are quite mature and beyond the scope of most Role Playing Games- there isn't much to work with.  I don't want to solve the final empire-That's been done in the books better than I can possibly manage.  I want other problems and there aren't any that don't stem straight from the final empire because all there is is the bloody final empire.  Hence my complaint that the system doesn't adapt well to other story structures. 

To be fair, the setting it's what it is. If you dont like the Final Empire, play in the New world after end of the trilogy and you will have no limits on what to do with the elements you already got...
You're playing the game because supossedly you liked the books, and the games gives you the chance to play in that setting.
If you just liked the magic system, or the system in general, you can take what you like and make your own.
In that respect the book gives you plenty of advice on how to adapt the story to your own tastes, and the What if section is very good in doing that.

Maybe you need to think what made you try to play the game in the first place... and follow from there...

I've finished reading he bookd a couple of days ago, and was tnking on starting a thread about my impressions, but some of whats being said here feels a little bit related to my impressions, so i will do it here.



I find canon in games based on books/tv shows/movies to be a great tool in order to give your stories bigger resonance...

My experience is based in a 6 year long star wars campaign as a player and a shorter Stargate campaing I as a gamemaster.

In the former the gm keep getting us in the middle of relevant moments of the original movies and the expaned universe, but creating stories that ran alongside them, It's very fun, and our story spanned around 20 years.

In stargate, i used the canon as a base to develop new stories for the pc, maybe rescuing some characters from the original show that weren't so relevant, or enemies that the SG1 had left behind. I took the canon as the foundation for my stories, not as a wall that limited them...

Right now I'm trying to get a mistborn game started. Today we sat and created the Crew, and I was a little worried because the original plan was to start playing  as well, and i had to find before character generation some kind that adventure that could be used whatever the kind of pc they created.

So i started digging a little bit in the canon. My main problem with the book, now that I've finished it, it's that the Setting info is ver very small. You get  pages at the beggining of the book and then around 10 pages in the Discovering the novels in the third book. But there's no real practical information.

I finished The Hero of Ages a week after it was published... almost 4 years ago... (it's been that long???) and I remember the world in general, mostly what the game already tells me... but i dont remember much more...

I found it lacking in that aspect. And it's a pity, especially with books like the FC Adventure Companion as an example... or the original Stargate rpg.. The adventure Companion makes a good example of how to introduce a setting in not many pages... The stargate RPG is very complete, with plenty of rules, yeah, but with a lot of practical information that's very useful.

I would have liked more information about the main Noble Houses status and resources, about the steel ministry inner workings, about luthandel and life in the city, about how the underworld works

I can find that information in other places (the coppermind and the mistborn rpg section in the 17th shard have turned out to be real treasures for that) but when this kind of thing is written with the game in mind it gives you a marvelous chance to insert seeds for possible stories for your own games. There are plenty of examples about how to use the rules, but these dont give enough fodder to develop them into stories. Back to SGRPG, I remember, when I was reading the Season synopsis included in the first chapters it felt like there was 1 or 2 adventure ideas in every paragraph.

And that's something that's missing from the game, I think. It's not a problem with the game system, as such, but with maybe the format. I can imagine that developing the setting that much would take a lot of space and make the book very very big, so much as to make impossible to keep the novel format. But before reading it i had the impression that it was a game designed to be light on rules... so i expected a little more of brackground...

I like the game system, a lot, and I'm really eager to start playing with it. I think the game is really good, and i like the way its written, how it tries to be very easy to understand for novice players. It's gonna do a great work getting mistborn fans that havent played before to try it. But I understand that it's difficult to know where to start...

Personally, after reading a bit about the setting in the Coppermind and the 17th shard to refresh my memories, as well as going back and start reading the annotations of the author for the original books, I've a few ideas to start with. I'm gonna start a few years before the first book, not sure how many yet, and I've created a corrupt Prelan that is gonna be behind a clandestine fight network, with Skaas fighting for their lives between themselves...  and against a few Koloss he got his hand on...

Sleepwalk with me

Dammit!

Fixed now 

This has little to do with the typical movies we discuss here, but I found the trailer, and the promo campaign of it, quite interesting and after seeing the clips I'm hoping it works out. And because I wont be able to see it (and actually doubt it will ever get to spain), maybe some of you can.

Sleepwalk with me

Promo with the creatos starring

Joss Whedon asking to boycott this movie. Indie films are a danger to great productions!

I see the reasoning behind this, but i think that's more related to how you choose to roleplay the PC that with a distinct mechanic. In SG1RPG you had to choose which one was the dominant personalities, the other one being controled by the GM,and disagreement between the personalities led to a Concentration check...

Player Character is: the host of a non-dominant but adult Goa'uld/Tokra
-Personal Lieutant feat with a partially pre-scripted NPC.

Not sure if this is possible... Anybody remembers any example?

Dont know... Yeah, the idea of Prize seems a good fit, but in terms of play it looks more like a Magic item than a contact. It gives benefits to the jaffa, like disease immunity, long life and healing properties. Mostly physical advantatges...

In some point in the series Jaffas can communicate with their larvae, but, i think that's more of a feat than part of the basics...


Personally I would drop the PL option... i think the species feat works much better...

Maybe there could be a different species.feat for Tok'ra in which the benefits differ because of their philosophy of sharing bodies instead of taking over them

I could certainly see that. I could also see using a Tok'ra specialty to differentiate them since its a matter of culture more than biology. Likewise a couple of Goa'uld specialties could emphasize things like their commanding pressence to Jaffa.

A goa'uld feat also makes a handy gateway for the ribbon devices and other such unqiely snake-head character options.

I was thinking about the fact that they're actually 2 different personalities sharing the body, so maybe instead of the virtual inmortality they could get some extra benefit related to wisdow or knowledge... 2 minds are better than 1...

Specialities could work as well, I could see one for Goa'uld Queens, for example...

Also, all this has me thinking back about SG in general and jaffa in particular right now... After checking again the other thread and the original book, I've seen that in the later the jaffa species didn't include the symbiote feat by default, just the chance to acquire it if you wanted, because not all Jaffa carried them. (Most of them, but not all). All the version on the other thread included the larval goa'uld... mine included

Thats the kind of thing I was thinking about. :-)

Its the most versatile way to address the problems of the goa'uld species and much more consistent with how species work right now.

Maybe there could be a different species.feat for Tok'ra in which the benefits differ because of their philosophy of sharing bodies instead of taking over them