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Lol, at the talking to the giant. Kids were running a game with a new player who decided to talk to the giant. Ended up convincing him the group was there for his surprise birthday party.

Ironically, your "bad" goals will eventually be legitimate in the Cosmere game.

I like how the DM asks the players for details about their relationships with the NPCs and about their character responses. I bet it builds "buy in" for the players. My understanding on damage is that hitting 0 hit points doesn't mean death but a serious injury that will affect the PC for a roll-determined amount of time and add a -5 to the next time they hit 0.

After listening to this I made the decision to cancel my pledge for Ember. I appreciate the thoughts and feedback you provided here. 😊

I liked the interactive Vistas to help setup roleplaying scenes that match the terrain, and automatic logging of events to help maintain notes. I would hope those features are part of foundry that could be reused in my homebrew games I run in foundry (like if I wanted to use them in a Pathfinder or DC20 games I'm building.) The cosmology was also cool, especially how it could affected the Vistas, but once again if I cannot customize it to use in non-ember campaigns, then I would be buying this for playing just in Ember. I would hope the Ember/Foundry team would make these tools available to use in foundry vtt in general. That would be awesome.

Thank you for the conversation, great as always. I certainly like the Pushing mechanic ad then the combination of this with the Stress mechanic used in Alien and Walking dead. I also very much like the Dragon Bane system for death, where you can still take actions while you are making death saves, it just makes it more likely to fail. I have combined this with the hidden death dice used in Mothership. I also regularly use the 'Mork borg' and 'Into the Odd' character generation hints.

I've been in a Shadowdark game this past year, and I kinda like the "light-sources are real-time" rule. It's more mechanically important in Shadowdark where being in the dark is *really bad,* but I could see it being an interesting way to add a bit of tension and a sense of urgency in other systems.

Great game! Jeff 100% would have been an Edgedancer Knight Radiant by the end of this - their ideal is "I will remember those who have been forgotten" and that was his modus operandi throughout the entire adventure - looking after Doral (?), making sure that the dead soldier's personal effects would be brought back to his family, healing everyone, etc. He definitely would have caught the attention of a Cultivation-spren with all that. And Brent might attract a High-spren (Skybreaker Knight Radiant), they care a lot about justice and just like him, they probably wouldn't be too thrilled with Selinar.

As someone who's a huge Cosmere fan just discovering the world of RPG through this kickstarter, this has been super interesting (and helpful) to see! I'm excited to play it for myself now!

I have backed it and will GM the Bridge 9 adventure this friday!

Mike, Brent, and Jeff, I paid for a complete live review and introduction and play through of DISTAL with me and friends of my choice. How about the four (4) of us do it together when Michael (Wrel) is ready! ❤

Yes, Brent, Distal is a great example. Michael (Wrel) has really done a great job in his efforts to build an RPG that focuses on things we’ve been missing our games for quite some time. I donated big to DISTAL to help get it over the funding line, and I am looking forward to seeing Wrel have a successful release.

Ah, sorry I missed this. Would have loved to be live in chat. Listening now. 😊

🙂👍🏻

Thank you for the conversation, sorry that I missed it, If you are looking for a very good 'Berserk' type TTRPG, check out 'Valraven: The Chronicles of Blood and Iron' the quick start is on DTRPG. The challenge with timer props is trying to differentiate between, real time and game time. I used a timer clock in 'Outgunned', but its working out when to start the clock again, as obviously each round is 6 seconds, but they take (For some 3 players that should not be mentioned) about 6-15 min in real time. BITD, Clocks try to use the in game world time shift, but it is so hard to GM.

I like Dragonbane. It's great fun. It's rather rules light. It's missing bits and for me feels incomplete. There are no maritime rules, no rules for castles, armour appears skimped over. There aren't enough spells. Its lovely and will expand. I'd give it a seven out of ten. I prefer Mythras or VS Dark Master but those games are more rules heavy and detailed. It's fun for a different style of play away from simulators.

Starts at 4:52 Excited to see where this goes!

for different races/ancestry. Every Cosmere setting has like 2 or 3 and the humans are technically a different species in each. Stormlight will probably have 1 more Ancestry. The unmade, Basically sentient Swarm that can take the form of different creatures and humanoids

Using spren as set dressing / shorthand descriptions of an area is common throughout the books, and definitely intended by the RPG design team! The Stormlight GM screen actually has a section on common spren and when they might appear

Also bridges are temporary because permanent ones get destroyed by the Parshendi.

One way to take advantage of fast vs slow turn in combat is applying some sort of buff or debuff on a fast turn that lasts until the end of your next turn and then going slow to make it last longer.

That was an interesting debrief. For reference, the Stormlight books are projected to ship in a year (September 2025) and the Mistborn books a year later. Presumably by then we'll hear about plans for future expansions. (Expansions? Installments? They're technically independent books that could be used alone, but they're all in the same setting so as a relative TTRPG noob I'm not sure what to call them. There's probably a term.😄) Yeah, the game is designed such that you don't start with magic at level 1; Sanderson suggested (and a poll confirmed) that most players would prefer to mirror the books by starting as regular people who get powers later on. Though to be fair, the fabrials (such as Jeff's character's painrial) are also obliquely part of the magic system, so artifabrians do get a taste of it. That's an interesting take on spren as a meta-description for an area! That pretty much is how some of them function; native Rosharans would be very familiar with things like angerspren, rotspren, etc. and their implications and react appropriately. The plot die is definitely something I'm going to have to figure out how to use. The GM can always choose to have a player add it, but players can also ask the GM to allow them to use it, with the guidance being that it should generally be for something narratively weighty or related somehow to a character's primary struggle or goals (and about 1/3 of the time overall, as was mentioned). I like Brent's idea of offering it to the players if they want it, that's a neat idea. Combat could get interesting with future additions to the system; some of the videos during the Kickstarter talked about how combat on Roshar is pretty fast-paced, but that things like an Elantrian (from a future _Elantris_ installment) drawing complex Aon symbols in the air to produce awesome magical effects might be a lot slower, requiring an entire three-action turn or more to draw one Aon (as a trade-off for their flexibility and power). I'm really excited to see where everything will be in about five to seven years when there should be books covering enough worlds to have a proper worldhopper adventure with characters from across the Cosmere with their own unique magics.

In September 2025

Yes. The players can choose to raise their own stakes.

I’ll be sure to review this. 😊

Haha, thanks for the shout out! Fun fact, I'm a professional astronomer, and in the astronomy world, amateur is simply a descriptive term; amateur astronomers have a long history (that continues to this day) of doing important science that professional astronomers don't have the resources for. So I think I can probably handle being an amateur GM. 😃 General thoughts: when I read through the adventure I was also expecting Captain Selinor to die earlier, so it was really helpful seeing how one might play him throughout the whole thing. Also, the general expletive on Roshar is some variant on "storms!" or "storming". On the topic of whether your spheres would be infused: spheres get infused by exposure to the highstorms that roll over Roshar every so many days*, and give slowly-diminishing light for a few weeks after that. People tend to get their spheres infused every chance they get to keep their light sources as bright as possible, so the default state would probably be that yes, your spheres would be infused. I think the rule book also takes that stance, unless the GM or players want to get more granular about tracking their resources. On the discussion at the end: the "gods" in the Cosmere can and have been killed/destroyed in the past, and some of those events are directly related to Roshar...but to say anymore would be a spoiler... 😉 *Except one month out of the year known as the Weeping where it instead lightly drizzles the whole time, but the adventure doesn't take place then.

Thanks so much for this playthrough, I'm a big fan of the cosmere and have played a handful of ttrpg and was looking to maybe run this as a way to give my groups forever DMs a break. Couple things off the top of my head that might've helped in combat: Brent could have given himself advantage and then attacked with advantage and braced after, all on the same turn with his 3 action slow turns. Plus spent a focus to do graze damage if he still missed. Having them roll the plot die as well could've helped out since it could have added to their chance to hit on complications or on opportunity let their graze do max die damage or some other opportunity effect. If you're interested the demiplane character builder does have two of the magic paths included, but it's a bit convoluted to find. Lastly the kickstarter is still taking late pledges until Sept 30th. I'm not sure what that means for actually backing though.

I got into the habit of taking quick short notes while I GM that I can later expand when doing a log. That habit translated well into player space, as I can pay a lot of attention and do the quick notes and expand them later. I also take notes of things that happened to others, but only so I can remind them of it when we go through what happened last session.

Thank you very much for the great video. In reality, I think that all games are meta and 100% should be. The session Zero is in place to ensure that we do not become to immersive in the game experience, this is not real, it is just a game and we are just supposed to be having fun, fun that is contracted and operating within specific pre arranged constraints. Players that meta game the rules can become problematic for me, however as a GM I lean heavily into not letting the rules get in the way of game flow, I just don't run or play ridged rules heavy games. Metta gamming plot and story information is certainly more difficult a 'Do you tell the other party members?' question is needed, or I use agenda cards and notes. Meta gaming is absolutely fine, if everyone is fine with it, as a GM I don't care, but if it is impacting on others fun and mine, I care lots.

A guy I used to play role-playing games with while at uni told me about a game he ran where he deliberately altered real world myth knowledge to avoid metagaming. The first time the group encountered it they were hunting werewolves for a village and did some prep by talking with the villagers about folklore relating to werewolves. In the real world, everyone knows silver hurts werewolves, so he made simple things like that have a really low dc, and had more specific things for this tribe of werewolves set at a higher dc. When the party rolled low, he told them that everyone in the village knew that werewolves were worshippers of the sun, and it that it was the source of their power, so something close to their god was needed to harm the werewolves and they should use items/weapons laced with gold if they wanted to have any chance of winning. Needless to say, the group saw their low roll and thought the info they were given was wrong, not realising that the info they would get would scale with the roll rather than it being simply wrong. They were very surprised when the silver they brought along did nothing...

Great discussion, meta knowledge is a very difficult thing. I play board games and some of them have meta knowledge you should try to keep hidden. We're terrible at it! Hope that it isn't an issue later.

Another solid discussion 👍

I agree with the overall sentiment that there are different levels of meta-gaming and not all of them are bad. Depending on the group, maybe even none of them are bad. I think that a commonality of much of the online vitriol towards any system or decision is the idea "that's not how I want to play it, so it's wrong", and as I've grown older (I'm 41 now) and experienced being a father, I've come to the understanding that letting others work out what they like most in a game by giving them space to do so, and encouraging them to do the same for others, will almost always lead to a group that actively want to play together. Rather than a group that never quite manage to make time to meet up.

Thank you for the conversation, great as always. I think its important area that you raised regarding what counts as an Antagonist, as you know Dragonbane separates out monsters from NPC, a Giant or Goblin is not played as a monster. MCDM Flee Mortals makes Adversaries characterful. Weather, environment, conversation and discovery, if done in a certain way also become Obstacles or adversaries to negotiate and overcome. However I am curious, (and maybe it is a whole separate video), but what's your thoughts regarding PC as antagonists, like Free leauges, Alien or Walking dead, where personal agendas are core to the game, and are designed to be in potential conflict with each other.

Interesting discussion. I have always been "plagued" by players who want to talk to their npcs, so combat always seems to be their option of last resort, making me have to think about character motivations! So inconsiderate, making me do proper prep 😂

As the likely prospective GM/DM for my group this is very helpful. Is there a talk about how to be a dm in your history list? I'll look, but sometimes if i don't find it i assume it doesnt exist.

Interesting to see this played! Especially with people new to the world of Roshar, as someone who's read the books, to see how they react to/interpret things. I'm considering trying to run it with my gaming group but don't have a lot of GMing experience, so it's nice to see it in action.

Thanks for the actual play! I’m getting a chance to run this in person at my LGS and excited to give the system a try! I’m curious how I’ll deal with a nat 20 with a complication or a nat 1 with an opportunity if a player rolls that.

Good discussion. I'm using DB to run an overlapping two table, two gm sandbox campaign and so far it's been a hit. It's a breeze to run and the players have all commented on it being a "fun" system.

Thank you for the video, great as always. I think that player knowledge is a very odd thing, because we are playing a role playing game and not a real representation of life either Modern or high fantasy. Because if we were playing a representation of real life the players would basically know 'Sweet FA' about their world. Because people know very little about the world they live in now, how many people living in the UK could travel from London to Edinburgh without a map, very few, how many Americans know where US troops are deployed in the world, again very few. So player knowledge outside their immediate surroundings is very limited. That is why I ask players to build the world, what do you see, what can you do, what or who does your character know about or in this place. Build the world together, and only role a dice if it is dramatic and adds to the tension.

Ooh. Great topic. I'm excited to hear y'all thoughts.

They've abstracted some stuff that I might want to track: the gem bits inside spheres are what actually stores Stormlight with bigger pieces (denominations) holding more. I think gem type can affect stormlight storage too.

I haven't finished the video yet but I must say I appreciate the discussion from non-fanboys. I myself am a big fan of Sanderson but a relative TTRPG neophyte so it's pretty easy to wow me with almost anything! It's very nice to see some perspective from those that have been around the block on other TTRPGs that don't have a large positive bias toward the IP.

🙂👍🏻 DC20 🎉

🙂👍🏻

I also wondered how his skeleton was there as a child on the other side of the puzzle lantern section. In the end I missed the comment about one of the lanterns having been taken away such a long time in the past, so I made the assumption that someone else had come in and accidentally "unsolved" the puzzle after he died in that room, or that the spirit was lying about who/what they were and that moving the bones would free some ancient lich/spectre rather than help a lost young boy. Regarding the almanac point, I would read it, but I also am definitely a nerd. I played a few games on Roll20 before, and I was the one writing RP "diary entries" for my character after each session on the Roll20 game forum to act as a chronicle of events from my character's perspective. To put it another way, I treat games I'm in the way I wish my players would treat mine xD That said, I've seen a number of people in other more narrative focused RPGs talk about engaging the players in their own backstory by letting them have some input into the NPCs/locations of their hometown. A relatively small town setting like this one could lend itself well to that, as long as all the players are well aware of the tone of the game and take that into account when talking to the GM about the characters and locations they are familiar with in the town. I look forward to watching your romp through the world of Roshar.

If you get a chance to play Outgunned, you should take it. It's very fun to play and quick to pick up.

Thank you for the recap of 'Outgunned' and how you experienced the game. The scenario that you played was not part of the starter set, but the pre gens were offered from the original Outgunned and 'The world of killers' expansion. The second part of the scenario is going back into the Prison you escaped from, It is called 'Return to Elysium- Go Deeper' . In relation to the Spotlight, very few people do use them, until it gets to the end. Maybe because it is such a valuable resource or maybe because its not needed. But people hold on to it, which makes the final show down truly epic, because it is exactly how you want it to be. Great system, thanks for being great players in it.

Glad to see you all cover this one. I looked at it once but know there is a low chance I'd run it.