Mistborn Adventure Game

by Brandon Sanderson (Creator), Alex Flagg, Patrick Kapera

Rally Your Crew Based on the best-selling novels by Brandon Sanderson and powered by an all new story-driven rules system, the Mistborn Adventure Game lets you explore, command, or liberate the oppressed world of Scadrial, battle the Lord Ruler's Inquisitors, and master the primal forces of Allomancy, Feruchemy, and Hemalurgy. It features new official fiction from Brandon Sanderson and loads of never-before-seen material, making it the ultimate resource for fans of the novels and those who want to experience the Final Empire firsthand. Softcover Retail Edition This version of the Mistborn Adventure Game will be available in book and hobby retailers worldwide, but you're also welcome to purchase it here. It features the same contents as the deluxe hardcover edition in a compact, easy-to-carry and use format. It's perfect for that gamer on the go!

Genres: Fantasy, Role Playing Games, Gaming, Fiction, Reference, Collections, Ebooks

573 pages, Paperback

First published November 23, 2011

About the author

I’m Brandon Sanderson, and I write stories of the fantastic: fantasy, science fiction, and thrillers.

The release of Wind and Truth in December 2024—the fifth and final book in the first arc of the #1 New York Times bestselling Stormlight Archive series—marks a significant milestone for me. This series is my love letter to the epic fantasy genre, and it’s the type of story I always dreamed epic fantasy could be. Now is a great time to get into the Stormlight Archive since the first arc, which begins with Way of Kings, is complete.

During our crowdfunding campaign for the leatherbound edition of Words of Radiance, I announced a fifth Secret Project called Isles of the Emberdark, which came out in the summer of 2025. Coming December 2025 is Tailored Realities, my non-Cosmere short story collection featuring the new novella Moment Zero.

Defiant, the fourth and final volume of the series that started with Skyward in 2018, came out in November 2023, capping an already book-filled year that saw the releases of all four Secret Projects: Tress of the Emerald Sea, The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England, Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, and The Sunlit Man. These four books were all initially offered to backers of the #1 Kickstarter campaign of all time.

November 2022 saw the release of The Lost Metal, the seventh volume in the Mistborn saga, and the final volume of the Mistborn Era Two featuring Wax & Wayne. Now that the first arc of the Stormlight Archive is wrapped up, I’ve started writing the third era of Mistborn in 2025.

Most readers have noticed that my adult fantasy novels are in a connected universe called the Cosmere. This includes The Stormlight Archive, both Mistborn series, Elantris, Warbreaker, four of the five Secret Projects, and various novellas, including The Emperor’s Soul, which won a Hugo Award in 2013. In November 2016 all of the existing Cosmere short fiction was released in one volume called Arcanum Unbounded. If you’ve read all of my adult fantasy novels and want to see some behind-the-scenes information, that collection is a must-read.

I also have three YA series: The Rithmatist (currently at one book), The Reckoners (a trilogy beginning with Steelheart), and Skyward. For young readers I also have my humorous series Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians, which had its final book, Bastille vs. the Evil Librarians, released in 2022. Many of my adult readers enjoy all of those books as well, and many of my YA readers enjoy my adult books, usually starting with Mistborn.

Additionally, I have a few other novellas that are more on the thriller/sci-fi side. These include the three stories in Legion: The Many Lives of Stephen Leeds, as well as Perfect State and Snapshot. These two novellas are also featured in 2025’s Tailored Realities. There’s a lot of material to go around!

Good starting places are Mistborn (a.k.a. The Final Empire), Skyward, Steelheart, The Emperor’s Soul, Tress of the Emerald Sea, and Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians. If you’re already a fan of big fat fantasies, you can jump right into The Way of Kings.

I was also honored to be able to complete the final three volumes of The Wheel of Time, beginning with The Gathering Storm, using Robert Jordan’s notes.

Sample chapters from all of my books are available at brandonsanderson.com—and check out the rest of my site for chapter-by-chapter annotations, deleted scenes, and more.

Reviews

[Eric Mesa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not a dice RPG gamer, but I did want to read the short story in here - "The 11th Metal". It's a prequel for the first book of the first Mistborn trilogy. That said, it's definitely best not to read before having read the first book of the trilogy unless you want some spoilers. Actually, I think the best place for a reader would be to read it after the second book as the reader would be able to get even more out of it. Story-wise it's in the category of the fan service prequel. There's no reason to read it other than to see a main character from the first book before that character was good at their job. Nothing is revealed that wasn't already sufficiently revealed in the first book. So it's all fan-service fun. That said, if put together with revelations from the last book in the trilogy, it does raise some interesting questions.

For the RPG section, don't read that part until you've read the whole first trilogy unless you don't mind spoilers before reading a story.

[Sabe Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Mistborn Adventure Game is Crafty Games' well-intentioned but shaky adaptation of Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy to tabletop role-playing. It attempts to walk a middle path between traditional RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons or World of Darkness and "indie" or "story game" RPGs like FATE or Burning Wheel, but ends up with something likely to be confounding to gamers who prefer either of those styles. (Caveat: these are impressions from reading the book, not playing it. I do intend to try it at some point, but until then, take this review with that grain of salt!)

As a compendium of Mistborn lore, the Adventure Game is a solid piece of work. With only a couple of minor exceptions ("time bubble" Allomancy), the descriptions of various magical powers, character types, and locales from the setting are spot on, in prose and as translated to game mechanics. A hardcore Sanderson fan might appreciate the Adventure Game as a setting encyclopedia, superior to the "Ars Arcanum" at the back of each Mistborn book.

Someone coming to the Adventure Game from a gaming perspective, however, should tread carefully. The core mechanic, rolling a pool of six-sided dice and looking for matches, is clever and well-thought-out; one of the book's later chapters breaks down the exact probabilities of each possible roll, showing the authors gave due consideration to the behavior of their model. Step beyond that basic mechanic, though, and you find yourself in a minefield of shaky design:

* The game makes a noble effort at balancing non-super-powered characters against powered ones, by making you commit a major character creation resource to what tier of magic you have access to. Characters with broad, powerful magic abilities have weaker attributes to compensate. However, when numerous magic powers add dice back to those attributes in crucial moments, it doesn't end up being much of a tradeoff at all.

* There is an extraordinary amount of "play before you play," prep work likely to go to waste as soon as the dice hit the table and people stop following the script. The players sketch out the steps of their party's (Crew's) mission (Scheme) in substantial detail, including objective, opposition, unknown factors, what might go wrong, and more. The GM (Narrator) builds on that with plotted-out twists and Bangs (Turning Points), and scripts beginning, middle, and end of the players' character development (Destinies and Tragedies). The authors repeatedly say that playing a game is very different from writing a novel, but it's clear they didn't keep that in mind through the rest of the book.

* Following from that, the Narrator advice and rules are shot through with the Impossible Thing Before Breakfast: the players are supposed to be the driving force of the story, but the Narrator is expected to veto, fudge, cajole, and generally Force issues to make sure "the story" she's planned out comes to pass. It's sad to see these things in a book whose introduction claims familiarity with indie games (though the fact that it refers to Storyteller as "indie" was probably a warning sign).

To use a somewhat forced in-universe analogy, it's like the Mistborn Adventure Game is a kandra who's absorbed the bones of Dogs in the Vineyard and Primetime Adventures* without ever having interacted with them beforehand. They have the pieces of great games, even in the right arrangement, but lack any understanding of the motivations behind those pieces or the behavior they're meant to encourage. I wonder if perhaps Sanderson's background in gaming, which by hints dropped in the text sounds like D&D, hurt the game's direction more than it helped during his editorial involvement.

All that said, I expect that the game could be made to work, and be fun. You just need the experience and discernment to throw out huge chunks of the text and use GMing advice from elsewhere (Apocalypse World would be a great source, as well as classic Internet advice like "Flag Framing") instead of the game's native processes. I look forward to having a chance to find out if I'm right on that count!

*Not that these games are dead, or something. I did say the analogy was forced :P

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

2 stars as a pen-and-paper RPG rulebook, 4.5 starts as the supposed "encyclopedia" of Scadrial.
I'm not keen pen & paper RPG fan. Actually I have never played it even once for real (though I have board game experiences), but always been curious how it works. As an enthusiastic SF&F fan, I figure my best shot for such curiosity is through RPG rulebook derived from my favorite novels.
This is my second try, the first one being The Expanse Roleplaying Game. The latter did an excellent job extrapolating the worldbuilding into a playable (as far as I can imagine) RPG rulebook.
This book also tried the extrapolating part, but not in earnest. Instead, the focus is more on deep-dive into the settings of Scadrian magic system, namely the three Metallurgic Arts. Mr. Sanderson indulges himself, his team and cosmere fans with every detail of Allomancy, Feruchemy and Hemalurgy, using RPG terms (or sometimes not). Some are scattered throughout Mistborn novels and now collected organically; some are even not explicit in novels. This is a real feast to cosmere fans but also make a behemoth of an RPG rule system bordering on impracticality. I can hardly imaging such a game playable by anyone barring Mr. Sanderson's own team or a few guru fans. At least I have no confidence in myself (having read all comere novels, many of them twice) at all.

[Evie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this rulebook was very clear and well organized. This will be my first time narrating / GMing (in any RPG), so I appreciated the sections about how to create my own scheme based on the books and all of the gameplay examples throughout. I also loved the character illustrations throughout the book - I have read both eras of the Mistborn books but I hadn't seen any depictions of mistwraiths or koloss before reading this! Very excited for my group's first session to put all of this information to use. :)

[Max Doyle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excellent work, nailing the feel of the setting in the way it written. big fan of how the form of investiture are translated into rules. however for the life of me i cannot figure out how combat works in this system, and I've play a lot of TTRPGs. It has some double-back-on-itself turn order nonsense going on, and while i could have worked it out with more work i think, how would i ever get friends to also make enough sense of to play this, when every other game exists and makes more sense.

[Mtabacman · Rating 3 out of 5]

The rules are original. The writing style is good.
But the book is way too long. The examples are sometimes too extensive.
I was expecting more inside info on the world.

[Tammy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Contains a short story:

The Eleventh Metal - (3/5) - Kelsier's backstory training with Gemmel, three months after escaping the pits of Hathsin. It is intended to introduce the magic system and world to people playing the RPG who might not have read the books. It's short and interesting, but more exposition/history than plot.

[Filippy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Looks like a cool game, but comes with a lot of solid storytelling advise anyways