Everything revealed so far.
Having spent the last couple of weeks consuming everything to do with the Stormlight Archive setting of the Cosmere RPG following it’s recent digital release, our natural thirst for more immediately turns to what’s coming next.
We know the next release for the Cosmere RPG (beyond the physical copies of the Stormlight books) is going to be the Mistborn setting. This should turn up next year probably around September if all continues to go to plan. But what exactly are we getting and what can we expect from the Mistborn setting? I’ve pieced together the tidbits of information from the metalmind nuggets we’ve been granted so far to enlighten you all.
What’s releasing for the Mistborn setting?
This is the most concrete information we have. Kickstarter backers (and presumably these will arrive at retail a little later too) will get their mitts on the following:
- Mistborn handbook
- Mistborn world guide
- Mistborn adventure
It’s not clear if we’ll get some the extras like those included in the Stormlight setting like a plot deck, maps and item cards, but we should learn more in the near future.
What do we know about the Mistborn setting books?
We’ve not had a full reveal of the Mistborn books just yet, but we have had some information trickled through to us at Dragonsteel Nexus 2024 and I expect even more details will come through as attention turns to Mistborn and Dragonsteel Nexus 2025 occurs in December.
Here’s what we know so far:
It will cover 2 eras
So Mistborn covers/will cover 4 eras. They are:
- Era 1: Pre-industrial age
- Era 2: Industrial age (steampunk)
- Era 3: Early computer age
- Era 4: Space-age
Brandon has expressed interest in writing a possible cyberpunk trilogy between eras 3 and 4, but this depends mostly on time and whether he feels he can make it work.
For the Mistborn setting, we’ll be getting the 2 eras that have been written already (eras 1 and 2). This means you can have events occurring during the final empire, during Wax and Wayne’s wild west era of Scadriel or at some point in between.
This may be a fair bit to balance with lots of new technology as well as increases in understanding of the various metallurgic arts advancing between the 2 eras (like the emergence of twinborns and hemallurgy beyond inquisitors and other lord ruler creations). I expect there to be some options only available to campaigns set in era 2.
We also know that somehow, the campaign will be set across both eras (despite the minor obstacle of a few hundred years between each era).
No new heroic paths but 8 new heroic specialities
I think this approach isn’t too surprising. The current heroic paths feel quite setting agnostic. I could point to characters that fit all 6 heroic paths across both settings, but it also makes sense that there are some unique specialties to the Mistborn setting.
In fact, we have 2 of these confirmed already:
- Mastermind: New leader specialty – These characters embody the likes of Kelsier.
- Gunner: New warrior specialty – This is unsurprising considering the prevalence of firearms in Mistborn era 2.
I am curious to see how they tackle some specialties that may be Stormlight exclusive (like the artifabrian). We know worldhopping exists so worldhoppers are welcome to access all kinds of paths, but there may be some GM discretion on the use of certain character options.
34 metallic art paths
These paths seem to be split between allomancy and feruchemy. We also know that hemallurgy is possible but not how this magic system will fit into everything else. Based on this, my guess is rather than having 3 specialties for each metallic arts path, that each path is it’s own specialty, but this isn’t definite.
We also know that all metals covered so far will be covered by a metallic art path other than the god metals.
We also know that we’ll get mistlings, twinborns and mistborns. This sounds tricky to balance. It seems the route they’ll go is that Mistborn will develop their talents across multiple paths which will mean slower progress in individual paths making them generalists while mistlings will be greater specialists and twinborns will fit somewhere in between.
2 new ancestries
We already have humans from the Stormlight setting. This leaves us with 2 other ancestry options from the Mistborn setting. They are the Kandra and koloss-blooded and both will be character options in the Mistborn setting.
2 new conditions
Soothing and rioting are 2 new conditions that can be invoked in the Mistborn setting. We know the team are handling these carefully to make sure they’re not a cheat-code for mind control.
Beyond 2025
At Gen Con 2025, Brotherwise confirmed that there will be a Mistborn era 3 (Ghostbloods) sourcebook once the books have been released and that this is in early planning stages. With the Ghostbloods books still a few years out from releasing, we shouldn’t expect this sourcebook for a little while though.
And that’s everything we know so far about the Mistborn setting for the Cosmere RPG. What are you hoping to see in the Mistborn setting? Let me know in the comments below.
