Loads of announcements coming from Dragonsteel Nexus 2025.
Dragonsteel Nexus, Brandon Sanderson’s very own Cosmere convention, has wrapped up for 2025. While we got some exciting announcements about a brand new secret project (that’s his 6th secret book) and a few other things, at Dungeon Mister, we’ve been most keen to hear more about the Mistborn setting of the Cosmere RPG and what else might be coming next.
The good news is, Brotherwise has delivered with a mostly confirmed release date for the Mistborn setting, a load of new details and even some updates on other releases.
When is the Mistborn setting releasing?
Brotherwise Games have confirmed that the Mistborn setting books will be releasing in September 2026. I expect that this is for Kickstarter backers with a retail release coming not too long after. It’s possible we’ll see a digital release ahead of that point like we did for the Stormlight setting, but we’ll have to wait and see on that.
The Mistborn setting is currently in alpha testing and will undergo a closed beta at some point too.
What products will we get for the Mistborn setting?
There will be 3 books for the Mistborn setting:
- Mistborn Handbook – This will include all the Mistborn specific character options like paths, weapons and heritages as well as game rules.
- Mistborn World Guide – This will include a really detailed guide of the Mistborn setting, including information about eras 1 and 2.
- Mistborn Campaign – This will be 50% longer than the Stonewalkers campaign from the Stormlight release and will include an adventure occuring across eras 1 and 2.
What new details did we hear about these books?
We got quite a lot of extra details on the Mistborn setting including:
Character options
- Heroic arts will be updated to be Mistborn specific. For example, the warrior path will still exist, but there won’t be shardbearer or duelist specialties as these are specific to the Stormlight setting. In this case, we’ll get the brawler and the gunslinger instead.
- Some specialties will be locked to era 2. For example, the gunslinger is unique to era 2 so not available for era 1.
- Metallic arts are spread across allomancy and feruchemy. They aren’t as deep as radiant paths from the Stormlight setting with less talents on each tree (tin allomancy has 6 talents for example as opposed to the 8 on radiant paths).
- You can play a Mistborn or a misting. Mistborn will take talents from all metals whereas listings will specialise in one metal.
- Hemalurgy will be available, but not as a path. Instead it can be received as a reward through a hemalurgic spike.
- There will be rules on how metallic arts interact with surges from the Stormlight setting.
World guide
- Details the true history of Scadrial. This means it’ll be full of spoilers for both eras.
- Lore will be expanded for both eras, including never before revealed details.
- We’ll learn more about the culture of Koloss-blooded.
- We’ll also learn about the forming of The Set.
- There will be new lore revealed about the Terris Dominance.
Mistborn campaign
- The campaign will be 50% longer than Stonewalkers.
- It’ll be set across eras 1 and 2.
- The tone will be a bit more horror in nature (partly due to the fact that they’ll be dealing with hemalurgic spikes).
- The GM will run 2 parties, one in era 1 and one in era 2. They’ll be separated in time, but somehow, the story will be related.
- The era 1 party will progress from levels 1-6 while the era 2 party will start at level 3.
- The campaigns and settings aren’t built to take characters from the Stormlight setting to the Mistborn setting (though GMs can choose to do that). How that works will be tackled in the Worldhopper setting.
A new campaign for the Stormlight setting
We also heard about a new campaign being released for the Stormlight setting. This will be a war-focused campaign. There’s a suspicion that it’s the campaign played at Dragonsteel Nexus called Heroes of the Lost Desolation.
The next Cosmere RPG setting…
I was hoping we’d learn what the next Cosmere RPG setting will be. Sadly, this was not revealed. Brotherwise are still working with Brandon on what this will be and it sounds like it may depend on book releases.
It sounds like it won’t be Warbreaker though. I guess this is the least fleshed out lore and magic system-wise so makes sense. This leaves Elantris and Worldhopper. The challenge with Elantris is that Brandon has some books announced for this over the next few years and only a couple of the magic systems have really been given much detail in the books. This makes me wonder if we may have to wait for the next couple of books to release before we get an Elantris setting. This means my money’s on the Worldhopper setting coming next, but even then, Brotherwise did say that we likely won’t see the same speed of releases for the next setting. That means we likely won’t see a new setting in 2027.
Solo mode
Brotherwise are also working on a solo mode for the Cosmere RPG. We didn’t get many details on how this works, but they are making tweaks to rules so that these things work without other players such as talents that rely on allies. There’s no release timetable on this one just yet.
The Plotweaver System
Last of all, we got some details on how they’ll be using the Plotweaver System moving forward outside of the Cosmere. Essentially, the Plotweaver System is the underlying mechanics that the Cosmere RPG is built on (much like D&D is built on the d20 system and Pathfinder uses this system and adapts it to their own setting). The Plotweaver System will become one that can be used for other settings, including Brotherwise’s own, uniquely created settings.
What this means is that once this system has been released, players can create, publish and even sell their own creations based on the Plotweaver System. You can’t sell Cosmere related creations as that’s an IP owned by Dragonsteel and Brandon Sanderson, but Brotherwise will make the Plotweaver System one that creators can base creations off of and will allow the licence to sell adventures, settings and supplements based on it.
Once published, it will essentially be the same rules we see for the Cosmere RPG without anything setting specific, so shardblades won’t exist, but weapons that cause injuries might, for example.
Thanks to Invested in the Cosmere for sharing all these Cosmere RPG details from Dragonsteel Nexus 2025. You can read more detail from his coverage of Dragonsteel Nexus over on his blog, including loads of great stuff more broadly on the Cosmere itself.
