Mistborn

Yesterday Crafty Games released its Mistborn Adventure Game Primer on DriveThruRPG for free. I have to admit I haven’t followed the development of the Mistborn Adventure Game at all. I haven’t heard of Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn novels before and I thought it was just another run-of-the-mill fantasy series. Oh boy, was I wrong.

I also expected the game using Crafty Games’ Fantasy Craft system. I was pleasantly surprised when I found out that the game uses an all new system. Don’t get me wrong, I like Fantasy Craft. It’s a very cool rule system and I think more people should check it out. But it always was a bit too rules-heavy for me. It’s basically on the same crunch level as Pathfinder or D&D 3.5, but I just don’t have the time for such rules anymore. I want my game rules to be light. But I digress.

So yesterday I downloaded the aforementioned primer to see what all the fuss was about. And I was blown away. The rules are really, really light-weight and have a very narrativist feel to them. That was something I haven’t expected, but I like it. I like it a lot. I think I have to “borrow” some of their ideas for the game I am currently working on. I hope the Craft Games’ guys don’t mind.

I also quickly realized that the game was no classic fantasy but sounded very unique and the world had some Victorian feel to it. At least that’s what the interior artwork reminded me of. I think I’ll have to get one of the Brandon Sanderson novels soon to learn more about the world. I already downloaded an excerpt from the Kindle book, but I haven’t had the time to give it a closer look.

Alas there are a few things I don’t really like about the primer. The description of the rules is terribly vague. I had to read the paragraph about how to read the dice results several times before I had a faint idea how it’s supposed to work. It get even worse when it comes to conflict. There’s talk of “action dice” you get, but there’s no explanation what these dice are, how many you get, and so on. Perhaps a few examples would have helped.

But overall the primer did what is was intended to do: it piqued my interest. It made me interested not only in the game, but also in the novel series. And I definitely recommend you check it out.