Mistborn RPG

Two Sundays ago me and my Siloam RPG group did a character creation session for the Mistborn Adventure Game RPG.  We are going to playing in our first session on this upcoming Sunday.  I have to say that I enjoyed the character creation quite a bit, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the system and the story play.

The Mistborn RPG has one huge advantage in its corner, and that is the author of the novels it is based on, Brandon Sanderson.  For one thing, he is a very gifted storyteller and world builder who has created an interesting setting that is just filled with opportunities for making your own characters and stories.  The whole of Scadrial is very thematic and flavorful.  He is also a genius when it comes to creating and quantifying magic systems in his worlds, and this has translated into a very unique and dynamic system that makes for some great game mechanics.

The game also benefits from the fact that the creators were more interested in making a narrative and rules light system instead of a heavily simulationist one.  As I have said above, the first play session is still. upcoming, but from a brief read through of the rules it looks like there is just enough crunch there to do what you need to, but that the rules stay out of the way of the story nicely.

The only real concern I have is that there is at least one incident of, shall we say wanting to "have you cake and eat it too".  There is an element to a character in this game called Standings.  The issue I have with them is that you both roll them as die pools to achieve things, and also apparently spend points off of them, lowering your die pools, to achieve other things.  Its the whole dilemma of possibly running into a situation of "In order to succeed I have get worse at doing this thing in the future", which just feels weird to me.

The character creation system was interactive and cool.  I had quite a bit of fun doing it.  The first step is to decide what you Crew is like.  The "party" in this game is called a Crew, and you as a group must come up with the reasons that they are together, what they have in common, and what they want to achieve.  To do so you answer three questions.  What is your common cause?  Who is your primary target?  What is your preferred method?  For our Crew we decided that our cause was bringing hope and a better world, that our primary target was the Steel Ministry (the oppressive police force/zealous church that enforces the will of the totalitarian government), and our primary method would be theft.

Step 2 is deciding on a concept for your individual character.  This is a short phrase that defines who you basically are.  Mine was Terrisman Con-artist (the Terris are a subjugated people who work primarily as highly trained servants and who secretly keep alive a distinctive racial magical art called Feruchemy).  We also had some idealistic nobles, a disgraced Kandra (shapeshifter race)and an ambitious Skaa (peasant) to round out the group.  The next step was to answer a series of 10 important questions.

The following questions give you various traits that both define your character and help you out:
1) Why did you join the crew?
2) How did you live before you joined the crew?
3) What special skill do you bring to the crew?
4) What is your most distinctive feature?
5) How do other people describe your personality?

The next three have to be answered with the following three answers:  Strong, Average, Weak.  You can only assign one answer to each question and must use all three answers.  These define your various attributes and abilities:
6) Do you have any special powers (like magic or shapeshifting)?
7) Are you especially fit, smart, or charistmatic?
8) Are you well-off or do you struggle to get by?

Then you get a tragedy:
9) What is the worst thing that ever happened to you?

And a Destiny:
10) What do you believe if your ultimate purpose?

The next step is mostly bookkeeping stuff.  You go through and assign different sized pools of points to your Powers, Attributes, and Standing; the pools depending on what answers you gave the corresponding questions in question 6-8.  Then you fill in the details.  You pick your race, though many of the character types with specific powers are limited to certain races (like my guy had Feruchemy so he had to be Terris).  Next is a name, then setting your damage tracks, and choosing equipment.  Then you are done and ready to play.

Like I said my guy is a Terrisman Con-artist.  He is the leader of our Crew and is meant to be a smart, charming, calculating mastermind type character.  He is heavily based off the Nate character on the show Leverage if you have seen that.  He joined the crew to try and defeat the Steel Ministry, because he sees them as a primary force for oppression and terribleness in the world.  His job before joining up was a Steward, or highly trained servant, to a noble house.  His special skill is the ability to always have a plan.

His most distinctive feature is an aura of companion-ability (not a word I know), which is to say that he just makes people want to be around him and be his friend.  Other people apparently see him as inspiring (at least I think that is what the group decided on.  He is a Feruchemist, so he has Strong powers.  I wanted him to have a high Charm and Wit, so he has Average attributes, and his Standings are Weak, but that kinda fits a servant.  His Tragedy was that his previous three crews had been caught and killed by the Steel Ministry, and his ultimate purpose (in his mind at least) is to show the people that don't have to fear and worship the Steel Ministry and its evil Inquisitors.

Feruchemy is a magic system that allows a practitioner of it to store certain qualities in special metal objects that he wears or carries, and then call upon those qualities with great speed and in typically vast amounts at a later time.  The downside if that you become deficient in those qualities while storing.  For instance you could store up vision in a Tinmind.  While you are doing it you become practically blind, but when you later use the stored vision you could spot the hair on a mouse's tail from a mile away.  Each of the different types of metal available in the system lets you store up a different type of quality.  I'm looking forward to the interesting challenge of creatively using and husbanding the limited resources of these stored qualities to best effect.

The resolution system in the game is fairly straight forward.  You build a pool based on some sort of stat that is relevant to the task, modified possibly by traits, equipment, and circumstances.  Then you roll a number of d6s equal to the pool size and your looking for pairs of the same number.  If you can get a pair of a number that equals or beats the Difficulty Score, which will always be between one and five, then you succeed.  Rolling 6s give you extra little bonuses if you succeed.  There are the typical three stages of complexity when it comes to rolls as well.  Player vs a set difficulty, Player vs. an opponent in a single roll, and Player vs. an opponent in a series of connected rolls.  These are called Challenges, Contests, and Conflicts respectively.

Character Advancement is another area where I see some possibility for concern.  I like the non-level based advancement.  You earn XP tics and then spend those to increase skills and abilities, which is a style of system I like.  The problem comes in when you look at what earns you those tics.  Most of the things are either going to be once in a blue moon, or are the vague, nebulous story based criteria that are sometimes so dang hard to define and to know when you've really earned them.  Passing these out at a good pace is going to take some getting used to, and would benefit form a confident GM; and unfortunately our GM, while most likely the best person to run a game in this world, is probably not going to be super confident in her abilities.  But the characters luckily start out at a pretty good power level, so even if advancement is slow, things should be mostly fine.

I'm really looking forward to playing the game.  I have a good feeling that this may turn out being a wonderful mix of the Matrix, Ocean's Eleven, the Chronicles of Riddick, and Lord of the Rings.  Which is an amazing combination in my opinion.