LOS ANGELES — After securing nearly $15 million in funds through a Kickstarter campaign, Brandon Sanderson announced that the core books for his in-development tabletop RPG will be the entire corpus of his written work, sources confirm.
“I write hard magic systems,” said Sanderson during an episode of his “Writing Excuses” podcast. “That means you can’t throw out a single word. If a player hasn’t read all of my books, then the whole magical architecture collapses. It quite literally becomes dangerous to use. Besides, there needs to be a cost for all things. In order to play my RPG, you must sacrifice the funds necessary to obtain every single novel I have ever written. You might think that this would exclude my non-Cosmere works, but remember, it’s a hard magic system. That means it’s comprehensive.”
Sanderson’s fans were thrilled with the announcement.
“Another win for the hardest working writer in genre fiction,” said Neil Hopkins, who works over seventy hours every week between three jobs. “I’m just glad that someone who understands magic is making a TTRPG. Magic isn’t supposed to be mysterious or enigmatic, and it’s certainly not supposed to illuminate themes within a narrative. It’s supposed to be a simple system where you trade points for very specific powers. Also, I’m glad that there will finally be a TTRPG where sex is explicitly prohibited. I hate horny players.”
Industry analysts were less optimistic about Sanderson’s foray into the gaming space.
“Sure, twenty years ago, this game would have been a hit,” said Jonas Buchanan, a prominent tabletop blogger. “Back then, most games were rigid, rules-based affairs. They were just like Sanderson’s books. Any time you wanted to do anything interesting or creative, you had to rely on your DM to loosen up a little bit. That’s not the case anymore. There are many systems that allow for much more open and free play. Unfortunately for Sanderson, the current TTRPG environment favors storytelling over nitpicky mechanics. It’s a shame he is so focused on the latter.”
At press time, Sanderson announced that he had written three more novels that will be added to the game’s required core materials.
