Speak the Words... Just not those ones

 Instead of finishing my reviews of ACKSII, I picked up the Stormlight Handbook (part of the Cosmere RPG), hoping to find a Heroic Fantasy RPG but finding instead yet another RPG with a full-blown identity crisis.

 First, why was I expecting a heroic game?  Two main reasons, the complex one first:

D&D 5e had an identity crisis of its own, it couldn't decide whether it wanted to be an heroic fantasy quest-hopping world-saving game, or a gritty, dungeon-crawling tomb-robbing game. It ended up being neither.  With the advent of OSR games during the life of 5e, the people who wanted a gritty game, or a game about dungeon-crawling or tomb-robbing, or about bloody world conquest, had their games.  An innumerable, ever-expanding morass of games.

BUT, after the life of 5e, there was, and still is, I would argue, a Heroic Fantasy shaped hole left behind.  6e/5.5e is utter trash, and so fails to fill that hole.  Other game blatantly stepped up to bat, such as MCDM's Draw Steel, or the story-game black hole of creativity that is Daggerheart.

In the middle of all this, I stumbled across the Cosmere RPG, specifically, as mentioned above, the Stormlight Handbook.  From the outset it looked to be 90% of D&D 5e with the other 10% being supplemented by the substance that is classified as SANDERSON.  In other words, a product for fans.  

But, as I found through my own rule experimentations, it only takes about 10% to fix 5e, so, if anything could work, maybe this would be the one to do it.

 The second reason is much more cogent: 

After reading four of the Stormlight Archive books over the past 2-3 months I can only come to the conclusion that it is an inherently heroic setting/story.  Anyone saying the negative of such I would be forced to decry as a liar, with pants of evidently inflammable corduroy.

 

So, why such an identity crises?

The game contains an unstable concoction of all three forms of TTRPG, which leads me to think, rather uncharitably, that the designers of this game don't really know what they are doing.

There are holdovers from D&D 5e scattered throughout this game, which are generally inconsequential, though there are two which stand out as egregious: Rations tracking, and a full adventuring equipment list.  

IF this is a heroic game, and by all indications I should say it is, why, oh why, oh why in the aphotic |||||||||||| do I need to keep track of rations?  Also, who needs a vial of acid when you have magic!?  What is the point of keeping track of the weight of these items when most characters can carry hundreds of pounds with ease?  Did anybody think this through for ONE BLESSED MINUTE and think, "Huh? why is that still there?" or did they just keep walking by the heaping pile of Legacy Mechanic and hope it wouldn't be a problem?

For clarification of my larger point, I would classify these two features as not just legacy mechanics, but Simulationist legacy mechanics.

 There are a lot of Narrativist elements found throughout the game, to the point that I feel I don't even have to point to any specifics, as the constant utterance of "story" this and "story" that which can be found practically suffused into the wood pulp and/or card stock of these pages, these digital pages...  should be evidence enough that theater kids story-gamers wrote this.  The positive: the core dice mechanic, though very narrativist, it is far less heavy handed than a similar mechanic in Daggerheart, and provides several purely mechanical options rather than forcing a "just be more creative" mindset on the players and referee.  The negative: A purely milestone XP system for leveling up, which is, in my mind, no system for leveling, or worse a "Just do it yourself" approach.

Finally, there are a lot of power game elements to be found here, especially regarding the combat section.  It uses three-action combat like pathfinder 2e, though far less re- mentally deficient in its implementation.  The most annoying of these is the one rules-lawyer rule found at the beginning of the book, "similar effects can stack on a target unless the effects share the same name." 

... Excusemewhatthe||||||||||||?!?  Who genuinely cares about this level of fiddling technicality, other than the worst sort of actual rules lawyer. 

So, yes, all three types of RPG, and with some of the worst aspects of each.  None of which, I should conclude, is particularly conducive to achieving a well-defined game identity.

 

As far as the setting material is concerned, it is perfectly serviceable, I only really have a few nitpicks, the biggest being that the Stormlight Archive books clearly state that there are five ideals of each radiant order, but here, there are only the first four ideals of each order.  I get the feeling that Brandon hasn't decided what the fifth ideals of each of the orders are yet, because I can not think of any other good reason not to include them here.

I only got the rules document, and not the world guide, which presumably would cover in greater detail how to evoke and better bring out the flavor of the setting.  As it stands, the game uses a [generic archetypes] and [specific classes] approach, which I would normally fully endorse, the only drawback here being that they could have tried to use more setting-evocative names.  

 

The final piece I have to say is a negative one: Safety tools.  This game has them, tucked away at the back of the book.  At least it doesn't parade it at the front of the book like some other games do in a flagrant attempt at virtue signaling that only comes off as a pathetic cry for help.  To say the least I don't like them.  You could replace any formal safety tools with common sense, basic intuition, and a rudimentary understanding of human nature, and, while I realize such ideas come in short supply these days, that fact, by no means, gives any level of credence to safety tools.

...Some people will call you crazy for saying that gaming is becoming more political, but why does this game have to include sections on "gender identity," "sexuality," or "Intersectionality."  "Yay, intersectionality" - said nobody ever.  This section, though only about 1% of the book, is the pinnacle of modernist trash.  Whoever wrote this section or vied for its inclusion should be fired, not out of malice, but purely out of good business sense, because people like that only know how to lose money, not gain it.

 

 I can't rate this as high as ACKSII, neither can I say this is objectively worse than Baptism of Fire, just objectively different.  Despite this, I am feign to use the modern standard of 'just call everything average,' but I cannot, really, say it isn't.  So, instead, I'll give this two different scores:

For simulationists it is a 2/5.

For narrativists it is a 3/5.

Sucks to suck, but I can't recommend this game except to fans of the Stormlight Archive books, which, even then, I would instead recommend the world guide instead of the rules handbook.

Be seeing you.