A Spoiler Free Look at Mistborn Legacy
In this article, we'll take a look at what's included in the book, everything from resources to help you get your campaign started to the new features added to the Cosmere RPG.
If you're worried about campaign story spoilers, don't be. This is a spoiler-free walkthrough.
I will however, be going over some aspects of the structure and canon timing of the campaign, but nothing that hasn't been touched upon by Brotherwise in the lead up to the campaign's release. There will be spoilers and references to the actual Mistborn books, so if you haven't read those yet stop now and go do that, and I'll see you on the other side of a life changing book read.
If your first playthrough of Mistborn Legacy is as a player, know that in this video I am focusing more on information for gamemasters.
Watching as a player, you won't exactly ruin the campaign experience. Though, playing a character in Mistborn Legacy is at it's best without knowing all of the specifics of the mechanics at play.
Fair warning.
If you want to learn more about the other source books in the Mistborn setting, check out my other videos covering the Mistborn Handbook and Mistborn Worldguide.
Ok, with that out of the way, let's talk about Mistborn Legacy.
Mistborn Legacy Campaign
The first thing you need to know about Mistborn Legacy its not a single campaign.
It's actually two.
The first half of the story will take you from level 1 - 6 and takes place in Era 1.
The second half of the campaign takes place in Era 2, and starts at level 3, and continues on to level 9.
There are a total of 9 chapters to the story and chapters 5 - 9 take place in Era 2, so it's actually a little more than half. If you haven't checked out my video on the Mistborn Handbook and Worldguide yet, know that the source books for this setting includes rules and resources for both Era 1 and 2 of Mistborn. There are certain Paths, Talents, Adversaries and Items that are only available during specific Eras, and as a gamemaster, you'll need to master both to run your group through Mistborn Legacy.
Since we'll be seeing both Eras in this campaign, know that there will be major spoilers for books.
Another warning here: I am about to discuss the timeline in which the campaign takes place, which touch on spoilers for the Mistborn books.
Beware of spoilers.
Campaign Timeline
In the canon timeline, the Era 1 campaign has you starting in 1024 FE, a year after the Lord Ruler's death and sticks pretty close to the timeline of The Well of Ascension.
Era 2 takes place in 345 PC, and occurs in between the events of The Bands of Mourning and The Lost Metal.
With the timeline out of the way, let's talk about managing a campaign with a 300 year gap.
Some gamemasters and players might find the concept of a two party campaign tough to deal with. A big part of tabletop roleplaying games is creating characters that grow session by session in power and roleplaying. The idea that at least one set of characters is just going to go away once you reach a certain part of the story might be tough to get your players excited about.
Brotherwise thought about this.
Cosmere RPG Legacy System
Mistborn Legacy introduces the legacy system, a means by which the choices your party makes in one Era effects the story in the next.
Here's how it works.
In Era 1 each player will choose a legacy. These are character arch-types that grant a small bit of background story and grant certain expertise to the player character. When choosing a legacy, the player must answer questions related to their story.
Let's take a look at an example from the book: If your player chooses the Noble legacy in Era 1, they take on the role of a disgraced member of a noble family.
This grants the player character either expertise in High Society or Luthadel cultures.
They get to choose what their family name was and what that family was known for.
They also get to chose the reason they were outcast. Your player could choose to be a member of a pre-existing noble house, or create one of their own.
Throughout the Era 1 campaign, certain parts of the story will have a Legacy Moment. These could be things like the player character knowing specific information about an event or item, having a unique interaction with an NPC, or even changing the way combat works during an encounter.
Decisions your characters make while playing their legacy trickles in to the next phase of the campaign as you move in to Era 2.
You start Era 2 with a fresh set of player characters, and along with it, a new set of Legacies to choose from.
Which options you have available will depend on the legacies your players chose in Era 1.
For example choosing the Urchin legacy in Era 1 connects to the Entrepreneur legacy in Era 2.
The best part is, your players don't need to pick the legacy related to their former character if they don't want to. It could be a fun twist to have the choices one player made in the first half of the campaign affect the legacy of another player in the second half.
In addition to the roleplaying and character choice questions that come along with each legacy, Era 2 characters will get a reward based on decisions that the previous character made.
I can't give specific examples without spoiling major plot points from the campaign, but know that these rewards can be pretty big: Rare items, entire businesses, wealth - all this and more can be gained through the legacy system.
In the coming weeks I'll be putting together a deep dive on the legacy system, along with some recommendations on how homebrew your own ideas and help your players make the best of the system.
Outside of the legacy system, there are some moments within the campaign where your parties choices will affect future plotlines. Some of these moments are small bits of flavor, and some are too massive to note without spoiling the campaign.
You'll just need to play through Mistborn Legacy to see how deeply these connections go. These moments are clearly marked in the book to help prompt the gamemaster to take specific notes on what occurred, or what decisions were made.
I love this design of connecting a single storyline across two Eras in the Cosmere. As we move on to additional settings within the Cosmere, timelines are going to get weird, and Worldhopping Campaigns will likely need ways to bridge gaps in storytelling. I can see these tools as the foundations for a system that will allow gamemasters to run multi-era campaigns in the future.
Time will tell.
Gamemaster Resources
Outside of the legacy system, the Mistborn Legacy book contains everything you need to run the campaign.
If you're new to the Cosmere RPG, or table top roleplaying games in general, that includes a number of key features.
You'll get a beat by beat walkthrough of the campaign story, including all of the battlemaps, roleplaying notes, and legacy connections you'll need to run your session.
Also included in the book are appendices of items unique to the campaign, 38 adversaries, handouts to give to your players during the game, and suggestions for downtime activities for the time in between scenes.
For the adversaries, the Mistborn setting as a whole includes 60 new stat blocks, not including the stat block modules for creating your own adversaries found in the Worldguide.
This does include some stat blocks for named characters and era specific adversaries, so your millage may vary.
In total I believe there are 25 stat blocks that are unique to Mistborn Legacy.
The next step
And that's it for this relatively spoiler free walkthrough of Mistborn Legacy.
Thank you so much to Brotherwise Games for both giving me and opportunity to put this video together and for making such an incredible addition to the Cosmere RPG.
Don't forget to check out my other videos on the new source books for the Mistborn setting, and I'll catch you on the next one.
