Cosmere: The Game

When I was a Senior in college, my college capstone class was The Literature of Awe.  In this class, our final paper and project had to deal with literature and awe, and had to be related to each other.  I chose my topic to be Brandon Sanderson and his literature. Brandon's 0th law is even: "Always Err on the side of what is Awesome."  My entire final paper was about his books and magic systems and the Cosmere and his awesome putting-the-pieces-together-at-the-last-minute-to-solve-the-problem-satisfyingly endings.  As well as the paper, I also had to do a project.  Hmm... give me free range to do a project, do you?  Watch yourselves, here comes a game.

So I developed a card game based off of four of the major magic systems in Brandon's Cosmere works.

Here's the promo video I made for it, which I put on Facebook and now don't know how to get it onto Youtube: Cosmere Introduction Video

The idea is simple: you choose a deck (it comes with four), the other players choose a deck, and then you battle each other for control of shards throughout various places found throughout the Cosmere. The first player to 16 shards wins.  Each deck consists of its own magic system. There are the Elantrian deck, the Allomancy deck, the Awakener deck, and the Surgebinder deck.  Each deck uses its own unique system of magic.  And, just as Allomancy's metals can be categorized into an awesome little chart:

So can the powers that each deck offers you:

Time for a little bit more explaining. [Note: all artwork is prototype, taken from off the internet. It is just sample artwork.]

Elantrian Deck: The Elantrains are capable of harnessing the Dor (a source of great power) by drawing certain symbols. Depending on what the symbol looks like depends on what it does. Elantrains are the people that can draw these symbols, called Aons.  In my earlier drafts of the game, this was by far the most powerful deck, and thus broke that game. I fixed that (I hope, more play testing needs to be done) by categorizing the Elantrains into beginners, intermediates, and experts, which can each draw Aons only if their skill level matches the complexity of the Aon. Before, I allowed all Elantrains to be able to draw all Aons, and that was too powerful.  In this deck, you have to attach an Aon card to an Elantrain for the Elantrain to draw it, thus activating the Aon's power. This is the: Everyone can do everything, Magic from external card, deck.

Allomancy Deck: Allomancers are able to burn (in other words, metabolize) certain metals to harness and use specific powers. For example, an Allomancer that can burn tin swallows tin and then burns it to enhance their physical senses. An Allomancer that can burn zinc can pull on others' emotions. Mist born can metabolize all the metals, while Mistings can only burn one. In this deck there are 2 Mistborn, and all the other Allomancers are Mistings, meaning that most of the Allomancers can only utilize one metal. Metal cards need to be played on the Allomancer for him/her to burn that metal. There are eight different Mistings, one for each of the eight basic metals (physical and mental). This is the: Specific Magic powers per person, Magic from external card, deck.

Awakener Deck: Awakeners get their power from the number of Breath they hold. There are Breath tokens that you place on your Awakeners to tell you how many Breath they have. Breath can be transferred from person to person, and the more Breath one has, the more powerful they are. Having more Breath gives the Awakener inherent special abilities, such as looking at the top card of your deck or the Time deck. The deck also comes with items that you can invest Breath into to have them do your bidding magically: for example, a rope, which when you put a certain number of Breath into and give it a certain command, can grab items or tie up an opponent. Unlike the Elantrian and the Allomancer decks, the magic can be used without any external cards. This is the: Everyone can do everything, Magic from self, deck.

Surgebinder Deck: Surgebinders can use magic if they have a certain amount of Stormlight in them. This Stormlight comes from the money cards of this deck, and is placed onto the Surgebinders so that they can perform their abilities. There are ten abilities, and each Surgebinder only has access to 2 of them. Some of them include: using illusions to disguise yourself, teleporting to another location, using Stormlight to stick your opponent so that they can't move, and so forth. There are ten different types of Surgebinder, each with a unique combination of exact 2 powers. This is the: Specific Magic powers per person, Magic from self, deck.

So there you have it: the four different decks you can use, each with its own unique system of using magic.  During early play testing I tweaked the rules, and will continue to do so with further play testing.

Question and Answer Session:

Q: Are you planing on getting this published?

A: Yes, but I don't own the intellectual property for this stuff, Brandon Sanderson does.

Q: Have you talked to him about this game then?

A: Yes, I have contacted him once.  Here's how it went down: I took this concept and emailed the CEO of Mayday games with it.  This is the e-mail I sent:

Hello Seth:
My name is Andrew Perazzo, and I am currently in a class at BYU.  In this class, my classmates and I are creating our final projects.  Because inventing tabletop games is my hobby and passion, I am creating one as my final project.  Tara and many others in my class are interested in my game and want to see it succeed, and Tara and others suggested I try to publish it.

I am contacting you to hopefully start going through the process of getting this game published.  A URL to a short video of me explaining my game is below. (It will go to Facebook, which is where the video is embedded . . . I'm not sure how to change that.)

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10203354885579073
Please e-mail me with any questions, comments, or concerns, at [address].  Also, my personal cell-phone number is [number].  I look forward to hearing back from you soon.

Sincerely,

Andrew G. Perazzo

After this email, I got an email back:

I love that you contacted me Andrew AND that you know Tara too, it is a small world!  I watched the video and like it, but there is a huge problem... getting the intellectual property from Brandon Sanderson will be a very tough battle unless you have some connection.  Great ideas for a game, but it just isn't realistic to think you can get the license to make a game of Brandon's out of the gate.

On a personal note I'll say I'm a stormin' huge fan of his work though, I finished Words of Radiance way too quickly!

Regards,

Seth Hiatt

Mayday Games Co., Ltd.

So then I emailed Brandon Sanderson with these emails attached, and here's what he said:

Andrew,

Thank you for sending this! Your ideas are quite good, however, you'll need to go through my agent with a proposal on game designs as everything like that goes through him. You'll have a better chance at getting him on board if you team up with someone like Mayday Games, who is experienced in the industry. I will forward this on to my agent with a note that you might be contacting him with a proposal at some point, but it would be good to contact him sooner rather than later to find out if the rights have already been sold to another company.  My agent's name is Joshua Bilmes and his contact info can be found here: [contact info]

Best,

Brandon

So then I contacted his agent, Joshua Bilmes, and here's what he said:

Dear Mr. Perazzo:

Brandon is personally designing his own Cosmere card game, so this is a sno-go.

And that was his entire email.  So . . . was there another publisher or not?  I don't know. So I let it drop after that, figuring I was busy with school and everything else. My question is: If Brandon was designing his own Cosmere card game, then why didn't he tell me instead of asking me to talk to his agent? Maybe he just didn't want to tell me to my face, or maybe he mentioned it once to Joshua and then forgot about it, or maybe Joshua didn't want an unknown game designer working on the project?  I don't know.

Q: So what are you going to do now?

A: I'm going to continue working on the game and making it the best it can be, working out the asymmetrical decks until they're balanced, and making the gameplay smooth and fun.  Then I'm going to give a copy to Brandon and talk to him about any future it might have.

Q: Any ideas for future decks, such as Hemalugy and Feruchemy?

A: Yes, although I am going to focus on the four decks I have right now and making them the best they can be before making other ones.

Q: Oh! Does that mean--

A: Yes, I already know what you're going to ask, you're going to ask if you can use hemalugy and feruchemy with allomancy to create compounders.  The answer is Yes, but like I said, I'm focusing on the first four decks first before I delve into anything else.

Q: Do you need help play testing Cosmere?

A: Sure, just let me know. I'm a bit busy with school right now, but during Christmas break we can definitely play.