Cosmere Entertainment

[Faceless Mist-Wraith he/him]

This question occurred to me as I was coming up with my mistborn chess rules. What do people in the cosmere do for entertainment, such as games? The only example I could think of off the top of my head was the colored ball game from Nalthis, and a guard admitting to cheating at cards. Was there any other mention of games played in the cosmere?

[Jondesu he/him]

Edgedancer spoilers: 

Spoiler

The orphans with Stick play a game with colored pebbles, probably just something similar to marbles.

I would expect it's likely that there are card games in the Wax and Wayne era, but I don't recall them being mentioned.  Other than that, I don't remember games coming up much.  

[+Zodiac he/him]

Are you going to release the rules for mistborn chess? 

[Jedal he/him]

ISING THE WISHING OF PLAYING THE MISTBORN CHESS

[Faceless Mist-Wraith he/him]

I already have. You can find them in the Mistborn section of the forums. They are mostly complete, I'm just trying to polish them and see what others think.

[Weltall]

On Sel we get mention of Tooledoo and ShinDa which are respectively a card game from Duladel and a board game from JinDo. There's also a Svordish sport called Leky-stick, which is where Sarene's nickname comes from. Shai's guards are mentioned as playing at card games as well. And then there's the made-up game of Stones from the deleted 'Mad Prince' chapters but that only existed in the mind of an insane man. xD

Scadrial has lots of entertainment options. Mistborn mentions Fets (a board game) and Shelldry (unknown) and if it's not the same thing Kelsier talks about card games and confidence tricks. Lots of Era 2 characters talk about cards as well (especially Wayne) and Steris mentions dice. We also know that they're eventually going to get motion pictures and in the meantime they clearly enjoy written pulpy adventure stories. Brandon has also implied that comic books will become a thing by Era 3 and we can assume broadcast music and radio dramas will show up as well once that technology becomes widely distributed.

Nalthis, as noted, has Tarachin which Lightsong manages to win despite not knowing how the game is played. Vivi sees Parlin learning to play a game that involves wooden cards and Siri implies that card games are known in Idris as well since she remembers a soldier who spent all his time playing cards while getting others to do all his work.

Roshar has Michim (a guessing game with colored rocks), Kabers (a card game) and Breakneck (which seems to involve 'throws' but also 'hands') and dice are mentioned in the context of Szeth finding odd the Vorin proscription on anything even resembling predicting the future. They've also got glass marbles.

Edited December 11, 2016 by Weltall

[Faceless Mist-Wraith he/him]

Thank you for the response! I hazily remembered cards being mentioned in Mistborn, but couldn't think of anything specific. This is much more than I had originally thought. It's interesting to see how Brandon even considered different entertainment culture while writing his stories.

[Eki]

Actually, this

47 minutes ago, Weltall said:

And then there's the made-up game of Stones from the deleted 'Mad Prince' chapters but that only existed in the mind of an insane man. xD

inspired this

48 minutes ago, Weltall said:

Nalthis, as noted, has Tarachin which Lightsong manages to win despite not knowing how the game is played.

 

They're basically the same, except the second one actually has real rules.

(By the way, Zahel is also seen playing with some stones in WoR. It is assumed that he is in fact playing a miniature version of Tarachin with himself, which is interesting on many levels.)