Pagerunner

Will this also be affecting Coppermind and Arcanum?

Regarding individual miniatures: you can't get individual miniatures, but you can get just the RoW set (for example). From the Kickstarter's FAQ:

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Will individual miniature sets be available as Add-Ons?

Yes! For now, you can select the pledge level that contains the number of miniature sets you want (e.g. The Way of Kings for one set, or Words of Radiance for two) and you'll have the chance to pick exactly which sets you want in the pledge manager.

EDIT: Also worth mentioning is the upcoming Taln miniature, which isn't on the campaign yet but will be available as an add-on. It will be part of the Secret Project Kickstarter's Stormlight merch box, for those who are pledged at that level to the other campaign. But anyone will be able to add it to this new campaign.

Yeah green Arcanum.

Lost Metal has been a year away for five years now. I'll wait until a progress bar pops up before getting my hopes up.

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Dec 2015: Lost Metal will be written between SA3 and SA4.
Dec 2016: Lost Metal will be the "next non-YA novel project," written Fall 2017.
Sep 2017: Lost Metal will be written "next year."
Dec 2017: Lost Metal will be out Fall 2019. Start writing on Sep 1st, 2018.
Sep 2018: Lost Metal will be written "in between chunks of" SA4.
Dec 2018: No more side projects until Lost Metal is completed. Release in 2020 or 2021.
Apr 2019. Lost Metal will be "one of the first things" after SA4.
Oct 2019. Lost Metal will be "right after SA4."
Mar 2020. Lost Metal or Skyward 3 in August.

Lost Metal has become the new Warbreaker and Elantris sequels; always just on the horizon, but never quite the right time to do it, apparently. Brandon has a good sense of how long it takes to write a book once he starts working on it, but his future project list changes about once a month. Since Stormlight is almost over, I expect he knows what's going to come next; Skyward 3 is my guess, since he has to keep both his publishers happy and Tor just got a big ol' book.

But after Skyward 3... who knows. Maybe he'll take longer than expected on it, and "need" to go straight to Skyward 4. Maybe one of his other side projects, like Dark One (with its big TV show just around the corner) or the Mistborn screenplay (which nobody will buy) or Apocalypse Guard (which he's figured out for sure this time) or new audiobook content for finished series (since everyone's been clamoring for more Legion and Reckoners) or Adamant or Silence Divine or who knows what other Secret Project jump up on the priority list and bump everything else out.

Incidentally, this pattern also has me concerned about the Stormlight novella for the leatherbound Kickstarter. The other Cosmere Kickstarter projects haven't come close to keeping their timetables, because they offered products that had yet to be developed and the creators haven't been able to hold to those production timelines. The House War expansion will be three years late on what was supposed to a be a 1-year wait, but at least it's being manufactured right now. I've flat-out written off the $50 I spent on the Stormlight art book from the Kaladin soundtrack, since they're back to square 1 on that again. I was expecting an Kickstarter done by Dragonsteel would be more professional and not have those issues, but here we are, about to pay for a novella that hasn't been written yet by an author who has not demonstrated he can write a given book in a timely manner.

Yes, he's always publishing something, but often it's not what he had planned to publish a year before. When he finishes a book, next he writes whatever he's passionate about writing at that moment. When he's shared plans before on social media or in States of the Sanderson, it's always been informal, so there's nothing wrong about breaking that "promise." But once we give him our money, he will actually be making a real promise to write this novella; we'd better hope we get lucky and he gets passionate about the novella in the middle of other Stormlight work.

Before the replies come in, of course Brandon is allowed to write what he wants to write. When he says "here's what I'm gonna write," I have not said "he should write this instead." What I am saying is: "I doubt that. Fans, don't count your chickens until he's started writing them."

I give it four hours until it's fully funded, all stretch goals unlocked.

Here's ten years of forum staff, which I put together from either being around, or poking through old threads scattered around the forums, or looking at the forums in the WayBack machine. Graphed, because I don't know any other way to express myself.

This does not include subforum staff (like Reading Excuses or any of the RP/SE forums), Arcanists, or Keepers (although you can get the latter from the wiki logs). And I unfortunately was able to locate no information on Kar, the Inquisitor on a treadmill.

This is a phenomenon that reappears in every Surge's applications. I've gone into some of them in this thread. To melt stone and make a staircase like the Aharietiam Stoneward did in OB, you need to fundamentally alter the coefficients of molecular bonding between all molecules in an specified area, apply energy balance effects to maintain system temperature, and then generate an infinitely complex field of forces to act on each molecule individually to shape your object's boundary. Even a relatively straightforward force-manipulating Surge like Gravitation has its funkiness: the "half-lashing" leaving you weightless and the way the Reverse Lashings work imply changing the direction of existing gravitational forces; but nothing's shooting off into space due to the rotation of the planet, so the magic's math is always balancing that out. And there's the "spiritual link to the ground" mentioned in the Ars Arcanum as a fuzzy explanation of what exactly is affected and why.

Rosharan magic is fundamentally more complex than many of Brandon's magic systems. It's the idea of "causes" vs "effects." Allomancy from Mistborn is an excellent example of "causes" - a narrowly specified magical phenomenon which can be applied in different ways. Steelpushing may be tough to sort out, but at the end of the day, it's the addition of an new force within the existing system of kinematics. Surgebinding is an "effect" - it's going to accomplish something particular, as it is defined, and anything that stands in its way is going to be accounted for in the background. TVTropes even has a page for this concept: Required Secondary Powers.

Brandon hangs a lampshade on all of this with Surges being based in perception, not just in-universe fundamental physics:

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Argent

My understanding of the... spren is that they grant powers based on what they understand to be fundamental? Ish?

Brandon Sanderson

Ish. I wouldn't 100% go with that. I would say these are the fundamental forces-- They aren't as scientific as our fundamental forces, but I would say it's more than just what the spren view and what the humans view in that case. But they are more philosophical than scientific, in cases.

Argent

Other cognitive beings, could they-- A spren on Earth. Would it grant electromagnetism surge, for example?

Brandon Sanderson

That, I would say yes.

Skyward Chicago signing (Nov. 16, 2018)

Mistborn's magic systems are like Microsoft Excel. You get your library of functions, and you can use them individually or in combination to build your nice spreadsheet. But you need to know how all of Excel's functions work to use them. Allomancy has steelpushing, Feruchemy has weight-changing; they're both handy individually, but put them together, and there you go, you've got tricks built up from these building blocks.

Stormlight's magic systems are like Facebook. You can upload pictures, create groups, etc.; but you don't need to know how Facebook is coded or how its databases work. There's a user interface that has been built into the website that lets you accomplish what you need to. Surgebinding's "user interface" was, first and foremost, developed by the author; there must be an in-universe mechanism for accomplish it, presumably from the magic's Shard, but the concept is required by the kind of magic Brandon wants to put in his books.

I wouldn't say Stormlight's magic is necessarily limited by this contrast. Dalinar, especially, has been doing... browser extensions, I guess? I don't know how to continue the analogy. There are ways to break the system, but the existence of the system itself means that you can do biology-related effects without being a molecular biologist, or gravity-related effects without being a quantum physicist.

Lots of unnecessary plastic. No secret objectives or anything else to keep a "cooperative" game from turning into "democratic solitaire." I'm gonna pass on this one.

2 minutes ago, The Invested Beard said:

Also @Chaos is there still a plan to highlight the WoBs that have never been seen by most of us before? I am really looking forward to that, but not so much to the sorting through 7k WoBs no matters how much info I'd glean.

They are pretty much all in the events linked above, which had new audio. The only other rare ones I can think of would be in social media, which each have their own yearly event. (There are some especially good TWG bits, if I do say so myself.)

Of all the WoBs to show as an example, you picked that one?

Does this mean you'll finally get around to reading it, Chaos?

18 minutes ago, ArborealEtymologist said:

Huh - never actually paid much attention before, but I don't think that's right.  Why would Dalinar be holding a Crab sigil pennant and wearing a crab cape?  I mean he is kind of crabby, but...

Edit: Is it that that sword matches Oathbringer's description?

And then the background figure is holding a spear, not a shardblade.

Yes, we know for sure it's Dalinar and Eshonai.

3 hours ago, Ecthelion III said:

How do I subscribe to this newsletter?

http://brandonsanderson.com/newsletter-signup/

Don't forget today's Edgedancer preview! It's the opening three chapters, the same passage that was available over the summer to newsletter subscribers.

And there's a White Sand preview as well. No essay, though.

Duralumin? When I follow the link, I'm seeing Malatium as the exclusive dice for newsletter subscribers. That wasn't even one of the three chosen for the kickstarter exclusives, I believe; those were Duralumin, Electrum, and Lerasium.

http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/52790-calamity-tour-chicago-naperville/page-3#entry408298 is where the info about Yolen is from. It looks like it's the second item in your list.