Pagerunner

The Trend page extrapolates based on current rate, and that's currently above the high point of the Projections. But the Projections are a little more complicated, as explained here. They include long-term declines in rate, and a 3-day end-of-project rush. It's far from perfect (but that's why we have Walgreens), but based on what I'm seeing, I feel pretty good about our chances of seeing new stretch goals.

He's always said that it would be three graphic novels; in last year's State of the Sanderson, he specified that all three were adapting White Sand: http://brandonsanderson.com/state-of-the-sanderson-2015/ We know there are two planned sequels, from Brandon's long-winded explanations of his future Cosmere plans. But that could always change; he might condense it, the way he's condensing his plans for Dragonsteel (down from 5 books to 3). Even if the structure of the White Sand trilogy stays unchanged, that doesn't mean that there will be 3 graphic novels per book; they might do 2 graphic novels, or 4 graphic novels, depending on the length of the sequels.

In this interview, Brandon told us that Vasher is subsisting off of Stormlight instead of Breaths, and that it is relatively much easier to find Stormlight on Roshar than it is Breaths on Nalthis. All the power behind magic - the energy of the Dor, the pure power of Preservation in the Well or the Mists, Breath, and Stormlight - are all different forms of a single power, called Investiture. Returned don't need to consume Breath specifically - they consume Investiture, and Breath is the kind of Investiture that is readily available on Nalthis. Not all power is completely interchangeable - Vasher cannot Awaken using Stormlight (at least, he hasn't figured it out yet; there's a long ways to go to his story yet). But he can consume it to stay alive.

Kicktraq has enough data for a projection. They're currently saying between $256K and $460K. If the stretch goals keep the patterns: House Urbain 150K Spot Varnishing 157.5K House Buvidas 162.5K More Named Personalities 170K Sculpted Pawns 185K Small Upgrade A 192.5K Big Upgrade A 207.5K Small Upgrade B 215K Large Upgrade B 230K Small Upgrade C 237.5K Large Upgrade C 252.5K We'll easily hit everything, and then unlock at least 6 additional items (be they more houses, upgraded components, or additional cards). I think the last count for sleeves had 11 unused ones if all the currently visible stretch goals were met.. that would mean no more than 5 additional Houses (since each would come with 2 Named Personalities). They couldn't even introduce a third Named Personality per house, since there'd be 12 Houses already unlocked.. Unless they decided to make an extra set of 50 Portrait sleeves available somehow. More likely, I'd suspect they'd slow down the stretch goals drastically after they reached the Sculpted Pawns. Maybe throw in a copy of an expansion at a $50K increment. (They said they had ideas, but didn't want to air them out, yet.)

Well, it's taken two years since the initial announcement of the graphic novels to get the first one out, so it shouldn't take longer than 4 years to the last two out. And I'd expect it to take significantly less time; I'm also not very knowledgeable on comic creation, but I'd think they can be writing the second while the inking is done for the first, so there's overlap in production. I seem to recall them saying one-year gaps for the remainder of the trilogy, but I can't find where that came from, so maybe I'm making it up.

Seems a little odd there will be a White Sand excerpt in the collection, considering the first graphic novel will be out already. Will it be a portion straight out of the non-canon draft? A passage that hasn't changed in the adaptation, so that portion becomes canon? Or was it edited and rewritten to match the graphic novel? Is it even going to be from the beginning of the novel, or maybe throw us in somewhere in the middle, that hasn't been adapted yet? EDIT: Ignore most of what I said. I just reread the announcement, and it's coming from the graphic novel. Which, again, is a little odd, since it will be out already, so it's not like it's a preview. I guess it's to get general Tor readers aware of the graphic novel, which is actually a pretty decent idea.

Oh, yeah, there are a lot of Vax theories riding on that star chart. About the Cosmere symbol, does anyone know any context for it? Is it the symbol for the whole Cosmere? (Which would seem a little hokey to me... it's not real-life has a symbol for our universe.) Or is it a new symbol somewhere in the Cosmere?

And, for those of us with all the MAG books, it's just Edgedancer! I'm okay with that, though - any time spent on new short stories would be time away from SA3. Sure, a lot of people would have liked a Lopen short story, or maybe a Nalthis/Threnody/new Shardworld story, but I'd rather Brandon focus on making Stormlight a priority.

There's more than a passing resemblance between them. AA has arcs instead of circles, and they are positioned at the points of the interior square instead of along the edges. Even if it's not that particular Aon, it still might be an Aon. Are we sure that's Khriss on the cover? Secret History spoilers: But if it isn't an Aon, I wonder what the particular significance of that symbol is? It's certainly not random; it's the only distinguishing feature on the cover!

Is that Aon Rao on the cover? Not the book's cover, the cover of the book on the cover of the book. Never mind, you all know what I mean.

I just pre-ordered, and it says June 28th release, but for the delivery estimate they say: So, even though they say it releases on the 28th, it looks to me like they have no idea when it's coming out.

I've lost a couple of posts. Typed them up, let them sit while I gathered links or did research, and then came back to the page. When I finally clicked "Submit Reply," the page refreshed and I lost the content. I suspect it's the computer I'm using; sometimes, I post from a machine with an older version of IE. (And, no, I cannot install a different browser on that laptop.) The old version of the forums used to autosave drafts of posts, and I used that a couple of times to recover content when I accidentally hit the Back button. I don't see that anymore; is that functionality gone?

Secret History has a lot of relevant information; there are some things you say in here that are definitely on the right track. I don't want to go into too many specifics, so as not to spoil you, but I do want to correct something you've said towards the end of your post with some info we knew before Secret History came out. It seems you're describing a mind sticking around after death as a separate phenomenon than a Cognitive Shadow. But they're the same thing; Cognitive Shadows are what happens when minds stick around after the body dies; they're essentially the Cosmere version of ghosts. For example, Preservation was a Cognitive Shadow, and Brandon has referred to him as such in interviews like these ones. No one on Scadrial knew about Preservation, but he stuck around anyways; Cognitive Shadows are not created or held by peoples' perceptions of them. Also, there is apparently something unique going on with the Stormfather; we recently learned that Nightwatcher and the collective of the Unmade are analogues to the Stormfather for Cultivation and Odium, respectively, and neither of those Shards are dead. (I think.) It's possible that the Splinter that was the Stormfather absorbed the Cognitive Shadow of Honor. But all that's going to say that the Stormfather is not a typical example of a Cognitive Shadow. A Cognitive Shadow is a mind that hangs around in the Cognitive Realm; it's happened several times with Shards, it's happening on Threnody for some reason, and it happened to Kelsier. All of those are Cognitive Shadows, of one sort or another. Enjoy Secret History when you get there; it will be very eye-opening, and I'm sure you'll be able to add a lot to this theory after that.

I thought that, too, but it's not $15k in net profit, it's $15k in gross profit. Since costs aren't necessarily linear (or, even if they are, they have a y-intercept), the extra $15k isn't all going towards manufacturing the house sheets - most of it is probably going towards making the games and books that people are purchasing, and as the profits get larger, they take some of that money to make the extras.

Reached the first stretch goal. I haven't had so much fun watching a number slowly increment since Cookie Clicker!

Well, that's that - fully funded less than 5 hours after posting. (Not that there were any concerns about reaching the initial level). Now we see how far we go along the stretch goals. If it stays at $15,000/level, then we'll need $240,000.

There's a relevant WoB from JordanCon that confirms Nightwatcher is a spren of Cultivation. No direct quote, but a paraphrase says that Honor has the Stormfather, Cultivation has the Nightwatcher, and that Odium has the Unmade (as a collective). Powerful, sentient splinters, made intentionally. You can find it here, towards the bottom of the post.

Anyone else remember their first time through Mistborn, when the Inquisitor made Vin burn aluminum? And how it broke open the rules of the system, that there were more than ten metals? Utterly mind-blowing, to me, a very well-done passage. Bands of Mourning repeated the experience, and convinced me that we still have a lot to learn about magic on Scadrial. That's why I went with Allomancy.

Yeah, the Allomancy dice haven't inspired much confidence in me, either. The noticeable differences between the 10 regular dice and the bonus Aluminum die and the off-center symbols on some dice are a little concerning, but the big one in my mind is how they intentionally hid the black mark at the injection point in all their promotional pictures and in the product packaging. Since the Allomancy Dice are all about the looks (if you just need functional dice, a pack of 36 dice costs half as much), I found it really jarring that they've tried to gloss over a noticeable blemish like that. (Figuratively gloss over, of course.) I didn't see the Allomancy Dice Kickstarter until after it had already closed (missed it by that much), and I haven't actually supported anything on Kickstarter before, but is it normal to not list price amounts for stretch goals beyond the first one? I would expect that those would be tied to economy-of-scale concerns, and once they cross the threshold of making enough copies they'd be able to afford nicer production options. And the stretch goals would be set by how many games they would need to produce, so they should already know what they need to reach. But by not listing them, it seems like they could 'move the goalposts' if the project is getting a good turnout, and they're using stretch goals exclusively as a method to generate interest. (Which is their prerogative, of course. But the lack of visibility is still a turn-off to me.) Maybe I'm reading some bad motivations into Crafty Games' actions because of the Mistborn RPG, too. The core book and the Alloy of Law book are okay, but I feel like I wasted my money on the Terris and Skaa books, which are mostly fluffy setting books that don't provide much meat to the game system. (Next Alloy book will have Bands of Mourning stuff in it, which should really give some really cool mechanics.) But I'm just about where you are, Pathfinder; since I'm big into board games, I'm gonna give this to them as my last shot. If it turns out poorly, I may have to refrain from giving any more of my business to them (maybe not even purchasing retail copies). It's about time they knock one out of the park (Brandon wrote, what, 13 books before he got published?), so I hope this game is good and I'm worrying over nothing. But if they produce another issue-plagued product, then I'd hope Team Sanderson would investigate another company. (Maybe let them keep Mistborn, but give someone else Stormlight.)

Just the Elantris Ars Arcanum, which says that Vax has a different Initiation than Scadrial.

Brandon just talked about it on Twitter. It's moving slowly, and it might still happen.

I mean... it's hard to argue with the big man himself on how the novel is classified. Maybe he's approaching it more from a characterization aspect, where they're building a team of specialists to accomplish a specific goal. But the team's goal is never to steal the atium: Their stated goal was to overthrow the Empire. They could loot the remains of it once they did so to get atium, but they were not pulling a 'heist' to get the atium. But, anyways, this is all going to say, what kind of a board game would be the best reflection of the feel of the novels? Competing thieving gangs wouldn't be any closer to the actual story than playing as the Noble Houses on the other side of the conflict. So, what would it be, then? A cooperative game, like Pandemic? Definitely no traitor mechanic - that doesn't happen until Book 2, and he winds not being that great of a traitor anyways. In the books, no one is working at cross-purposes, but they do have their own separate goals and objectives. Worker placement sounds like it might work... you have assign crew members to certain tasks, and they pull in resources (intel, troops, equipment, etc). Ooh, maybe like Betrayal at the House on the Hill, there's a secret objective that no one knows until the final turns of the game (we're actually starting a new religion to overthrow TLR), so you need to preserve enough flexibility. But it's very tricky to balance player-vs-the-game situations (Fantasy Flight had some serious delays with their Star Wars TCG, since they couldn't balance it), so that might have driven the game designers to find an appropriate venue for the players to work against each other - the Noble Houses. I'm getting distracted. What were we talking about? Whether or not this is a faithful adaptation of Mistborn? I don't think it's necessary for the game to replicate the exact experience of the book. Just like books need to be adapted to fit in films, with characters cut and plotlines streamlined, the book needs to be adapted to fit into a board game, as well, and I feel that playing the 'other side' is a perfectly valid way to fit the world of Mistborn into a board game environment.

If you've got active Shardic presence, I think a Cloud-City-like setup would definitely be possible. Silence Divine reading, I think it was, had cities floating over a world covered in lava. Shards have strong influences on weather phenomena (mists in Mistborn, highstorms in SA), so a Shard 'terraforming' and protecting a region of stability inside a gas giant doesn't seem too far out to me. And I don't think it even breaks the top 10 weirdest theories for what Vax is.

You could make the argument that a spoken oath gives you less wiggle room. It's not about mentality, it's about action, so it doesn't matter what you think or feel, as long as you follow the oaths you've spoken. Breaking the oaths means you're not following the path of your order, so it's very clear what will get you expelled. So, what is the path of Lightweavers? They need to reveal secrets; maybe that indicates that Lightweavers reveal the truth. (It's been a while since I last read WoR, so forgive me if it's been spelled out more explicitly.) Without a clear boundary of what to do, it might be easier for Shallan to slip into non-Lightweaver-appropriate actions, as she keeps secrets and hides the truth. So, lack of an oath doesn't mean that Lightweavers don't have an imperative to act a certain way. Just that their path isn't revealed in four distinct Oaths.

Except TFE isn't actually a heist novel. The team is built from a thieving crew, sure, but they don't actually steal anything. They recruit an army, disrupt trade, sow discontent among the workers, start riots, and overthrow the government. It's a very political novel; once she's recruited by Kelsier, the only thing Vin steals is food from the kitchen. Well of Ascension is all about rebuilding that government, keeping it going when there are a multitude of problems assailing from all directions and the heroes can't be sure if they trust their allies. EDIT: Also, this game has seemed oddly familiar for a while. I finally found what I was thinking of: http://wiki.decktet.com/game:chancellors. The way of solving problems is different, and M:HW has new effects when problems erupt, but some parts are very reminiscent of this decktet game.