The Mistborn Adventure Game is Crafty Game's adaption of Mistborn: The Original Trilogy, the popular series of novels. Heroes take the role of thieves, rebels, and others who work against or outside the dystopian government of the Final Empire. Featuring a unique dice pairing system and a heavily story-driven ruleset, the Mistborn Adventure Game is a unique and valuable addition to the worlds both of tabletop gaming and the Mistborn franchise.
The mechanical engine of the game is its dice rolling system: you accumulate a pool of 2-10 dice (if you have more than ten, the extra dice become free Nudges, if you have less than 2, you take a penalty to your Outcome), then roll them. Remove any sixes, then the highest pair showing becomes your Result. So if you rolled 1 2 2 3 4 2 4 6 6, your result would be 4. If the Result was higher than the Difficulty, the roll succeeded. Meanwhile, the removed sixes have become Nudges. Nudges allow you to make your victories more awesome or mitigate the Complications that arise from failure.
From a roleplaying perspective, the game is driven by Traits. Everyone has five Traits (why you joined the Crew, what you did before joining, your special skill or asset, your physical appearance, and your personality), though there are ways to earn more. For each Trait which would help you with your roll, you can add a die to your pool.
Mistborn Adventure Game provides examples of:
- All There in the Manual: The Mistborn Adventure Game rulebook reveals a fair amount of previously unknown lore, such as the Feruchemical properties of several metalsnote and the exact specifics of Kelsier's Snapping and escape from Hathsin.
- Alternate Continuity: The Narrator is given license to come up with completely different stories, and several suggestions are included (Kelsier hired the Heroes instead of his canon crew, the whole crew broke out of Hathsin, Elend dies and the Crew has to hold his kingdom together, etc.)
- Badass Normal: In addition to having the highest Attributes and Standings, non-powered characters get two bonus Traits to represent growing and developing without powers.
- Caper Crew: The protagonists form one.
- Contrived Coincidence: The Spirit standing can be used to create these, with the odds of it working proportionate to how improbable the coincidence is.
- Critical Existence Failure: Averted. If an attack deals more than a quarter of your current Resilience in damage, you take a Serious Burden, which anyone attacking or opposing you can invoke to add a die to their pool. If the attack deals more than half your Resilience, you take a Grave Burden, which is worth two dice to your opponents.
- Empowered Badass Normal: By spending a large number of advancements, a previously normal character can become a Misting or even a Mistborn.
- Epic Fail: When you fail a roll, you gain a number of "Complications" equal to the degree by which you failed. You can buy them off with Nudges, but if you don't have enough you can lose Resilience, dice from your next pool, Standings, and a whole bundle of other penalties. If you fail badly enough (by -3 or more), then the entire Crew might get penalized.
- Healing Factor: Gold Feruchemy, Pewter Allomancy, and kandra mimicry all grant this.
- Lightning Bruiser: Burning Pewter allows you to add your Pewter rating to your Physique stat, which governs strength, speed, endurance, reflexes, etc. It also boosts your Health rating, which means that you can take more damage while burning. On the other hand, running out of Pewter might drop you to negative Health if you're badly hurt, and pewter burns fast.
- Luck Manipulation Mechanic: You can spend a Spirit point to make a last-ditch effort, rerolling a failed roll.
- Mooks: Extras, who have no Resiliences (so even one damage kills them) and can't spend Standings.
- Point Build System: An odd variant. Your stats are divided into three (well, really four) categories: Attributes, Standings, Powers, and resiliences. Of the first three, one is strong, one average, and one weak. Attributes and Standings are further subdivided (Attributes into Physique, Charm, and Wit and Standings into Resources, Influence, and Spirit), and the power levels you pick for those categories determine how many points you have to put in each category (Strong is 13 with a max of 6 per attribute, Average is 11 max 5, and Weak is 9 max 4). For Powers, the strength you pick determines which powers you can select (Strong makes you Mistborn or a Feruchemist, Average makes you a Misting or a kandra, and Weak means you have no powers but get two extra traits). Finally, Resiliences are determined by adding together Attributes and Standings (Physique + Resources = Health, Charm + Influence = Reputation, and Wits + Spirit = Willpower).
- Retconjuration: You can expend Spirit to try and rewrite details that have already been introduced, but it's very unlikely to work.
- Rocket-Tag Gameplay: Due to the aversion of Critical Existence Failure above. You don't have to take much damage at all to pick up a Burden, and they are very hard to get rid of. If a hero gets into a fair fight, then things are already probably screwed.
- Rule Zero: Two specific rules fall under this trope. First, a player has the right to veto any detail about his own character introduced by another player (for example, deciding that their character does not have mud on their boots). Second, the Narrator has the right to veto or confirm any detail about any character. They are even allowed to override the player's description of their own character, though they are advised to be very sparing with this power.
