Mistborn RPG: Four Ways to Play in the Final Empire
If you want a Mistborn RPG, you have four real choices today. You can run the Cosmere RPG, the tabletop roleplaying game built for Brandon Sanderson’s worlds, which names Mistborn as one of its settings. You can play the Mistborn Deckbuilding Game, a card game where you burn metals, alone or with friends. You can track down the older Mistborn Adventure Game, the first tabletop RPG set in the Final Empire. Or you can play inside the books yourself, as your own character, with a narrator that has read the novel and answers whatever you type. Which one fits depends on whether you want a table of friends, a card game for an evening, or simply more time in Luthadel after the last chapter.
This guide goes through all four, says plainly who each one is for, and ends with how to try the last one tonight without paying anything.
What people mean by a Mistborn RPG
The phrase covers a few different wishes, and it helps to know which one is yours.
- You want to be an Allomancer. Burn pewter, push on coins, soar over the rooftops in the mists. You care about the magic system most of all.
- You want to run a heist. Kelsier’s crew is the heart of the first book: a team, a plan, a job that goes wrong. This is a group wish, and it suits a table of friends.
- You want to step into the books. Walk the ash-covered streets, meet the skaa and the nobility as Sanderson wrote them, and make choices the story never offered. This is the reader’s wish.
The table below shows where each option lands.
The four options side by side
| Cosmere RPG | Mistborn Deckbuilding Game | Mistborn Adventure Game | Play inside the book | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | Tabletop rulebooks | Card game | Older tabletop rulebook | Written game in a browser |
| Players | A group, one runs it | Solo, co-op or head to head | A group, one runs it | Just you |
| Rules | Its own system | Deckbuilding rules | Its own system | None to learn; you type |
| Story | Made up by your group | Missions on cards | Made up by your group | Grows from your choices, grounded in the novel |
| Best for | Groups who love the Cosmere | A game night with the magic | Collectors and old hands | Readers who want the book’s own world |
The claims about the Brotherwise games below were read from Brotherwise Games’ own pages in September 2026.
The Cosmere RPG: the official tabletop game
Brotherwise Games calls itself the official games partner for Sanderson’s Cosmere universe, working with his company Dragonsteel. Its Cosmere RPG page describes the game like this:
“The Cosmere® RPG is a “living” RPG that will grow as Brandon Sanderson writes new novels and expands his universe.”
The same page says the system is designed to tell standalone stories in the Stormlight or Mistborn settings, or campaigns that move between worlds. So one rulebook family covers Scadrial and Roshar both, which matters if your group has read more than one series.
Pick it if you have a regular group, somebody willing to run it, and friends who would argue happily about which metal to burn first. A heist campaign with your own crew is exactly the kind of story a tabletop game does best.
It is weaker for anyone without that group. A game master has to learn the rules and prepare each session, and the Final Empire is a big place to hold in one head. Check the product listing for which setting books are on sale before you order, since a living game releases in stages.
The Mistborn Deckbuilding Game: the magic as a card game
Also from Brotherwise, and listed as available now in September 2026. Its page puts it plainly: “Mistborn is a standalone deck-building game in which you “purchase” cards as you play to build and improve your deck.” You “burn” metals to activate cards, and each metal does something different: damage, mission points, or help from allies. You can win in battle or by finishing missions, and you can play it solo or co-op against the Lord Ruler as well as head to head with friends.
Pick it if what you love is the metals themselves and you want a game you can learn in an evening, with no one having to run it.
It is weaker for the roleplaying wish. You play cards, not a character with a history. There is no conversation with Vin or Sazed, and the story is the one printed on the mission cards.
The Mistborn Adventure Game: the first one
Before Brotherwise, Crafty Games published the Mistborn Adventure Game, the first roleplaying game set in the Final Empire. As of September 2026 Crafty’s own site files its older roleplaying games under legacy titles and sends buyers to DriveThruRPG for them, so treat it as a book to hunt for rather than a line that is still growing.
Pick it if you already own it, or your group likes a finished game with no new releases to keep up with.
It is weaker for a new group starting today, which will find more support and newer material around the Cosmere RPG.
Playing inside the books themselves
The fourth way is the newest. You give a narrator the novel itself, and it reads the book before you begin: the places, the people, how they speak, what they know and what they hide. You are shown what the reading costs before anything is spent. Then you make your own character, step into that world, and type what you do. There is no list of choices. You can join a crew, hide from an Inquisitor, or talk your way into a noble ball, and the narrator keeps the world consistent with what the author wrote.
This is what LLM RPG does. You upload a copy of a book you own, as a
.txt or .epub file, and it builds an atlas of that book’s world before your
first scene. Because it works from the text rather than from a preset, it works
for The Final Empire and equally for any other novel on your shelf, including
the later Mistborn books and their very different era.
Pick it if what you miss after the last page is the world itself, and you would rather be a skaa thief in Luthadel tonight than learn a rulebook first.
It is weaker for players who want a group or a table. It is a written story, read and typed, like a patient game master who never tires. It also needs the book file, so you use your own copy.
For the wider field, see AI roleplaying and AI game master. If you liked this for Scadrial, our Lord of the Rings roleplaying game and Game of Thrones RPG guides do the same for Middle-earth and Westeros.
What it takes to start each one
| Option | How to start | What you need |
|---|---|---|
| Cosmere RPG | Order from Brotherwise or a game store | A group and a game master |
| Mistborn Deckbuilding Game | Buy the box | One to four players, or just you |
| Mistborn Adventure Game | Find a copy of the legacy book | A group and a game master |
| LLM RPG | Open the site in a browser | Nothing for the first five turns |
With LLM RPG you can play a ready-made world for five turns with no account at all, and signing up adds free credits. The current plans are on the pricing page.
How to start a Mistborn RPG tonight
If playing inside the books sounds like your kind of game, this is the whole path from nothing to your first scene.
- Try it with no account. Open a ready-made world and play five turns. A few minutes tells you whether typing your own actions suits you.
- Sign up with your email if it does. You get a one-time code, no password.
- Upload the book. Choose the volume you want to live in, as a
.txtor.epubfile from your own copy. The narrator reads it and builds the world before you play. - Make your character. A skaa smith who has never burned a metal, a minor noble’s cousin with a secret, an obligator’s clerk who has started to doubt. You are a new person in the book’s world, so you can be anyone.
- Type what you do. “I follow the crew member to the safehouse and wait outside.” “I ask the steward which houses will attend the ball.” The narrator answers in the book’s voice and remembers what you did, including the secrets you let slip.
When a table or a card game is the better choice
Be honest about the evening you want. If you have friends who want to plan a heist together, a tabletop game gives you a crew nobody else will ever have, and the Cosmere RPG is the one being built for that now. If you want the metals in your hands for an hour, the deckbuilding game does that without anyone preparing a thing.
A written game fits a different moment: you have just finished the last chapter, the next book is not in your hands yet, and you want to stay in that world as yourself. That is the moment it was built for.