The Kickstarter goes live tomorrow!
The Stormlight Archive is set on the planet Roshar, where 10 heroes known as Heralds spent millenia protecting humanity with the help of highly magical swords dubbed Honorblades. All of them abandoned their duties except Taln, the Herald of the Common Man. Despite Taln’s best efforts, the forces of the vengeful god Odium have returned. Taln was left maddened by his ordeal and soon after he first appears in the books, his Honorblade goes missing. Its whereabouts remain unknown.
“The adventure is answering that question,” Sanderson told Polygon. “What happened? Where did it go? What’s going on? And you get to be part of the story. We were looking for an adventure you could do that would intersect with the canon of the books in an interesting way, and allow you to fill in a hole yourself.”
The Kickstarter for the d20-based game goes live on Aug. 6 along with a beta preview of the rules and a first level adventure meant to walk players and game masters through the setting and core mechanics. The hardcover Stonewalkers Adventure, where players encounter Taln and learn what happened to his honorblade, will be released in 2025 along with the Stormlight Roleplaying Game Handbook and World Guide.
Players will hunt for Taln’s honorblade across Roshar, from the Shattered Plains where much of The Way of Kings is set, to the magical forest of the goddess Cultivation, where bold souls can receive both a boon and a curse. There are a mix of dungeon crawls, puzzles, chase scenes and prison breaks. As they choose how to approach the problems they face, player characters will be able to attract the attention of spren, spirit-like beings who can bond with like-minded people to bestow them with incredible abilities. Completing the mission can allow them to join the newly re-founded ancient order known as the Knights Radiant.
The PCs can meet major antagonists from the books, including the twisted Herald of Justice Nale and the traitorous General Meridas Amaram, and learn how the talking sword Nightblood first featured in Sanderson’s 2009 book Warbreaker wound up on Roshar. As they move through key moments from the series, like the emergence of a raging storm that brings Odium’s most powerful lieutenants back to the world, Sanderson welcomes players to reshape his narrative.
“There’s a lot of cultural details being filled in, but at the same time, we dig a little bit further into what each order of Radiants’ oaths, spren, and motivations are,” Sanderson said. “There’s some new stuff there that I think fans will really enjoy.”