Cosmere RPG Stormlight Starter Set Review

Yes, buy it. The Stormlight Starter Set is the highest-scoring game we've reviewed so far: an 18 out of 20 at the table. Joe called the rules the best D20 system he's ever read and gave the layout our first ever crit. The one place we split is the setting, and the reason is simple. Joe has read the books. Blaine hasn't, and the starter set assumes you have.

What we reviewed

The Stormlight Starter Set for Brotherwise Games' Cosmere RPG, which runs about $25. In the box: the starter rulebook, the Bridge Nine adventure, a set of custom dice including the plot die, two flip maps, tokens, and initiative cards. We read it cover to cover. Joe has also read the core book and the wider line; Blaine scored the box on its own.

Rules

If you've played D&D fifth edition, you already know the core of this game. It's a D20 system built on that structure, and that would normally be a strike against it for Joe. Not this time. It takes the best of fifth edition and borrows from everything else around it, and the result is what a lot of us wanted fifth edition to be.

A few pieces stood out:

• The plot die. It works a bit like Hope and Fear in Daggerheart. When you roll a complication, you still get +2 or +4 on the check, so a complication can be the difference between failing and succeeding. Complications become a story tool instead of a punishment.
• Fast and slow turns. There's no initiative roll. Players choose a fast turn (fewer actions, act first) or a slow turn (more actions, act later), which means the table has to talk it through together.
• Three defenses. Physical, cognitive, and spiritual. Attacks go against those instead of saving throws.
• Focus. Spend it to turn a miss into a graze. It does less damage, but a bad roll still gets something done, and deciding when to spend it matters.
• Injuries. Characters come back from going down with injuries, not just a reset.

The crunch is there, but it's back-loaded. Stats and skills run from 0 to 5, so there's far less adding up than in Pathfinder, and the complicated parts arrive at higher levels. You don't start as a Radiant. You earn it by choosing the ideals your character lives by and roleplaying them, which ties the rules straight into the setting.

We had two gripes. Advantage and disadvantage are the standard roll two d20s and take one, and rolling a 2 and a 3 with advantage feels like nothing happened. A bonus die, like the d6 in Daggerheart or Lancer, would have felt better. The conversation system also feels unfinished: you wear down an NPC until they give in, but there's no clear point where the attempt fails. It's easy to house-rule, with a success-and-failure count like the game's own endeavors, or a hostile-to-friendly scale the NPC moves along.

Blaine also found spheres confusing. They come in different sizes and materials, then get tracked as one currency anyway. In the setting, spheres mostly matter because they hold Stormlight, the power your characters burn, and the starter rules don't make that clear.

Joe gave Rules a 19: "This game is finally what I've always wanted out of a D20 system." Blaine gave it an 18, two points off for conversations and spheres.

Layout and support

This is where the box shines. The Bridge Nine adventure is one of the best starter adventures either of us has read. It walks the players through the setting and the rules one piece at a time, with color-coded boxes and a clear summary for the GM up front, and it hands you the tokens, maps, dice, and initiative cards it uses.

The dice deserve their own mention. Starter sets usually throw in mismatched bargain dice. These are custom, well made, and include the plot die with its real symbols. Blaine expected trash dice and was shocked. Joe bought three starter sets so his players each have dice and a rulebook at the table.

The support behind the box is just as strong: a level-zero adventure, a level-three adventure, a GM screen, larger maps, item cards, a plot deck with condition cards, the core book, a setting book, and a full campaign to level eight, most of it available at launch. Joe found only a couple of typos across all of it in a first printing, and put the editing level with Free League, whose layouts are the ones we measure everyone against.

Blaine's one ding: the GM section in the starter rules is a few pages, mostly about reading stat blocks. Either move it into the adventure or give the GM a few more stat blocks to build their own encounters with while they wait for the core book.

Blaine gave Layout a 19. Joe gave it a 20, our first crit: "This was a labor of love."

Setting

Joe came to the game before the books. He loved the starter set, read The Way of Kings because of it, and fell for the setting the way he fell for Dragonlance as a kid: a world that feels made to be roleplayed in. Earning greatness instead of being handed it runs through the books and the rules alike. He gave Setting an 18.

Blaine hasn't read the books, and from the box alone the setting is hard to get into. The adventure uses terms like spren and singers with no explanation until the back of the book. Welcome to Roshar, a cheap primer that explains the world, would have fixed most of that, and Blaine would have happily paid a few extra dollars to find it in the box. As Blaine put it: "Just as somebody who's never read the books, there wasn't a whole lot of meat on the bones regarding the setting for me." He gave it a 12, up from a 10 he walked in with, because the adventure teases enough to make him want more.

If you've read the Stormlight Archive, add a few points to that. If you haven't, pick up Welcome to Roshar with the box.

Who it's for

Anyone who plays fifth edition and wants more out of it, and Daggerheart fans who like Hope and Fear but want a crunchier D20 game. If you've read the books, it's an easy yes. If you haven't, it's still a yes, just budget for the setting primer.

The verdict

Joe: 19. Blaine: 16. An 18 at the table, and the best starter set we've reviewed. At about $25, the dice and maps alone are close to worth the price, and you get one of the best D20 systems out there on top of them.