There will be two Mistborn: House War board game playtests at Worldcon in Kansas City, August 18th (Thursday) and 21st (Sunday), run by Brandon’s literary agent, Joshua Bilmes. He has three copies of the game, so there will be 15 slots available in each session. Please sign up ahead of time for the Thursday or Sunday sessions. It looks like there’s no cost to join the playtests, but you must be a registered attending member of Worldcon (preregistration is over, but you can register at the door) in order to take part.

The eighth installment of the 2016 Sanderson Lectures, “Magic Systems,” is now live! If you missed last week’s episode, “Character,” you can catch up on all the videos here. Enjoy!

In this week’s new Writing Excuses episode, The Element of Humor, we ask, what is the driving force that gets readers to turn pages in a book that is primarily a work of humor? More importantly, how do we as writers get that driver into our books? We cover this, and provide some starting points for writers seeking to improve their humor writing, along with a bunch of neat techniques and a long example for deconstruction.

Last week, in Tor.com’s continuing reread posts for Words of Radiance, a highprince met his fate and four Radiants gathered. This week, in Epilogue and What Comes Next, Wit expounds and Elsecalls, as we conclude our discussions of this magnificent behemoth.

My assistant Adam has updated the Twitter post archive for July and August.