Comms will vary greatly based on who populates them, but also on where they are geographically located in the world. That can create interesting story stuff where you’re part of the community, but you’re secretly an orogene, and all the difficulties that that engenders.”Ĭampaigns will kick off with elaborate comm-building exercises. And you can play one of those characters with limited powers, but you won’t be shifting tectonic plates or anything like that. “People who have talent but they haven’t been trained or anything like that.

“The rulebook has rules for minor orogenes,” Pramas said. Think Earthbenders mixed with X-Men and you’re on the right track. Players will create characters based on the Broken Earth trilogy’s strict caste system, which divides workers from creators and even from those tasked with raising the next generation.Įmbedded within that rigid caste system are the secret orogenes, powerful magelike figures who are persecuted - and, in the books, often shunned out of comms - as others fear their titanic abilities. There are interpersonal as well as logistical concerns at every turn, and as cataclysms pile one atop the other only the most cohesive groups will survive. In Jemisin’s apocalyptic world, humanity must band together into tight-knit comms in order to survive a seemingly never-ending series of natural disasters. “The whole way that The Fifth Season RPG works is different than a lot of games, because one of the key aspects of the whole series is that to survive these cataclysmic Fifth Seasons, you need community.” “With any license, the first thing you want to do is identify what is unique about it, and then how you can translate that into the game,” Green Ronin founder and president Chris Pramas told Polygon. A crowdfunding campaign runs on Backerkit from now through Feb.

With it, players will be able to guide their own homemade communities (comms) across Earth’s last remaining supercontinent. The Fifth Season: Roleplaying in the Stillness will use the well-established d6-based Adventure Game Engine (AGE) system, the same system that underpins many of Green Ronin’s most popular titles. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy is being adapted to a tabletop role-playing game by Green Ronin Publishing.

The broken earth