The Fifth Season

Survive the next apocalypse in N.K. Jemisin's Stillness. You build the community before you build the character.

Overview

The Fifth Season Roleplaying game is designed for you to play out adventures and stories set in the world described in the Broken Earth trilogy of novels by N.K. Jemisin—a world where constant and unstable tectonic and volcanic activity threaten all life; a world whose peoples have learned to adapt in order to survive. It is a world where everyone learns that Father Earth hates his children and is always trying to kill them, where metal rusts and even stone crumbles, and the best you can do is be prepared for the next disaster. In the world of the Broken Earth, community— the comm—is everything, because in community there is support and a chance to persevere.

Key features

Build the Comm First

The group creates its walled community, called a comm, before anyone creates a character. Comm creation runs in four steps. Step one sets the concept, which covers location, size, age and type. Step two assigns five primary traits, each tied to a caste: Strength, Resistance, Innovation, Leadership and Resilience. Size, Cache and Stability are secondary traits. Step three answers questions about status, geography, history, features, culture and secrets. Step four plays one full year, which is four seasons, at comm level. The comm works as a meta-character that binds the party together.

Use-Castes

Society sorts people into five inherited professions. Breeders handle medicine and teaching. Innovators handle engineering and science. Leaders handle negotiation and planning. Resistants heal fast and endure. Strongbacks do the labour and the fighting. Two restricted castes sit outside the five: Orogene and Guardian.

Orogeny

Orogene characters draw on the earth itself. The power makes them valuable and makes them hunted. Guardians exist to control them. This tension drives most campaigns.

Three Dice and Stunts

Every test is 3d6. On doubles, the player gains stunt points and spends them at once on extra effects. The mechanic is the AGE house standard, shared with the Dragon Age RPG and The Expanse.

Season Zero and the Moderator

The game calls the referee the Moderator, not the Game Master. It names four Moderator roles: Game Planner, Game Host, Game Runner and Game Adjudicator. The book builds safety tools into setup. It uses veils and lines, relationship bonds that change rolls, and short-term and long-term character goals.

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