Upstairs-Downstairs Personal and Sociological Drama Meets Existential Horror.
Today, transmedia company Studio Hermitage announces a Kickstarter campaign for the debut project in its first original IP: Our Brilliant Ruin. The tabletop roleplaying game tells the story of the Dramark, an elitist society unraveling against a preternatural catastrophe. Studio Hermitage will bring Our Brilliant Ruin to other formats, such as graphic novels, audio dramas, and video games, in the future, but is making its inaugural debut with the Kickstarter campaign for the TTRPG on February 27, 2024.
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Written by industry veterans Justin Achilli (World of Darkness series, Assassin’s Creed series), Rachel J. Wilkinson (Vampire the Masquerade: Port Saga, Dune: Adventures in the Imperium), and Pam Punzalan (Journeys through the Radiant Citadel, 2022 Nebula Award Finalist), Our Brilliant Ruin hones in on the relationships and drama of class-based society and the balance between the haves- and have-nots. Artists Andy Foltz (FarCry4, StarTrekBridgeCrew, MythicQuest) and Efrem Palacios (StarWars, Hearthstone, Magic:TheGathering) drew from the Art Nouveau and Art Deco movements to create the unique, Edwardian-inspired world.
About Our Brilliant Ruin
The Ruin befouls everything in its path, ravaging culture and geography alike, and leaving its living victims contorted into horrific creatures. In its wake, Dramark society moves toward an irreversible demise, buoyed on a tide of excess and intrigue.
Players must navigate the social and political machinations of a class-based society while facing the end of the world. Three distinct factions and the families and guilds within them allow players to create fully realized characters to inhabit this doomed world. Investigate an abandoned mansion fallen into danger and disrepair, attend a high-society ball while keeping abreast of the ever-present danger, or confront a deadly chimera that bears an unsettling resemblance to a missing lover. The world is an open book of possibilities… until it ends.
Our Brilliant Ruin uses an original system of dice pools driven by a character’s emotions and motivations. Combine personality traits and skills to accomplish goals by rolling pools of d6s to determine success, failure, or catastrophe. Inspired by similar dice pool-based systems, these original mechanics for Our Brilliant Ruin provide numerous ways to determine player characters’ fates. An attack motivated by jealousy could be Obsession + Fight, or discovering your best friend is hiding a dangerous secret might be Benevolence + Intuit. Players can leverage their Portfolios to gain advantages in social situations and call upon their Passions to gain an edge on a roll… at a risk.
