Award-Winning Broken Earth Fantasy Series to Become a Tabletop RPG

The award-winning Broken Earth books by N.K Jemisin will be adapted into a roleplaying game. Earlier this month, Green Ronin Publishing, the maker of tabletop RPGs based on The Expanse, Lazarus, Dragon Age, and A Song of Ice of Fire, announced that had signed a licensing agreement with Jemisin to publish a new game based on her Hugo Award-winning series. The new game will use a modified version of Green Ronin's Chronicle System, the same game system used by A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying. Tanya DePass and Joseph D. Carriker will co-develop The Fifth Season RPG, which will be released in Fall 2020.

The Broken Earth trilogy is set on a planet with a single supercontinent periodically wrecked by devastating natural disasters known as the Fifth Season. Communities adhere to rigid roles to survive these Fifth Seasons, with many people cast out to die out of sheer necessity. In addition, there are people known as orogenes that can command energy, usually in the form of seismic activity or temperature control. Many look down on orogenes due to their struggle to control their powers at childhood, and those who do survive are given to mysterious Guardians who train them and can somehow short out a orogene's power.

The Fifth Season and its sequels The Obelisk Gate and The Stone Sky all won Hugo Awards in consecutive years, an unprecedented feat for a science fiction series. The books have received high praise for their deep and innovative take on post-apocalyptic societies, magic, diverse characters, and class systems. In 2017, TNT announced it was developing The Fifth Season into a TV series, but no further news about the proposed series has come out since the initial announcement.

The Fifth Season RPG will be released in Fall 2020.