What if the world of Downton Abbey was slowly being consumed by an unknowable cosmic force — and you could play through the collapse yourself? That’s the vibe of Our Brilliant Ruin, a tabletop role-playing game from Studio Hermitage that originally launched on Kickstarter in 2024. After Dark Horse published a successful comics run called Our Brilliant Ruin: Horror at Crane Mansion, it is now publishing a 296-page hardcover print edition of Our Brilliant Ruin Rulebook.
“Our Brilliant Ruin is set in the Dramark, a place where the last fragile remains of society burn with excess and intrigue in the shadow of a dying world,” according to an official release obtained by Polygon. “The Ruin, a preternatural force befouling everything it touches, has ravaged geography and culture alike, wreaking destructive havoc and transforming both people and animals into monstrous creatures. With the world plunged into darkness, how will you spend the time you have left?”
Dramark rests in a secluded mountain valley, one of the few places in this world where the Ruin — the sinister light of a dying star — cannot reach. Its corrupting influence morphs people into monsters and even blights the landscape itself. The majority of people recognize the futility in fighting against the inevitable cosmic doom and instead resort to partying like there’s no tomorrow.
Players assume the role of either an Aristocrat, a Truefolk laborer, or an Unbonded pioneer who rejects this class-based world order. The roleplay dynamics of the upstairs-downstairs drama are just as vital to the gameplay as the ever-creeping presence of the Ruin. Another interesting facet of the experience are syllokinetics, described on the game’s Kickstarter page as “machines built by the previous Royal families whose secrets are lost to time.”
Dark Horse’s comic, Horror at Crane Mansion, follows private investigators Elizabeth Ranseur and Arielle Wren, who are tasked with vetting a wealthy heiress’s potential suitors. There’s also an audio drama called Clawmoor Heights that sees historian Agatha Quinn get drawn into “the turbulent affairs” of a dying baron attempting to preserve his family legacy. There’s even an Our Brilliant Ruin video game in development, where players assume the role of human resistance fighters standing up against a vampire queen and her minions. But it all started with the TTRPG.
The Our Brilliant Ruin Rulebook includes systems for character creation, gameplay rules, a regional gazetteer, a gallery of allies and antagonists, and an introductory scenario. One of the game’s more interesting systems involves dice pools driven by a character’s emotions and motivations rather than more traditional stat-driven systems.
The Our Brilliant Ruin Rulebook arrives Sept. 26, 2026, bringing its decaying high-society horror to premium print.
