The new Hallowed Edition of Our Queen Crumbles, the beloved collaborative storytelling game for 2-4 players about revenge, inevitable death, and saying goodbye to those you love.
The conclusion is already in place. You have failed. The Queen is dead.
When the Assassin swept through the Lonely City, they left rubble and blood in their wake. Fate, or some other kind of magick, pulled the Assassin past all resistance and into the throne room. It was there the Queen of the Lonely City collapsed into a pool of crimson blood.
It was the Gravity Witch who moved first. In a whirlwind she gathered a pile of shards and dust—the remains of the Quickened Guard, the Queen’s army of living statues, shattered by the Assassin. And when the dust settled, there stood in the throne room a new living statue, misshapen and asymmetrical.
The Queen returned.
Yet this was only a temporary solution. The amalgam was not fit to hold a human soul for long, no matter the pull. There was, therefore, only one thing remaining to the Queen: Revenge.
Our Queen Crumbles is a collaborative storytelling game for 2-4 players about revenge, inevitable death, and saying goodbye to those you love.
It is set in the weird-fantasy land of Halloway, where the dead whisper to those who listen and the fundamental forces of nature can be bent to your will. The game is meant to be played in a single sitting, and is focused on developing interesting and dynamic characters over the course of a few hours—no matter your roleplaying experience.
Written by Jason Brown in 2019 and first published as a 24-page zine, Our Queen Crumbles got an Italian edition in 2021 curated by NessunDove, the Indie Groundbreaker Award-winning game design studio behind Crescendo Giocoso and the new Oracular Edition of momatoes' solo journaling game The Magus.
The expanded and revised Italian edition will be the foundation for this new Hallowed Edition, with even more additions thanks to your support and to our renewed collaboration with the original artist, Al Lukehart.
The Italian edition included:
A new format: pick-up-and-play laminated sheets inside an A5-size boxed set.
5 yellow-framed sheets, containing the complete rules.
1 map of Halloway, the orphaned Queendom, plus sheets detailing 8 Backdrops for the steps of your journey.
1 character sheet for the Queen, in two alternate versions.
1 character sheet for the Assassin, in two alternate versions.
16 character sheets for the Queen's loyal Retainers: 4 from the core game, and 12 from the digital-only Retainers expansion.
Why the new format? The laminated sheets mean that the game is always ready to put on the table, with no printing required. You just need a dry-erase marker to play on the fly and reset everything at the end of the game. The sheets are quite sturdy and easy to handle, perfect for dealing out playbooks or keeping the rules handy.
They also look pretty gorgeous.
The new Hallowed Edition will include:
3 new sheets with an alternate map of Halloway and 8 all-new Backdrops for increased replayability.
Reworked Retainers, to better weave their stories into the new places of the Queendom.
Reworked art by Al Lukehart for the original map and characters.
All-new art by Al for the new map and, depending on stretch goals, for every alternate Retainer.
The game will be available in both Italian and English. Backers will be asked their preferred language at the fulfilment stage.
Our Queen Crumbles uses a bespoke GM-less storytelling system centered on progressive character revelation— though you start the game with only a vague idea of who your characters are, each scene lets you dive into their history and personality a bit more. Players build scenes around a collection of character traits and story elements, allowing you to do on-the-fly worldbuilding alongside your friends.
Each player chooses what kind of relationship bound them to the Queen. Were you as close to her as a sibling? Did she dote on you as if you were her child, or were you the one acting as her parent? Or did you simply long to be her lover? For each relationship, you may pick between four playbooks, helping you build a strange and wonderful character over the course of your journey from an assortment of traits, items, and abilities.
The sixteen playable Retainers
Instead of character advancement that makes you more powerful, Our Queen Crumbles features character advancement that makes you more interesting—every box you mark on your sheet drives the story forward, giving you a better picture of the character you play.
Who is the Little Stone God? Why does the Knight of Whispers carry the Salt and Iron crowns? What is the Tree Under the Mountain? Only you can decide.
The game trusts you to come up with conflict, intrigue, and answers to the questions you have.
The players also share two table playbooks: The Queen, and The Assassin.
The Queen is a shared character. With every scene, you work together to build up her presence and keep track of her Decay, leading up to the only possible Conclusion: her inevitable death.
The Assassin is an enigma. The goal of every scene is to introduce another Rumor about their identity, but only in the shadow of the Tree under the Mountain will you decide together who they really are. This is the last step in your journey. Will you truly choose revenge?
Click here for an actual play by Chromatic Chimera.
The world of Our Queen Crumbles is filled with wonder and sorrow.
The Queen of Halloway was once revered and feared in equal measure. She ruled over a vast and wild land at the edge of the world, home to human, fey, and magickal creature alike. The land itself defied all taming—deserts bloomed with crystalline roses, boiling rivers ran through the forests, and towering prisms gathered on the plains like the eggs of some great beast—yet still the people of Halloway made their own place there.
On the far coast, the Lonely City presides over the Queendom.
We cannot bring the Queen back, but with your help we want to make her land even more dreadful and more marvelous.
A peek at the Kingdom of Halloway, as presented in the first edition (left) and in its new incarnation (right).
The Queendom is vast and there is much yet to discover. If the Queen and the Assassins have two faces, like the two sides of a sheet of paper, why should the lands lying between the Lonely City and the Tree under the Mountain be any different?
For this new journey, we want to lead you through six new enchanted places, written by the quills of NessunDove and illustrated by the pencil of Al Lukeheart. A new, unexplored map, interwoven with the stories of the Queen's most loyal subjects.
Our plan is to fulfill all orders by November 2025. Work on the game is already underway: we are in the process of writing and translating new material, as well as creating additional art and graphics. Our work on the first Italian edition has given us a good estimate of the work ahead of us.
For worldwide shipping, with the exception of the USA, NessunDove will handle shipping through the Italian postal service. For the United States, we previously collaborated with the good folks of Indie Press Revolution and would like to do so again: whether this is feasible will depend on the number of US pledges and on the evolving international situation. We are in the position to handle all orders ourselves, should the need arise.
If you're a retailer or distributor, no matter where you are in the world, we're happy to get in touch: we've created a 1€ pledge for the campaign as a reminder to discuss order quantities once production is underway.
