Black Mass

They are alone, seeking a secret place. They are dead set on getting there.

Black Mass is a tarot-based tabletop roleplaying game played in one sitting over the course of two to three hours. Black Mass is for four to eight players, including a proctor, who facilitates the game.

This is a roleplaying game about two people leaving a community that doesn’t want them, to the woods that calls for them. Those travelers, Lydia and Catherine, confront their pasts to seek their own black mass, a moment of transformation, to put the tools of change into their own hands. 

In this pointillistic tarot-based roleplaying game players share responsibility over two travelers, Catherine and Lydia.

Players take on portions of their personalities, called personas. We join in their successes, their defeats, and we all sign their names into the devil's book together. During a game of Black Mass, players take turns inhabiting different elements of their histories, personalities, and tendencies. Personas revolve around relationships, emotional experiences, discovery, and growth. Each persona is different and sketches out a different piece of each character. Each player gets two: one for Lydia and one for Catherine. 

We play to find out who they are, why they left Salem, and what they find in the woods. Once we know that, we’ll find out what they do after their black mass. 

Black Mass is a game about discovery: through play, we learn about Catherine and Lydia, informed by the in-play personas. No two games are similar, and no two Catherine’s and Lydia’s are the same between playthroughs. There are ten personas for both Catherine and Lydia, resulting in many unique combinations at the table. 

Writing by Will Jobst
Illustration by Kate Liset 
Photography by Kara Kokinos 
Design by Shannon McLean 
Editing by Colleen Riley 
Black Mass Suite by Jack Jobst

Reviews on itch.io:

"one of the most complex, nuanced character studies I've seen in interactive fiction."-Kumada1

" an atmosphere that I wanted to dive into headfirst"
-jdsk