Black Heart

How is version 2 coming along? The cover art looks really cool, and I'd love to see what's different.

This seems really interesting and I'm excited to run it after it gets updated. 

This seemed like one glaring issue to me, and it's possible you are already aware of it, but on page 6, where the mutations are listed, the count begins at "2", so the first mutation is missing.  The previous page claims there are 12 possible. mutations. Was the number 1 mutation accidentally deleted?  

I thought I'd mention it since I haven't seen anyone else in the comments bring it up. 

It took our group a while, but we finally played our scenario. We definitely had a lot of fun. Like others have mentioned, it took a decent amount of prep beforehand. We created a whole Carly Rae Jepsen shrine, and I decided to make all of the NPCs pop musicians from the 80s and 90s.

I wrote about the whole thing on Medium, including a few of our scenarios If anyone is looking for how our group handled it. 

Black Heart — Yes, You Summon Carly Rae Jepsen | by Tim Gordon | Sep, 2021 | Medium

I'm planning on running an online game and recording it in a month or two but I am confused a bit by the Visit/Assist comparison. Let me know if this is the correct way as my brain processed it: 

Assist- Any number of players can choose to go to the same location, take part in the challenges together by taking the highest rolled die, and then taking the modifier of whom's turn it is.  On a success do they all get the bonus or just the player who's "turn" it is?  Turns aren't really defined in the source material---- do you keep going on challenges until you fail? With Assist does this mean you get multiple attempts at a challenge or are the other visiting players "forfeiting" their attempts? 

Visit - A player chooses to go to a location where one of the other cultists resides and THAT cultist can assist the current player (but still have their own scene at another location). So basically any time a cultist goes to another location that one of the other cultists "resides" at they will get the bonus die from that resident? 

Thanks!!!

I ran this for a small group last night, and we had a lot of fun! I agree with the other comments that GMs need to have fleshed arcs and points of conflict. I struggled with challenge levels and always having them go easy, medium, hard- it felt sometimes like I was really reaching for ideas of things which could feel unnatural- also a turn failing after an easy roll fail occasionally makes it hard to tell the story or move things forward. Otherwise we had a lot of fun.  I made one big tweak because my players like to work together and it felt like having to share their turns challenges stifled them from doing different things in the same place, so if two people went to the same place I gave them option of having their own challenges or assisting on specific challenges. If the specific challenge they assisted on worked it counted towards both of their challenge of whatever level.  I was worried about the intensity of one of the players having to die for the summoning, but the players had a lot of fun with it and it ended up having a witch player who the entire game had insisted that she was only considered a “witch” because she could read using real magic to get out of being the hanged man, which was hella fun.

I also had the town meeting be immediately followed by a cult meeting, where they could all talk and share info and plan the next day in character- which the players enjoyed.

the commenter below covered most manual confusions I had- I will add one thing which is that I assumed all the non hanged-man-contest roles during the summonings were + weird but I don’t think that’s explicitly laid out anywhere. Overall a lot of fun, definitely good for a one shot. The constantly changing stats are an interesting effect.

We ended up naming all the NPC’s variations of rhymes on Tom Hanks as a nod to I Really Love You- and taking some CRJ lyrics out of context and having a demon/ghost say them really makes them spooky.

The growing microgenre that is Carly Rae Jepsen ttrpgs (see also: LA Hallucination) continues to deliver both on lush designs and cool premises.

Black Heart  is a decently crunchy one-shot game about being cultists in a small farming community preparing the way for their god (Carly Rae Jepsen)'s arrival. It tracks stats and time and is pretty structured, to the point where it has an almost boardgame-like or werewolf-like feel to it, while at the same time maintaining plenty of freedom to interact and roleplay.

It also has lovely, thematic illustrations and extremely immersive layout, and the design is deeply solid. The mechanics and gameflow are pretty clear, there's hidden snippets of Jepsen lyrics, and it's a really fun book to read.

I think my only major critique of Black Heart is that it's definitely not low-prep for the GM. If you're GMing this, you should sit down in advance and write out (or at least outline) a module. It *is* possible to seat-of-your-pants a game of Black Heart, but it's not heavily supported.

Fortunately, Black Heart's GMing advice is good, and will point you in the right direction for running it.

Overall, Black Heart is a great game for folks who like character drama, the occult, community-focused games, dark and atmospheric stories, and Carly Rae Jepsen. I would absolutely encourage folks to pick up a copy and check it out.

Minor Issues:

-Page 3, Blacksmith, "They masterworks all" they're?

-Page 5, Weird, "your meeting will increase by 1" your weird will increase?

-Page 5 says you get a mutation at 5 Weird, page 6 says you get it at 6

-Page 7, Gold Veins, "you made of gold" you're

-Page 9, Assist and Visit feel pretty unclear. Assist uses 'visit' as part of its text, but Visit is a better version of Assist. Also, when you Visit, do you go to your own matching location, or someone else's?

-Page 9, "as you face a challenge to difficult" too

-I'm not at all sure from the explanation on page 9 how your Weird stat comes into play on challenges.

-Page 14, The Archon, "This person is responsible is to prepare the ritual and maintain" responsible for preparing the ritual and maintaining

-Page 14, The Emissary, "and watches too much weird" and watches out for too much weird

-Page 14, Emissary and Hanged Man, missing italics from their bottom sections

-Page 16, "failing challemges" challenges

-Page 17, Partial Success, "The God has taken a different for" form

Ran this for the first time recently and the group had a great time! The Tome of Knowledge was a huge help - I was struggling to think of ideas, and it was released just in time. I'm happy with how it all came together in the end, but I would love to see a video playthrough or more ideas about how to map storylines onto the rule structure. Looking forward to Boy Problems next!

I think what im missing is maybe a quick cheatsheet of actions or phases! reading thru it right now, im feeling a bit overwhelmed at all the possible options. or there are details im not entirely sure about, does each player each day get to pick places to go to or is it an entire party action?

this looks so interesting and im extremely excited to try it out sometime soon!!! :)

it's super cool that this is getting more attention because of the number of people who have the bundle (which is itself super cool for different reasons too!)
i was there before it was big and i got to see it blow up, as it deserves

Hi, I haven't played this yet but I just wanted to say that I am so absolutely stoked that there are TWO carly rae jespen TTRPGs. Bless you.

Is there an FAQ for this game? Because I'm looking to run it but have questions haha.

Ran this a few months back and it's an absolute blast! I believe it includes a worldbuilding guide along with it now, but I ran it in a custom world with other pop stars encroaching on a town, and honestly had a blast! Make it your own, add creepy music and atmosphere, and it'll honestly be a blast! If you're a fan of Carly Rae Jepsen or Demons this is the game for you! 

Major fan of this premise, I got it through the bundle. Is the first one-shot recommended to play prior to this or is it mostly unconnected?

Are there any game play videos of this game? I kinda' want to see it first.