Game Review
Black Heart — Yes, You Summon Carly Rae Jepsen
This is a weird game, but a ton of fun if done right
Do you like tabletop role playing games? Do you have a group of 4 to 6 friends that are willing to come over a try to summon Carly Rae Jepsen as members of a post apocalyptic cult?
Then it’s time to give Black Heart a try.
Let me back up almost a year. In the middle of the raging pandemic, there were protests in the streets calling for racial justice. Distribution platform Itch.io decided to raise money for the cause with their Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality, which ended up containing hundreds of games by developers hoping to support the cause.
One of the highlights of the pack was Black Heart, described as “a Carly Rae Jepsen-Themed cultist TTRPG One-Shot.”
This was one of the first games I downloaded, and I fell in love with the artwork and the world. My wife and I love a good horror theme, and this seemed to fit the bill.
Plus the pop music theme was just the right, subtle mixture of strange.
The only problem? This required at least 5 players to work (including the GM), and COVID still had us locked down.
Fast forward a few months, and we were finally able to get a group together, after many (many!) false starts. I was to be the GM, and my wife was in charge of decorations. She had a ton of fun:
We had a fantastic night, filled with bad pop music, witches, and bigoted churches to technology that meet in abandoned Best Buys. And, true to its word, it was a One Shot, meaning that we were able to finish with the pop goddess worship before the night was over.
A LOT of Preparation
Before starting this game, the main thing to note is that it takes a LOT of preparation. And no, I don’t mean creating Carly Rae themed saint candles, though that did take a while.
Unlike other tabletop RPGs I’ve tried (D&D being the big one, but I’ve also done quite a few from the good people at Evil Hat Productions) the manual in the current form really doesn’t give much guidance. It sets up a general world, but every game day each player needs to go to one of several locations.
Each location needs at least 3 challenges (one easy, one medium, one hard) that potentially gives a reward. The manual has a handful of example challenges, but the majority of that is on you. We had four players, which goes over 7 days, so that ends up being quite a few challenges. All of which I had to set up myself.
I had a lot of fun coming up with scenarios. But it probably took me a week to work through them all…and some were pretty weak. A little more guidance would have been nice.
The Rules Could Be Tweaked
The creator of the game, Colin Cummings, made the rules himself. They mostly worked, but could use some tweaking.
The problem we had was that it seemed like it was either too easy to beat a scenario (if working with another player) or way too hard (if working alone). I ended up letting the players work together, but kept increasing the difficulty as we went along (without letting the players know, of course) until I got a success rate about where I wanted.
Bask in the Weird
This is definitely a wonderfully weird world. Ours ended up being themed like a 1700’s town (think Salem) that had been built up in the wreckage of a city. Having the Jepsen worshipping cult members secretly hiding in that world definitely worked.
The game needs some tweaking, though. Theoretically there’s a version 2 in the works that reduces some of the prep time and tweaks the rules. If you’re up for the challenge and love coming up with scenarios, though, you should dive in right now.
Assuming, of course, you can get a group of friends safely together. Yes, you could play on Zoom…but then who is going to put together the altar?
I do have one final suggestion to the GM: do everything you can to make sure the most contentious player has the lowest score. It’ll make the final night so much more entertaining.
A Few Example Scenarios
If you’re scouring around for scenario ideas, here are a couple that I used. Feel free to steal.
First of all, my NPCs were all pop star references. Rick would help you roll, Shakira would shake it, Elton worked the farm, the Jonas’ ran the church. Sting was at the police station. And so on.
Also, despite the happy music playing the background, this world was dark.
I decided that the players had to find a few things to make the ritual work to give them direction. This included a necklace (the upside down one from some of Carly Rae’s photos I found on the internet), a cat, and a place where the veil was thin. Or something like that. I was playing that a little bit by ear when the players weren’t quite sure why they had to visit various.
Anyway, here are some specific scenarios I ran.
General Store
Due to some previous clues, the players believed the necklace was here.
The store owner, Alanis, was freaking out because this ghost cat was running around, and a glowing triangle kept appearing in the air.
With some work, the players discover that there is someone claiming to be Carly Rae on the other side of the triangle, but with effort they discover it is actually…Rebecca Black.
After negotiating with Rebecca, they are able to get the necklace, which the spirit was holding in the hopes that you would summon her instead.
The Butcher Shop
The fan favorite was the butcher shop. This was run by George Michael and his son, who everyone in town called Boy George.
Boy George had gone missing, and George Michael desperately asks the players for help.
The various challenges have to do with searching for Boy George, and they got harder as you go along. Finally, when the players found Boy George, he had painted his face blue, and was sitting in a growing puddle of blood. As the players get closer, they see him whispering “do you really want to hurt me?” then slicing off another bit of skin.
This being a world of possession, it’s up to the players to free Boy George of this nightmare. If they can.
Blacksmith
Another fun one was meeting the blacksmith Justin. Justin’s tools keep disappearing, and he’s begging you to help find them (I might have used losing things too much).
A trail leads the players and Justin down to the catacombs, where he is afraid to enter. After some effort, you all get down there to find the culprits: the spirits of Joey and Lance, Justin’s best friends from long ago.
It turns out that Justin murdered them, but it was under the siren’s song. If successful, the players can help Justin reconcile with Lance and Joey, and they fade away with an echo of “bye, bye, bye.”
