Black Stars

Along the shore the cloud waves break,
The twin suns sink behind the lake,
The shadows lengthen

In Carcosa.

Strange is the night where black stars rise,
And strange moons circle through the skies,
But stranger still is

Lost Carcosa.

Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
Where flap the tatters of the King,
Must die unheard in

Dim Carcosa.

Song of my soul, my voice is dead,
Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed
Shall dry and die in 

Lost Carcosa.

-Cassilda's Song (The King in Yellow; Act 1, Scene 2)

Black Stars is a game of gothic fantasy set in the dreamlike world of Carcosa. You will chart a tale with your friends through this strange world. You will face both failure and success, and learn to embrace both. And, if everything goes well, you might even live to see the suns rise on Carcosa once more. 

Taking inspiration from  The King In Yellow, Black Stars puts a fantasy twist on the play that so infamously drives its readers to madness. With a hint of the gothic horror and the cosmic unknown, Black Stars is a narrative focused game with an emphasis on collaborative storytelling, creative problem solving, community building, and lingering wounds and scars.

Themes: Black Stars is about overcoming the odds in a difficult world. There are things you will not fully understand, and things far more powerful than you could ever imagine. Despite this, you will always have a home; the community. A place where you can rest, recuperate, and heal your wounds. This is a grim world, but it is not without hope. The suns will rise again.

Setting: The setting of black stars is heavily inspired by The King In Yellow. It takes the concepts presented in what little we know of the play and expands upon them, transforming the story into a tense and dreamlike fantasy world. The setting is focused on the weird and gothic over the cosmic. You might find a corpse watchman, witness a statue springing to life, or see your carriage from just a moment ago lying in the snow as if it had been abandoned for years. Carcosa is a strange land, with even stranger denizens.

Mechanics: Using a system of drives to motivate your character and attributes to define their skills, Black Stars puts the fiction first and has a heavy focus on character agency. The players are working in tandem with the GM to tell a story, not against each other. In total, there are 10 Drives and 16 Attributes to choose from. Your character's wounds make their attributes less potent, while one time use resources could bolster a roll to push over the top to success.