BLOC MASS

BLOC MASS is a tabletop roleplaying game of Soviet dread, vicious temptation, and supernatural fallout. Set in a fictional Eastern Bloc country in 1970s, players take on the roles of Channelers, each marked by contact with forbidden powers from the Beyond.

You’ve seen too much. You’ve been touched by something that does not belong in this world. You're compelled to save your community, and possibly yourself, from fiends spawning from this dark realm, and this is happening through tense, investigative gameplay.

BLOC MASS is a narrative-driven game centered on player choices, emotional weight, and horror. It blends paranoia, grim aesthetics, and occult horror. It's 1984 meets The Exorcist, Hellboy in the world of The Lives of Others.

You tell demonic fables in the late Soviet era, mixing political oppression with temptations of biblical evil. Players impersonate Channelers, drawn to twisted and inexplicable events and having a connection to fiends who influence the world despite the authorities’ attempts to suppress this kind of knowledge.

Unnatural events are denied and swept to oblivion by the authorities. But you can’t ignore what’s happening because you feel, hear, see, and know things normal people cannot. You’re lured to a sinister presence.

Your Channel reveals how deeply you are connected to the Beyond. When you are exposed to it, roll as many dice as your Channel, and get closer to finding out the intent of the scheming fiend. You may have to increase your Channel, and if you reach 6, you succumb to the dark forces.

The same might happen when you cast a Spell, but you can protect people and places from the Beyond. As you get more insights, the Gloom Gauge advances, and the demonic influence is getting more direct. 

When you have enough information about the fiend’s intent, the Endgame starts. Everybody rolls, and only the highest result counts. On 6, you understand the scheme, and your plan to banish the fiend works.

This fully illustrated, full-color 48-page first edition of BLOC MASS includes ...

• Comprehensive rules and play guideline
• Channeler creation
• Printable and online Channeler profile sheets 
• Safety with online tooling 
• Initial setting build with Map of Perema (Vysonca region)
• Vessel guideline for game hosting
• 4 fables:
    ★ The Missing Mountain
    ★ The Beast Beyond the Blizzard
    ★ Her Sleepless Choir
    ★ Sparks of Ages Sunk

Original art (including the cover) by Jasper Wilson
Jasper aka. Stange Bird Studios is a young illustrator and artist who offered to work on this project for free, but I refuse to accept this, because he's not only awesome in his art, but one of the nicest guys I met.  

Original art by Tony Tran
Tony is a marvellous visual artist who offered partnership for my games, and helped me enourmously not only on the art front, but in marketing and business aspects, too. Tony totally kicks ass, he's devoted, fearless, and industrious. 

Design, layout and additional artwork by Tremor Mezes 
Yours humbly. I was born and raised in Hungary. The cynical masquerade of socialism that I witnessed as a child in the 1970s still haunts me, mostly because of the mind-boggling nostalgia that people all over Eastern Europe still feel about the safe, calm and predictable Soviet era. Part of me gets it. Part of me wants to shout out: “You were watched! You were controlled! You were kept poor! You were locked up!” My game is a response to this unintelligible controversy: let me give you demonic fables so that you may understand dictatorship better.