Black Void Mindset

When you get started with Black Void, you might have a momentary lapse in judgement. It's been my experience that certain delusions of grandeur occur when you play Black Void for the first time, especially if you have prior TTRPG experience. You may see the incredible art in the books, find a cool ability or two, and think yourself equal to the esoterica of the Void. The reality of Black Void is: you are mere mortals, that's why your caste starts as Kalbi, literally translated into Arabic as "dog". You are more than likely to be out of your depth, out of your element at every turn.

Creatures you try to fight have powerful abilities that deal damage to more than just your body and certain wounds may last forever. Your character develops an inherent narrative tale as you discover just how truly alien the world of Black Void is to the average RPG, mixing in horror elements that provide an Arbiter (DM) with the ability to flip everything on its head in a moment: sanity loss causes madness effects, fear effects may leave you permanently mentally scarred from your encounter, critical hits may leave you alive but crippled, and spellcasting is in its proto form of phenomena, so they may fail dramatically.

It's important to keep the following mindset when playing Black Void as both Arbiter and player: characters may fail and characters may die. It's okay. It's okay to lose a character or two to a madness effect causing your party's strongest member to attack the others in a frothing-mouthed frenzy. It's okay to tell a story in which your players are not in control. Black Void has numbers in it, sure, but it's first and foremost a narrative system. If something makes sense, and it works, go for it. Pursue the story at all costs, because not every story needs a happy ending, and in Black Void, the dark and desolate, the horrific and the dreadful are at play, so play with them.