Memento Mori: The Game

Memento Mori is a card game for 2-6 players created by Andrea Peterson of Plain Great Productions, based on Hans Holbein the Younger's Dance of Death woodcuts. A game typically lasts 45-90 minutes.

The gameplay is sort of a mix of Guillotine and Marrying Mr. Darcy, where you try to collect the most "valuable" hoard of souls from a medieval Castle’s Keep. The downloadable version must be printed duplex and works best on cardstock—preferably manila-tinted, if you have it lying around, for an aged feel. Printing everything requires 22 pages.

To play, all you’ll need are the three printable decks (Mortals, Goals, and Death), the printable rules sheet/score tracker, a d6 (or the ability to virtually roll one), and markers like pony-beads to move around the score tracker. You can also play without keeping track and total points at the end to see who wins, in so much as anyone wins in a game where the goal is effectively killing everyone.

Win or lose, the real goal of the game is to help you kill time in a way that’s meaningful with people you care about. That's what this is about for me.

Have feedback or photos of you playing? Hit me up on Twitter or Instagram as @kansasalps or email me at plaingreatproductions@gmail.com.

Here's a short video of me playing it, alone, in quarantine with my plants:

This game is currently play-testing and you can download a free print-and-play version here.

But if you want to throw me $10 bucks for making it, use the checkout below to help fund my continued creation of strange things.

Andrea Peterson (1989-???)

Peterson is the founder of Plain Great Productions and a creator of interesting things. She's a writer and reporter with bylines about technology and culture at The Washington Post, Slate, The Daily Beast, Ars Technica, Politico, Protocol, ThinkProgress as well as other outlets. Once a week, she sends out a newsletter called Plain Great Stuff about things—such as obscure art history—and why she likes them. She sporadically updates Murder, She Sang—a podcast reclaiming the true crime stories behind America’s murder ballads. Her folk band, MidMountain, released an EP of feminist murder ballads called Fatal Female Agency in 2019. She’s mostly online as @Kansasalps on Twitter and Instagram. Kansas is her home, but she lives in Washington, DC now with two cats, four typewriters, a husband, and a famous shower.

Hans Holbein the Younger (1497-1543)

Holbein was a German printmaker and painter known for his portraiture in the court of Henry VIII of England and satirical edge. The art in Memento Mori is from his Dance of Death series of woodcuts, produced between 1523 and 1526—a prime example of the danse macabre medieval and renaissance allegory that depicts a personified, skeletal death as a great equalizer who comes for those from all walks of life.