Black Mass (2019), by Will Jobst, is a neat zine RPG about witchcraft, discovery and haunted woods. It came out of the first ZineQuest on Kickstarter and recently Will released a second edition.

There are two characters, Lydia and Catherine. Each player takes on aspects of each of their personalities (every player gets one aspect for each) and they take turns driving, in a way that is very similar to Bluebeard’s Bride. For instance, one player might be Mud-baked Catherine, who is about hiding in the dirt (Literally? Metaphorically? Up to you!) while Cataloging Catherine is about sussing out secrets. Similar to Powered by the Apocalypse playbooks, each aspect has abilities they can use to seize and mold the narrative. The game also uses questions and Tarot cards to drive play, the subjective symbolism of the latter providing an excess of storytelling fodder. I love this shared control of characters — it seems geared for very specific sorts of experiences (this and Bluebeard’s Bride are very similar in tone), but represents a very different sort of play from what most folks are used to. I particularly like how the meta conversation at the table — players disagreeing — becomes a manifestation of the character being unsure or indecisive.

Catherine and Lydia are leaving Salem to find the truth of themselves in the forest. The GM puts them through strange and dangerous encounters until they are ready for their Black Mass, which irrevocably changes them. Then they return to Salem in one form or another. This is a horror game, but horror in the mode of The Witch. It is never entirely clear that the horrors are real, or some sort of symbolic journey of the self, and the truth of it will vary from group to group and playthrough to playthrough. Spooky, heady stuff, with a looping soundtrack on Bandcamp to boot!