Jewish Roleplaying Games 3e

So I think this is becoming a proper series, which is pretty darn cool. I realized, as my previous two articles about Jewish games started to make the Hanukkah season circuit, that I have once again found more Jewish tabletop games (and more) to talk about!

We’re gonna start by giving some updates about things I discussed in the previous years’ posts before diving into Exciting New(ish) Things™. Going all the way back to the original reason I wrote the very first post about Jewish tabletop games, Ritualwell launched not one, but two new sets of their Dreidel20s in 2023. The first is a multi-color set, expanding the original opaque white and blue/green set with opaque black and translucent red, green, and purple dice, and the second is the Dreidel4+20 set, which is two oversized D20s with tiny dreidels (D4s) suspended inside. They slap.

Secondly, I have landed on a place to get minis that I can make as Jewish as I please (with some limitations). It’s HeroForge! It’s not perfect, but the fact that I can put a headscarf on my ladies and can put a hannukiah on a mini base? Pretty great. I made a basic models for my Veil character Chava and then a full color model for my Vampire: The Masquerade character Wren.

I’m not 100% a fan of how chunky things can get on HeroForge, which is definitely something I have heard echoed by other people as well, but that is a tiny quibble when you think about how much HeroForge can do. Another thing that is generally hard to find vis a vis minis are disabled character figures, and HeroForge has you covered there too. They have disability aids you can give your figures, like wheelchairs, prosthetic limbs and crutches, which I love and they’re always adding more stuff. So much got added in the 10 months between my designing Chava and then coming back to design Wren.

So those are the updates on the previous articles, but what’s new new for 2023? A bunch of cool Jewish games from independent Jewish game designers is what. 

• If I Were a Lich, Man: 3 Jewish Games by Lucian Kahn – Lucian Kahn, who you might know from Visigoths vs Mall Goths or Dead Friend, launched a full trilogy of Jewish tabletop games in!
  • The titular game, If I Were a Lich, Man—a phenomenal pun on the Fiddler on the Roof song, “If I Were a Rich Man,”—is a game that says “Okay, Dungeons & Dragons says that liches have phylacteries, the English word for tefilin, making them Jewish-coded, let’s look at that.” Taking inspiration from the structure of the Passover seder, the game has you take on the roles of four liches who are debating strategies for survival for when the murderous lawful good paladins inevitably come after them. Tags[1]: Tense, Tragicomedy, D&D inspired, Dreidel-based system (could be substituted with a d4 with some conversion)
  • Same Bat Time, Same Bat Mitzvah – A guest at Ruthie’s bat mitzvah has been bitten by a vampire bat and is turning into a vampire. Just what every bat mitzvah needs. Ngl, if I’d had a bat mitzvah, I would have loved vampire shenanigans. Tags: Goofy, Card-based system
  • Grandma’s Drinking Song – You might recognize this one! It was one of the games in the Jewish ttrpg anthology Doikayt, which was on last years post. Inspired by stories of Lucian’s actual family, this game sees you craft a drinking song while roleplaying through various scenarios in the lives of a Jewish family of bootleggers during Prohibition. Tags: Happy, Melodramatic, Musical Comedy, Prompt-based system
    [1] These tone tags are taken from the descriptions on the If I Were a Lich, Man Kickstarter page.
• Hanukkah Goblins by Max Fefer – So we know what happened to Herschel and the villagers in the Hanukkah classic, Herschel and the Hanukkah Goblins, and we know what happened to the Goblin King, but what about the rank and file goblins? I did always feel so bad for that fellow who got his hand stuck in the pickle jar. In Hanukkah Goblins, you play as those rank and file goblins who have been inspired by Herschel’s lessons about the values of Hanukkah and are now trying to convince your fellow goblins to join you in the Hanukkah spirit.  Tags: Funny, Community, Supernatural, d6 system, GM optional
• Esther and the Queens by Max Fefer and Norma Kaplan – A Purim-themed game, Esther and the Queens is a retelling of Book of Esther from a queer and feminist lens. You play as the handmaidens of Queen Esther who have infiltrated a party, on your queen’s orders, to liaise with the nobles and gain their support to help Queen Esther convince the King to overturn Haman’s decree to kill the Jews and save the community. Instead of simply rolling dice, the mechanics take the form of a variety of mini-games, which is really cool. It’s currently available for pre-order! Tags: Drama, Carnival, Mini Games, Dice Collection
• Keeping the Lights On by Hekla Björk Unnardóttir – It is Hanukkah 2019/5780 and your community is fighting to keep your synagogue from closing. A short game designed to last for eight scenes, you create characters and then work your way through a series of prompts to try and save the synagogue all while trying to keep your characters from burning out. The play mechanics are a dreidel-system using matches in place of gelt. Tags: Community, Hanukkah, Drama, Dreidel-based system
• Society of Rafa by Chickadee Tales, LLC – You are a healer in the village of Kahal and throughout the course of the game you will care for your patients and engage with the local spirits. Inspired by Jewish folklore as well as Ghibli films and other similar media, this is a community focused game rather than a sweeping adventure game. That said, this is still a full, robust ttprg, with the handbook providing four starter scenarios that could launch a campaign style of play. Tags: Community, Supernatural, Relationship Centric, d10-based system

• Beyond the Pale by Yochai Gal – Inspired by Jewish folk tales and mysticism, Beyond the Pale is a horror adventure module designed for play with your chosen “old school” ttrpg system. Though the creator notes that Cairn was the system they had in mind during development, they consider the gamer pretty close to “system-neutral.” The setting is a shtetl in the Pale of Settlement in Russia and is deeply Jewish in its themes, while also being a proper old-school dungeon crawl. The Kickstarter just wrapped, but you can still pre-order the book before the campaign is fulfilled! Tags: OSR, Horror, Supernatural, Dungeon Crawl, system neutral

I’m super excited to play these (the ones that are actually out currently at any rate), because unfortunately for me, Hanukkah fell over finals weeks this year, so I was not thinking about games in the evenings, I was lighting candles and enjoying my eight days of tea and chocolate gift set to decompress after long days of doing nothing but writing, and then immediately returning to writing.

There will also be a part four to this series coming in January, because I ended up having to split my original piece into two parts for both length reasons and tonal shift reasons. Because the other half of my Jewish gaming experience in 2023 was a foray into the horror game series World of Darkness, which is, as the name might imply, quite dark. If that interests you, keep your eyes peeled and I’ll add a link here once it goes up. 

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 (You are here), Update: Part 4 (Judaism, Vampires, and World of Darkness)

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