If I Were a Lich, Man

If I Were a Lich, Man is a boxed set of three comedic, Jewish tabletop role-playing games about creative resistance against authoritarianism.

The players write a drinking song together while performing short scenes based on Kahn's ancestors' true stories about working as bootleggers during Prohibition in New York City.

[3] The games reappropriate antisemitic tropes to rethink fantasy monsters and criminals as "figures of resistance.

"[4] Kahn explained the thinking behind this in an interview with Lindsay Eanet for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency: “There’s a long tradition of looking at the monster and seeing that the reason why these are monsters is because the people who have oppressive power have decided that these are going to be the enemies of the ‘good’ oppressive powers...But if you don’t agree with their ideology, if you’re seeing yourself as being a member of a marginalized community and being in opposition to these oppressive powers, then you can look at the qualities assigned to these monsters and some of them are qualities that are good.”[5]The instruction manual contains a foreword and afterword about Jewish culture by Filipino Jewish writer James Mendez Hodes.

Hodes worked as lead designer on Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game, which also deals with themes of systemic oppression.

Interior illustration for Same Bat Time, Same Bat Mitzvah