Jews in TTRPGs - Content Creators

Content Warning: Anti-semitism, blood libel

Alright folks, it’s time for the second article in the “Jews in TTRPGs” series. During part one, we highlighted eight Jewish designers from across the TTRPG scene. We’ll come back to more designers in Part 2, but today we’re focused on content creators!

I chose content creators as our second category since we don’t talk a lot about specifically Jewish media in the TTRPG space. From my vantage point in my narrow fold of the universe, I don’t see much ongoing Jewish actual plays except around specific crowdfunding campaigns or around Jewish holidays. This isn’t meant to be a criticism on the quantity of Jewish TTRPG media, merely an observation that we can explore in this article.

Special shoutouts to Tony Vasinda of Plus One Exp for hosting Gabrielle Rabinowitz’s Ma Nishtana and FawnAndGames for hosting my Hanukkah Goblins game! Tony and Fawn went the extra mile and are great supporters of diverse content.

Philosophy

We’re mixing up the writing philosophy this time! Instead of a listicle, this article will feature my interviews with two prominent Jewish content creators: Rue Dickey and Fleet Detrik. I wanted to go more into depth with these two mensches so we can dig a little deeper on what it means to be Jewish in the TTRPG scene.

The designers article was upbeat and bursting with enthusiasm. This article will tone it down and dig into nuanced topics with our featured creators.

Let’s begin :)

Rue Dickey: Content Creator Extraordinaire

Introduction

I’m glad to have the opportunity to chat with Rue. I’ve been following Rue for a while, going back to your TTRPG actual play streams on the Chromatic Chimera Twitch channel. You may recognize Rue from their massively succesful Itch.io bundle raising money for transgender rights in Texas.

Rue is a Roma-Indigenous-Welsh nonbinary disabled creative based out of Oregon, US. Rue does cosplay, costuming, actual play performance, voice acting, and is also a game designer! Rue uses they/he pronouns or xe pronouns if you’re feeling spicy.

Rue Dickey (they/he/xe)

Note: This conversation was originally 30 minutes and has been edited and reduced for clarity purposes. Rue and I discussed accessibility needs before starting the interivew. I encourage you all to normalithis practice :)

Max: Hi Rue! Thank you so much for agreeing to chat with me. With the “Jews in TTRPGs” series so far, I love that I get to ask people on how their style of Judaism manifests in their work. How do you see your Judaism manifest in your content?

Rue: Judaism informs my ethical starting point for all things. The most important part of Judaism for me is the cycle of work and rest. I’m very bad about taking Saturdays off (the Sabbath) like I’m supposed to because I have too many things to do. But, that ethic of always having down-time is important.

Rue: We’re all human and we’re going to fuck up, but how we respond to those fucks-ups defines us. For me in content creation, that’s a way for me to approach not perfecting a costume right away, or having to re-record an episode of a podcast or a tabletop game because something is wrong. The work that goes into that rebuilding and the work that goes into repairing relationships, if something went wrong at the table, really informs a lot of my personal ethics and beliefs.

Max: chef’s kiss I love that. So a lot of what TTRPG content creators do is create characters. As a Jewish content creator, What are some things you notice when people portray fantasy characters, whether through roleplaying or cosplay?

Rue performing as Intrigue in an actual play alongside GM Connie Chang.

Rue: For me, I see a lot of gentiles (non-Jews) accidentally create characters that ring several hundred anti-Semitism bells. Part of what I like to do with my characters is tackle those stereotypes head-on and use my characters as a way to educate people about the prevalence of those stereotypes. For example, I did a cosplay of Taako from the Adventure Zone. Taako is sometimes portrayed with green skin, large nose, and big ears, which are Jewish stereotypes common in fantasy characters. I like to take all those things and make them not immediately hostile towards us Jews. I do this as a way to reclaim those aesthetic components that so often have been used against us. Like I’m in love with my big nose. I have a huge fucking nose, and I’m in love with it. So I will pick costumes and makeup that accentuate my nose and I love doing that.

Rue: When Taako’s art was released in the graphic novel, the design had green skin and a very prominent nose, which are negative stereotypes about Jews. There was a lot of push back from the Jewish fandom and the goyim (non-Jews) didn’t understand the problem. So, there is an in-depth conversation to be had talking about the anti-Semitic stereotypes surrounding green skin from witches (Think of Wicked Witch of the West) as an allegory for Judaism.

Rue: I approached my Taako cosplay to soften the skin tone to a beautiful sea green and use my cosplay as a way to educate other fan artists on these negative stereotypes portrayed in fantasy. It’s a good opportunity to teach non-Jewish people about the aspects of art you should be careful with when drawing and designing characters.

Max: So on the subject of educating audiences, content creators are much more in the public eye compared to TTRPG designers or lurkers on Twitter. Content creators put themselves on camera and in positions were they often the representative of their particular communities. Do you feel pressure to be “The Jew” in a space or be the person who’s calling out bad behavior?

Rue: Yeah, a lot of things that end up in the cultural lexicon that people say have roots in anti-Semitic, anti-Indigneous, and racist beliefs. Lots of people aren’t aware of it. An example I’ve seen is listening to a character say “out for their pound of flesh”, and my whole body tenses. That phrase evokes a connection for me to a classic example of anti-Semitism: blood libel.

Max: Absolutely, these tropes have been a common theme in my interviews and something I dealt with quite a bit in Hanukkah Goblins. Transitioning to more about you. Tell me about a dream project you’d love to work on if you had all the resources available.

Rue: I want to make a tabletop game experience where the rules and mechanics of the game build and grow with the players. I’m imagining there is a very loose set of rules at the beginning of the game that helps guide things, but I want the players to contribute to the world and the experience. I think a lot of the time, when GMs or designers try to make a pre-set anti-colonialist or anti-racist world, we’re only getting a limited set of identities. There’s always something that gets left by the wayside, something that gets missed, and a culture that’s not present.

You can capture a lot more of that experience by having a diverse set of voices and backgrounds at the table that are actively contributing to the story, characters, and mechanics of the game.

Max: Thanks Rue. My last question is going to be the thread between the interviews. In your opinion, what is the right way to make a latke? Are you in the grated and crispy edge spaghetti monster kind or are you more in the homogeneous pancake puck camp?

Rue: I am spaghetti monster all the way!! Latkes should look as absolutely messy as possible, be very crunchy on the edges, and then just kind of gently soft in the middle.

Max: Excellent, that is the correct answer. We’re 2-0 (Max, Rue) on the great latke debate of the millenia.

Thank you for joining me, Rue!

Rue dressed in as Lucien Tavelle (Neo-somnovem) for a promotional shoot with Del Rey Books / Critical Role on the new Lucien novel.

Random aside

Since we’re talking content creators, I wanted to share some random Jewish content from my childhood :).

Who’s feelin’ yofi? One of my favorite memories from Sunday School as a child was singing this popular Simon and Garfunkel song and swapping in “Feelin yofiiiiii” instead of “feelin groovy”. I encourage you to do the same! Thank you for indulging my random aside as we transition from Rue to Fleet.

If you’re feelin yofi, go listen to the Simon and Garfunkel song

Fleet Detrik: Mörk Borg Hanukkah

Fleet is a new face for me! Another beautiful mensch that manifested in the Twitter replies to my original tweet. Fleet (they/she) is a non-binary Brooklyn-based comedian, award-winning Actual Play performer, and a TTRPG designer. Fleet won the GameHERS Best TTRPG campaign award as a cast member from the Girls Run These Worlds Twitch channel.

Our conversation focused on a behind-the-scenes look at Mörk Borg Hanukkah, a 3-hour TTRPG performance (also known as an “actual play”) featuring a heavy metal retelling of the Hanukkah story. I was struck by the very diverse all-Jewish cast that Fleet collected for this actual play. I highly encourage you to at least watch the first few minutes to hear the performers’ introductions.

Fleet Detrik (they/she)

Note: This conversation was originally 45 minutes and has been edited and reduced for clarity purposes. Fleet and I discussed accessibility needs before starting the interivew. I encourage you all to normalize this practice :)

Max: Hi Fleet! Thanks so much for chatting with me today. I watched most of Mörk Borg Hanukkah and I was so impressed by the group you gathered. Excited to chat with you!

Fleet: Lovely to meet you! Thank you so much for bringing me in for this.

Max: Absolutely. Let’s start with the basics: Mörk Borg Hanukkah is an actual play game you hosted on Twitch. Tell the audience what Mörk Borg is and about using it for your Hanukkah retelling!

Fleet: Mörk Borg is heavy metal apocalyptic dark fantasy game about lost souls seeking redemption, forgiveness, or the last remaining riches in a bleak and dying world. This actual play is a heavy metal retelling of the Hannukah story using Mörk Borg as our system. This game may surprise people because many think of Hanukkah as a “Jewish Christmas”, but it’s absolutely not. The reality of Hanukkah is it commemorates the victory of a guerilla group of Jews called the Maccabees who succesfully reclaimed the Temple in Jerusalem from the invading Syrians. Hanukkah literally means “dedication” and is the festival that commemorates the purification and rededication of the Temple following the occuptation.

Fleet: Mörk Borg is typically an apocalyptic game where players are overpowered by the setting, but I designed our game so that our players (the Jews in the game) were specifically overpowered and the world around them was underpowered. This let our players demolish anyone in their path as a way to express the uprising and success against oppression that we see in the Hanukkah story.

Max: Yeah, we clearly see that in the game when the players are in the forest and are being told that they will be “cleansed” by the rulers of Galgenbeck and the rest of the game focuses on the players’s last stand.

Fleet: One of the big things I took to heart was violence is not just the tool of the oppressor. It felt good to design a power fantasy for my players as Jews to confront that oppression.

Max: One thing I was particularly impressed by was your skill as a GM to create this brutal ambience typical for Mörk Borg through your performance as various non-player characters (NPCs). When you switched to a new character, your voice changed…your facial expressions changed…and I could see this new character being born in a split second as you transitioned. Really skillful stuff.

Fleet: Thank you so much, that really means a lot. It’s one of the skills I’ve worked hardest to hone over the years. You can build a beautiful world, but unless you feel like there is a world beyond the characters, unless the world feels lived in, it’s going to be sort of a movie set. So for me, the goal is always, “If this character exists in the world, on what terms do they exist? How did the world shape them versus plopping them in the world?”

Go watch the Mörk Borg Hanukkah replay on Twitch! Special shoutouts to Elisa Teague, Lauren Urban, Sam de Leve, and Dann/DarkerLarper for their performance.

Max: I want to transition to the amazing all-Jewish and diverse cast you collected for the show. The chemistry you all had was amazing. Tell me about them!

Fleet: It was such a fun game and good time. Everyone was so on board and broke out their best puns. Being in an all-Jewish enviornment, we had the same language and cultural understanding. I’ve never played in a group of all Jews before. So having that exist was so satisfying and I felt seen on multiple levels. I finally didn’t have to explain context on the Jewish things that happened and it was really empowering.

Max: The Jewish puns in the chat were off the charts!

Fleet: I didn’t even have to explain what a moyle was!

Max: I’m curious what the goys thought about it.

Fleet: You know what? Who cares what the goys thought? It wasn’t for them. That was for us. We deserve to have our own streams and holiday content without having to play some Santa Claus derivation. I’ve played my fair share of Santa games and no shade to Santa, but it’s just been done a lot and we deserve something.

Max: I couldn’t agree more. At least in my fold of the TTRPG universe, it seems like there isn’t much actual play content about Jewish stories or with all-Jewish casts. Is that something you’ve noticed as well?

Fleet: Yes. Honestly, I didn’t even consider when I originally pitched this game about making this an all-Jewish cast. I didn’t think it would be possible to get the diversity we needed. It didn’t feel right running this game only with white Jews. Girls Run These Worlds was incredibly supportive when I did a casting call specifically for Jews of color. We got a lot of interest and were able to create the amazing cast we had.

Max: And lastly, I have the most important question for you. What kind of latke person are you?

Fleet: Sour cream. Sour cream is my answer.

Max: LOL! But actually, that’s not my question! Are you a crsipy-edge latke person or more a potato cake person?

Fleet: I like a crispy edge and something that looks homemade. As you work your way into the middle, it gets a little thicker and you have a nice edge to dip with.

Max: Well I’m glad you’re on the right side of history of the great latke debate. I was nervous because you’re an East Coast Jew and I’m a West Coast Jew!

Fleet: East Coast Jews do it a little different, that’s true. But you know what? We’re the same in our souls.

Max: True that. The latke count is officially 3-0 and I hope the next interviewees agree with our latke verdict.

Fleet and I had an amazing conversation on how they got started as a TTRPG designer and content creator from their days as a comedian with the Upright Citizens Brigade, but that’s a story for another day!

Thanks all for reading! Follow along with me on Twitter when I release the next chapter in the “Jews in TTRPGs” series: Designers (Part 2).

Links

Rue’s Twitter
Rue’s Games on Itch.io
Rue’s Website

Fleet’s Twitter
Fleet’s Games on Itch.io
Fleet’s Website
Girls Run These Worlds Channel