Lucian Kahn is an American role-playing game writer/designer and musician based in Brooklyn.[1][2] His work focuses on LGBT, Jewish, and subcultural themes, typically utilizing satire and farce. His games include Visigoths vs. Mall Goths and If I Were a Lich, Man, and his music includes Schmekel.
Writing and Design
Kahn wrote and designed the tabletop role-playing games Dead Friend: A Game of Necromancy,[3][4] Visigoths vs. Mall Goths,[5][6] and the boxed trilogy If I Were a Lich, Man.[7][8] All three games started out self-published as indie role-playing games, then were reprinted by Hit Point Press in 2023 after the Canadian publisher's kickstarter campaign for If I Were a Lich, Man raised $84,590 in two weeks.[9]
Visigoths vs. Mall Goths lets players play LGBTQ people in 1990s goth subculture[10] with a focus on bisexual people,[11] and uses both classic RPG and dating sim game mechanics.[12] The art is by Los Angeles artist Robin Eisenberg, and the game includes an adventure written by Jonaya Kemper.[13]
If I Were a Lich, Man and Kahn's thoughts about Jewish fantasy tropes were featured in a 2023 Jewish Telegraphic Agency article.[14] The trilogy's title game is about Jewish liches debating how to survive attack by paladins. The game reappropriates antisemitic tropes such as the use of tefillin as phylacteries to store a lich's soul. He sees his work as similar to tricksters fighting evil monarchs in Jewish folklore. Kahn "sees Jewish-coded monsters, and queer-coded villains, as figures of resistance."[14] He explained:
"Maybe somebody thinks they're insulting me or insulting Jews," he said. "My response is: I like vampires and liches and trolls and goblins and think they're much more interesting than bland white muscular humans running through the fields with a cross on their chest hacking at the same things with a sword over and over again."[14]
The second game in the trilogy, Same Bat Time, Same Bat Mitzvah, is about a guest who turns into a vampire at a Bat Mitzvah. In the third game, Grandma's Drinking Song, players collectively write a drinking song while acting out scenes based on Kahn's ancestors' true stories about working as bootleggers during Prohibition in New York City.[14] The trilogy was inspired by What We Do in the Shadows and Russian Doll.[7]
Jess Kung for Polygon named Dead Friend the best game they played in 2022.[15] Alex Roberts interviewed Kahn about designing Dead Friend as an episode of Backstory on One Shot Podcast Network.[4]
Kahn wrote the setting "Gaylords" for the Thirsty Sword Lesbians expansion Advanced Lovers & Lesbians (Evil Hat Productions).[16] It is about gay male warlords and was the first of 50 stretch goals unlocked for the Thirsty Sword Lesbians kickstarter, which raised a total of $298,568.[17][18][19]
Editorial
Kahn co-edited the LARP anthology Honey & Hot Wax (Pelgrane Press) with Sharang Biswas,[20] which includes work by nine designers, including Alex Roberts. Author Cecilia Tan called Honey & Hot Wax "a fabulous collection of 'let's pretend' games."[21] During the COVID-19 pandemic, Kahn produced Hibernation Games, a collection of one-player journaling games by five designers including Jeeyon Shim, with themes of winter and solitude.[22]
Awards and Museum Exhibitions
If I Were a Lich, Man won the Indie Game Developer Network award for "Most Innovative" in 2020.[8] Visigoths vs. Mall Goths was part of the exhibition "Game Play: Between Fantasy and Realism" at the Museum of the Moving Image.[23] Honey & Hot Wax received 2 grants from the Effing Foundation.[24]
If I Were a Lich, Man was nominated for the ENNIE Awards for "Best Family Game / Product" in 2024.[25] It was also nominated for the 2023 Origins Awards for "Best Dice-Related Product." Honey & Hot Wax was nominated for an IndieCade award in 2020[26] and an Indie Game Developer Network award for "Game of the Year."[27] Visigoths vs. Mall Goths was nominated for the ENNIE Awards for "Best Writing" in 2020[28] and the Indie Game Developer Network award for "Best Setting" in 2021.[29] Dead Friend was nominated for an Indie Game Developer Network award for "Most Innovative" in 2019.[30] Kahn was on the production staff for the anthology You & I: Roleplaying Games For Two,[31] which was also nominated for an Indie Game Developer Network award for "Most Innovative" in 2019.[30]
Talks
Kahn spoke on the game designer panel "Playing with Identity: Tabletop Role-Playing Games and the Queer Power Self-Definition" at Flame Con 2019, discussing the impacts of queer identity on game design and play.[32]
Kahn was the singer, songwriter and electric guitar player for the Brooklyn queercore punk band Schmekel,[33] which explored his identity as a gay, Jewish, trans man through comedy. Hugh Ryan for The New York Times compared Kahn's songwriting to gay punk band Pansy Division and Jewish singer/songwriter and satirist Tom Lehrer.[34] According to the Jewish Music Research Centre at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Kahn wrote the lyrics and punk chord progressions on the guitar for songs like "I'm Sorry, It's Yom Kippur," then electronic keyboard player Ricky Riot altered the chord progressions to make them sound cantorial.[35] Eddy Portnoy wrote that Schmekel was an unsurprising development in Jewish culture because there was evidence of transgender people in the shtetls of early 20th century Europe, and connected the band to "Queer Yiddishkeit."[36] In describing his performances with Schmekel, Kahn said, "Comedy is sacred to me, which is a pretty Jewish sentiment, isn't it?"[37]
Kahn appears as the lead singer of Schmekel in the Tales of the City novel The Days of Anna Madrigal by Armistead Maupin, being flirted with by the character Amos.[38] Kahn was interviewed with Schmekel in Original Plumbing magazine.[39]
Game Design Credits
Songwriting Credits