Archive Delving - Doikayt

Another day, another delve into the archive. Today I'm taking a look at Dokayt, an anthology of jewish ttrpgs.

Doikayt is the last from my original list of games I wanted to read through, back when I was trying to amass enough points to save my library from roman invaders. Now the "heroic" work is done, I've been keeping a more leisurely pace, but the list remained! Until today. Today, we finish the list. Doikayt entered crowdfunding in 2019, spearheaded by Riley Rethal, whose work has appeared on this blog before, and JR Goldberg, whose work has not - the last thing on his itch page is from 2020, as with his patreon, and a lot of it appears to be wrestling-centric, which is a little outside my usual wheelhouse.

My relationship to jewishness is not, I believe, particularly unique - I was not raised to be devout, and did not attend synagogue or other services (there in fact was not a synagogue in my hometown). I did not read the torah, neither for a bar mitzvah nor for fun. It was obvious enough (and there were few enough jews) that it was comment-worthy, but I was weird for other reasons; being jewish was not ever the grounds on which I was excluded, and certainly I was never made to feel in any danger. There have since been times when I have felt that way (like nazi rallies in my new town) but not many, and that's about the extent of it. The lie that Israel is the necessary foundation of jewish safety is heinous and evil. That's the other thing to mention, I suppose - being jewish in the "large" way, meaning connected to a community of jews, has never been less appealing to me than when I learned about Israel.

Doikayt was written well before this contemporary genocide, although of course the crimes and genocidal intent of Israel extend to its beginning. I've read a handful of things about connections to and thoughts on being jewish in the modern era (most notably the book Here All Along, which I found to be pretty empty, but did at least wag its finger at the Israeli government, though couldn't find it within itself to fault the idea of a "Jewish state"). I'm curious if the various pieces of Doikayt will touch on any of this, or really, I figure they will touch on it and I'm curious if any of their thoughts will land for me. The other thing I'm wondering about is if any of these games inspire me to bring them to game night with friends, or if their strength is primarily in the reading. There are 12 games, and two little essays it looks like, across ~90 pages.

The first little essay is by Goldberg, "On playing these games if you're not jewish." It makes a few moves that I like a lot. I'm gently enchanted by the folk tale it uses as an introduction, and Goldberg's stated intention, that the book is meant to introduce or present judaism in a new (and perhaps approachable) way to new audiences, is mostly sweet. The sentiment behind that intent, that it's been tough for Goldberg to talk to people about his religious faith (including to his wife) is trickier for me to work with. On the one hand, I think I'm quite familiar with the shape of the phenomenon, but on the other, I don't have that kind of difficulty sharing my metaphysical views.

Gila Green's essay, "On the diversity of the jewish experience," is less concise, and doesn't quite work for me - it starts off with a celebration of Ashkenazi experience before pulling back to remember that there are other jewish traditions too. Green winds up choosing the idea of monochromaticity to represent this - different shades of the same hue. I think this move is a mistake! And Green's writing feels more like a blocking out than an invitation. It ends in an call to action to "break out of our Jewish tribal isolation." Anyway the vibes were weird enough for me that I had to check and see if she's written anything lately, and it turns out that she's a zionist. Gross! She wasn't in the original pitch for the kickstarter - apparently she was added as a stretch goal.

I'm going to leave that behind, although its inclusion (and Green's) definitely is factoring into my idea of how the text thinks about being jewish. Now it's time for the games. There are 12 of them, so I'm going to try to move quickly, and condense each into hopefully a paragraph.

Riley's is first! Akeyah is a game about a god and a creation, and how the two influence each other. It's a cute little two player game, played by drawing cards. There are four kinds of scenes, although two scene-kinds share a basic structure. I'm having a tough time getting into it! It might just be that I'm still thinking about zionism, but this lens, of a personal relationship with the divine, is the least interesting part of religion for me. The prompts are good, but it's not quite enough to get me excited about it!

Next is a. fell's If you can't take the heat, get out of the ring, a game about being in a boxing match against god. The illustration here imagines god's appearance as a burning bush. This one is fun, although it doesn't mean very much to me, and the rules are basically a normal card game's, with some narrativization added on top. Another two player game about a personal relationship with the divine!

Marn S.'s game is Dybbuk Cup. I'm aware of the idea of a dybbuk, but I was kind of hoping for a more nuanced understanding, or reference to some of the source material - but the text begins with a citation from the encyclopedia. The game itself is cute! It's played over a meal. The family believes that it has been cursed, and they've gathered for the yahrzeit of the death of an aunt. One person is hosting the dybbuk, chosen by drawing lots. The dybbuk player can pass the possession to someone else by slipping them the lot. Players can accuse someone of being the dybbuk by drinking from a glass of wine - but when the cup runs out, the dybbuk wins.

Evan Saft's game is Emet, and is about the legend of the golem. It's a little unclear, but it looks like each player will be playing a golem, as well as representing the members of the community. It's the kind of distinction that I do think is helpful to establish for GMless games, since it can sometimes be tricky for people to know when it's their turn to talk. The game is played in several acts, in which the golem is (or the golems plural are) presented with a problem, and freeform discussion occurs until the problem is solved (to the satisfaction of the players). The meat of the writing is in the problems, which are categorized by "severity" and have some prompts, but that's really all there is to it. Thematically, I'm in, but I don't know if it has enough for me to really want to play it as a game. It does have a nice writeup at the beginning about how the golem works (ie, the connection between "truth" (emet) and "death" (met), being given a commandment, etc), so this might be a nice way for people to learn about it.

Randy Lubin has written a few adventure hooks inspired by "Jewish history, folklore, religion, and mythology"! So their entry, Jewish inspirations for worldbuilding and adventuring isn't so much of a game as it is perhaps game-adjacent. The hooks are things like "roll a d6 for each place to determine how it relates to jews" or plot starters about helping jews relocate or trying to convince a king to not pass oppressive laws. The golem and dybbuks both reappear here, with some fairly rote adventures, but there are other mythological entities that get less playtime - the ibbur is also a spirit, but a benevolent one; leviathan, behemoth, and ziz are here as ultra-endgame bosses (with an adventure to build a mega golem to fight them). There's a final note on diaspora. It's cute, and I like this ethos pretty well - I think jewish mysticism is instrumentalized a little directly for my tastes. I'd want to learn a little more about the history of Ziz before I threw in a big bird kaiju for a golem mecha battle and called it a day. But the general idea, of "you're playing games inspired by history, and jews are a part of history, so think about that" is appealing to me.

Adira Slattery's game is The Wise Men of Chelm. It's got the strongest voice so far - it's written "in character" all the way through, which is fun although it started to wear on me. It's another GMless game about solving problems, although this one has a more scaffolded procedure, which is fairly step-by-step. One player brings their problem (selected from a table, if they'd like), a story is crafted ("embellished" in the game's text) as to why it's such a pressing problem, the other players all share solutions, which can be as nonsensical as you like, and finally a punchline is served, ending the round (problem solved or not). It's cute! I think this would be a fun one to bring to friends who are ok with improv-heavy play.

Zev Prahl's game is Talmud! Like the actual Talmud, the idea here is that the game is a dialogue between writers. The margin sizes are increased, to provide players/readers with plentiful space to leave their own comments (and we're warned that the text will be vague and perhaps unsatisfying, requiring our own rulings). The text is tough to get through! But it will probably start to be familiar to anyone who's poked around in various fantasy adventuring manuals of a certain type - hidden beneath the style are thoughts about increasing character statistics, rolling "saves" for conditions, and determining travel speed. I think it is fun to read, but that act of translation is more of the game than the hint of a fantasy adventuring "system" underneath. That said, it is pointed at a kind of almost OSR-ish imagining that I enjoy conceptually - caring about who has a donkey and who has an ox-cart, and how far you can walk in a day, and seeing what emerges out of that simulation is neat, and in combination with this talmudic style, the text does inspire me to think about "fantasy adventuring" differently!

JR Goldberg's first game is The Accounts of Getzel Shlomo. This one is the most overtly religious - it concerns a real story (as perhaps distinguished from a "true" story) about a man who was "secretly pious." His accounts are of his secret charities, and it transpires that he was responsible for many acts of good around town. The game is at his funeral, and play is about sharing these good deeds and discovering what necessitated them. The text ends by encouraging players to meditate on a lesson they take away from the proceedings. I like it, but it does strike me as a little schmaltzy. I think it would be tough to find the "play" in it.

Goldberg's second game is The Cantor's Son is an Orphan Now and We Must Steal Him Lemons. The concept is wonderful - you're all friends of the cantor's son, the cantor has died, the son's mother and brother are useless, and instead of teaching him how to read the kaddish, you're going to steal a lemon for him to cheer him up. "Unfortunately, your plan is ill conceived and it will most likely fail." You play by drawing cards for prompts, and then drawing beads (or similar) from a bag and hoping you are not caught. You have 24 prompts to get through, and 2*N+1 beads to draw, where that extra 1 is the differently colored bead; drawing that one means you're caught. The premise is great but the procedure seems a little long winded - 24 prompts is a lot to get through. At four players, by the time you've drawn 6 times, you're starting to see some people drop out, but that's still ok odds for making it through all 24. With three players, you probably stop earlier. Anyway, it's a cute idea!

Lucian Khan's game is Grandma's Drinking Song, about being jewish immigrants to New York City during prohibition. It's a "verse-writing, song-singing" game. It's surprising in-depth - there are a lot of scenes written up and there's a detailed starting procedure. It is powerfully not a game for me!

Nora Katz's game is Lunch Rush, a game about working in a deli. This is a dice rolling game with character classes and stats! It's your job to save the deli from disaster and impress the rabbi's son who runs a food blog. On the whole, it's charming but a little messy (perhaps not unlike the deli itself) - jobs get something called a "shimmy bonus" but how this relates to the the "shimmies" (which are like pbta moves) is unclear; we've got pbta success tiers, although even rolling at +0 puts you at a ~75 chance of the middle result (with a ~16% chance of hitting the high tier); one of the stats is freeform and players are encouraged to needle the GM to let them roll it; the first page ends with "jew do you." I can't be mad! It's fun and silly. One of the shimmies is to "Lead a revolution" and if you do great you've successfully educated your coworkers and customers about marxism, so that's a win.

The final game is Eli Seitz's Christmas Day. I think it's an interesting choice as a capstone. It's a "freeform larp" about being a jewish family eating dinner at a chinese restaurant. This is a classic joke, but I kind of want to see more engagement with it - for example, centering the jewish customers over the chinese servers is a choice. The text does engage with some aspects of jewish experience that I haven't seen mentioned elsewhere in the text - it explains some big holidays, the process of converting, the question of interfaith marriages, etc. The text has characters which each come with a central struggle about their relationship to jewishness, as well as suggestions and interpersonal dynamics highlighted. There are five acts related to the course of the meal, with some gentle prompts, and a little debrief section. And that's it!

I think that there's not a lot for me in this book. It's probably not entirely fair to compare these short games to Dream Apart, the phenomenal other half of Dream Askew, both of which became defining texts in the GMless game space, but Dream Apart really does do something special in how it makes jewish history front and center but something to live with in the game. I like that the stats in Lunch Rush are yiddish words, but if you didn't know about jewish delis, what separates the game from other kinds of food service? Cantor's Son has a delightful tie to a jewish story, but isn't ultimately very much about being jewish or imagining being jewish (although I don't think it needs a lot more; but nearly all of the prompts would work for any story about being kids pulling off a heist). Talmud gets really close for me, but I'd have a tough time translating the text into the act of play - if I could find friends as excited to do annotations as I am, we'd have a game going.

I think the other way to sum up my disappointment is that I'm not walking away with too much of a different appreciation of jewishness. That was always going to be a tough sell, but I was hoping! But, as Talmud suggests, what's more jewish than reading a book and thinking "I have some notes?"