Kahn wrote and designed the tabletop role-playing gamesVisigoths vs. Mall Goths,[3][4]Dead Friend: A Game of Necromancy,[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]
In Dead Friend: A Game of Necromancy, two players act out a ritual in which one resurrects the other from the dead. Players draw Tarot cards to receive randomized storytelling prompts. Jess Kung for Polygon named Dead Friend the best game they played in 2022.[14]Alex Roberts interviewed Kahn about designing Dead Friend as an episode of Backstory on One Shot Podcast Network.[6]
"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."[15]
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.[15] The trilogy was inspired by What We Do in the Shadows and Russian Doll.[7]
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]
If I Were a Lich, Man won the Silver ENNIE Award for "Best Family Game / Product" in 2024[23][24] and 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.[25]Honey & Hot Wax received 2 grants from the Effing Foundation.[26]
If I Were a Lich, Man was nominated for the 2023 Origins Awards for "Best Dice-Related Product." Honey & Hot Wax was nominated for an IndieCade award in 2020[27] and an Indie Game Developer Network award for "Game of the Year."[28]Visigoths vs. Mall Goths was nominated for the ENNIE Awards for "Best Writing" in 2020[29] and the Indie Game Developer Network award for "Best Setting" in 2021.[30]Dead Friend was nominated for an Indie Game Developer Network award for "Most Innovative" in 2019.[31] Kahn was on the production staff for the anthology You & I: Roleplaying Games For Two,[32] which was also nominated for an Indie Game Developer Network award for "Most Innovative" in 2019.[31]
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.[33]
Music
Kahn was the singer, songwriter and electric guitar player for the Brooklynqueercore punk band Schmekel,[34] 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.[35] 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.[36]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."[37] In describing his performances with Schmekel, Kahn said, "Comedy is sacred to me, which is a pretty Jewish sentiment, isn't it?"[38]
^Grace, Lindsay, ed. (2021). Black Game Studies: An Introduction to the Games, Game Makers and Scholarship of the African Diaspora. Carnegie Mellon University: ETC Press. p. 48.
