Today’s post is from Lynne M. Meyer. She holds a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School, a Master of Jewish Studies from Spertus Institute, and multiple certifications. She has spoken and published in numerous outlets, national and international, on the subjects of interfaith cooperation, civic engagement, and diversity, including the Parliament of the World’s Religions in 2015 and 2018. An advocate for inclusive gaming, she brings her personal and professional background to her work as a game designer. She is a 2019 New Voices in Gaming Scholar who is best known as a writer and editor for the acclaimed Uncaged anthology, a collection of myth- and folklore-themed adventures written for Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition.
Long a staple of fantasy storytelling, the figure of the witch is surprisingly absent from a number of today’s major tabletop role-playing games. Where the witch does exist, depictions are generally problematic, frequently drawing upon centuries of negative lore. A prime example is the current edition of Dungeons and Dragons, by far the dominant presence in tabletop gaming, where Hekate is canonically a chaotic evil goddess and hags and Barovian witches are evil-aligned manifestations of the worst of witch stereotypes. Anyone interested in playing a witch typically must turn to creative builds of other archetypes, like warlocks, wizards or druids, because no witch player class exists in this edition.
Many games’ core assumptions about witchcraft, and about what makes a witch a witch, require tabletop gamers to work with mechanics and canon that often leave real-life Witches dissatisfied.
Enter the independent game designer.
The cover to Kestrel Rae’s “Village Witch”, showing a table filled with a witch’s supplies – a candle, a mortar and pestle, berries, and more [courtesy]
As the player base for tabletop games grows and becomes more diverse, so too does the community of game designers. More than ever, it’s possible to find games created by people familiar with, and respectful of, diverse worldviews, including Paganism. These creators are bringing their practices and perspectives to their work, giving tabletop gamers opportunities to play and experience a different kind of witchcraft and witch.
Why does this matter? Words have power. The stories we tell together around the game table have power – to welcome in or to exclude, to shape perceptions, and to influence the way we treat one another. As game designer Mike Nagle puts it: “To me, being Pagan means being in touch with the stories that have been passed down throughout not only my own family but through all cultures. Storytelling is such a major part of my game design philosophy as, in my mind, storytelling is why we are the way we are. We learn, adapt, and understand through the shared telling of stories and the lessons and morals shown within them.”
Games are the means by which a creator can not only counter harmful tropes, but also educate and open minds. One prolific designer, Jessica Marcrum, who also streams roleplaying game campaigns to an audience on Twitch, explains: “I used to be part of several Witch communities and the diversity of experience and representation is something I try to get across. Not everyone practices in the same way and there isn’t one way to do magic. Even for people who don’t practice, but still follow the rituals, the ritual itself can evoke a sense of power and connection.”
The cover to Jessica Marcrum’s “The Coven at the End of the Lane,” featuring a witch flying above a cottage on a moonlit night [courtesy]
A former practicing Wiccan who today describes herself as a spiritual agnostic who leans toward Pagan sensitivities, Jess is the creator of The Coven at the End of the Lane, a game of “spell casting, tarot, and community.” The playbooks for the included archetypes are, she explained, “primarily different types of witches I’ve known personally – with a bonus grandmother hag, because where would we be without her?”
Designer David Markiwsky also draws inspiration from actual people and practices. Markiwsky is a solitary Pagan whose game credits also include art and layout design. “I’m trying to find a place for the role of real world Witches and the kinds of charms, divination and spellwork they do, inside a fantasy world,” he says, describing one of his current projects. “In most fantasy projects that involve witches, magic gets upscaled to fireballs, healing spells, curses, scrying, and flying brooms, or the visual aesthetic of witches is overlaid on top of what would normally just be a fantasy wizard or druid. I want to roll all that back and find a place in a fantasy setting for the local practitioner who makes charms to prevent bad dreams, blesses your home to keep bad spirits away, and offers sage advice.”
How a designer portrays witchcraft can make it more accessible to audiences from other backgrounds, helping them to understand it as one valid path among many. “I come from a Christian background,” says designer Kestrel Rae, “and I’m deconstructing and trying to figure out what I still believe. I definitely think a lot of what I was taught was wrong, and I’m hesitant to use the term Christian because of it. I’ve always felt drawn to witches and literature and witchy things, but was always told it was evil. Now I’m drawn to and comforted by a lot of the ritualistic aspects of a lot of witchcraft.”
In her game Village Witch, a solo journaling game where one plays as a witch finding and creating a home, Kestrel Rae strove to bring a familiar sense of comfort and ritual.
“I think witchcraft feels like this foreign, incomprehensible and senseless thing to a lot of people, and I wanted to add small elements that were easy to connect to so it didn’t feel like this big ‘other’ thing.”
Nagle, on the other hand, is developing a supernatural Wild West setting for a system of his own creation. He specifically wants to address the idea that religion is good and witchcraft is bad. “To this end,” he says, “there are religious practitioners as well as witches, the key difference being they are not at odds and often have worked together. Just like in my own life, within the game world a different belief is never coded as ‘good’ or ‘bad.’” His game leaves the definition of “good” and “bad” open to interpretation, according to one’s perspective.
Steffie De Vaan, an accomplished designer whose work spans multiple game systems, describes herself as an eclectic ethical Witch. “‘Eclectic,’” she says, “means my magic doesn’t adhere to a single tradition. It’s highly personal to me, but it does occasionally borrow from traditions. Specifically, I use a lot of Chaos Magic, but I also make spell bottles and work with Hekate. ‘Ethical’ means I don’t borrow from closed traditions like Judaism or African Traditional Religions.”
The cover of Steffie De Vaan’s “Cupcake Witches,” featuring brightly colored cupcakes with sprinkles [courtesy]
De Vaan has two games on Itch.io that deal with witchcraft: Cupcake Witches and Wights. The two games are very different in feel and gameplay, and they illustrate different truths. “Cupcake Witches is about witches who run a cupcake store,” explains De Vaan. “Just regular people trying to keep a business afloat, who also have to use their magic to deal with monsters. The mundane and magical meet in this game, as witchcraft and the mundane often do in my life. Wights is about the descendants of the Witte Wieven, a Dutch legend about ghostly women. They’re supposedly evil, but if you dig deeper they’re really defenders of women and children – so the game is about community, justice, and vengeance.”
Gender is an inescapable topic when writing about witchcraft and witches, and one that these designers are mindful of in their work. Who gets labelled a witch in the first place? What do they look like? And are these attributes to be applauded or feared? Much of the content in tabletop games echoes what we’ve seen elsewhere throughout history and in pop culture, negatively affecting people of all genders. “‘Witch’ usually just means someone who doesn’t adhere to patriarchal norms,” says De Vaan. “And that’s how they show up in my work. Witches protect their community, which authorities often conflate with – or deliberately label – making trouble.”
Markiwsky looks to not put limits on the witch identity in his game design work.“The popularity of Wicca and certain pop cultural references have painted a very pervasive picture of the qualities of a witch and a ‘witchy’ aesthetic,” he says.“Although a great many people feel a sense of resonance and belonging within these identities, there are just as many practitioners who exist entirely outside them – something I think I feel even more keenly as a male practitioner. So as I design games, I try to focus on the roles, actions, and motivations of witches, instead of an aesthetic or other form of identity, to allow more people to feel a sense of kinship within the space I carve out for them.”
In life, and in our games, there’s always room for more folks at the table.
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