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I just preordered the Bestiary because I have quickly fallen in love with this game system and hope to convert my current 5e group (or find another group) to play Dragonbane with. The one thing I noticed right off the bat that perplexed and bothered me in the Bestiary, though, is that the Golem is placed in the Demon section. Given that golems from jewish folklore are constructs given life to be workers and protectors for jewish communities (like in the Golem of Prague story, the golem specifically defends its community against antisemitic attacks and pogroms), it feels deeply problematic to me that the game would make this distinction. Unless anyone else knows of a folkloric source that says otherwise, there is no mention of the golem's animating spirit being a demonic spirit within the stories about them. Granted, fantasy ttrpgs don't have a great track record of portraying golems in a way that respects their mythology, but it just feels really disappointing to me that this trend would persist in this game as well.

Medieval and early Renaissance Christian theology tended to consider the Jews in quite a negative light... and esoteric Judaism even worse. Likewise, it was considered that the ultimate sin was to try to do "what only god can do: create life." Creating golems was explained in some Christian contexts as animating clay or the dead with summoned and bound demons. In others, simply hubris and a false life that naturally became corrupt because its creator was inherently flawed by being human.

The Jewish tales of Golems are not all sweetness and light, either.
Medieval Jewish stories are, as cited by Professor Jeremy Dauber, Atran assistant professor of Yiddish language, literature, and culture at Columbia University, as often having the golems turn evil when not used solely for the defense of the people, but for mundane tasks. He cites several variations... and avoids drawing the comparison to Frankenstein's flesh golem, Adam.

Frankenstein's Adam, misunderstood, and misrepresented in 20th C films, was posessed of no malice, merely ignorance and incompetence, plus great strength. And is put to death for mistakes... The real monster is indeed Frankenstein, but Frankenstein isn't the golem in the novel.... Adam isn't the standard Jewish golem, either - being a flesh golem, not a clay one, but his creation is what made Dr. Frankenstein the truly evil being, for his flawed creation and his hubris that he could succeed well.

Add to that 50+ years of golems as movie monsters based loosely upon both Jewish Golem-Turned-Bad and widespread Christian hatred of attempts to create life...

https://www.ala.org/tools/sites/ala.org ... buks_0.pdf

I'm certainly aware of the rampant antisemitism in Europe that started in the medieval age, and is frankly what I was alluding to with my question. I know the historical bias reasoning, I was more hoping to bring up how deeply disappointed I am to see that antisemitism find its way into the game by literally demonizing the only representation of jewish folklore that currently appears in the game.

And of course there are the golems from folklore that turned evil, but given that they are not inherently evil creatures, it just further makes me feel pretty sad and gross about them being presented as if they are here. The designers of the game could have easily used many different names for the golem if they were intent on it being demonic, or simply moved the golem to a different classification.

I adore this game's ruleset and so much of its flavor, its just that this antisemitic reinterpretation that persists from its fantasy ttrpg predecessors leaves a bad taste in my mouth and has kind of made me wonder if I want to spend any more money on free league products.

While I can really only speak for myself - I do not imagine there was any harm intended by Free League with this.

To contrast, there certainly have been *recent* attempts for TTRPGs to negatively portray certain groups - this game seems nothing like those.

For this, I allowed Free League the benefit of the doubt from a combination of "maybe its stuff held over from the original game" and "maybe its getting something lost in translation".

I asked a friend of mine about it since it directly pertains to his background and upbringing.

His grandparents for example raised him on those very golem stories from Prague and we'd had conversations about golems before from other RPGs.

For this specific forum thread, he said:
--->8---
The creepy thing is... I can see the logic
You're building a material body and summoning a 'spirit' not of this plane to inhabit/animate it.
This was a pretty standard thing in some of the old demonology texts, and it's where we get the prohibition on puppets/dolls/moppets in some areas of te world: they were a handy thing to turn into a weapon.
On one level, you could make the case that a golem is just a positive energy version of the negative energy killer-moppets (ie, Chucky)
If you go look at the books from the 1400s/1500s, there's not a whole lot of difference between summoning demons and summoning angels...
---8<---

Just my thoughts because I was surprised by this very thing in an earlier RPG which got my friend talking about golems misrepresented and more.

I don't look at golems in D&D the same way anymore, for example, and I was introduced to that game decades ago.

For myself, personally, I would probably use this as an opportunity to incorporate dispelling misinformation into the game world itself.

This is the amazing power of TTRPG - the story is you and your group's to create - its not cast in stone forever unchangeable like traditional literature or movies (George Lucas aside...)

There's a whole story or adventure arc here of characters carrying around bad information, and an adventure they find out things are really different.

Golems in your Dragonbane can be truer to the original because it's your story world to shape.

The ideas for the monsters comes from various folklore but that is pretty much it. The idea of a golem comes from the Jewish folklore but that only for the golem as a concept, then the monster needs to fit into the setting of the game. In this game, a golem is created in clay and stone and is brought to life by chaos magic and that is why they are classed as demons, they have demonic essence in them. So the golem in this game has been inspired by RL folklore but has been changed so it fits into the setting of Dragonbane, a setting based on order and chaos.

A lot of the other creatures in this game and also in most other RPGs has been inspired by RL folklore but changed and adapted to fit the setting of the game and the same can be said about fantasy books, tv shows and movies. Should we stop using goblins, dragons, etc. because the inspiration for them comes folklore but has been changed to fit the setting.

Moderator Message
Now, I put on my moderator hat and say, please do discuss and debate monsters, what you think about them, good & bad adaptations of them and sure, even comparison with RL folklore variants of them, but don't accuse writers and game designers to be part of some sort of antisemitism or any other hate crime for that matter.

While i can agree that being listed in the Demon section dosn't give it a flattering image and giving it another name like "Animated Statue" or such might have side stepped this issue, i sincerely don't think it was done with ill-intent in mind.

I also think that it is worth to point out, aside from being powered by a spirit summoned from the demonic realm, there is nothing that outright that states that once animated the Golem is an evil creature that WILL unleash death and destruction upon all that crosses it's path. Instead it is says that it will obey the commands of the one who created it without question. Plus the random encounter and adventure seed dosn't paint it in an overly negative light. The random encounter has it simply driving off people who wanna get a look at the fountain while the adventure seed leaves it open for the golem to either join the evil wizard or one of the players.

So there is nothing stopping you from having a mage create a Golem for benevolent reasons, more true to it's source. If anything you could make that into an adventure of it's own.

The players might be approached by some Villagers begging for aid as there is a golem running amok in their village, often acting calm but "will attack at the slightest provocation", created by a wicked mage. If the players tries to do a beast lore, they might learn "It's animated by demonic spirits", which might make them assume that this is true. Getting to the town however, the people are oddly calm, if not happy with the golem's presence, and if the players attack it they will start to beg them to stop. Here they can learn that the village was often attacked by local bandits, until a kindly mage decided to help them by creating a golem, tasking it to keep the village safe. The "villagers" that asked the players for help were actually some of those bandits, hoping to trick the players to get rid of it so they can continue extorting the village.

Plus if anything, considering that demons are beings of chaos, having one of them stuffed into an animated body that must obey orders given, to the point of eternity if needed, would be a pretty funny way to insult them as one of them becomes a creature of "order" instead.