David Chart's Blog

David Chart’s Blog

Latest News

  • Ars Magica Crowdfundings

    My first professional publication for Ars Magica came out in 1993, in White Wolf Magazine. Things rather grew from there, and I spent over a decade as the Line Developer. When I retired from that position, I ended up taking a break for a few years, but now I’m back.

    First, I prepared the text for the upcoming Definitive Edition. The text is now done and is being laid out, and the crowdfunding launches in a few days.

    Second, part of the crowdfunding is the release of Ars Magica under an open license (CC BY-SA), and I have a Patreon at which I am writing for that license. The licensing has not happened yet, but I have permission from Atlas to do that. When you have been working with them on the line for years, you can do that.

    I am looking forward to writing for the game again!

News Archive

My Writing

Fiction

I have written some fiction.

Academic

I have published a few peer-reviewed academic works, on philosophy and Japanese history.

Roleplaying Games

I have written for roleplaying games.

Mimusubi

Mimusubi is my project for non-fiction writing about Shinto. It has its own website.

Recent Blog Posts

  • Liquid Web

    This website, and all my blogs, are hosted by Liquid Web, a US web hosting company. They were recommended on an industry mailing list about six years ago, and so when I decided to switch to a host independent of my connection ISP, I signed up with them. They aren’t the cheapest option available (with…

  • Server Change

    All my blogs have just been moved to a new server, to get access to newer underlying software. This should have made no visible difference, but people may have noticed the gibberish characters replacing quotation marks in Tamao. I’m working on getting that fixed as soon as possible, but if you spot any more problems,…

  • Happy New Year

    Happy New Year to everyone reading this blog. It’s a beautiful day here in Japan, but our family are starting the year jet-lagged, having only got back from the US on the 30th. I made it to midnight hatsumode at Shirahata-san, the local shrine, but I was the only one. One of my aims for…

  • Merry Christmas

    To everyone reading this blog who celebrates it.

  • Tea Party

    Last night, I went to a tea party. At least, that’s how the participants referred to it in English. Actually, I went to an extremely formal tea ceremony. The name of the type of ceremony is “Akatsuki no Chaji”, which means “Dawn Tea Ceremony”. The name is descriptively accurate; dawn is an important part of…

  • The Colour of Traffic Lights

    A notorious peculiarity in the Japanese language is that they think that the “go” light on traffic lights is blue. That is, the word that is normally translated as “blue” (ao) is used to describe the “go” light, rather than the word normally translated as “green” (midori). This is something that foreigners, particularly Western foreigners,…

  • Visa Extension

    I got my visa extension today. This is just another three years on the spousal visa; still no news on permanent residence. There wasn’t really much doubt that I’d get the extension, since I clearly meet the requirements, but it’s still nice to actually have the visa in my passport and the record on my…

  • Shinto Controversies Course — 10th Lecture

    Today was the last of this year’s Shinto lectures at Kokugakuin. The theme was the origins of Yoshida Shinto, particularly the activities of Kanetomo Yoshida. (Kanetomo is his given name.) Right at the beginning of the lecture, Professor Okada said that he didn’t generally like to criticise historical figures, because you shouldn’t speak ill of…

  • Goth Girl

    Mayuki has recently started insisting on choosing her own clothes to wear. Putting her in other things causes a tantrum and a bad mood, so unless she, for example, chooses two pairs of trousers and tries to wear one pair on her head, I tend to let her. Save my energy for the important battles.…

  • Shinto Controversies Course — 9th Lecture

    Today was the ninth lecture of the Shinto Controversies course at Kokugakuin University. Today’s topic was Ise Shinto, a variety of Shinto developed at the Grand Shrines of Ise, as you might have guessed. However, it was mainly promoted and developed by the priests of the Outer Shrine, not those of the Inner Shrine. The…