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

  • Shinto: The Way Home, by Thomas P. Kasulis

    The author of this book on Shinto is primarily a philosopher of religion, not a historian, and thus he approaches Shinto from a philosophical perspective. One result is that this book is not really a very good introduction to Shinto. It is easy to read, and assumes no background knowledge (as far as I can…

  • Shinto Controversies Course — 8th Lecture

    The eighth lecture of the Shinto Controversies course at Kokugakuin University was held on Wednesday. This time, Professor Okada started by saying that it wasn’t a very interesting subject, and there were more than the normal number of digressions in the course of the lecture. Clearly, this is a topic that is somewhat outside Professor…

  • Shinto Controversies Course — 7th Lecture

    Today, the Kokugakuin Shinto controversies course restarted after the summer break. Today’s lecture had two main parts, and an introduction. The introduction was Professor Okada telling us about his summer holidays. One of the things he did was visit an archaeological dig in Hamamatsu (I think), where a number of festival-related items had been unearthed.…

  • Silver Week

    Japan is now in the grip of Silver Week. People familiar with Japan will know about Golden Week. This happens at the end of April and beginning of May every year, when several public holidays come together. First, there’s Showa Day on April 29th, then Constitution Day on May 3rd, Greenery Day on May 4th,…

  • More Pictures

    Sonoe has been taking photographs of Mayuki again, and they are online on her blog. As usual, the text is in Japanese, but the pictures are cute in any language.

  • Magic Words

    Yesterday and today, Yuriko was in Kyoto on a study trip with her kimono course. She should be back in a few minutes, but Mayuki has decided to watch a video again while she waits, so I have a few moments to write a blog. And I haven’t written anything about Mayuki for a while,…

  • Shinto, by Ian Reader

    This book, in the series Simple Guides, is, as you would expect, a simple guide to Shinto. It is very short, and took me about an hour to read, and thus can only hope to cover a basic outline of Shinto. However, if you know nothing about the religion, that’s exactly what you need to…

  • Politically Stable

    Japan has had four prime ministers in my daughter’s lifetime. My daughter is not yet two. This might not sound like a politically stable society, but have you heard about riots in Japan? Street protests? Internet campaigns to impeach the Prime Minister because he was born in Mombasa? This is, I think, true political stability.…

  • Further Immigration

    Yesterday I got a letter from Japanese immigration asking for some more information for my permanent residence application. One thing they wanted was, basically, directions to my house, in case they wanted to pop round. Now, it is fundamentally reasonable that they might want to pop round. I believe it’s virtually standard practice when applying…

  • Mayuki Being Cute

    Since it’s a while since I posted anything in this blog, I thought I’d post a couple of things about Mayuki being cute. People with no interest in yet another cute baby can simply read something else. Both incidents happened yesterday, before we went out to do Mayuki’s birthday shopping. This is probably the last…