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

  • Law in Everyday Japan

    This book is a serious legal/anthropological study of the effects of the legal system on various aspects of Japanese society. It was very interesting, in part because I learned a few more details of what the law in Japan actually is. It made me think that I need to find a basic “introduction to Japanese…

  • Birthdays

    It’s been a while since my last update. Sorry about that. One reason is that I finished the first draft of my first novel on Thursday. More about that at a later date: watch this space! The main reason, however, is that after finishing the novel I was extremely tired, which is doubly unsurprising. Writing…

  • I Was Right

    A while ago, when writing about the Conan book I had read, I said “Oh my god, it’s Dungeons and Dragons.” A week ago, Wired had an article about Gary Gygax, which included the sentence: “[Gygax] was a fan of the Conan the Barbarian books by Robert E. Howard and wanted to try to capture…

  • Estimates

    I just ordered a book from Amazon US; Amazon Japan didn’t have it in stock, and, with the weak dollar right now, it was actually cheaper to order it from the US, even including the shipping. Today, I got the ship confirmation email from Amazon; that was expected, as it was in stock when I…

  • Holding the Baby

    Yuriko has gone out again today, to a special meeting associated with her kimono class: there is a chance to see Okinawan kimonos and eat Okinawan food. She couldn’t really take Mayuki, so I’ve been left looking after her. Since I have no lessons, it is possible, but I’m trying to do some work in…

  • Spell Compendium

    Spell Compendium is a book for D&D 3.5. It does what it says on the cover: it’s a big collection of spells, from lots of previous D&D books, revised and updated to deal with problems found after publication. There are a lot of interesting ideas in it. A couple of things struck me. The first,…

  • Little Baby, Sweetly Sleep

    We’ve been changing our daily schedule here over the last couple of weeks. The general advice is that it’s best that babies go to sleep relatively early and wake up relatively early, so we’re trying to manage that. Of course, given that I’m teaching until 8:30 every weekday, there’s a limit to how much we…

  • Gary Gygax RIP

    Gary Gygax has died. Whether you know who he was depends on whether you’re a roleplayer. For everyone else: he’s one of the two people who created roleplaying games. Along with Dave Arneson, he wrote Dungeons and Dragons, back in 1974. He has, therefore, had more influence on my life, indirectly, than almost anyone else;…

  • New Diary Entry

    I’ve put a new diary entry online. Yes, again.

  • New Diary Entry

    I’ve put a new diary entry online.