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

  • Fundamental Revisions

    Today, I’ve made a start on the revisions to Kannagara based on the results of the first playtest. I’m looking at making quite a fundamental revision: I’m working on dropping the dice mechanic. This is a bit painful, because I really like that dice mechanic. I think the probability distributions it gives have some very…

  • Persistence Ain’t All That

    This post may come across as something of a rant, and possibly also as a humble brag. I have to concede that I’m ranting a bit, but I would like to emphasise that there is nothing humble about the bragging parts, and that I am entirely serious about the humble parts. This rant was inspired…

  • Mimusubi in 2013

    Following in the footsteps of people like Fred Hicks at Evil Hat, I’m going to post about the business side of Mimusubi, with actual numbers. I can be open about this, at least for now, because I have a lot of things going on apart from Mimusubi, so these posts will tell you very little…

  • Playtest Results

    Over the new year, I arranged for two playtest sessions of Kannagara. I was involved in one, but not the other, which was deliberate. For the game in which I was involved, I could see how things went for myself, and have a direct sense of the dynamics, but I also, inevitably, guided the game…

  • Merry Christmas

    It’s 7:30 on Christmas morning. The sun is shining, the air is clear, Mt Fuji is capped with glistening snow. And Mayuki is still asleep. It’s going to be a good day. Merry Christmas, everyone. (I can’t say “Happy Holidays”, because it isn’t. At least not here.)

  • Playtest Scenario Finished

    Today, I finished the first draft of the first playtest scenario. The next step is to try playing it, to see whether it works. This very first playtest will be very limited in numbers, because the game might well not work at all, and I will use the feedback from it to revise and improve…

  • Good Progress

    Today, I’ve made good progress on Kannagara. The first playtest scenario is nearly finished in first draft. I think I need another day to get it done, which augurs well for it being completed within the year. Then I will try to recruit some people to actually try it, to find out whether it is…

  • (No) Progress Report

    There have been no updates to the blog for the last couple of weeks because I’ve not made any progress on the game. My family all came to Japan for my daughter’s Shichigosan ceremony, so I haven’t had any time to work on this project. Shichigosan is a Shinto ceremony, so it is, at least,…

  • Work Continues

    I’m continuing to work on the introductory scenario. One of the features of Kannagara is that the players can define the details of the world that their personae live in through their choices as they explore it. The players decide what the personae discover, and those discoveries define the world. There are two versions of…

  • A Sample

    Here is a sample of text from the first scenario. This section concerns the creation of the norito for a harae to purify the personae. Norito The rules for creating each part of the harae are the same, and we will create the norito first. First, one of the personae must come up with a…