My Portfolio

For my official portfolio, which contains writing samples from several different games to highlight the breadth of my writing, click here.

Below is my complete CV, complete with links where possible.

Glaive Guisarme Games

Games that I wrote and have self-published:

RPGs

  • By the Author of Lady Windermere’s Fan - The world’s best Oscar Wilde-themed RPG

  • The Magical Repair Shop - A #zinequest game about the place where artisans repair magic items (a collaboration with Ash Cheshire)

  • The Trans Rage Trilogy - A #zinequest game about, well, transitioning, as told in three games that aren’t about transitioning:

    • To Stand Before the Dragon’s Wrath - Written in denial. Take on the dragon that’s ruined your life and don’t think too hard about what it represents.

    • Let’s Rob RJ McElhenny and Steal Her Golden Quill - Written in the closet. Break into the home of a magephobic fantasy author and wreck the place.

    • Penis 2.0.77 - Written out and proud. Not a game, just a cyberpunk-themed exercise in thinking about how strange genitals are, when you really think about it.

  • Synanthropes Lite - A fifteen-minute exercise in applied anthropology in a post-human age

  • The Glaive Guisarme Patreon - A collection of small games, most of them quite silly. Currently on hiatus!

Board Games

  • Prohibitionists - A light but strategic co-operative game about taking out the mob in Prohibition-era Lake City.

Other RPG Writing

Games I’ve written or designed for on behalf of other people or companies, not under the Glaive Guisarme umbrella:

  • Paranormal Inc. - A GMless game about struggling paranormal investigators, facing paranormal events and solving mysteries

  • Fate Condensed - An updated, streamlined version of the Fate Core System

  • Fate of Cthulhu - A pulp-action game about time-travelers attempting to prevent the eldritch apocalypse

  • Dresden Files Accelerated - An adaptation of the popular Dresden Files series of novels

  • Acute Paranoia - An expansion to the most recent version of the long-running satirical RPG

  • The Fate Adversary Toolkit - A guideline for creating bad guys in your Fate Core games

  • Venture City - A superpunk sourcebook for Fate Core

  • Morts - A Fate Core setting about the folks with the ultimate dead-end job: minimum-wage zombie hunters

  • The Aether Sea - A Fate Core setting about a fantasy world that takes to the stars when the planet is destroyed

Games I've Edited

In addition to writing games, I have worked as a developmental editor or design consultant on the following:

  • Almbrecht After Dark - Unravel conspiracies in an industrial city full of criminals, dark magic, and deadly nightmares

  • Wearing the Cape - Thrilling superheroics in the world of Marion G. Harmon’s Wearing the Cape novels

  • Uprising - An RPG set in Indie Boards & Cards’ Dystopian Universe: it’s time to overthrow the corrupt rulers of Paris Nouveau

  • The Fate Horror Toolkit - If you’re looking to take your Fate games to a darker, scarier place, this is the tool for you

  • Weird World News - Teen journalists travel the country reporting on paranormal events and/or creepy folks in rubber monster masks

  • So the Story Goes - The evil overlord has been deposed, and you travel the world, spreading story and song, to rebuild it

  • Under the Table - Arthurian legend retold in Prohibition-era Chicago, where Arthur’s gang are bootleggers dealing in magical booze

  • Loose Threads - You exist in a world of fairy tales, trying to help people get their happy endings because you never got yours

  • Ghost Planets - Earth's greatest scientific minds explore the ruins of vanished alien civilizations looking to understand why they went extinct

Non-Games Writing

Sometimes I make stuff that’s not even a game at all!

Short Stories

  •  “In Battle, Alone and Soon Forgotten” - A story about an orc who goes to great lengths to acquire a prophecy foretelling his own death. Published in the anthology This is How You Die, a collection of stories about a machine that predicts, quickly and with perfect accuracy, how its users are going to die.  

  • “Edison's Dead Men” - William Joseph Hammer, personal assistant to Thomas Edison, discovers the mad things his employer has been working on in the secret lab below Edison's actual lab at Menlo Park. Published in History is Dead, and anthology of historical fiction featuring zombies. 

PANELS AND PRESENTATIONS

  • “Embracing Non-Violence in Role-Playing.” Moderator. Presented at Emerald City Comicon, April 4, 2016, in Seattle, WA.

  • “War, War Changes: The Developing Role of Idealism in the Fallout Series.” Presenter. Read at Southwest/Texas Popular Culture and American Culture Associations conference February 15, 2013, in Albuquerque, NM.

  • “Discipline and Critfail: Creating Characters through Game Mechanics in Valve’s Team Fortress 2.” Presenter. Read at the SW/TX PCA/ACA conference, February 9, 2012.