Jeepers.  After hundreds of hours of summer development, much of it full-time and often more than full-time, I appear to have a stable build of Arcana.  Not perfect by a longshot, but stable.  For those of you interested in the history of the project, I wrote a blog about that.  Tl;dr, I’ve been working on […]

Recent Arcana progress has been slow but steady and significant, with advances both on the front-end (visual interface and feedback for ritual performance) and the back-end (underlying systems and mechanics driving the rituals). For front-end progress, I am now working with an excellent artist, Thomas Vanhuffel, whose portfolio can be seen here: http://weenog.deviantart.com/ His many atmospheric art […]

Fire Walk with Me: Summer Progress on Arcana Over the summer, I have been working with fiery passion on my game project, Arcana and its associated editor, the Arcana Ritual Toolset.  Arcana is a twofold project: a) a game meant to simulate a rich experience of magic by allowing players to perform rituals and b) […]

[Spoiler alerts: Lord of Illusions, Fallen London, NBC Constantine] In one of the most haunting lines from Clive Barker’s film Lord of Illusions, a high-ranking member of an elite illusionists’ club observes that “we walk a narrow line between trickery and divinity.”  The character is alluding to the two meanings of the word “magician,” which can connote both sorcerer (who […]

About a year ago, I started wearing a chaos star.  While there is a real-life school of occultism that adopted this star as its emblem, and while I am a real-life occult game designer, I don’t consider myself primarily a practitioner of Chaos Magick as defined by Peter Carroll and his followers. A little historical […]

I want to market Arcana like Iron Maiden. No, let me rephrase that. I want to market Arcana like motherfucking Iron Maiden.   A little context is in order here. As preparations for the Arcana Kickstarter gather steam (especially in terms of art direction), I find myself thinking about the relationship between marketing and world-building […]

As I refine the design for the Arcana Ritual Toolset in preparation for its crowdfunding effort, the analogy of theater is increasingly useful to me.  The idea of theater as ritual performance (or ritual as theater) has been common in mythological and magical studies for a long time, going at least as far back as […]

I recently spent a week in Northwest Arkansas to visit family.   The region has changed a lot since I grew up there, and with a population of 500,000 it is now referred to as “the Northwest Arkansas Metropolitan Area,” a phrase I never expected to be applied to the isolated and rural region that […]

  I have played a lot of games this summer.  Here is a list of them along with brief commentary. First, as an overview, the list: Dark Souls 2 (140 hours, finished) Thief Reboot (finished) Anna: Extended Edition (finished) Knock-Knock (finished) Castlevania: Circle of the Moon (finished) Mountain (finished) Catachresis (finished) Metal Gear Solid (2/3′s […]

The publication of Game Magic has led to some inspiring and productive conversations with amazing, like-minded designers.   Some of these conversations involve the designers’ awesome  projects, which I won’t talk about online without permission out of respect for the designers’ own publicity prerogatives. But I can safely share my sides of these conversations, which […]

Someone recently asked me what I thought of Bloodborne, the new game by From Software, the trailer of which was unveiled at E3 2014.  The Souls franchise is a major touchstone for my ideas about magic systems (and game design more generally).  Here’s a one-paragraph review of my thoughts so far, and a brief extension […]

Below is the trailer for my recently-published book, Game Magic: A Designer’s Guide to Magic Systems in Theory and Practice, which can be ordered on Amazon at http://www.tinyurl.com/gamemagic.  Giles Timms created several illustrations for the book, which he then brought to life in a trailer through his fantastic animation skills.  More of Giles work can be […]

While at the East Coast Games Conference to speak about my book Game Magic, I had the privilege of seeing a vast library of occult tomes and esoteric RPG books owned by Steve Burnett, a writer, musician, and Raleigh native who was kind enough to guide many of the conference participants through the city during the week.

My original Facebook post should convey the rapture of the experience and how I see the two parts of this library (the RPG books and the grimoires) as related: “In the most unexpected turn of events at the East Coast Games Conference, I was invited to go see the most extensive occult library *and* the strangest collection of obscure tabletop RPG’s I’ve ever encountered, housed under one roof.  We’re talking a complete run of Scarlet Imprint, rare editions of Kenneth Grant and Austin Osman Spare, and some very rare and seriously weird tomes that I have a hard time describing.  Pictures forthcoming, both of the RPG books and the grimoires.  Though, in the end, is there really in difference?  Performance, imagination, and play . . . the highest forms of magic.”

I took several pictures of the library, focusing on volumes that particularly caught my eye based on my own research and creative interests.  These pictures, though, are only a glimmer of the overall riches.  Soon, I’ll comment on individuals volumes and why I chose to photograph them (as well as some of the volumes that I did not have time to capture).  For now, here are the pictures en masse from my phone.

Selim Lemouchi, former frontman of Dutch occult rock group The Devil’s Blood, died last week at the age of 34.  I am a great fan of The Devil’s Blood, whose song “The Madness of Serpents” I chose as the music for the upcoming animated trailer for my forthcoming book, Game Magic.  When Selim Lemouchi agreed to […]

“The Gods of the Nephandi are the Dreams of the Neverborn” is a phrase that Richard Dansky, game writer and narrative design veteran, said to me over drinks at Nanocon, South Dakota’s premiere gaming convention.  At my request, he also wrote this phrase in the front of my copy of the second edition Wraith rulebook […]

  In Nobilis, players take the role of the incarnations of abstract ideas (or sets of concrete objects reified as abstract principles), such as Love, Wine, the color Yellow, and Death.  The immediate inspiration for this concept is Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, an epic comic book series that chronicles the adventures of a pantheon of the […]

Tabletop designer Kenneth Hite once described experimental RPG Nobilis in these words: “Imagine Neil Gaiman’s Sandman and Clive Barker’s Hellraiser on an absinthe bender, with flowers. That’s Nobilis.” I can think of no better description of an imaginative life well lived.       These are the kinds of worlds I want to create in […]

The Faceless Men from A Song of Ice and Fire.  [spoiler alerts abound for all the books in the series]They are a haunting set of characters, and the reference point to which I return whenever I think about stealth mechanics and ideas in games and other media.   They conjoin magic and stealth in a way that I’ve […]

As some of you may know, I have been hard at work for a while on a book called Game Magic: A Game Designer’s Guide to Constructing Magic Systems, which will be published by Taylor & Francis/CRC Press within the next year.  My deadline is September 1st, so I’m writing both joyfully and madly every […]

The beta of Arcana: A Ceremonial Magick Simulator can now be downloaded at the link below! http://tinyurl.com/ArcanaBeta1-2 Please play and provide us feedback at: http://tinyurl.com/ArcanaFeedback

One of the reasons that I adore the Assassin’s Creed franchise comes from the paradox of the title’s creed, “Nothing is true, everything is permitted,” which is quoted several times in the games. A creed is defined as a profession of belief, but the assassin’s creed is a profession of belief in nothing except pure […]

In Arcana Manor, the player wields a uniquely immersive and symbolic magic system to defeat the demons of a surreal Gothic mansion and unlock its secrets. Arcana Manor is a ceremonial magick simulator with a meticulously-researched system of gestural sigils, incantations, colors, and sounds that makes players feel like true adepts, not mere button-pushers.