Game Writing and Development
I’ve worked in tabletop games professionally since 2014. I draw on my personal and academic background to guide games and media toward new cultural frontiers through writing, development, editing, and cultural consultation. My favorite themes to write about are hip hop, martial arts, culture clash, religion, and the Wu-Tang Clan.
Old men in cool outfits get ready to deliver a beatdown. That’s all Imma say in case anyone reading this is, somehow, unspoiled for the end of Avatar: the Last Airbender.
Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game
I’m a senior developer on the official tabletop role-playing game about the world of Avatar: the Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra, the greatest martial arts shows on television. Like many of the games on this page, it’s powered by Meg and Vince Baker’s Apocalypse World system: easy to learn, flexible, and fun to design in even if you’re new to game design.
Thousand Arrows
Gunpowder and betrayal! Thousand Arrows is a tabletop role-playing game of samurai warfare, drama, and tragedy, powered by the Apocalypse. I wrote and designed Thousand Arrows, and it’ll go on sale a little later this year; but if you want access to some quick-start documents so you can try playing, please email me. I’ve blogged about the game’s approach to sensitivity in these articles, part I and part II.
An armored samurai with a wide-brimmed hat and a matchlock musket stands in front of a burning tower. Art by Yoshi Yoshitani.
A Filipino man with short side-parted hair in a Macintosh suit ballroom dancing with a white American woman with long blonde hair and a white dress, which is probably illegal.
Star Crossed: Love Letters
Star Crossed by Alex Roberts is a Diana Jones Award-winning ttRPG about two people who really, really want to but really, really can’t. The players act out a series of scenes, pulling bricks from a block tower to represent increasing romantic tension, finally acting on their ill-advised attraction when the tower falls. The Love Letters expansion features several rules hacks and setting seeds including “Taxi Dance,” a romance between a Filipino farmworker and a white professional dancer in 1934 California in the shadow of anti-miscegenation laws and race riots.
Arcadia 23: Religion Construction Kit
Arcadia is MCDM Productions' magazine of 5e-compatible content and advice. Issue 23 features my Religion Construction Kit, a step-by-step procedure to create the living community and social and power structures which support a religion’s deities, doctrine, and dogma.
A massive red-skinned demon with four horns and batlike wings wears an orange robe and sits cross-legged in meditation, one hand formed into a prayer seal, the other holding a pink flower. Before them, other horned figures sit and look toward them, incense burning nearby.
A fighting game character select screen shows DJ Windfire, Pit Viper, Ox Head, and Horse Face. Art by William Tempest.
Fate Core: Iron Street Combat
Iron Street Combat is a setting I wrote for the Fate Core RPG, which brings players to a world of secret societies and martial arts competitions inspired by all the fighting games I æsthetically love but can’t play worth a damn. Seriously, the only one I’m decent at is Super Smash Bros. In my quest for an analog way to appreciate such games, I tried some other fighting game-inspired RPGs, but I found them nearly as technically intimidating as their electronic equivalents. That’s why I created this game’s combat subsystem, directly inspired by visiting friends’ houses and haphazardly button-mashing to win at fighting games I don’t own. The +, -, and _ symbols on your Fate dice become the attack, defense, and movement buttons on a hypothetical controller, and you combine dice you roll into move commands just like playing a fighting game (but without having to look up guides on the Internet or endure toxic competitive culture).
Sentinel Comics RPG
The Sentinel Comics RPG is a tabletop role-playing game of superheroic action in the same setting that gave us Sentinels of the Multiverse, my favorite card game. I wrote some material about martial arts and Asian religion for the upcoming Dark Watch sourcebook.
The supervillain Dragonclaw, an athletic Filipina woman with a green Chinese straight sword and some kind of intimidating action-oriented cocktail dress, prepares to cut some fools.
Omolara Muhammad, Annie X, and Little Máo face off with several Titanspawn. Art by Shen Fei.
Scion, Second Edition
Scion is a tabletop role-playing game about demigods’ adventures in the modern world. In the corebooks, I contributed to system design (particularly the Virtue subsystem) and wrote three pantheons—the Devas, Òrìṣà, and Shén—as well as the guide to respectfully diverse play. I also did cultural consulting on the Companion, wrote several antagonists for Titanomachy, and wrote the Atua pantheon for Demigod.
Monsterhearts 2
Monsterhearts is a tabletop role-playing game by Avery Alder about sexy teenage monsters’ messy lives and relationships. I collaborated with Jeeyon Shim and Ciel Sainte-Marie to write the guide to experiencing race as a teenager.
Punk rock monsters get in your face. Art by Cecilia Reis.
A stylized Greek hoplite’s helmet with geometric designs. Art by John Harper.
Agon
Agon is a tabletop role-playing game by John Harper and Sean Nittner about ancient Greek epic adventure. John Stavropoulos and I were the cultural consultants on this game, and wrote a primer about Greek culture and sword-and-sandal media. I also wrote Khryse, an island of adventure where your wave-tossed heroes can get involved in an artistic struggle between Apollo and the Muses, inspired by a tradition of Greek epic poetic performance which you may find represented elsewhere on this site.
The Ultimate Micro-RPG Book: Post-Match Interview
This is a great book to get you started with tabletop RPGs: forty little two-page games, edited by James D’Amato and written by many of my friends. For this book, I wrote “Post-Match Interview,” a game inspired by this Key & Peele sketch as well as the insipid interviews they make sumō wrestlers give immediately after they’ve thrown a 200kg man out of a ring but before they’ve even had a chance to catch their breath. In this game, a crowd of reporters asks an exhausted athlete a series of increasingly surreal questions, while the athlete must return the most quotidian answers possible so they can go home and go to sleep. Most importantly, “Post-Match Interview” is the only game I’ve ever written that my mom understands.
The cover of the book, featuring images of a dog, a space shuttle, a Spartan warrior in space, a hobbit hill, an astronaut, a city, and a woman with blue hair singing into a microphone.
A black-cowled pugilist has decided that eyeglasses over cowl is the way to go. Art by Jason Morningstar
Fiasco
Fiasco is a tabletop role-playing game by Jason Morningstar and Steve Segedy about people with powerful ambition and poor impulse control. In addition to doing cultural consultation on the game’s second edition, I wrote a playset (package of setting and situation elements) called Fist City about America’s secret underground community of warrior nincompoops.
Jiāngshī: Blood in the Banquet Hall
Jiāngshī: Blood in the Banquet Hall is a ttRPG by Banana Chan and Sen-Foong Lim about a Chinese family working at a restaurant in North America, struggling against racism and classism by day and against hopping vampires by night. I was the cultural consultant on the game, and wrote a section about how to play a Chinese character.
In the background, a hopping vampire and a red dragon; in the foreground, a family working at a Chinese restaurant.
Some thirsty lesbians cross swords.
Thirsty Sword Lesbians: To Lay Down One’s Life for Another
Thirsty Sword Lesbians is a ttRPG by April Kit Walsh about exactly what it sounds like it’s about, powered by the Apocalypse. For this game, I wrote a stretch goal setting called “To Lay Down One’s Life for Another,” which takes the game to the late Heian period of Japanese history, the era of Genpei War chivalry, courtly romance, and desperate knife-wrestling.
Geist: the Sin-Eaters, 2nd Edition
Geist is a tabletop role-playing game from Onyx Path Publishing about humans with ghosts attached to them who help the living and the dead with their powers. I wrote the archetypes for krewes (groups of sin-eaters, named after a similar concept from New Orleans).
A ghost floats in a window.
A stylized cityscape emerging from the dark.
Urban Shadows: Dark Streets
Urban Shadows is a tabletop role-playing game of political urban fantasy. Dark Streets is an expansion featuring new rules, new character types, and new settings which introduce the supernatural underworlds of various real-world cities. I wrote the guides to the New York boroughs of Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island.
Shinobigami
Shinobigami is a tabletop role-playing game by Kawashima Tō’ichirō about warring ninja factions in the modern world. For Matt Sanchez, Andy Kitkowski, and Joshua Kleibscheidel’s English translation of the game, I wrote “I’m Afraid of Americans,” a short campaign which pits the ninja clans of Japan against a small army of American cultural appropriators who might seem familiar to practitioners of Japanese martial arts in the West.
A squad of young ninja with strange weapons vaults through the urban night.
Four Scherzando! players converse excitedly while sitting at a table covered with musical instruments and game materials. From a painting in the background, a European composer of old (probably named Johann) looks on.
Scherzando!
Scherzando! is a ttRPG by Elizabeth Bellisario and Amber Autumn Faebrooke in which the players actually perform music at the table to resolve what happens in the musical world of the game! No, you don’t have to be a good musician or even a musician at all to play—learning to communicate with the other players through the rudiments of performance is part of the game. I was the editor and cultural consultant on this game. I also wrote a Wu-Tang Clan-inspired setting—you’ll know it when you see it.
The Sky Left Us
The Sky Left Us is a visual novel about queer romance, climate crisis, queer romance, classism, and queer romance set in the science-fiction universe of the Event Horizon live-action role-playing games. I’m writing for this game, which is on Kickstarter right now!
A worm exploring a rat skull for some reason against the backdrop of a verdant mountain under a starry night sky.
Two teenage detectives are excited to have found a clue.
Bubblegumshoe
Bubblegumshoe is an ENnie Award-winning tabletop role-playing game about teenage detectives in the tradition of Nancy Drew or Encyclopedia Brown. For this book, I wrote “The Wheels of Steal,” a story seed about (among other things) hip hop.
Katanas & Trenchcoats
Katanas & Trenchcoats is Ryan Macklin’s ttRPG of over-the-top urban-fantasy melodrama, inspired by the storytelling traditions of the 1990s. I did lots of writing, development, and cultural consultation for this game.
Not actually an image from Katanas & Trenchcoats. Instead, it’s Wesley Snipes in costume as Blade on the poster for Blade 2, with sunglasses, a leather duster, and a cool sword. When you read the game, you’ll understand why.
A human in a stark technological landscape looks at little electric butterflies rising from the floor underneath them.
Legacy: Life Among the Ruins
Legacy is a ttRPG about the species-level implications of apocalypse, powered by the, well, Apocalypse. In addition to cultural consulting on Free From the Yoke and Shattered City, two of the game’s settings, I wrote an essay and some subsystems about culture and religion in Legacy: The Engine of Life.
Hearts of Wǔlín
Hearts of Wǔlín is ttRPG of wǔxía melodrama, powered by the Apocalypse. For this game, I wrote “Fight Me IRL,” a cyberpunk setting which explores the effects of bionic technology, culture clash and appropriation, and especially Internet drama on the rivers and lakes of the near future.
A tearful swordswoman in ornate red-and-gold hànfú.
I haven’t actually read any Judge Dredd comics but I’m pretty sure this man holding a pistol with a scary helmet and large shoulder pads is Judge Dredd
Judge Dredd: Block War
Judge Dredd: Block War is a two-player card game about criminals in a dystopian city competing to mess each other up before future cops arrest them. I edited this game!
The Sword, the Crown, and the Unspeakable Power
SCUP is a tabletop role-playing game of dark political fantasy, powered by the Apocalypse. For this game, I wrote a guide to decolonizing and diversifying the religious and cultural influences on the game.
A swordswoman with a long braid raises a crown in front of a star map.
A large, shirtless, musclebound man with a glowing forehead and a sun tattoo on his chest shouts “what the christ are you talking about!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Exalted
Exalted is a ttRPG about epic fantasy in an anime-inspired setting. On the game’s third edition, I helped with cultural design for Lunars: Fangs at the Gate, and wrote about teaching the game and navigating orientalism for Crucible of Legends. More importantly, I also made some memes out of the comics printed in the 2nd Edition books.
Legend of the Five Rings
Legend of the Five Rings is a ttRPG (and collectible card game) set in a fantasy world inspired by Western imaginations of feudal Japan. It surprises a lot of gamers to hear I’ve contributed to the game, since over the course of its history, it’s exhibited many orientalist issues endemic to adventure gaming. The game’s fifth edition still struggles with some of those issues, but it’s made significant improvements over previous editions, especially with regard to culture and identity. I wrote about religion (including guidance on religious sensitivity) in Emerald Empire, material culture and romance in Courts of Stone, knight-errant life in Path of Waves, and the world of fae and immortals in Celestial Realms. I’ve also done cultural consulting on some of the game books and fiction.
A ninja with a figure-ten spear and a sword slips out a window after killing an assassin.
Two witches face away from each other. One, dressed like a Shintō shrine maiden, holds some prayer strips. The other, in a suit, holds bloody knives.
Mystic Lilies
Mystic Lilies is a ttRPG by Will Uhl about vengeful witches in conflict. I wrote a seed setting for this game called Wormspire, a Hollow Knight- and Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind-inspired environment of intelligent arthropods and power politics. I hadn’t watched Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts yet when I wrote it, but it’s kind of like that show too.
The Islands of Sina Una
The Islands of Sina Una is a 5th Edition campaign and setting book inspired by Philippine mythology. I wrote a couple of the locations and spirits you’ll encounter among the islands, based on animal stories from the children’s books one of my relatives wrote.
A Filipino elf in a dark blue outfit and a shadowy cobra spirit.
A Fusōese swordsman and a Shenese soldier encounter trouble in the street.
7th Sea, Second Edition
7th Sea is a tabletop role-playing game of swashbuckling adventure in an alternate-universe seventeenth century. My writing and development appear in every 2nd Edition book except for the corebook and Secret Societies, including the ENnie Award-winning Pirate Nations. I talk about developing 7th Sea: Khitai, which expands the setting to Asia, Oceania, and the Pacific Islands, in the following interviews.
Spirit of the 7th Sea: audio interview with Hannah Shaffer (offline right now)
Five or So Questions: text interview with Beau Sheldon
That said, the current state of the Khitai material has fallen far enough from my original vision and standard for cultural respect that I no longer consider it my work.