Thousand Hells

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote multiple missions and settings for this "tactical narrative" game about underworld heists, coming in 2026 from Kitfox Games. Like designer David Dunham’s prior games King of Dragon Pass and Six Ages, text is designed to vary considerably based on game state, including especially the traits of the companion characters you’ve brought along on your mission.

In the excerpt, from my scenario “The Midnight North,” the player is meeting a goddess of weaving in a Hell inspired by Finnish mythology. Content is authored in Inscription, a custom scripting language created by Dunham for this project (I contributed the syntax highlighting library).

The Zone

Sun, 01 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I was commissioned to write an alternate sci-fi setting for this tabletop roleplaying game’s "Book Of Twists." Challenges included re-mixing fixed game elements (the deck of idea cards that come with the game) to tell a different kind of story, and effectively communicating tone and expected play style in a minimal amount of space.

Virtual Virtual Reality

Sun, 01 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote multiple characters for this award-winning indie game from Tender Claws, including "the whale that appears in every VR demo."

Blade Runners (Prototype)

Sun, 01 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This unreleased prototype from award-winning indie studio Hexagram proposed a licensed game built around a living city of thousands of simulated NPCs, acting and reacting to complex stimuli. I led the creation of an action library for NPCs: atomic units capable of combining into emergent stories of cause and effect. (Post art courtesy the official Blade Runner roleplaying game.)

The excerpt here shows action code written in Viv, a domain-specific language for action definitions created by James Ryan.

Achaea

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Achaea is a commercial MUD (text-only online multiplayer game) that has been in business since 1995. I was commissioned as part of a series inviting outside writers to create a quest line for the game. Writers were not required to learn the game’s complex scripting language, but were expected to specify responses to actions and consider other interactive elements.

In this excerpt from my quest line, The Secret of Orshuu’s Heirs, the player has just activated the Last Journal of Alcibiades in the lost troll city of Kasmarkin, receiving the quest from an NPC.

In the Library of the Magi, the Last Journal of Alcibiades has indeed appeared:

name: journal
short_desc: an ancient journal
long_desc: An ancient journal bound in read leather sits atop a stone plinth rising from the center of the chamber.
extended_desc: The journal is bound in an archaic style, though does not appear yellowed with the passage of time, or indeed even dusty. An aura you can’t quite see or hear surrounds it, a vibration of some keening energy, and the book floats a hair’s breadth above the plinth beneath it. The red leather of its cover is embossed with ancient trollish runes inlaid in gold. [If the player speaks trollish: The runes on the cover read: “The Last Journal of Alcibiades.”]

If the player tries to take the journal: “The book feels infinitely heavy, as if not even a team of mules could remove it from the plinth, but it can be opened.” Others see: “{player} reaches out to take the book, but it seems fixed to the plinth.”

If touched, opened, or read, move The Spirit of Alcibiades to the location, and trigger this scene:

The runes on the cover glow hot, then leap into the air.

They swirl madly, glowing and multiplying until they fill every corner of the chamber, before condensing into the shape of a ghostly figure.

The spirit moves, breathes. It turns to face you, a shape made of runes and sigils, writing and rewriting themselves in whirling scratches.

Alcibiades: “It would seem my plan has worked. Good. Greetings to you, child of tomorrow. I am Alcibiades, archmage of Kasmarkin.”

“Or, perhaps, an echo of him. A loose thread of a life, unstitched from time, cast forward like a fisher’s line into deeper waters, far from the shores of the mortal.”

The spirit’s eyes flicker to the book on the plinth.

“This book, my last journal, was meant to tell one final story of Kasmarkin before its end. But it is empty. The tale I meant to write was ripped from my memory, and all memories across time and space.”

“All I now remember is a name, and a calling. Orshuu. Orshuu the druid.”

“I don’t know who she was or what she did to deserve such a terrible curse, to be rubbed out of time and of memory itself. But I think her story must have mattered.”

“Only if it mattered would someone have tried so hard to untell it.”

The spirit walks to the plinth, runes shimmering and reshaping themselves like a thousand million insects, and places a hand made of ink atop the book.

“In this journal is only a poem, or, perhaps, a riddle. I have no memory of writing it. But it speaks, I believe, of four children, four trolls. The last descendants of Orshuu.”

“They are grown now, and might have no knowledge of each other or their part in this story. But I suspect each might carry a piece of it, even if they don’t know its importance. A family heirloom, perhaps, which protects them, and may well harbor other magics too. But that is only a guess.”

The spirit turns, fixing his stern gaze on you with all the power of an archmage.

“Find Orshuu’s descendants. Four trolls, scattered across the lands. They will know the sound of her name. Find them, and you’ll find the druid’s story. A story I fear the trolls should never have forgotten.”

“Read the journal’s riddle when you wish to begin your search. May your hunt be swift and your tale run true. Farewell.”

The shimmering rune-cloud quivers, then swarms back into the journal, sinking through the red leather with a sound like a million rustling pages, a library’s last sigh. All that remains is the lingering scent of ink.

The Spirit of Alcibiades
name: Alcibiades
short_desc: the spirit of Alcibiades
long_desc: The ghostly spirit of an ancient troll mage paces, formed from a shifting mass of living runes.
extended_desc: The spirit is formed from a dense cloud of shaped fog, made from a mass of millions of floating, shifting runes. Once a thin but towering troll, he wears the fine robes of an archmage of Kasmarkin, and his arms and cheekbones are tattooed with sigils of power. Even in ghostly form, you sense in his penetrating gaze a will that must once have wielded awesome power.

If attacked or touched: The cloud of runes swirls and reforms around the spirit, who seems not to notice.

The Spirit of Camp Pinewood