Along with the rebrand of this website from Alchemical Gaming to Narrative Alchemy, I am officially opening my doors today as a pastoral counselor. While I used to have some imposter syndrome around this, I can’t deny that friends have occasionally come to me for religious or spiritual advice, throughout my adult life. I am […]
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Author: Chance
Narrative artist, game designer, TV and film buff, zenarchist, occultist, mystic, gadfly, queer, meat popsicle, warrior princess
Regarding a certain Facebook controversy
Now that it’s two and a half years later, I need to set the record straight about certain things. A friend recently wrote a blog post discussing an attempt to smear his reputation, and I realized it’s time I addressed a similar situation. Certain people in the East Coast larp community have tried to paint […]
How One Rabbi Uses Roleplaying Games to Build Community
(Originally published on WIRED . Article by Eli Reiter.) AT HIS BAR Mitzvah in his Reconstructionist Jewish synagogue, Rabbi Menachem Cohen hoped to be saved. “I was waiting for God to plunk me on the head and take me on a spiritual trip. A spiritual acid trip, without ever taking acid,” he says. It never […]
A meme from Facebook
Larp is a Chrysalis
If all the world’s a stage, identity is nothing but a costume.” -Lana Wachowski and J. Michael Straczynski, Sense8 “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person; give him a mask, and he’ll tell you the truth.” -Maxwell Demon, fictionalized glam-rock persona from Velvet Goldmine, paraphrasing Oscar Wilde At an after-school program at […]
Alchemical Gaming: A New (Old) Vision for Positive Bleed
(Note: This article is a draft, intended for eventual publication on nordiclarp.org. It has been edited by me, but not by one of their editors yet, so it may differ from the final version. I decided it was time to post it, because it represents the most complete and concise presentation of these ideas that […]
A Preliminary Toolkit, from Living Games 2018
For anyone who missed my workshop on Alchemical Gaming at Living Games Conference 2018 and wanted to be there, here are the worksheet and handouts that we used. I revised them a bit in response to feedback from the participants. This is by far the most concisely and clearly I’ve ever been able to present this material, […]
The Alchemical Gaming Manifesto
Originally published on Chance’s personal blog, Boundary Crosser. It’s mind-boggling to me that I’ve been playing role-playing games for 20 years now – about two thirds of my life – but when I stop to think about it, it’s really not that surprising. I was the kind of kid who had a very active fantasy […]