I will be starting an artist's residency at a university here in Vancouver next month. Focus is indigenous roleplaying and art.
No more teaching juggling work & family then squeezing in time for games. Producing the full version of NUNA and art for it will be my focus for 6 months. As well as building community and learning the trade.
I am so happy.
Thanks for coming along for the ride.
Exciting things are coming.
In the meanwhile, here is a great video on writing and producing an RPG.
Video is HERE.
I am back from a much needed vacation in the desert of Osoyoos, as well as a stop in Hope, the town where First Blood was filmed. We dodged forest fires, but had a great time hiking the Nk'Mip Culture Center's desert hiking trail. We saw a coyote and lots of birds.
Just what I needed to refresh myself. I have lots of family and work stuff to face eventually, but I also need to keep advancing my game and art projects to keep healthy.
Before diving back into projects, here is the list of things to do for the latter half of the year.
I am in talks with 2 academic publishers about turning my research and teaching into books. I haven't been an academic for 3 years, so this all feels like an older version of myself. But I have finished doing academic 'freebie' articles, and having published a textbook, I know how a book can be revenue for years to come. So I will be chipping away at these, one on debt in Japan, the other on the neoliberal inflitration of US news media.
I also have a book in my head about how I got sonny and myself out of Japan. Less academic but a story worth telling.
The next project is Giri-Ninjou, my RPG of the soul of Japan. It is a step away from D100 and trad games into a more narrative play the focuses on cultural constraints and difficult choices.
After that, I'll be churning out the NUNA Corebook.
I also have an idea for a system free bestiary for Moorcockean fantasy that I call The Melancholic Menagerie.
I might be running some indigenous games, and trying to figure out how to get a regular Stormbringer game started in anticipation for the Free League version started.
Just learned there might be an academic event about indigenous / decolonial gaming. Finger's crossed.
Wish me luck!
OK, Nuna text is finished. Just need to add a half dozen sketches at important points, redesign the covers, and it is off to the printer. I'll also have to get the gameshop launch party planned, as well as online sales set up.
But feels great to have come this far.
My whole life I have been called a Dreamer, but that is how I have made so many of my dreams come true.
I wanted to live in Japan. Spent 22 years there.
I wanted to be a professor. I got tenure in Japan, but quit to care for sonny.
I wanted to be a martial artist. I got blackbelt in karate, then won 2nd place in my city in Japan.
I wanted to learn Japanese. I taught myself to the JLPT level 1, the highest you can get.
I wanted to get my son out of Japan. Now we enjoy life in Vancouver.
I wanted to be a game designer. Now here I am.
In my life, people have mostly been supportive of my dreams. But there are always negative voices, and our inner voice often sides with them against our own dreams.
So I say to you, Dream big!
Don't listen to the naysayers.
Keep at it with incremental action.
And whatever dream you have, you can make it reality.
Nekmek!
Hi all,
I am sick as a dog when I should be working and prepping NUNA.
I decided to go back and reorganize Stormbringer Redux. Added all posts to #30.
Enjoy.
It is not the kids, who are wonderful young people finding their way and much more savvy than I was their age.
It is not the colleagues, who are brilliant and dedicated and who fall into the normal workplace split of 10% who love me, 80% who don't care, and 10% who resent me for being a freewheeling fun teacher.
It is not the office, who are just people doing a job I'd never want to do and who increasingly have to butt heads with teachers as the govt and parents put more pressure on them and we push back aided by our union.
It
Is
Spending
All
Day
Marking
Seeing you on the other side, when the push towards the NUNA QuickStart launch and regular posting begins!
I'm currently in crunch time at the end of the schoolyear.
I'll probably stop posting here a week or two.
I hope to get NUNA quickstart done by month's end.
Do a few weeks of publicity then let it out into the world & RELAX before starting my next project.
So I just went to BEAUTIFUL Victoria BC for a workshop on Indigenous Education for my school.
Not only did I learn lots of useful things for my classes, it made me reflect on how this plays out in NUNA
In NUNA, all of the peoples (Inuit, Viking, and Rigger) all survive by going back to their roots. The Northern Inuit have re-mastered the pre-colombian skills of hunting with handmade weapons (I will NOT say primitive as they are very sophisticated), the Southern Inuit use reliable early 20th century devices, and the Riggers all cling to the different cultures their ancestors brought with them working on the rigs, from Maori Whalers to Portuguese swordsmen.
I learned that Canada in general, and BC in particular, is reconnecting and recognizing the people rooted in this land, and are trying to survive as a pluralistic nation by doing so.
Even the Scientists of NUNA are reconnecting back to the lost roots of humanity. Although the Inuit often say they have always been on the land, the genetic Thule strain of modern Inuit, according to recent research, spread from Far Eastern Russia only a 1000 years ago, and was proceeded by the now extinct Dorset Inuit, and possibly the mythical Tuniit giants before them. So it is true to say that Inuit peoples have lived in the North from time immemorial, without bogging down in genetics. I pay homage to the Tuniit by having them as returning mystic giants in NUNA, hiding in caves where they hang upside down and give aid or prophecy for those brave and foolish enough to seek them out.
As for me, the workshop was a chance for me to learn more about the First People's English course I am teaching, as well as enjoy so long needed R&R with sonny. Now I am back to the fatherhood + work + NUNA grind, but with summer vacation, the end of the tunnel is finally in sight.
Hello,
Currently crushed under the task of marking, especially comments.
If you're a teacher, you know.
Quietly working on games and career.
This song is pulling me through. I hadn't heard it and suddenly realizing Gord Downey was singing the middle part was like suddenly meeting a ghost at a bar.
Enjoy.
Hello friends!
It has been a minute since I posted. I was trapped under the day job and killing off the few final academic writing obligations.
(My book chapter on AI and social discourse is HERE and article on Japan's MeToo movement coming any day)
On top of that had a nasty cold and so have taken some time for myself.
Now, I feel revitalized by the pause and am slowly ramping back up to work on a few things.
1. NUNA is at the playtesters and I am giving them the time they need. Participating in the Swords of the Serpentine playtest years back taught me you need to give it time and have people give good feedback on the game warts and all.
2. Japan Studies Book proposal. Probably the last academic thing I'll do unless a uni hires me, but some heavy hitters in the field are cheering me on and the idea is solid. Also, a rare paid academic work so going to give it a shot.
3. Giri-Ninjo, my rules light Japanese RPG. Yes there will be swordfights and seductions, but the game is based around the internal conflicts of characters' humanity and duties. Hope to get a MVP done and start playtesting with some former students from a Japanese uni where I taught Media Studies who also live here in Raincouver.
4. In talks to run some games at Rain City again, the list includes Coyote & Crow, Coyboy Bebop, and Stormbringer. If you are in Vancouver and want to play with me, this is your chance.
But now it is time to clean my space then take sonny out for a walk on this lovely day.
I am currently enjoying the incredible warm weather and sunshine here in Vancouver. First snowless year in 47 years, with the rest of the country snowed under.
(I wanted to put a movie poster here but Blogger is having issues today)
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| Meh, this is all I could upload. Tilt your head right to see correctly. |
While I recuperate from balancing work and writing the Nuna QuickStart, I am reading The Great Buddha Pass - a huge work of fiction from the prewar period about a wandering, evil samurai. Post Nuna, my next project is Giri-Ninjou, my rules light TRPG about Duty & Humanity among the samurai.
You can read The Great Buddha Pass HERE, and several movies have been made based on the property over the years.
I have been enjoying my deep dive int Coyote & Crow, but NUNA is heating up on my backburner.
Some things I have in mind:
Culture as superpower
Place as the source of that power
Do I really need to do Kickstarter?
Work is starting to settle into a routine so I will be speeding up RPG work.
T
Hello!
Let's see...
In January we got turfed out and were living in Air BNBs. Sonny was melting down and I was freaking out.
In February, I got us an apartment in a nice corner of Vancouver. I also got a job as literature teacher at a top French school. Also got sonny ADHD meds and back to school after a year dropped out.
We dodged a bullet and are enjoying life again.
Just enjoying a paid spring vacation and time with my boy.
Hope to get back to writing and gaming soon.
Thanks for reading and sending positive vibes.
Long time no see!
It has been a busy new year.
The good - I published my novel on Kindle. Paperback & hardcover to follow. If you're into Japanese ghosts, WWII enemies, Shinto exorcists, and all kinds of Tokyo weirdness, give it a read.
The bad - we left Newfoundland and moved to Vancouver on the prompting of a former colleague, but it has been hard getting a job. The teacher credential office won't accept my outer provincial license, so I have had to sic the union on them. I have an interview with an online medical interpretation outfit tomorrow, low pay but any port in a storm and I get to stay home with sonny, whose autism is skyrocketing from the stress. I interviewed at 2 unis but one already denied me. Finger's crossed for the last place
The Ugly - The people who invited us out here to stay and work on a start up kicked us out of the house January 2nd because sonny was sick at night and made noise because his ears hurt. We've been floating around in Air BNBs for 2 weeks now, trying to save money (impossible) while job hunting. At least we have a car.
I have never been this close to homelessness. Especially not with a child.
I've started a Go Fund Me, so if you can help out please do. Link is HERE.
And how has your 2025 gone?
Taking a break here boss!
Not going to waste these gorgeous waning days of summer.
Get out there and enjoy!
Hi all readers out there!
This is a real life PSA message, and I'll be talking about my personal experiences, so feel free to skip if you are here just for gaming goodness.
Alright, let's go.
I am 53. And like a lot of guys my age, I have spent decades supporting others and neglecting myself.
I spent those decades tanking through physical ailments and mental stressors. And I paid the price for it.
In 2011 I started a PhD in Japan. My life was pretty mellow before that, but my slack job teaching ESL at a nice uni allowed me the leeway to start my final degree on the side.
Then, in 2013, my son was born.
In 2014 my 5 year contract ended I had to change from my supportive workplace to a hotbed of workplace harassment and a 5 hour daily commute.
On top of which my wife was suffering post partum depression.
The stressors kept piling up. And I kept working like a beast.
I would wake at 6, train to my hellish workplace, teach a few hours, then return. In the crowded trains winding between Kyoto & Osaka, I would sleep or more likely do research and write my thesis on my tablet. I estimate about 80% of it was written in trains. Once a week I would also go to my seminar and fight over my ideas for the thesis in French. Stumbling home in the dark, my wife would basically throw our insomniac son at me. I would bathe him, then carry him around the neighborhood talking and singing to him until he fell asleep 1-3 hours later. Then I would crawl into my room and research for a few hours until I slept or passed out.
Then my supervisor began harassing me. I was incensed, began counter harassing him, went to a lawyer, and fought my way out of that dark workplace with a settlement while at the same time finishing off my thesis, a monumental effort most people tackle while single and not working.
In 2016 I graduated with a PhD in Global society studies, and moved to a supportive workplace an hour closer to home. The wife and I were slowly drifting apart, and I was unimpressed to have finished a PhD but still be stuck working as an ESL instructor.
Then, in 2018 I snagged a prof position on a beautiful island in Kobe Bay. It was a small but supportive university with interesting content classes. I was head of the seminar program, I loved my office with its view of the bay and palm tree lined boardwalk.
For an instant, I was happy. I travelled for research once a year, hitting Germany, Spain, and the US.
Then in 2019 we learned our beautiful, smart and sweet boy was autistic with ADHD. I didn't care, I love him. There was an American style autism center in front of my uni and two international schools he could commute to on a flexible schedule. The island also had ridiculously cheap condos, so I suggested we move there to reduce my commute and raise sonny in a supportive environment.
My wife refused. All her Japanese wife friends and their foreign husbands asked us why not.
There was no answer. I couldn't talk with her without a major eruption. At the same time she had insisted on starting an MEd, so I kept on commuting and sacrificing for family. I watched sonny more and more, especially when his ma went on internships to Vietnam and Australia. At those times when it was just he and I, we were incredibly happy.
Leo started elementary school in 2020, just as Covid exploded on the world. My wife kicked me out in February, and I spent days in a hotel filled with Covid patients when there was yet no vaccine in sight.
That is when I knew we were done. I limped on working, then sonny became violent as he was left behind and neglected at school, then sent for long hours to Japanese play schools everyday.
I wondered, how can I get my beautiful boy back?
In 2021 I began volunteer teaching at my son's school three days a week before heading off to work. Many Japanese teachers were nice people but untrained in adaptive methods, so I modelled the special ed techniques I had learned during my BEd in Canada. I also fought to let my son stay home and away from crappy for-profit play centers that exist to allow parents to work work work.
If you ask my son now, the only good memories he has of school in Japan was when I was there. I helped him through 2021 and 2022, then in November that year he came home and said, "I quit school. I'm not going back."
His mother and I agreed. We would let him recuperate at home and help him study when we could.
She finished her MEd and started teaching at a university in Kyoto. That summer she turned to me and said, "I am not doing anything for him anymore. Cooking, cleaning, YOU have to do it all."
I said, "OK. I'm taking him back to Canada then."
Once again I had to go to lawyers and fight an abusive person with power over me in Japan. But she wasn't physically or mentally able to handle our boy. She finally agreed I would have custody. On the day I was awarded tenure at work, I quit. My colleagues were sad, but understood.
On March 10, 2023, sonny and I got a plane from Tokyo to Vancouver, then slowly made our way back to the east coast visiting friends and relatives across the country. And I have my smiling boy back.
Leo loves Newfoundland. To him, it is a fairyland where he is accepted, left alone, and the cooler weather suits him. I had never intended to live back here, but I am happy to save my son. He entered a good school in town, and was loved by teachers and students alike.
In 2023 we lived for 5 stressful months at my family house, with relatives who couldn't accept my son's disabilities and meltdowns. I got my DELF B2 French certificate, signed up to teach, found us a car, a house to rent, and a fulltime job. No easy tasks in a land that had grown dysfunctional in my absence. I exercised everyday to get back in shape, and cooked healthy Japanese food for sonny and myself. Work was hard as Canadian junior high schools had gone from peaceful spaces of learning to overcrowded and understaffed diploma factories with endless problems. I had initially thought to take it easy and substitute the first year, but caved into family pressure to get a fulltime job.
This was a mistake, and I was exhausted and rundown every day. Yet I pressed on for sonny's sake.
I also reconnected with a friend from my undergrad days. She was still beautiful, a fellow PhD and single parent of a special child. We fell in love, and I seriously thought of spending my life with her in my hometown, a celtic redhead goddess at my side. I loved being at her house or with her family, and put up with her need to socialize in bars downtown every week.
On the first day back to work in January 2024, life fell apart. Again.
At school, students were out of control after the holiday, and I lost my cool and yelled at some to STFU. I was suspended, and the district officials who interviewed me were accusatory and aggressive. In February I had panic attacks, trouble breathing and teary eyes. I reached out for my lover.
And she left me. Scott Galloway says men usually get left when they have mental or financial crises, but always when they have both. And so it went with me.
NB I don't blame her or hate her. She has her own history of trauma, and I was needy when she wanted space. It might have happened eventually even without a crisis due to our opposing attachment styles, but came as another huge shock to me. Especially when her friends mocked and badgered me when I reached out to ask her for another chance.
I spent spring in a depressive state, living only for sonny's happiness. I took counselling through my Employee Assistance Program, which had ballooned in response to the burnout factories schools had become.
Then in April, sonny quit school again. He had been doing so well back at Canadian school, even starting to make friends. I realized he had tried so hard to please me and masked his feelings so long, I accepted his decision. I had begun substitute teaching at good schools nearby, and began enjoying my time at work again. I realized this is what I should have done from the beginning. But it was too late, and I was alone again.
Because real life is a slow, boring, depressing slog to get anything done.
Even getting gamers together is a chore these days.
Spending time with sonny, walking under the sun on a beautiful shore, is what really keeps me happy these days.
Finding a job is a slog.
Publishing the book is a slog.
Getting over trauma is a slog.
The old Irish knew life when they gave us the word slog.
Which is why you need to slow down, put your ear to the earth, let flowers dance before your eyes, and hold your child's hand all the more.
Hope you're all taking time out from the slog.
