Portfolio

My freeform live-action role-playing game The Secret Lives of Junk(kin) Drawers, or, Why Marie Kondo Does(n’t) Spork Joy earned an Honorable Mention in the 2023 Golden Cobra Challenge. The Golden Cobra Challenge is a beloved and community-organized “friendly contest open to anyone interested in writing and playing freeform games.” According to the 2023 judges:

We simply had to recognize this cute, prosocial game that actually prompts you to clean out your junk drawers. Beautifully framed, written, and conceived, The Secret Lives of Junk(kin) Drawers, or Why Marie Kondo does(n’t) Spork Joy will help you sort your house – and your feelings – while fostering a reflection on what we keep and what we forget.

In 2022, “Why Are the Digital Humanities So Straight?” was selected to be part of the Electronic Literature Organization’s Electronic Literature Collection Volume 4, which includes a playthrough video, code file, and directions for play. The editorial statement reads:

Why are the Digital Humanities So Straight? is an academic essay-as-parser game, setting the reader on a course to unlock secrets about Alan Turing, Ada Lovelace and Purna Jackson, a fictional character from Techland’s 2001 Dead Island games. As a mash-up of fiction/non-fiction that explores the “technonormativity of code”, this work offers a special blend of scholarly critical analysis by playing a text-based game in BASIC.

Tellings is a point-based, skills-based tabletop RPG, featuring a robust character creation, 100+ skills, 75+ character strengths and weaknesses, a distinct magic and prayer system, and unique fluid-time combat mechanics. The rulebook is 431-pages and provides a robust system that can be adapted to a game runner’s desired world. I started working on Tellings in the late 1990s, and the current version is the 25th Anniversary edition, which is available via Amazon. A Tellings worldbook is currently in development.

Currently in development is Archaea: Bane, what I describe as a semi-autopoetic, cooperative card game based in the world of Archaea, my live-action role-playing system. The players must work together to destroy a “manifestation” of the Bane (represented by a separate deck, from which it “draws” and self-runs) before it grows too powerful. Here is my initial thoughts and prototype of the game; here is an update on the cards design.

I wrote the keyword “Queer” for the Modern Language Association’s Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: Concepts, Models, and Experiments edited by Rebecca Frost Davis, Matthew Gold, Katherine D. Harris, and Jentery Sayers. Published March 2021. Peer reviewed. https://digitalpedagogy.hcommons.org/keyword/Queer.

“Cards Against Humanity is __________” started as a digital presentation for the Queerness and Games Conference, University of California, Berkeley, October 2014. The essay version was published at First Person Scholar, March 2015.

“Gaming as Writing, Or, World of Warcraft as World of Wordcraft” is a multimodal essay published in August/September 2008 for Computers and Composition Online‘s special issue on “Reading Games: Composition, Literacy, and Video Gaming.”  Edited by Richard Colby and Rebekah Shultz Colby.

Critical Gaming Project @ University of Washington
Organizer, Contributor, Instructor, 2007-2012.

e.g., the UW’s Online Journal of 100-Level Writing
Editor, Contributor, Webmaster, Expository Writing Program, Autumn 2007-2012.

English Graduate Student Organization
Contributor and Webmaster, 2007-2012.