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Everlasting, Neverending Game Night

by Chrys Sellers, she/they

🌈🚀 Reliable wonder engine. I make narrative role-playing games that imagine a weirder, queerer, more connected world.

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Featured Post

densely packed

Hi Reader, Welcome! Please, come in, make yourself at home. On the table, next to some humble, xeroxed character sheets, is a tiny ceramic pot holding a lush orchid. I've been thinking about the densely packed experience lately. Like movies. Even though they're today's prestige storytelling format, even a great movie is just two hours (okay, two and a half) of light and sound. But in that time, it takes you on a rollercoaster. When it drops you off at the end, you feel richer—not twenty...

3 days ago • 2 min read
drawing of a sheet cake, half missing. The cake reads "Def Goo."

Hi Reader, Welcome! Please, come in. Make yourself comfortable. On the table, we have peonies and sheet cake. I'm celebrating (re)launching the Defy the Gods Kickstarter! Sorry I already ate half the cake. I lost control at 2 a.m. after I uploaded the last assets to the Kickstarter campaign. (If you're sick of hearing about Defy the Gods—or you're just mad about the cake—click here. I haven't tried it before, but my email service should take you off the list.) To make it up to you about the...

9 days ago • 1 min read
wizard in a skullcap and a dark room using a crystal prism to refract a ray of sunlight into a rainbow

Hi Reader, Welcome! Please, come in. I've put some pink daylilies in a vase for Pride month. Daylilies—pretty, but impossible to kill. We're all saying "Happy Pride!" with extra daylily-determination this year. It's a happy Pride, but with grit. Before it was a party, Pride was a protest. sorcerer discovering the occult properties of the rainbow And 5,000 years before that, in a land you build at the table, it was a battlecry against the gods! If you can't tell, I'm pumped to be re-launching...

16 days ago • 2 min read
Defy the Gods: Smoldering Queer Sword and Sorcery

Hi Reader, Welcome to my regular newsletter! It's a cheery place where we can talk about games and good vibes. I land in your inbox somewhere between once a week and once a month. Please, come in. Sit down. I've put a bunch of garden stars-of-Bethlehem in a bowl of cold water. There's a bowl of dice next to them. Don't put your hand in the wrong one! Tuesday, June 10th is my target date to relaunch Defy the Gods on Kickstarter. That gives us two weeks. With that ramping up, I'm getting into...

22 days ago • 2 min read
A mockup of the Defy the Gods book, not real yet but tantalizingly realistic.

Hi Reader, Welcome! It's good to see you again. Please, sit down. All the irises are in bloom, so I've put a few in a cut-glass vase. Spring is in its full glory. It's on a beautiful day like today that I had to cancel the original Defy the Gods Kickstarter. So close you can taste it It just wasn't going to hit its goal. Not the way I'd set it up. Valiant backers (like you) kept pledging, even as it became clear it wasn't going to clear the tree-line. I admit it, I got cocky. My raccoon...

about 1 month ago • 1 min read
A woman stands in a room bathed in golden light, with her hand on the hilt of her sword. Her face is frozen in rage.

Hi Reader, Welcome! Please, come in. Make yourself comfortable. On the table, I've put a pint glass with bugleweed and butterweed blooms. They'll take over your garden if you don't get them out—especially the butterweed. But they're cheery for all that. As the Defy the Gods Kickstarter continues, life here has returned to normal. Sort of. There's a rhythm. I'm posting to social media every day about Defy the Gods, which is its own kind of discipline/fun. I get to share details from the...

about 1 month ago • 1 min read
mockup of the special edition of Defy the Gods, showing two figures embracing and surrounded by gold foil.

Hi Reader, It's good to see you again. Please, sit down—let me move these stacks of paper. And these. I'll put them—somewhere. On the sofa. As you can see, this place has been a hive of activity since the Kickstarter launched on Tuesday. I meant to get together with you before now, but there's just been so much to do. Oh hey, didn't I tell you? The Kickstarter is live! If you haven't already, please go check it out—including all the art I'm showing off there. Yesterday, Jay Dragon released a...

about 2 months ago • 1 min read

Hi Reader, Lovely to see you. Please, come in, sit down. On the table, I have a terracotta vase filled with chamomile flowers, sacred to Inanna, and Mesopotamian irises. The land of Gilgamesh has taken over the game table, as you can see. Because the Kickstarter for Defy the Gods launches on Tuesday! If you haven't yet signed up to follow the campaign, please do at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hecticelectron/defy-the-gods. Then come back. This book got a lot more personal than I...

about 2 months ago • 1 min read

Hi Reader, Welcome! Please, come in. Let me take your raincoat. And your umbrella, and oh the galoshes. The horrors really are pouring down out there, huh? On the table, I put some sunny daffodils in a clay pitcher. I couldn’t cut the crocuses, spring’s tiny cheerleaders. But these daffs were fair game. My partner, M, is away this weekend, so I've been walking Udo in the mornings, and this morning, it was raining. Water streamed down the streets and gutters, but it wasn’t cold. It felt nice...

2 months ago • 1 min read

Hi Reader, How are you? Please, come in. Have a seat. I'll take your raincoat. The weather's been all over the place lately. These innocuous-looking white flowers on the table are bloodroot. Don't break the stems—the sap is poisonous. What a sword & sorcery flower. Last week, I went to GAMA Expo as a Horizons Fellow. "GAMA" is the Game Manufacturers' Association, and "GAMA Expo" is a professional conference of retailers, publishers, and distributors. The Horizons Fellowship is part of GAMA's...

3 months ago • 1 min read