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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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Four illustrations from the book
Featured Post

the book takes flight

Hi Reader, Welcome! Please, come in. There's still a few patches of snow on the ground—winter coming in fits and starts. How are you? Me? A weight is off my shoulders—Defy the Gods is at the printer. You can read more about it in the breathless Kickstarter update I sent out yesterday. In fairness, I was feeling breathless. Or like I was just starting to exhale. The printer is reviewing the files. They'll send a report by the end of the week. I'm gonna pay half the print cost soon, with an...

about 11 hours ago • 3 min read
Art for Defy the Gods: scorpion demon, crab city, civic festival, and a thief in the marketplace.

Hi Reader, Welcome! Please come in. It's rainy and blowy outside, and someone said we could get snow. But it's toasty in here. On the table, we have a pile of decorative gourds. I marked numbers on them with a Sharpie so you can roll them like dice. After months of frenzied work on Defy the Gods, I'm suddenly left with nothing to do. The text is complete, the book is laid out. We're waiting on the index and the last four pieces of art—out of 75! Sometime in the next 10 days, we'll submit the...

9 days ago • 1 min read
sketch of four cards with a human figure or sword strikes, divided into nine grid squares. Defy the Gods looms faintly underneath.

Hi Reader, Welcome! Please come in, sit down. Have some cold fizzy water—it's way too hot out there. On the table are echinacea blooms—they're back! Since the Defy the Gods Kickstarter wrapped, I've been keeping a low profile. Writing the text, fixing things, finishing sections that were rough. I mean, that's what I'm doing now. At first, I just took the weekend off. Went to a movie. I found myself working on an old card game idea—a fast-paced sword duel played in real time instead of turns....

4 months ago • 1 min read
Defy the Gods, Smoldering Queer Sword and Sorcery, with a mockup of the book and a scene in the Underworld

Hi Reader, What began as a silent shaking in the earth has grown to thunderous, resounding hoofbeats. The armies of Doom approach. Time to draw steel. That is—the Defy the Gods Kickstarter ends on Thursday! If you haven't read my emails for the last year, or I just didn't tell you, Defy the Gods is a queer sword & sorcery tabletop role-playing game set in fantasy ancient Mesopotamia—a game full of daring adventure, messy romance, and cursed power. It's a game where a single sword stroke or...

4 months ago • 1 min read
colored pencil drawing of a silver mirror showing a face, surrounded by darkness and flames

Hi Reader, It's good to see you. Please, have a seat. Have some iced tea. On the table is a little succulent called, I shit you not, goblin fingers. Other name, for real: Gollum jade. It's the most tabletop role-playing game plant I've ever met. The Defy the Gods Kickstarter ends on Thursday. It's been a roller coaster. In these last four days, I need to tell as many people as possible about it. Expect a few more emails from me this week. If you don't want to get them, you can opt out here....

5 months ago • 2 min read

Hi Reader, Welcome! Please, come in. Sit down. We've got some cold fizzy water and some pizza from this place up the road. On the table and chairs there's an oiled bronze sword, a boiled leather shield, a skeleton key mottled in verdigris ... let me get all that out of the way. There. As you can tell by all the detritus—We're just a week and a half away from the end of the Defy the Gods Kickstarter! So far, we've unlocked an embroidered patch, a spot-gloss upgrade for the standard edition, a...

5 months ago • 1 min read

Hi Reader, Whew! Please come in, out of that gale. Here at the table, there's a tranquil bunch of violets and some herbal tea. Those winds are Origins Game Fair blowing through Columbus like a hurricane. Also—related—Defy the Gods blowing past its second stretch goal. This week has bowled me over. I sold out of all my raccoon dice and enamel pins. I sold over fifty Quick Starts for Defy the Gods. Several people also backed the Kickstarter right there at the booth. Since I don't have a...

5 months ago • 1 min read

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...

5 months 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...

5 months 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...

6 months ago • 2 min read