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I work as a freelance author, so I have written and contributed to quite a lot of books. Most of my work is for role-playing games, although I have also published a work of academic philosophy. I've not done any philosophy recently; the publishers of philosophy assume that you are being paid by a university, and thus expect you to give them your work for nothing, while the publishers of role-playing games actually pay the authors.
Admittedly, role-playing games are not a huge market, and do not pay particularly well, so I'd be grateful if you used the Amazon links on these pages to buy my books. That way, I get a bit of money back from Amazon.
The books I've written are split between a number of sub-pages, based on the game line for which they were written. I've written a bit about my thoughts about the book to go with each one, rather than sales-speak.
Ars Magica is the role-playing game of medieval magic; wizards in a world very similar to the way medieval people believed the world to be. It is my favourite role-playing game, and the game for my first published writing (a magazine article). I am currently the Line Editor for it, which means I'm in charge of the editorial side of publishing it. This means that I won't be writing very much for it for a while; I'm too busy looking after the people who are writing for it. Besides, if I wrote for it now, I'd have to edit myself, and as everyone knows, that's a really bad idea.
The d20 system is the game engine for the new edition of Dungeons and Dragons, the oldest roleplaying game of them all. The new edition is a big improvement on previous versions, but the most revolutionary thing was the Open Gaming Licence, which allowed other companies to legally produce products that used the same system. As, for a few years, this was the biggest thing in roleplaying, I wrote a few of them.
I have also written a small amount for the actual Dungeons and Dragons line.
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay is a Grim World of Perilous Adventure. It's also one of the few really successful roleplaying games that was originally produced by a British company. It is, therefore, somewhat ironic that, by the time I got to write for it, design was being handled by an American company. Oh, and I was living in Japan.
WitchCraft
WitchCraft is a game of modern magic. It isn't particularly large or popular, but I think it has a number of nice features. But then, I've written for it, so I would.
The World of Darkness is White Wolf's world of modern horror. It consists of a number of linked games, one based around ordinary humans, and the others based around one type of supernatural denizen of the World of Darkness.
I have a PhD in philosophy from the University of Cambridge. This has almost no relevance to almost all the books I write. I would really like to write more philosophy but, as mentioned above, the publishers don't pay you for doing so. And it takes a really long time to write a philosophy book.
Copyright David Chart 2002-7.