The day job is developing a new rocket engine.

The home business making art and 3D prints is not progressing too well.

The ducks are happy and mostly healthy.

The honeybee hives, Louise and Thelma, are building up strength.

Chip got a lot of screenplays written during World Anvil’s challenge. Soon he hopes to animate his stories and publish them online.

Storium games I’m writing include:

Police Squaad: Recipe for the Prosecution
https://storium.com/game/police-squaad-recipe-for-the-prosecution/green-room

Love. Craft. Dream. Quest
https://storium.com/game/love-craft-dream-quest/green-room

Desperate Hedgewitches: Suburban Magick
https://storium.com/game/desperate-hedgewitches-suburban-magick/green-room

U.F.O. I.D.’ed
https://storium.com/game/ufo-ided/green-room

I prefer games in which each player posts once a week, but once a month is OK. I tend to add more action, humor, and horror than most players who storium with me. I enjoy uncovering my characters’ vulnerabilities and embarrassments as much as their goals and triumphs. My mind naturally adds fine details to each scene I write, so I like to have a well-defined degree of freedom to add color and flare beyond what the narrator already invented.

I prefer adult themes for adult characters, but I can enjoy light stories of adventure and the power of friendship if the genre requires it.

I don’t mind other people writing for my characters. If I can’t collaborate (in a Google Doc, etc.) and need to interact with another player’s character, then I always read everything that character has said and done so far and try to extrapolate what would be in-character.

I love the first rule of improv-comedy: Always try to say, “Yes, and…” I accept what other players have written and expand on it. On the other hand, I have seen enough comic books and soap operas and sequels to see how easy it is to ret-con any event. Real people often say or do something they regret immediately. It happens every day. But, I am perfectly willing to keep my hands entirely off of other people’s characters even though that detracts from the story and makes the reader think there is no teamwork happening.

I like plot twists and having a character misunderstand what they are seeing sometimes. In a horror story, I recently showed my character apparently get killed and followed up from another viewing angle where it could be seen that he was pushed away to safety.

I love to foreshadow big events several posts in advance and pick up loose ends that might otherwise have been forgotten. I think it keeps the reader engaged if the characters remember what has happened in the past and if the puzzle pieces of the characters’ successes and failures are plainly seen when one reads the story a second time.

I prefer a partially-omniscient narrator who only explains what thoughts are in the head of one character each post, not all characters all the time. I believe there is a proper time to have a character verbally say what is happening far away and a proper time to show instead of tell. I like characters who are skeptical until they see proof.

Some of Chip’s Storium roleplaying highlights include:

Braam de Klerk, the straatveger handyman plagued by his inferiority complex, in Scrapjack: A Knack for Trouble
https://storium.com/game/scrapjack-a-knack-for-trouble/chapter-1/scene-1

Spencer Elliott, the flamboyant 1930’s Broadway musical producer with fragile sanity, in Kingsport by Night
https://storium.com/game/kingsport-by-night--2/chapter-1/scene-1

Billy, the friendly humble goat boy, whose long-winded stories could bore Freddy Krueger to sleep, in Shifting Ground
https://storium.com/game/shifting-ground/act-1/scene-1

None

• Chester Koziolski in Innsmouth: After the Shadow
• Braam de Klerk in Scrapjack: A Knack for Trouble

• Redwood in Golems and Trolls.
• Spencer Elliott in Kingsport by Night