The keeper of the Sanctum
A lifetime of play.
A habit of curiosity.
Withered Sanctum brings together the interests that have stayed with me: tabletop role-playing, video games, media, popular culture, and the study of the people who create them.
The study is open.A personal legacy
Returning to the first stone.
When I was fifteen, I wrote and self-published Pyramid, my own tabletop role-playing game. At fifty-nine, I want to preserve that original and build a modern update. The years between those two projects are part of what Withered Sanctum is here to hold.
I have watched tabletop role-playing and video games evolve from their early years. That long perspective informs how I look at games, their industries, and the stories we continue to tell through them.
My academic interests in sociology, anthropology, and archaeology bring another set of questions to the table. What beliefs sit inside a game’s rules? Which myths survive in a new setting? How do history and culture shape the worlds we imagine?
One home, several paths
What you’ll find here.
The Sanctum is a home for legacy projects and continuing work: original adventures, the return of Pyramid, and writing that places games and media in their wider human context.