Working on Rites of the Blood while taking a break at our local LARP. Because I don’t have enough Vampire around me.

Spec Ops: The Line

It’s been a while, so let me recap: “What I Learned” essays are not game reviews in the traditional sense. Rather, I talk about what I learned as a designer from playing the game in question. Sometimes I learn awesome things from terrible games, and sometimes games I love don’t actually give me any new insights.

This past weekend, I played Spec Ops: The Line….

Wait, before I start. This essay will not just “contain spoilers” as we mere mortals understand it — I will ruin the entire game for you. I will spoil this game like five-month old milk. Here be spoilers. Spoiler alert. Seriously, I’m going to talk about the end of this fucking game, a lot. If you haven’t played it, just know that it is not a typical shooter, and the narrative is worth the six or so hours it’ll take to get through it. Come back when you’re done. I’ll be here.

(Oh, and avoid the comments, too. Spoilers there as well, most likely.)

Okay. That was fucked up, wasn’t it?

There’s actually been a lot of ink spilled about Spec Ops: The Line . There has been discussion about how it’s a deconstruction of the shooter genre, about how it’s an elegant send-up of the fossilized and jingoistic tropes of modern FPS games, and blah blah blah. Don’t get me wrong, it’s all good stuff, but it’s not what I’m interested in as a designer.

For purposes of discussion, the key relevant point is that the protagonist and player avatar, Captain Walker, is actually insane, and much of what the game goes into is in his mind. In fact, the game itself is an unreliable narrator. This is not the first time a game has lied to me, but this is the first time I was really blown away by it. This isn’t a case of the game just saying “fuck you” and crossing its arms, but rather the game was giving me bad information that looked like good information. What’s worse, I didn’t realize the information was bad until about halfway through. The final chapter of the game (which I did see it coming), did put much of the game into perspective. Decisions I wasn’t realizing I was making suddenly took on a greater significance.

While it was ham-fisted at times, the idea is captivating. We rely on honest, “real” information from our games so much that when it lies to us, it comes as a real betrayal. But The Line is more clever and subtle than that. A lot of little decisions really sells this twist for me, and they add up to some fascinating learning points to consider as a designer.

• Decisions were not parceled out. That is, there wasn’t any place where the decision was spelled out in giant letters with “Press A for Yes or B for No.” They were all integrated into the gameplay, making them very natural. Once, I even accidentally made a decision by slipping and killing an ally. The moral decisions weren’t in neat little gameplay airlocks, and as a result everything felt much more real and personal.
• Decisions were not harped on. There wasn’t really a lot of end-game “This is all because you did X or Y.” Instead, it was a growing, building sensation, a realization that I did some horrible things in the name of war (and gameplay). The game didn’t tell me I was a bad person; rather, it gave me some time to come to that conclusion myself. The end where I get the choice to shoot Walker (i.e., myself) or the hallucination of Konrad allowed me to decide my own fate. The game doesn’t judge me, but it does give me the opportunity to judge myself.
• Decisions were tied to gameplay mechanics. All of this was tied to the core design: a modern military shooter. A good example of this is picking up ammo. If you injure but not kill an enemy, he doesn’t drop his ammo. Ammo is in just short enough supply that you probably need it. If you push a button near the dying enemy, you beat him to death and take his ammo. At first, it’s just a bit of flourish, but over time it gets more and more brutal, and I found myself more and more looking for alternatives. (And of course, I was needing more and more ammo, so I had to keep killing.) The more I played the game, the more the game lied to me, telling me I was a hero while simultaneously proving I wasn’t.

The game has flaws — it’s a mediocre shooter, it has awkward controls (tying the sprint button and the cover button to the same key was irritating, for example), and the story is a bit hard to follow in parts. But the acting, writing, and visuals, combined with a compelling premise and a devotion to tying it all to gameplay, is really astounding. I finished the game 48 hours ago, and I’m still thinking about it. It’s the first shooter since Bioshock that I’m seriously considering installing for another playthrough down the line.

The idea of an unreliable narrator in video games is still one fraught with peril (yes, I’m still bitter, The Path), but Spec Ops: The Line shows that video games are maturing to the point where we can successfully (if inelegantly) subvert its own tropes to good effect.

Hard Times Cover

Another peer review of one of Matt Forbeck’s 12 for 12 trilogies. This time, it’s “Shotguns & Sorcery,” Matt’s noir-esque fantasy world. As always, full disclosure: I’ve traded drinks and emails with Matt, and I was a backer for the Kickstarter to fund these. Also, like his last trilogy, while the first book stands largely on its own, the three books are pretty heavily connected, so I’ll review them as a collection.

The main character is Max Gibson, a retired adventurer/mage who is down on his luck. He and his former group of treasure hunters landed the big score and called it quits ten years ago. Since then, he’s lost touch with most of his friends, and broken it off with the love of his life. And that’s all before he’s called in to investigate the murder of the entire family of one of his best friends.

The entire setup is “Chandler meets Tolkien,” and I was in love with the premise of a hard-bitten investigator in a fantasy noir world. And the first book is a lot like that. But then, around book two, the story starts to slide into a more traditional fantasy tale, and by the time you’re into End Times in Dragon City, it’s a full-on fantasy adventure.

At first, this bugged me. I am a fan of noir, even if it’s hazily defined, and I felt like I wasn’t getting what I wanted. And yet, the series’ tone reminded me a fair bit of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files novels which also use noir detective trappings to tell a more traditional fantasy tale (albeit a modern fantasy one in Butcher’s case). Once I wrapped my head around the fact that Matt was using noir as set dressing and not as a plot structure, I got over my concerns and enjoyed the mad race to the end of everything. Plus, Matt does something with his fantasy that I don’t see much these days — he keeps it concise, and that gets a lot of points with me in these days of 800-page doorstops.

You can get all three books from Matt’s site, including a free short story if you’re not sure about the tone.

In March, I was struggling with some lingering mental baggage. Since my uncle’s death last year, I’ve had an increasingly weird relationship with alcohol: primarily, that part of me felt like I shouldn’t be okay with it, but I still was. I haven’t overindulged in over a year, and the couple of times someone tried to pressure me into doing so I reacted… poorly. A few conversations caused me to realize what was bothering me — in a family of alcoholics, how could I honestly say I wasn’t one?

So I took five weeks off. I didn’t tell anyone, because I didn’t want people to react differently around me — this is about learning something about myself. I made it long enough to cover a convention and a LARP (usually times when I drink), as well as a couple of work milestones (which are often celebrated with alcohol).

The result? Aside from a couple of idle moments when I thought “A beer might be nice,” I barely noticed the time. In fact, originally I was only going to do it for four weeks, but I extended it to five half-way through because I wanted to see if I could. Yesterday, I had one beer while I was playing video games.

It may seem ludicrous, but this was something I needed to know. I had to prove to myself that when I say alcohol is a part of my life and I consume it in moderation, that I really meant that and wasn’t trying to fool myself. There are also health benefits (I actually got the idea from some coworkers who often take a month off from alcohol to cleanse their systems), and that tied into my decision, but really this was more for my mental health.

Elementary Title Card

At 221b Con, I was on a panel to discuss Elementary, and a few things came out of that discussion that tie into my original post on the topic. So, consider this an addendum.

• The show is very much based in New York. Rather than being a general analog of London, the show veers into being explicitly a show that is part of the culture of New York. Again, I think this ties into the heart of the original Canon: Holmes was originally a creature of London, and now he is a creature of New York. Being originally British, this allows other characters (such as Gregson) to act as “native guide,” but New York is very much a character in this show.
• It was pointed out that CBS has a long history of these kinds of character-driven shows masquerading as procedurals. I was completely unaware: the only remotely similar show I followed was Castle, and I got bored with it after a season and a half, and that’s on ABC anyhow. But it does explain why the character dynamics are interesting, even if the actual mysteries are a little soggy.
• A number of fans of Elementary said similar things: Sherlock is an amazing show, but Elementary is something different. And time and again, they mentioned that Elementary felt “real.” Sherlock is, to quote one attendee, “a boy’s adventure,” whereas Elementary feels like it’s about real people. I feel that’s slight hyperbole, but the core point stands: Sherlock is about the adventure, whereas Elementary is about the relationships. A lot of this, I feel, stems from the respective formats: deep characterization is hard in three 90-minute episodes, and the movie-length format does play well to broader, more epic tales. A 24-episode formula structure, however, means that the only thing tying the episodes together are the characters, so the focus on them is natural and positive.
• I won’t give any spoilers, but I am very interested to see where they go with Miss Hudson. (Edit: Spoilers will appear in the comments below, though!)

Matt Forbeck’s Brave New World

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, but I have a few backlogged. For those new to my blog, “Peer Reviews” are reviews of products that friends of mine have worked on, because I am lucky to have a lot of talented friends. As usual for my Peer Reviews, full disclosure: I have shared drinks and emails with Matt Forbeck in the past. I purchased these books with my own money.

Matt Forbeck’s Brave New World (so called to avoid confusion with any other properties entitled “Brave New World” and not at all due to Matt’s ego) is a trilogy of superhero novels based on a roleplaying game Matt developed back in the late 90s. I actually have no prior experience with the game, so I came into them cold. While the first novel stands relatively well on its own, the story really takes place across all three books, so I’ll be reviewing them as a unit (collectively “the story”).

The books are set in 1999, in a dystopian world where the fight between super-powered humans led to the destruction of Chicago and the imposition of a police state. Each chapter is a first-person perspective for a different character, but the most common character is Patriot, a formerly-loved American hero who is now fighting against the ongoing tyranny of President Kennedy (yes, THAT President Kennedy). From there we follow the struggles of a variety of characters as the political and personal ambitions of a variety of character conflict over the course of three novels.

I admit I have a soft spot for morally-gray superhero stories, and this one really delivers that. No character is completely good or completely bad, and even a couple of the “villains” in the story get their own spotlight chapters. Some of the weirder parts of the setting (such as why President Kennedy is still around after 1963) are explained, but Matt doesn’t succumb to artificially accelerating the timeline — as weird as it seems, 1999 was fourteen years ago, and small things like the lack of cellphones and the relatively crude nature of the Internet are reflected in the story.

On the other hand, I admit I struggled with the shifting first-person format. To cite a common example, George R. R. Martin had a similar format in his “Song of Ice and Fire” series, but those chapters are all third-person (even if they are third-person close). It’s a subtle difference, but a noteworthy one — if I skimmed over the name at the start of the chapter, I sometimes had to struggle to remember whose head I was in at the moment. Third-person narration is handy because it repeats the character’s name, so you don’t lose track. However, Matt is clever enough to seed other cues around and repeat important information if it’s been a few chapters, so it wasn’t as much of a problem as it could have been. However, I could envision some readers being turned off by the format.

Also, at times I felt the story could have explored some of the darkness of the setting a little more, but I think this is more an indication of Matt’s style than a particular failing — Matt generally writes more upbeat stuff than I do. That doesn’t mean that this story doesn’t explore some dark corners of the human psyche, but it does mean that it is still, at heart, a superhero story. It reminded me a lot of the Civil War arc that Marvel did — the characters have a lot of conflict, but things do resolve to a relative status quo at the end.

But these are very minor quibbles. The novels are short and well-paced, and I tore through them all quickly. They are well worth it. You can get them over at Matt’s website, or via DriveThruFiction.com.

221b Con Badge

Last weekend I went to 221b Con, a first-year Sherlock Holmes convention in the Atlanta area. It was my first Sherlock Holmes-only convention, and the first one where I didn’t know a single person there (aside from a nodding acquaintance with one of the organizers through a mutual friend). I was signed up to be on four different panels. And I was a little terrified of the prospect.

It turned out to be a fantastic experience.

Unsurprisingly, the con was just as much about BBC Sherlock as it was about the original canon. What was interesting was that there was already a strong Elementary presence, and indeed even some more remote pastiches such as The Great Mouse Detective had a following there. Further, there wasn’t much siloing of the subfandoms — time and again I would hear of old Sherlockians watching Elementary or Sherlock fans rabidly devouring the original canon. One of my favorite moments was a cosplayer of Sherlock Irene Adler dominating a cosplayer of Elementary Sherlock for a picture. It was a sincere love of all versions of the Great Detective, which I immensely enjoyed.

Secondly, for a first-year convention, it was incredibly well-run. There were about a couple hundred attendees (based on my casual estimates from when most of the con was in one room) “639 people” according to the staff of 221b Con, but I didn’t notice any significant outages. Each panel room had a list of all of the events scheduled there, as well as who was on the panel, and someone went to every panel room to end the event five minutes early. Getting my badge was immensely fast, and everyone was polite and helpful.

Thirdly, the conversations were genuinely interesting. Naturally there were a couple of bad apples (because people are people), but overall I found each of the conversations to be worthwhile, and more than once I was delighted to find someone who knew more on a topic than I did. It was great to be able to make cracks like “Watson only had one wife, damn it!” and hear a room respond with laughter.

Fourthly, I got unexpected work and free books out of it, as well as some nice conversations with fellow authors. I also got recognized by at least two people for my White Wolf work (although one told me about it later), which was a bit of a surprise, but a pleasant one.

What was odd for me, however, was walking into someone else’s community.

I didn’t realize until very near the end of the convention was that a large percentage of the attendees were part of a Tumblr Holmes community with a strong slant towards cosplay. It gave me a unique opportunity to see a tight, integrated community from the outside. A group heavily slanted towards women coming from a wide variety of states and dressing in costume to share inside jokes and debate arcane minutiae is eerily close to the dynamics of the White Wolf LARP community. Even the stories of room parties on Friday and Saturday night sounded a lot like what I’ve experienced.

I can’t say I’ve learned much from the outside observation, because by the time I recognized it as such, I was already inside of it — I made a Tumblr at the con because I was asked for my address so much, and the community has been very warm and welcoming.

The best thing I can say is that I did something I almost never do: I pre-registered for next year’s show at the convention. I can very much see this being a new annual tradition for me.

Elementary Title Card

The past several years have been good to Sherlock Holmes fans: two features movies (with a third on the way), new novels, and the massively-popular series Sherlock introducing a new generation of fans to the Great Detective. So when Elementary was announced, I was skeptical. Holmes in America? Watson is a woman? Alone the idea sounds terrible, and in the context of the intensely satisfying Sherlock, it seemed like an unmitigated disaster. However, in preparation for my upcoming appearance at 221b Con, I knew there would be discussion of this show, so I watched all 18 episodes released thus far.

And I was right: it’s not Sherlock. But then again, I’m not entirely sure it’s trying to be.

Sherlock, at its core, is a love letter: a modern-day adaptation written by people who are passionate fans of all forms of Sherlock Holmes. It is laden with inside references and recreated scenes. Characters are either very close to their literary or pop culture analogs, or explicitly distinct (thin Mycroft and chaotic Moriarty, for example). The brilliance in the series is that it holds up as a fantastic series without knowing the references, but the form of the series is very much there, even adapted to the modern day. It is a pastiche.

Elementary seemed, at first, to be a generic mystery show that happened to have some Sherlock Holmes references. None of the cases evoked the original canon, Joan Watson is not much like John Watson at all, Sherlock Holmes has a father (!), and so on. However, I kept in mind the fact that there are a lot of terrible Sherlock Holmes pastiches out there and did what I could to divorce my mind from Sherlock. And I discovered that Elementary is not a pastiche, but inspired by the canon.

Once I got past that, I grew to like the series. The heart of the canon, if not the form, is present: Watson and Holmes are friends, and Watson is drawn into Holmes’ world. The respect and antagonism of the police (via Greggson) and Holmes is here. The disconnected cases feel much more like the original short stories. Even the mystery of Holmes’ family and history is present. The details are wildly different, but the feel of the original stories is here.

Plus, while the writing is average and, at times, outright lazy, the acting is actually quite good. Lucy Liu is good as Watson, and Jonny Lee Miller makes for a pretty good Holmes. The characters reference and call back to old situations, making their relationship feel very real. Plus, the sheer length of American shows over Sherlock allow for more of that characterization to take place. Cumberbatch and Freeman evoke the intensity of the relationship between Holmes and Watson, but Miller and Liu demonstrate the domestic nature of it. Also, there is more sexual tension between Cumberbatch and Freeman than between Miller and Liu, which is a refreshing change — knowing that the male and female protagonist will eventually hook up is boring, but here I sincerely feel like these two characters are friends, not frustrated lovers.

If I were asked to recommend one TV show for Sherlock Holmes, I would immediately say Sherlock. If asked to recommend two, I’d probably throw in the Jeremy Brett Granada series. But Elementary is certainly entertaining, and I think it only fails to cross over into “good” because it is forced to stand next to two other amazing and iconic series. If you can approach the series on its own merits, I believe it is worth your time.Update: At 221b Con, I was on a panel about the show, and a few more things came up that reinforce and expand on my original thoughts here.

Have Blaster, Will Travel

I’ve been pretty busy lately, so I thought it was time to do some catching up.

• I’ve primarily been focused on my day job working on the World of Darkness MMO at CCP. It’s very challenging, but I really enjoy it — every day I’m thankful for the chance to work on videogames full-time, and I sincerely feel that this is the career I want to be in. I‘ll occasionally get asked, so I’ll just mention here that yes, it is still being worked on; no, I can’t say when it’ll be released; no, I can’t get you a beta invite.
• Two anthologies I worked on have seen the light of day: Have Blaster, Will Travel, which is the Bulldogs! anthology, and God-Machine Chronicle Anthology for the new World of Darkness. In the first I contributed “Resolute Star,” a story about a free-willed android and a very angry ship’s captain. The second I contributed “Just a Bite,” a story about unrequited love and biting people.
• I’m currently working on a new story for When Will You Rage 2, an anthology for Werewolf: The Apocalypse curated by Bill Bridges. I’m close to 4k in, and I expect it’ll be 6-7k when I’m done before editing. It’s a story about a pack of monkeywrenchers that have to steal back a very personal cargo. Naturally, the job goes badly.
• I’m also back in the developing seat, working on a new Vampire: The Masquerade book called Rites of the Blood. It’s a collection of new blood magic rituals across a wide variety of Clans and Sects, how vampires live with them, and how they can be tempted to even darker things. There will also be a chapter of classic material converted and updated to Vampire: The Masquerade 20th Anniversary Edition rules.
• Next weekend I will be on four different panels for 221B Con (which is having to cap registrations, so check it out now if you want to go!) I will be on the following panels: “Elementary Revisited,” “Original Stories I,” “Watsons Through Time,” and “Women in Sherlock.” Come indulge in my love for Sherlock Holmes, and watch me attempt to get sick of talking about it (spoiler: the odds are not good).
• In my spare time (ha!) I’ve also been playing Baldur’s Gate on my iPad. While it is buggy and not a perfectly ideal port, I’m finding that turn-based gaming works very well on tablets and smartphones. I really loved the various Spiderweb Software games I’ve played on the iPad, and BG is working just as well. I’ve also been slowly tackling my Steam queue, as well as a few games that have trickled in via Gamefly.
• I’ve also been catching up on my novels from Matt Forbeck’s 12 for 12 experiment. At some point in the near future I plan to post reviews of the six I currently have, which should kick off another round of peer reviews.

After wrangling an invite and finally getting some time to go out with a few players, I got a chance to play the Ingress beta for a while. For those that don’t know, Ingress is an Android mobile MMP that uses your physical location as part of a global play space. You walk around and claim or attack portals for one of two factions, while people from the rival faction do the same. You accomplish this via the use of items and XM, an energy you collect from walking around (little globes of light fly towards you as you walk close to them). The game tracks local, regional, and global control for each faction.

I learned a few things from playing this. As always with “What I Learned,” this isn’t a judgment on whether the game is good or bad, but rather what I learned from trying to deconstruct what I personally think the game did well or poorly. (Also, this is a beta, so some of this may change.)

A binary choice isn’t necessarily a balanced choice. The tutorial and start of the game take place in the “voice” of one faction, the Resistance. Throughout the start of the game, you’re told that the rival faction, the Enlightenment, is bad. Near the end, you briefly get to hear the Enlightenment’s side (which basically comes down to “Nuh uh”) and then make a choice which faction you side with. Unsurprisingly, anecdotal evidence seems to indicate that there are more Resistance players than Enlightenment players. For a PvP game like this, that’s not a good design – the sides should be presented equally to present at least a chance of parity, and you’re already working at a slant because the kinds of people who would be attracted to a game like this are probably going to think that rebel hackers are cooler than… uh… whatever the rebel hackers are rebelling against.

Single-currency designs can have compounding effects. Everything in the game revolves around XM. You walk around to collect XM. When you are attacked by portals, you lose XM as damage. When you use items, you spend XM. When you gain levels, your XM capacity increases.

I learned the hard way how this single-currency design can suck. As a level 1 player, I accidentally tried to “hack” (attack) a portal that was much higher level than me, and ended up going from full to close to zero in seconds. I ended up having to walk around for five minutes to get enough XM to even try to do anything, and when I did I was knocked back to zero again. Luckily some other players I was with were able to help me, but I felt like I was being punished for starting out the game, and every error had a compounding effect: I spent XM to try it and lost XM when I failed.

Add-on designs can support a core design. There’s an entire side-game to Ingress. You can enter codes into the game, which are generated from a steady stream of ARG-like puzzles that pop up around the various Ingress online communities. These codes general items and (I believe) experience and XM, which means that people who would rather solve puzzles instead of walk around in the sunshine can support their buddies. It reminds me a bit of the Dust 514/EVE Online link, of how one game can feed into another.

The space changes the play. Part of the idea behind the game is that various local landmarks are portal sites. One of the first we went to were a set of water towers near our house. It allowed a focal point for our first portal hack, and a group of us naturally radiated out from the towers even though the screen was a fairly abstract black screen of lines, pointers, and colored dots. Later on we went to downtown Alpharetta which had a number of portals, and we had to constantly coordinate between blocks, walking across roads or behind alleys to try to get close to particular portals. It felt much more disjointed, because most of the landmarks were buildings or small signs, which felt less natural. It required more checking the phone, and I felt less connected to the real world play space. To be fair, this isn’t so much a criticism of the game design as an observation that play space is important. When the play space is the real world, that world has an impact on how the game feels, for good or ill.

It’s certainly not a game for everyone – for example, I’m not sure I’ll play it very often – but it was a fascinating experience, and anyone interested in Augmented Reality or live-action games should try to snag an invite and give it a chance.

One bad habit I’ve picked up over the past year is picking up video games and ebooks on sale and letting them collect digital dust. Kickstarters, Humble Bundles, and Steam sales have left me with dozens of unread books and unplayed games. So, this year I’ve made a resolution: I’m going to finish three things before I buy a new thing. If I see a game I like, I have to finish three games I already own first, no matter how cheap the game is. If I want to pick up a new book, I have to knock out three books from my backlog.

Thus far I’ve been doing pretty well: I finished up Walking Dead and Phantasy Star IV, and I’m two-thirds of the way through Shining Force. I’m finally getting through my Michael Moorcock novels and the steadily growing collection of Kindle books I have (although I cheated and picked up Cold Days before going back to knock out Catcher in the Rye, Tarnished, and Our Last Best Hope). I’ve been able to pass up a variety of deals with a clearer conscience, and my Kickstarter habit has gone way down.

This has extended into other areas of my life as well: I’ve been selling off a large chunk of my RPG collection because I just won’t play them ever again, and I’ve learned all I reasonably could from studying their designs. I’ve sold or given away most of my novels for similar reasons, while keeping books with strong sentimental value or use as research tools. I’ve been watching some of the DVDs I’ve collected over the past six months¹ and keeping to whatever’s on Netflix Streaming or Hulu Plus.

One situation I haven’t run into yet is what happens when I just abandon a book or game. Right now I’m trying to force myself to struggle through for an hour before giving up on something. Sometimes books or games have bad patches, and I want to give them a chance, but at the end of the day if it’s not grabbing me, I’m willing to give up on it.² Not only does this help me get through the things I’ve already spent money on, but also the pressure of “this thing is keeping me from something else I really want” is helping me to be willing to cut loose games or books I’m just not enjoying.

Do any of you have any plans on tackling your backlog?

We Are Dust, the anthology of short stories for Our Last Best Hope, has dropped in ebook form on RPGNow/DriveThruFiction. I wrote “Quantum Crisis,” a story about a scientist that nearly destroys the entire universe in his quest to find a source of cheap energy. I am told that print-on-demand editions are coming in the near future as well.

Immediately after my surgery, everything was a constantly spinning tornado of nausea. Every time I opened my eyes, I was immediately nauseous, and the only thing that made things better was sleep. Honestly, most of that time was a blur (no pun intended), but I do recall everything spinning a lot. Strangely, this was the most normal part of things, because it felt like getting off of a really bad roller coaster ride or something similar.

Once that calmed down, the next week or so was the weird sensation of having the constant spinning, but not having the accompanying nausea. Every time I moved, the world spun, but it didn’t make me sick — just hard to move. It was like being very, very drunk, but subtracting the ill feeling that comes with it — it’s hard to focus your eyes, you have trouble walking in a straight line, and you find yourself leaning on tables and other handy props to keep yourself upright. Moving around and navigating was not only very difficult, but it was also exhausting, and it felt like a lot of my brain power was devoted to simple activities like eating, drinking, and watching TV.

From there, the vertigo became milder, but no less constant. I was able to do light activities with increasingly less reliance on help as I walked, but lying down was still my preferred state. I was able to go to work in the later parts of this stage, and I noticed that when I walked in a straight line for a distance, I would involuntarily stagger to the left and right a fair amount. Stairs also felt easier to navigate when I could use the handrail — my body constantly thought it was going to lurch forward when walking down stairs. Interestingly, my driving wasn’t impaired — when I sat normally, the vertigo was extremely mild, and I was able to focus. Checking behind me was a bit of a challenge, so I kept to one lane when possible, and took routes without a lot of intersections when I could, but I was able to concentrate and recognize my environment just fine.

After that, the vertigo became intermittent, and I’ve gone through various stages of intensity (up and down). I could sit down at a stretch and not notice any symptoms, but when I had to turn my head to, say, talk to someone, the vertigo would come back, and things would get blurry for a second until my head settled in the new position. Meetings turned out to be particularly exhausting, because I would turn to look at each speaker (and, of course, try to focus on them to hear them), and a one-hour meeting would wipe me out. I discovered that sitting at the end of the table when I could helped immensely, as I would turn my head only a little. Trying to do anything while walking (like checking my cellphone) is impossible — I fall over.

Now, the vertigo shows up a handful of times a day, when I’m doing a lot of walking or suddenly changing my elevation (such as ducking to get into or out of a car). I’ll feel my body start to counter an imbalance that doesn’t exist, or I’ll have to close my eyes for a second as my head sorts things out. It’s not crippling, but it is irritating, exhausting, and can add up if I don’t rest in between attacks.

Some of this is skewed — for example, for most of my life I would get car- and plane-sick, and after the surgery my nausea has actually gone down even when the vertigo was pretty bad — so it’s possible that a normal person going through this might have more nausea than I have had thus far. And objectively, it’s got me thinking a lot about concussions and other skull damage, and how much vertigo is downplayed in action fiction. But I’m ready to end this phase of my research, thanks.

Yes, I talk in public a lot. (Photo by Ned Coker.)

At Atlanta by Night I ran a new version of one of my LARP theory presentations (“Your Game Sucks”) as well as a brand-new presentation building off of the previous three (“Playing to Lose”). After a couple of weeks of dodging sickness and generally not having time, I’ve finally edited the recordings and posted the PDFs of the Powerpoint slides I used on my Free Stuff page. I also left the YouTube version of “Your Game Sucks” from last year up for people who like moving pictures.

Photo by Joelle Silverio

It’s been a while since I’ve done a personal update, and since a few things have fallen into place recently, it’s a good time to update and recap.

Health: Last week I got a nasty cold that I’m still shaking off (probably due to Atlanta by Night). For a while it really ramped up my vertigo, but it seems to have died off. However, I’m still struggling with mild dizziness and headaches as I continue to get the last bits of congestion out of my head.

Conventions

• Atlanta by Night went well. I got recordings of many of the panels I was on or at,¹ and now that I’m mostly well and past my convention gauntlet, I can start editing those for release.
• SIEGE also went well last weekend, although I was only well enough to attend for one day. The panel on writing for video games I sat on was well attended, and a number of people seemed to really appreciate the things we discussed. As much as I like talking about the RPG side of things most of the year, I really enjoy digging into my day job and talking about working on video games when I get the chance. I got some nice emails from the staff of the show thanking me, and I really hope to make it a yearly event that I can contribute to.
• I also got to try out an early build of Xaviant’s game at the show, which is shaping up really nicely.
• I’m discussing travel arrangements for Midwinter now, so I’ll definitely be there. I’ll give a few presentations and probably LARP a fair bit to make up for not being able to do much of it at AbN.
• Today I got an email saying that I am on the short list for adding a presentation to the Canon track at 221b Con in April. I haven’t figured out exactly what I’ll present yet, but it’ll likely be some of my rants from the Tour de Holmes rewritten for presentation.

Writing Projects

• This one is the most time-critical, so I’ll put it on top: the legendarily-awesome Robin Laws asked me to work on a Series Pitch for his new Kickstarter Hillfolk (GO NOW). If it breaks $23,500, I will work on Deadweight, a crime drama setting in the world of independent professional wrestling. Also, if the DramaSystem version does well, I’ll seriously consider some of my fiction ideas for that setting.
• I’m continuing to hear good things about the production of Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition (which has a new Kickstarter GO NOW), which I did some initial design work on and wrote some words for. Stew Wilson was nice enough to let me throw a few words at the upcoming Book of the Wyrm as well.
• I’ve sent off some short story drafts. One is for the God Machine Chronicle fiction anthology, edited by the always-awesome Matt McFarland (who also has a new Kickstarter GO NOW).
• Another short story draft is off for We Are Dust, the anthology for Our Last Best Hope, edited by the equally awesome Mark Truman.
• I saw a layout draft of Have Blaster, Will Travel a few weeks back, so that should be available soon. Brennan mentioned wanting me to work on another anthology, so I’m looking forward to that.
• I’m in the middle of a longer-than-normal-for-me short story draft for the Strix Chronicle fiction anthology, edited by the running-out-of-adjectives-for-awesome Russell Bailey. It’s very noir, and has a few things going on that I hope will interest people.
• I’m also working on the initial design doc for a new project I can’t give details on yet. I will say that it does involve Sherlock Holmes (and no, it’s not the Tour de Holmes manuscript which I keep not finding the time to work on).

God Damn

• Somewhere in there, I’m trying to play some Fall of Cybertron, which is probably the best Transformers video game ever.

Let me tell you two quick stories.

1) When I posted my findings on what I learned when I went to a shooting range, it was pointed out that the word “gun” does not accurately apply to small arms.

2) My wife is a scientist, and scientists have a very specific use for the word “theory.” Tell her that “evolution is just a theory,” and I will open betting on how long it takes her to frenzy and try to kill you.¹

In both cases, these are conflicts within a word’s penumbra, or the meaning that people have put on a word that isn’t explicitly covered in it’s technical meaning. In both of these cases, it’s an example of a technical term gaining a vernacular meaning that isn’t the same as (or even at odds with) the original meaning.

But there are also cultural penumbras for words. Here’s a third story.

3) During one design meeting at work, one of my Scandinavian coworkers suggested “Blood Purity” as a term we could use. All of the Americans in the room immediately got a little nervous, and it led to a short conversation. For us, the term is very loaded with cultural meaning, primarily from the Nazis.

As a writer, this is something I have to keep in mind often — word choice might have a different meaning based on the audience. What might sound authentic and edgy to my Midwestern Caucasian ear might sound hokey or even infuriating to someone on a different coast, or from a different ethnicity, or just in a different headspace than I am. This penumbra extends to characters as well, as their own word choices will certainly stem from their experiences and opinions, and careful word choice can help distinguish two characters in dialogue.

This is why it’s important as a writer to listen to lots of different people and how they use words. An airport terminal or public transportation can be a wealth of education on the various inflections, intonations, and word penumbras people place on things. All of this can help give your writing a more authentic flair, and also keep you from accidentally having your military character call a pistol a “gun.”

Quick health update: I still have vertigo, but I’m doing better. I can go through an entire day without needing to nap, and my sleep and eating schedules have regulated to something much closer to normal. I have another following with my surgeon next week, and I hope I can lift things and start working out again after Atlanta by Night.

Also! I’ll be at Atlanta by Night! I will be on panels! I may even LARP (recovery and energy levels pending)!

Before I go into my own recovery, I just learned that Jesse Heinig is also going through some medical problems, and needs help with bills. It appears he just went through two surgeries, so I certainly wish him the best of luck and recovery, and hope that he continues to get the kind of emotional and community support that I’ve been getting.

For me, it’s close to two weeks since my surgery, and things continue to improve. At some point recently I made the switch from “I am always tired but can do short bursts of activity” to “I can move around and do some things, but I need to sit or lie down once in a while.” A checklist:

* I still have constant vertigo, but it does seem to be reduced. I can actually walk in a straight line, but I still sometimes need to use the rail on stairs, and sudden movements still make things spin for me. The vertigo pills weren’t having a noticeable impact anymore, so I’ve stopped taking them.

* My pain continues to be very low to non-existent. Once in a while my ear will ache or be sore, but I haven’t felt a need for any pain medication since shortly after the surgery.

* My hearing continues to fluctuate, but does not appear to have decreased since the surgery. Sometimes I’ll get popping or ringing in my ears for hours at a time, and how well I can hear seems to constantly change.

* I’m still on reduced physical stress. I’m not lifting anything heavy or doing anything strenuous. I’m not even going to raise that question until the vertigo goes away.

* I’m slowly getting cognition back. With everything going on, it was just really hard to think since the surgery, at least clearly. Last week a conversation would have taken a lot of energy, but now I can talk at length. Saturday I even went out to eat and had a lengthy conversation with my family. I’ve driven a few times on short trips without incident. I’ve been able to articulate some work-related concerns over email in a way that (I hope) is logical and intelligent. Today I’m going to try and outline something.

* All in all, I am better, but I am not well. The most frustrating part of any surgery like this is that there’s multiple stages to recovery: the immediate “oh my god did I survive that” stage, the “how long until I can get into an upright position” stage, and the “how long until I return to normal” stage. I’m starting that third (and most frustrating) part now, where I’m looking at what I used to be able to do on a daily basis and feeling frustrated because I can’t do it. This is also the part where I could really screw up my recovery, so I’m trying to be careful, but it’s a balance between pushing too hard and taking it too easy.

In some ways, the vertigo is helping with that as a constant reminder of “no, seriously, this is still not okay,” but I’m not going to keep sitting here and waiting. Tomorrow I’m going to try to drive into work and see how long I can sit at the office. I expect what will happen is that I’ll get up, go into work, work for a while, come home, and go back to sleep. However, it’s important for me to start getting back to something resembling my normal life routine, and being at my desk even for a short time will be a huge part of that.

He also explained to me what happened during the surgery. Often I use “inner ear” to explain what’s been going on, because it’s just easier, but in reality the problem has been in my middle ear (picture provided to help explain things). As I mentioned in my previous post, the tissue grew over most of the malleus, and all of the incus and stapes. Dr. Alvarez essentially cut out all of that (as well as part of my eardrum) and replaced it with a strut that directly conducts the sound from the newly-constructed eardrum to the plate of the stapes (the “foot” of the stirrup, if you will) that connects to the inner ear proper. This was actually all in the plan.

What wasn’t in the plan is that the plate of the stapes actually fragmented during the surgery, giving him no place to anchor the strut to. He had to rebuilt that before he could attach the strut. Since that connection is what helps the inner ear regulate balance, a foreign connection to the inner ear results in the body not understanding what “balance” is until it’s all healed. Ergo, vertigo.

Now, the good news.

Dr. Alvarez (aside from being a sci-fi and fantasy geek, as I learned today) is frankly amazed at how much hearing I have now. His best-case condition for the surgery was that it would result in about -20db in hearing loss, which is pretty much where I was at beforehand. So, if healing continues at the pace it is, I could come out of this with no net hearing loss. I won’t gain any, but I may not need a hearing aid.

I’m really trying not to get too excited about that, but I may not need a hearing aid. I went from almost certain hearing loss to a noteworthy chance of none.

Further, as I remarked that I’m glad I decided to get the surgery done, he agreed. If I had decided to leave it alone, I could have developed a brain abscess. He also mentioned that the reconstruction is actually more extensive than my previous surgery, mainly because instead of trying to rebuild a few worn out bones, I had to have the entire system completely replaced.

So, while I’m naturally a little frustrated that I’m going to be laid up for another week, this is probably the best news I could have gotten. Even Dr. Alvarez seemed genuinely surprised at how well things are going. If that means I have to force myself to not push and let myself heal to make sure I maximize my chances of this amazing outcome, I will sit on the couch and snuggle with my dog for as long as it takes.

Right now, though, I think I need a nap.

The Health Pug

I expected to be more visible during this process. The plans of mice and men, etc. First off, I want to thank David for jumping onto the blog and letting folks know how the initial phase of things went, and for Michelle who kept people abreast of developments on Facebook.

Essentially, the surgery had complications. The cholesteatoma had actually grown to completely cover two of the three inner ear bones and part of the third, requiring a complete reconstruction of my inner ear and ear drum. Thankfully, I still didn’t need the radical procedure which involved bone saws like my right ear. Despite the complications, though, it was expected that I would wake up, get checked out, and be dismissed after an hour or so to go home.

Instead, as soon as I opened my eyes, the room titled and I immediately became violently nauseous before passing out again. This happened a few times, so I was kept overnight for observation. I vaguely remember one point where David and Michelle briefly appeared, but they tell me they stayed for several hours. Sometime in the middle of the night I was able to open my eyes without being nauseous and start keeping down liquids. The next day, the doctor came to look at me, and I was able to sit up and even walk to the bathroom without nausea, but not without vertigo. He said that I would be more comfortable at home to deal with the vertigo and dismissed me.

Now, I was surprised to learn that “vertigo” and “nausea” were distinct concepts. For me, they really have never been — if I’m getting dizzy, I’m also getting nauseous. And yet, it was true — while the ride home was a fun-filled exploration in the various kinds of vertigo one can get in a car, I didn’t actually get nauseous, and I haven’t been since. However, every time I move my head or stand up, I feel like I’m standing on the deck of a ship, albiet a ship that is in steadily calmer waters from day to day.

However, here it is nearly a week later, and I still have vertigo. For a couple of days, I couldn’t walk too far without listing and nearly falling over. Now I can handle short tasks by myself (sitting up to eat or type this blog, making myself a drink, taking a shower), but I’m easily exhausted. Around Thursday I stopped falling asleep at random after such tasks, but everything still exhausts me. Watching television is about the only activity that doesn’t take anything out of me — even reading a Beast Wars graphic novel that John The Great so wonderfully sent me took several days, because I just had to take it in several chunks. I’ve only been able to tackle my email since yesterday. Puck has been doing an excellent job in being a health pug. He has sat with my on the couch and made sure that I stayed put and don’t overexert myself. So, my recovery is going slower than expected — I have a follow-up appointment with my doctor this Tuesday, but I don’t think I’ll be heading back to work from it like I previously expected.

But I have watched a lot of Batman: The Animated Series and Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. So there’s that.

As for my hearing, I honestly can’t say. A couple of days ago I was pretty impressed that I didn’t have to turn the volume up too high on the TV and was able to hear what David and Michelle were saying pretty well. Last night it was harder, though. From what I recall of my surgery in 2005, there was a lot of this up and down of hearing, so it’s too early to tell.

Am I frustrated? Sure. I had hoped at this point to be able to just focus on my hearing. I didn’t want to have to plan around being able to walk to the kitchen or strategically decide my reading time. But the support from my family, my friends, and my coworkers has been nothing short of amazing, and it has helped me every day. So while I haven’t been physically able to say so, I do want to thank all of you for every supportive tweet, every inquiring email, every helpful text. It really does help.

Posted with Blogsy

I am not Eddy.  I lack the vast number of things that make Eddy interesting or appealing, such as his stunning good looks, his compelling writing talent, his charming personality, or anything that would make me someone with a well-read blog.

What I do have is information.  Information which I will share while Eddy is recovering.

The surgery was a success.  They stopped short of pulling all the hearing bits out (apologies for the medical jargon) and the report is that he had a “very impressive” cholesteotoma.  The surgeon replaced two of the inner ear bones and rebuilt the middle ear (pause for cyber-hearing joke).

The reason Eddy himself is not writing this is that his vertigo and nausea has been severe since the surgery and the surgeon has decided to keep him overnight for observation.

Shortened version:  The surgery went fine, recovery is taking a while.  Eddy will return shortly to provide infinitely better written content.

Thank you to all of Eddy’s friends for your consideration and well wishes.