Origins of a Game Writer: The Nurture Part

I am very clearly in part the product of my ancestry. Everything from the shape of my skull, my balding hairline, my medical history, to how I react to various foods tells me there’s some pure biology involved, especially since both my parents grew up in different location (in one case a different continent) than I did, and still had very similar childhood reactions to the things that kids get exposed to.

But, I am also very much a product of my environment. Not just my upbringing (though, to be sure, that’s had a huge impact as well).

I grew up in the same house, in the same room, from the time I was brought home from Norman Regional Hospital to the day I moved in permanently with my wife-to-be. And that space shaped part of who I have turned into.

My parents bought a house when my mother was pregnant with me, and made sure it had a space for my older sister, and a different one for me. That space was a good-sized room (at least 15 ft. square, though I don’t recall ever measuring it), with a built-in sliding door closet that had drawers above and below, and a built in hardwood bookcase inset in one wall. It easily held a double bed, three chests of drawers, a desk, a workbench, a toychest, two freestanding bookcases, an antique upholstered chair, two floor lamps, a component stacked stereo, and a wall’s worth of wooden record cabinets and cubbies.

It was banks of windows on 2 sides, one facing the backyard (which was huge, and very sloped) with a highly-climbable mulberry bush right outside of it. We had numerous indoor/outdoor cats when I was growing up, and some of them would jump on the outside windowsill and meow to get my attention so I could let them into my room. I had space to craft, play, a reading nook, a writing zone, and enough floorspace that (if I had it clean, which was rare, I admit) I could practice foam weapon swordplay.

I even, at one point in my mid-teens, hung a tire from a rope in one corner of my room, with broomhandles sticking out of it at odd angles. I’d hit it with a PVC sword, and as it swung around block its counterattacks with my wooden-backing-of-a-resin-Aztec-calendar-and-bike-tire-rim shield.

When I talk about my privileged upbringing, in addition to never worrying as a child about health care or food or clothing, and the family being able to take an out-of-state vacation every 2-3 years, I remember how big and accessible that room was.

But the influence of that location growing up was more than about its size or amenities. My room was the furthest from the living room, kitchen, and parents’ bedroom… which meant it was the furthest from oversight. My sister was specifically forbidden as a teen from having a boy in her room with her bedroom door closed, and her door was easily spotted from the chairs that faced the TV in our living room. While I officially had the same restriction applied to me a few years later once I began to have girls over to the house… you couldn’t see my bedroom door without walking into the back hallway and specifically looking. So while that rules was strongly enforced on my sister, it almost never was for me.

It was also at the end of the hall that served as the family library, where pulp and scifi and fact books abounded. There were tons of books and speculative fiction magazines from the 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s. Here I learned to love John Carter of Mars and Carson of Venus, Skylark, Conan, Kull, Elric, Slan, Foundation, the Star Beast and Space Cadet, the War of the Worlds and Sherlock Holmes, Worlds Colliding and Darkness Falling.

And my family were all readers, new books would get stacked wherever they would fit as others in the house finished their new acquisitions. If Azimov, Heinlein, Cherryh, Clarke, Le Guin, Foster, Herbet, McCafferey, Butler, Gibson, Atwood, Niven, Pohl, or any of a dozen other authors released a new book, in time it appeared on the shelves. Similarly, lesser-known writers’ works appeared at random, and if some where not for me, others took their place in my mind with the great creators of speculative fiction. Even the pile of fanzines, largely from the university’s local scifi club, showed me how small articles and semi-polished ideas can spark the imagination, even without a formal publisher.

My love of games may have gone off in its own direction once my Uncle casually introduced me to RPGs, but my love of games game from that hall of books. Hoyles from different centuries, books and chess variants, the history of GO, and reprints of Little Wars. Books on the rules of various sports and where they came from, and 50 different ways to play poker. I absorbed them all, and adored when they overlapped (as with Jetan).

I often wonder how I would have turned out with a different home growing up.

Cancer Support

I have cancer, and am on chemo (and likely will be for months to come). If you want to help me cover cancer treatment costs, right now, the main way to offer your support is to purchase the Fight Owen’s Cancer megabundle, which offers $1000 worth of material, 355 pdfs from 15 companies, for just $40!

Or, if you prefer, I do accept donations to my Ko-Fi, which doesn’t take a cut before passing the money on to me. (Also, there are cat pics there!)

And, of course, a big part of my income comes from people supporting my Patreon, so joining that is a big help!