Of Games & Health
In March of 2023, I had a brain thing related to my migraines, which I’ve experienced since at least middle school (so, circa 1977) or thereabouts. The brain-thing was a few minutes of aphasia and aura. I was in Austin, Texas, with my daughter Adrienne, and we were ready for the drive back to Houston. I sat in the driver’s seat. Adrienne asked me a question, and I couldn’t answer. I knew what I wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t leave my brain through my mouth. At the same time, the aura narrowed my field vision into a blurry circle framed by lights of shifting colors. Adrienne thought I was having a stroke. The aphasia and aura passed entirely after a few minutes, with the aphasia going away first. Adrienne drove us back to Houston.
My migraines almost always start with aura and then move into light sensitivity and pain. During a migraine, nerve cells and blood vessels in the brain stop acting right, and the migraine proceeds through several phases. The last phase is something like having a hangover, and my brain got stuck in this last phase for weeks while I got scanned and experimented on with different vitamins and dosages of meds. Fortunately, despite decades of untreated migraines, I have no structural brain damage, but it does look like there are some functional changes.
The main two are an increased inability to focus on a task for extended periods of time and an decreased ability to process short-term memory into longer-term memory. Put simply, I get distracted more easily, and I’m more likely to forget things. To combat the latter, I’m working on taking better notes in a more organized manner. To-do lists are a regular part of my day, and they are helping.
But my memory issues are complicating my gaming.
I currently run an occasional Wednesday night game (Dungeon Crawl Classics/Mutant Crawl Classics mash-up), an every other Saturday game (Castles & Crusades with elements of Dungeon Crawl Classics), an occasional Sunday game (ShadowDark), a student game-club for 6th graders (Castles & Crusades) and for 7th/8th graders (ShadowDark). This is getting laborious.
Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy the games. I enjoy the players. I enjoy being the GM. But I’m finding it hard to keep the details of the different games and systems straight, even with the notes I’m taking.
One thing I have noticed is that it’s easier for me to prepare for and keep track of the games using the less crunchy systems, which makes the two ShadowDark games where I feel most confident and most able to keep track of details from session to session. After that, Castles & Crusades is next easiest for me (likely owing to its similarities to 1E AD&D). While I adore Dungeon Crawl Classics/Mutant Crawl Classics, they present me the most challenges in terms of remembering how the games work. (I think this is likely true of my players as well, some of whom I’m know are only playing Dungeon Crawl Classics/Mutant Crawl Classics because I said I wanted to run it. About half my players would prefer Savage Worlds or something d20 System-related.)
Mixed up in all of this is the plain fact that I’m not getting any younger. I can remember the days when I could run four miles in 24 minutes flat, and when I could do at least a dozen one-armed pull-ups with either arm. Those days are gone, and they are exceedingly unlikely to return given the joint health of my left knee and right shoulder. I’m more or less used to the reduced physical strength, speed, and endurance, and I know more exercise and better diet are helping improve all three.
But the past going on two years has been my first experience with decreased mental strength, speed, and endurance. It’s a wee bit annoying. More exercise and better diet will help my brain, but, just as with the chronic low-level knee pain, it seems that a somewhat less efficient brain is my new normal.
What does this mean for my various games? I don’t know yet.
