We are taking off the month of December with regard to the ETU Designer’s Journal to instead bring you a series of articles on Autism in support of the Midnight Charity Project. Even though this isn’t game related, we hope you’ll take a few moments to read it. 

There are many theories regarding Autism and its causes. A majority of the medical community believe it’s a developmental problem of the brain that occurs in the womb. Others believe it has to do with high levels of mercury introduced via inoculations, particularly the MMR (for measles, mumps and rubella). The traditional treatments include various teaching methodologies and the prescription of various drugs.

What follows is a really basic treatment of the GF/CF diet as my wife and I have come to understand it. We have spent many hours on the internet and read a wonderful book by Karyn Seroussi entitled Unraveling the Mystery of Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorder. Quotes used herein are taken from her book.

Many autistic kids have been found to be allergic to Glutin (which comes from wheat, bran, oats, etc) and casienates which come from dairy (milk products, not eggs). Many parents and doctors have also experienced that while children are being introduced to wheat and dairy, many begin suffering from chronic ear infections and are placed on antibiotics on a very regular basis. (With our kids it was every two months like clockwork!) Unfortunately, antibiotics also attack good bacteria in the stomach and intestinal walls, and this can have the effect of leaving only candida-the bad yeasts and fungus in the intestinal linings.
Whatever the cause, many autistic children have been proven to have high levels of candida (gastrointestinal yeasts and fungus). Normally, candida exists at very tiny levels in the gastrointestinal linings, but something is killing the “good-guy” bacteria, which allows candida to grow. Candida can be considered the “bad-guys” and is barbed, toxic and difficult to kill. A healthy intestinal system allows only nutrients to pass into the bloodstream and blocks out larger products like “incompletely digested fats, proteins, starches, and bacteria.”

When candida grows and takes over the system, many professionals refer to it as “leaky-gut syndrome.” The theory is that when this occurs, certain proteins are not broken down and pass through the intestinal lining into the blood stream. These proteins are toxic and foreign in the bloodstream and act almost like narcotics or opiates in the human system. Hence ADHD, ADD, Autism and many other disorders could possibly be traced to someone with “leaky-gut” syndrome. A 1995 article in the journal Gastroenterology, “found increased evidence of leaky gut in diabetics and schizophrenics” as well.

DAN! (Defeat Autism Now!), an organization put together by Dr. Rimland states the following: (taken from Seroussis’ book)

• Children may be born with a genetic predisposition toward food or other allergies.
• As some point in their development, they develop an abnormal immune response.
• The children become ill and are given antibiotics.
• The candida grows and becomes a nastier version that attacks their guts, causing changes in the GI immune system and a leaky gut.
• This is seen with the malprocessing of certain proteins; such as casein and gluten. Instead of being properly utilized, they are broken down into neurotransmitters, which affect their brains.

Remarkably many autistic children (1 in 3) respond very well to a glutin-free/casein-free diet, and begin expressing normal behaviors, communication, and development. Mrs. Seroussi’s child had been diagnosed as a moderately autistic on the spectrum at a very young age. She investigated and learned that many parents were having wonderful results on this diet. She became a pioneer, and now her son is fully recovered and on level with the rest of his schoolmates. He no longer exhibits the signs of autism. There are now many parents and doctors who have come to accept this diet as one possible treatment for children with autism.

You have our permission to pass this along to anyone interested in the diet, but please understand that my wife and I are not doctors and this description is our best understanding of it. We are still learning, and have a long way to go.

I highly recommend Seroussi’s book, as well as Special Diets for Special Kids by Lisa Lewis, Ph.D.

For more information check out:

• www.autismndi.com
• www.Gfcfdiet.com
• www.Foodyoucaneat.com

Last time, I talked about how technology’s feel compares to the flavor of other similar classes. This week, I’m going to focus more on mechanics, and how a technological character works from the perspective of a player.

Balancing technology is tricky work. On the one hand, it doesn’t have to be a limited resource like magic: in the real world, we use technology all the time, and its power is seemingly unlimited. This is a far cry from the wizard who begins his career being able to throw magic missile two or three times a day. However, allowing technology this sort of free reign would rapidly throw the balance of the game out of whack.

Fortunately, there was a rather simple solution. Technology as presented in SteamWorks is not ubiquitous - it is either relatively new or recently rediscovered. As such, only the knowledgeable can make use of technology, and even then, the devices the technological character makes use of are not always guaranteed to work. Even if technology in your setting is everywhere, the small chance of failure for technology makes sense: not everything works perfectly every time.

To use their devices, technological characters must ready them; a readied device has a set number of charges, which can be used freely. Each time a device is used, it has a chance to fail; a malfunctioned device must be repaired before it can be used again (even if it has charges remaining), while a device that functions has a slightly higher chance to malfunction the next time it is used. The resources a technological character uses to ready devices are also used to repair and recharge them, leading to a bit of a balancing act on the part of the player in the event of an extended adventure: repairing and recharging devices means that you have less available firepower for that day.

The resources to use their devices that a technological character uses are usable only once a day, much like a wizard’s preparation of spells. Like a wizard, not all of the character’s resources have to be spent in one go, meaning that you can hold resources in reserve to repair or recharge devices after a major fight.

In playtesting, the technologist (one of the technological classes presented in SteamWorks) has proven to be quite useful, effectively able to replace a wizard but with a feel of its own, throwing grenades instead of magic missiles.

Technology as per SteamWorks takes a little getting used to, not only in terms of feel, but also in terms of game mechanics. However, the end result is a mechanical system for technology that reinforces the idea that it is not magic, while retaining balance with existing "caster" classes.

We are taking off the month of December with regard to the ETU Designer’s Journal to instead bring you a series of articles on Autism in support of the Midnight Charity Project. Even though this isn’t game related, we hope you’ll take a few moments to read it. 

Howdy. First I want to thank everyone who is supporting this drive to raise money for the Autism Research Institute. Your support during this holiday season is a tremendous gift and very much appreciated.

As some of you may know, I have two boys. The youngest, Kevin, is a high functioning autistic child. He has Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD- in educationalese). I consider my family to be very lucky as he can function in society, learn, and become a productive citizen, though he may always have “autistic” tendencies.

I knew the day he was born something was wrong, but no one could tell what. As a newborn he was very fidgety, could never get comfortable, and cried a lot! Of course we thought he was just a colicky baby, but I knew something was wrong. It was as if whenever I tried to hold him he would not be consoled. As if he hated being held or touched. He never played peek-a-boo or showed interest in what other people were doing. As he grew into a toddler, he did not develop speech as my other son had done, but remained with a type of baby gibberish. He did mature physically very quickly and was pulling up at 9 months and walked extremely early, never really crawling as most babies’ do.

I asked our pediatrician several times if something was wrong with him, each time she said she didn’t think so and that some children “just develop at different rates” from others. I was very impressed that he learned the alphabet, seemingly overnight, and spent hours playing with magnetic letters on the refrigerator. I could ask him for any letter and he would give it to me. My wife and I worried that the only true speech he had developed included “mom, dad, coke,” and the letters of the alphabet. I also realized that if I ever tried to make eye contact, he could not look me in the eyes and always immediately looked away.

It was stressful to ever go out in public as he seemed to never hear us, was uncontrollable, and generally raised hell wherever he was. We left restaurants early, rarely visited others, and were even afraid to leave him with the sitters at church. Our friends were afraid when we came to visit as nothing was safe. He would run through their home and though I don’t remember him breaking anything, it was a constant worry.

Realizing he needed help, we contacted our local school system and they recommended he attend speech therapy classes at the elementary school with a speech therapist. He was to receive 30 minutes instruction a week. He was 3 ½ years old at the time. The young therapist told us to leave him with her. The first session lasted a total of 10 minutes and the therapist told my wife that she couldn’t work with Kevin as he wouldn’t sit down or listen to her. There were also three other children in the session. My wife sat in on the second and all subsequent sessions to assist in “controlling” Kevin. After a particularly frustrating experience, the therapist told Tracey (my wife) that she simply couldn’t help him, but we could continue to bring him and let him play in the corner.

I got very angry. I have a Special Education Teaching Certification and I know the laws. That is not a right the therapist actually has. I called her and told her my opinion. My wife and I then decided against attending any more of the sessions.

I finally transferred Kevin to the school district in which I work, as I rightfully thought they would have better services for him. They tested him and decided that he was PDD. I took him to a specialist and she tested him as well. She recommended we take him to special speech therapy class. Each session would cost between 75 and 100 dollars and it , two to three times a week, and it was not covered by insurance. Well, it’s not something we could afford. There are actually many awesome programs to help autistic children, but they are all very expensive and middle class and lower economic folks simply can’t afford them.

Finally my wife and I got tired of feeling helpless. We began reading everything we could find on autism and particularly a book by Karen Seroussi about her struggles as a parent of an autistic child. In it she described the GF/CF diet (gluten free, casein free) and how it had a very positive impact on her child. Basically every item that contained wheat or dairy had to go. We decided to try the diet and threw out approximately $200.00 in groceries and started over from scratch. We ordered a book called Special Diets for Special Kids to gain recipes and to learn to cook the GF/CF way. We went to an organic store to purchase these special dietary items. It’s amazing really. I used to make fun of folks who went “organic” and perceived them as flower children or Wiccans, but I am now convinced of the effects of this diet.

Almost overnight Kevin began talking. Within six months he was speaking sentences. I have not seen him stemming (hand-flapping) since we started the diet. His abnormal behaviors decreased greatly and he no longer hid under tables at school and we constantly received positive reports from his care givers and teachers. The difference was drastic. He can now look into my eyes, and he actively plays with his brother and other kids. He still has a very sing-song voice and experiences difficulty expressing his thoughts, but he has come so far.

Many doctors do not believe that a diet can be used to treat autism. They state that there are no professional studies to prove it helps. True. Pharmaceutical companies are not in the business of treating any illness with dietary changes, so it makes no sense for them to fund such studies. However, thousands of parents can attest to the difference dietary changes made with their children. I am definitely one of them.

I don’t believe the diet works for every child, as I believe the causes of autism vary greatly and without recognizing causes it is difficult to treat. But if you are a parent of an autistic child, what would it hurt to try the diet and see for yourself?

The Autism Research Institute is made up of DAN doctors who have seen the dramatic results of dietary changes and are willing to seek other answers as well as using the more generally accepted methods of teaching and working with autistic children.

Finally, I am happy to report that Kevin is now in first grade, is reading in the top of his class, and is on level in math and other skills.

Very early on in the writing of SteamWorks, I wanted to ensure that it pressed the idea that technology is not magic. Unlike psionics, there is no magic-technology transparency. While it is possible to combine the two in interesting ways, I felt that the two were inherently separate fields.

This idea is presented in the book in a variety of ways. For one, the mechanics that technology implements feel very different from magic. To use technology, a character must carry the devices he wishes to use; he must maintain them, repairing and recharging them as necessary; there is always a chance that a technologist’s more powerful devices will fail; and in the construction of some devices, the technologist must use devices he has already built and incorporate them into the new one.

However, to ensure that technology would be useful to a standard adventuring party, the technologist is still capable of things that are typically (at least in d20) in the realm of magic. A technologist can heal others - but their healing is not magical, as it can only affect living things with biological processes, and is weaker than divine healing. A technologist can make himself invisible - but such invisibility is not the same as magical invisibility (the technological term being "cloaking"), and the technologist is unable to manipulate invisibility at all (conversely, arcane magic and psionics cannot easily manipulate cloaks). A technologist can manipulate nature, but such manipulations are forced and artificial, rather than natural applications, as druids use.

The role of a technologist in the adventuring party is similar to that of a wizard or other arcane caster. He has devices like flamethrowers and autocrossbows, cloak generators and flux capacitors, universal remotes and instant fortresses. While they may be similar to spells, they are most certainly not, and no one in a setting would hold a technologist to be anything like a wizard. But while technologists are most similar to wizards, they are also capable of building devices that mimic the abilities of divine casters or psionicists: they can heal, control the wind, and protect their minds from the mental influence of others.

The devices that a technologist can have at his disposal are many and varied in function. While he can do some things that many other classes can do, he cannot do them as well, and some things are beyond even the power of technology. However, in a similar vein, there are some things that only technology can do that no other caster or manifester is capable of.

We will be taking off the month of December with regard to the ETU Designer’s Journal to instead bring you a series of articles on Autism in support of the Midnight Charity Project. Even though this isn’t game related, we hope you’ll take a few moments to read it.

As we kick off our fundraising month to help Autism research I wanted to take the time to explain why we are doing this and how you can help. First I want to thank everyone who has purchased our products and shown us so much wonderful support since August of 2003. Our customers have been very loyal and every cent we have earned has been appreciated. While we have been very successful for a small indie publishing company, we still do it out of love of gaming. The greatly positive customer reviews we have received proves that we have managed to produce quality products.

We have wanted to give back for a while now, and finally we have the means to do so. We discussed several charities, all deserving of help, but finally settled on helping the Autism Research Institute and their initiative known as DAN (Defeat Autism Now!).

Autism is unfortunately becoming more and more common, and affecting more families around the world today. In the mid 1970s it was rated as only 5 of 10,000 births. Today the incidence of babies being born autistic has been reported to be 1 in every 150 kids. What is happening?

Well, I do agree that we are better at diagnosing autism than we were thirty years ago, but even given that statement, the incidence of autistic children is growing at an astounding rate. Worse, there seems to be no central, common cause though many have developed various theories. I’ve read about too many metals in the bloodstream, gluten/casein proteins, inoculations, chemical overloads, and many others. The truth is, it may be a combination of all these things or it may be that there are many different causes, but the disability looks the same.

What is Autism? It is a “severe developmental disorder that begins at birth or within the first two-and-a-half years of life. Most autistic children are perfectly normal in appearance, but spend their time engaged in puzzling and disturbing behaviors which are markedly different from those of typical children. Less severe cases may be diagnosed with Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD) or with Asperger’s Syndrome (these children typically have normal speech, but they have many "autistic" social and behavioral problems)” [www.autism.com].

Many authorities believe it is part of a spectrum of disorders that actually range from Attention Deficit Disorders to Severe Autistic Disorders. Some autistic children are very high performing and look to be “normal” though upon speaking to them you may notice something that is just not quite right. There are many signs that could indicate a child has autistic tendencies that parents should look for, and these should be taken together, not individually, as every child develops at different rates and times. If you see a pattern of these behaviors in your child, see a doctor immediately, as early diagnosis and treatment can greatly affect the life of the person. Signs include not playing age appropriate games-such as peekabo-with others, not being able to look directly into the eyes of another, not reacting when spoken to, may not learn age appropriate words but rely on hand gestures, may seem immature for age, may not be able to play or show interest in playing with other children, may have bizarre or repetitive behaviors such as hand flapping or rocking back and forth, and more [see www.autism.com for more information].

How can you help? We are sponsoring a series of fund raising events, collectively called the Midnight Charity Project. All proceeds of this year’s event are going to the Autism Research Institute (ARI). More than 80 cents per dollar donated to ARI goes directly to programs and research projects. These doctors and scientists are exploring new ways of combating this disability, and are providing great help to parents who have just learned that their child is autistic or has PDD (pervasive developmental disorder).

I’m sure if you know many families with young children, you know of at least one child who has autism. It is an epidemic that affects us all, and as the cause is not known, it could personally affect you or your family.

I know. See, my youngest son is autistic. Please help us Defeat Autism Now!