Post originally by Ben Pierce at 2005-05-14 09:50:37
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Battlelords...what can I say? Most of it seemed to make some sense at the time.

Looking back on my time with ODS now, I have very mixed feelings. I can safely say that Larry Sims is one of the most remarkable human beings I've ever worked with. He has enough drive and enthusiasm for any three normal humans, and tends to sweep those around him along in his wake.

I got caught up in that wake early in 1990, and wound up writing or co-writing half a dozen books as a result.

As for Larry's writing, I was always torn between admiration for his incredible drive and ability to churn out ideas, and frustration at his reluctance to change anything for fear of losing the "voice" of the piece. I think I spent the better part of a year trying to explain to him that misusing "yet" in place of "but" isn't what most people mean when they think of voice.

Larry's writing has a quality much like the man himself--it's so energetic that it's difficult not to get caught up in the wake and come to your senses some time later, blinking and saying, "Where am I, and what the heck just happened?"

Case in point: my normal writing style is extremely dissimilar to Larry's. If anything, it tends to be dry and fairly academic.

On the other hand, most people have a hard time picking up the books we co-wrote and picking out the pieces that were mine. Part of that was a conscious decision to try to make the writing style uniform, but a lot of it was simply that Larry's gung-ho, take-no-prisoners approach to writing the game was contagious.