Quote:
Originally Posted by Flyndaran
For example, "everyone knows" that alcoholism blows out your liver. But my gf worked in an assisted care facility with an alcoholic with a perfectly healthy liver but alcohol induced dementia. The immediate effects of alcohol ingestion are pretty predictable, but the long term effects, not so much.
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Right. Alcohol increases the probability of liver failure, but doesn't make it a certainty.
Game mechanically, I'd treat things like Aging and degenerative conditions as periodic CP loss, but I'd leave it up to the GM (with possible input from the player) to determine how those disadvantage points are "spent". The particular type of disease or addiction will influence, but not dictate, what disadvantages are gained.
Obviously, having a character lose CP over time is not appropriate in all games. In one-shot adventures or short-running games such a condition is no more than a Quirk. In many other games it simply doesn't fit the tone, and may be more appropriate to Dependents than adventurers. If a PC has a degenerative disease I'd have the player prepare a backup character that they can switch to as their primary becomes too frail to adventure.