02-06-2011, 11:16 AM | #21 |
Wielder of Smart Pants
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
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Re: Coffee and GURPS
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02-06-2011, 12:09 PM | #22 | |
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: Coffee and GURPS
Caffeine withdrawal symptoms are well documented.
Here's part of a report of one recent study by researchers at the University of Vermont College of Medicine and Johns Hopkins: Quote:
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02-06-2011, 12:11 PM | #23 |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: Coffee and GURPS
I've spent long periods of my life either drinking or not drinking coffee. I did not notice anything different even when I suddenly stopped drinking coffee after several years. Spent a half-year or a year not touching the thing.
I also seem have Immunity (Red Bull): the thing has no effects on me and/or my sleepiness; contrast with the effect on my SO - a €2 can is enough to switch my SO from falling asleep every 2 minutes to rather talkative and ready to work. *shrug* |
02-06-2011, 12:25 PM | #24 |
Join Date: Jan 2011
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Re: Coffee and GURPS
Well, coffee seems more impressive than I thought, certainly. Still just a quirk, I guess, since the headaches are temporary and the addictiveness seems to be mild at best. Besides, legal and cheap.
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02-06-2011, 12:30 PM | #25 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: Coffee and GURPS
Quote:
Indeed dehydration and low blood sugar being other common causes of stuff like headache, fatigue and mild nausea, maybe better for a rapid temporary improvement. For many people washing a single asprin tablet and/or a multivitamin down with a can of non-diet cola will help a surprisingly high fraction of the time.
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02-06-2011, 03:43 PM | #26 |
Join Date: Apr 2006
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Re: Coffee and GURPS
As always, stat the effect.
How does caffeine withdrawal affect your character? If he's just a bit grumpy until he has his morning coffee, and takes care to make sure he can get it, that's a quirk. If he suffers Mild to Severe Pain from headaches, Bad Temper, and -2 IQ from grogginess until he has his coffee, that's a fairly severe disad (with a big fat mitigator - caffeine is extremely common, cheap, and legal, meaning that you're basically immune to the disad as long as you're near civilization or have a portable supply). Note that caffeine addiction wears off fairly quickly; if it does, then you're either going to need to buy off the disad, or you're going to need some excuse to keep it. If this is a problem for you, I'd advise taking it at quirk level. GURPS fatigue really doesn't differentiate between physical exhaustion and sleepiness, and it doesn't really affect alertness (until you pass out), so it's not really equipped for resolving caffeine's effects. I'd say that if your character had missed sleep, and was sleepy enough that his activity level wasn't enough to keep him awake (guard duty, book study, etc), and the GM was making you roll to stay awake, caffeine would give you a bonus to the roll. That's pretty much the realistic limit of caffeine's effects; if you want something more dramatic (increased IQ, increased FP, etc) you're going to need stronger drugs - or a sympathetic GM. ;) |
02-06-2011, 04:00 PM | #27 |
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Not in your time zone:D
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Re: Coffee and GURPS
That is so QI - awesome. I'd read little bits about a cup-a-day kinda thing helping brain function but Asthma! Wow! That explains why I'm practically double dosing the inhalers this year - That's it, after dinner coffee is back on the menu. Thank you, Bruno!
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02-06-2011, 04:20 PM | #28 | |||
Join Date: Apr 2005
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Re: Coffee and GURPS
Quote:
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Overdoses can of course cause problems, but I'm not sure how I'd model that. Increasing FP, IQ, and DX penalties, probably. Sufficiently high and you can start having more serious problems. Quote:
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02-06-2011, 04:29 PM | #29 | |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Torino, Italy
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Re: Coffee and GURPS
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Everybody I know (literally) drinks either coffee or tea every morning. If they were suddenly deprived of their typical breakfast/energizer, surely they would get grumpy. But this should not be considered a quirk / disadvantages in GURPS terms. It is not a meaningful disadvantage if it is the "campaign norm"... Let me make an analogy: most civilized people are used to have regular access to hot water. Most people I know would get grumpy if they were suddenly deprived of showers. Surely a physician could measure tiredness, poor skin tone and other physical symptoms. Does this mean that everybody has a Addiction (Caffeine), Addiction (hot showers), Addiction (fridge), Addiction (sugar) and so on? This would make for very long, boring & similar character sheets... Such common and minor traits IMHO are better considered as "setting features" and occasionally used by GMs as dramatic justification for minor penalties or failures (e.g.: "Since in the last few days you've been held captive, you are a bit weary and grumpy... -1 to rolls until you get some rest and a shower"; or possibly "I see you failed your HT roll to make guard in the jungle... it appears you were really tired and it is not easy to stay awake for the whole night without even a coffee...") Of course if somebody wants to portray a character which is especially addicted to coffee and becomes really untractable without coffee, he's free to buy a proper quirk/OPH to reflect that. But IMHO coffee in itself is, realistically, below GURPS' resolution.
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02-06-2011, 05:35 PM | #30 | |||
Join Date: Dec 2009
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Re: Coffee and GURPS
No, but I'd say it can roughly double the max food-based FP recovery. You still need to eat the food, but if you're already stuffing yourself American-style, caffeine can mean you get less padding and more FP.
It increases metabolism, which makes it easier to stay awake(one of the symptoms of sleepiness is metabolism reduction), which might be plusses to resist going from Drowsy to sleeping, or rolling less often. You still suffer the penalties from just being Drowsy, though they might be partly credited to distraction instead. At higher doses the mind-racing, heart-racing, and jitters can make it hard to get to sleep. (That's probably Short Attention Span, in GURPS terms, except falling asleep also counts as a task that requires concentration.) Recovering 1 FP now but losing 2 FP later is a stronger stimulant, getting into the prescription and illegal drugs. Quote:
The metabolism boost is probably what it's "for". Quote:
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Yeah, that's my real problem with statting it as an Addiction. Sure, it's an addiction, but for most people it'll go away with a week of inaction. A particular character or race could have an unusual reaction to caffeine, if the GM agrees; only the price is fixed across characters in that regard. In one fantasy setting I wrote up, elves could take ginger as a Cheap, Incapacitating, Highly Addictive, and Legal drug. And it can be taken as a Mitigator or Trigger.
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