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Old 04-21-2018, 12:10 AM   #1
Gollum
 
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Default Got a problem with Missed Sleep rule

Hello ladies and guys!

I was reading again some rules and suddenly realize that I don't understand one. At least, I suppose I don't understand it, because the results I find sounds silly.

It is the Missed Sleep rule (Basic Set, Campaigns, page 426, 427).

As far as I understand it, when you have to wake up 1 hour earlier, you subtract 2 hours from your normal day. Said like that, everything sounds normal ... as long as you only do it once or twice.

But suppose a real example: Joe Average usually goes to bed at 11 PM and wakes up at 7 AM. No problem for him. He sleeps 8 hours a day and his normal day lasts 16 hours. One week, Joe Average has more work to do. He must absolutely do it. To do it, he decides to wake up one hour earlier. He now goes to bed at 11 PM, as usual, but wake up at 6 AM.

Following the rules as I understand them, here is what happens.
  • Monday, 1 hour of missed sleep, normal day reduced by 2 hours, he begins to get tired at 8 PM and since he goes to bed only at 11 PM, he takes 1 FP. He has 9 FP left.
  • Tuesday, 1 hour more of missed sleep, normal day reduced by 4 hours, he begins to get tired at 6 PM and since he goes on going to bed only at 11 PM, he takes 2 FP more (one when he fails to go to sleep plus 1 after 4 hours). He has 7 FP left.
  • Wednesday, 1 hour more of missed sleep, normal day reduced by 6 hours, he begins to get tired at 4 PM and since he goes on going to bed only at 11 PM, he takes 2 FP more (one when he fails to go to sleep plus 1 after 4 hours). He has 5 FP left.
  • Thursday, 1 hour more of missed sleep, normal day reduced by 4 hours, he begins to get tired at 2 PM and since he goes on going to bed only at 11 PM, he takes 3 FP more (one when he fails to go to sleep plus 1 every 4 hours after that). He has 2 FP left.
  • Friday, 1 hour more of missed sleep, normal day reduced by 2 hours, he begins to get tired at 12 and since he goes on going to bed only at 11 PM, he takes 3 FP more (one when he fails to go to sleep plus 1 after 4 hours). He has -1 FP left. He is “on the verge of collapse” and loses 1 HP.

And if he goes on doing that a couple of days, he will have to go to hospital!

It sounds more than harsh. I’ve done that several times. Sure, I was exhausted and had to sleep more than 8 hours during the week-end but wasn’t at all “on the verge of collapse”.

So, I’m sure I’m wrong about the rules. Can someone explain how it really works?
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Old 04-21-2018, 12:53 AM   #2
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Default Re: Got a problem with Missed Sleep rule

I believe you are correct, but I also think the RAW are excessively harsh here.

My person experience leads me to the conclusion that an HT roll should be involved to decide if lack of sleep has a cumulative effect. Reasonably healthy people seem to be able to operate on less than 8 hours of sleep for quite a long time (weeks or months) before reaching what I would consider the 1/3 FP threshold.
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Old 04-21-2018, 02:26 AM   #3
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Default Re: Got a problem with Missed Sleep rule

I get 6 hours of sleep a day (and have for over twenty years), but then I either have Less Sleep 2 lvls [4] or Tyneras is correct and the FP penalties from missed sleep are excessive.



When I was a teen, I'd crash out on the weekend and sleep like 8-10 hours one day, but once I hit 19 and had a job where I worked 12-14 hours a day seven days a week for months, I stopped doing that.

I'm also a very light sleeper and occasionally insomniac, so I occasionally get far less than 6 hours of sleep a day. Of course at those times (insomnia is a terrible disad) I'm closer and closer to being a zombie as I get less and less sleep, until the insomnia passes (or I drink myself into a stupor and sacrifice a day to sleeping).

Last edited by evileeyore; 04-21-2018 at 02:30 AM.
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Old 04-21-2018, 05:33 AM   #4
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Default Re: Got a problem with Missed Sleep rule

I don't think the "Getting Up Early" reduction is meant to be cumulative. If you miss one hour of sleep every day, your bedtime doesn't keep dropping. It just moves two hours, and stays there, because you get up early one hour each day. If you got up an hour earlier every day (6, then 5 am, then 4 am), you'd get the progression bedtime advance.

The FP loss, on the other hand, is cumulative. And in this scenario, you can't recover that loss, as you're never sleeping the full period.

Last edited by Anaraxes; 04-21-2018 at 07:15 AM.
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Old 04-21-2018, 06:16 AM   #5
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Default Re: Got a problem with Missed Sleep rule

If I remember right, the average person doesn't actually need 8 hours of sleep every night. I believe most (modern, Western, adult) people actually spend a little under seven hours asleep most nights, but there is quite a bit of variation so it isn't at all rare to find people who do fine on five or six hours or ones who really do need eight hours or more.
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Old 04-21-2018, 06:42 AM   #6
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Default Re: Got a problem with Missed Sleep rule

Quote:
Originally Posted by Anaraxes View Post
I don't think the "Getting Up Early" reduction is meant to be cumulative. If you miss one hour of sleep every day, your bedtime doesn't keep dropping. It just move two hours, and stays there, because you get up early one hour each day. If you got up an hour earlier every day (6, then 5 am, then 4 am), you'd get the progression bedtime advance.

The FP loss, on the other hand, is cumulative. And in this scenario, you can't recover that loss, as you're never sleeping the full period.
I think this is how it should work. The subtraction comes off the normal 16 hour waking day, not the reduced waking day of the day before. It seems much more reasonable that way, if still a bit harsh.

Every day that he wakes up at 6, he has fourteen hours before he starts getting sleepy (at 8 pm). If he keeps going to bed at 11 pm, and getting up at 6 am, he loses a point of fatigue a day. After he loses half his FP this way (about 5 days for an average person), he'll have to start making HT rolls to stay awake at 10 pm. If he misses the roll (50/50 chance) and falls asleep at 10 and sleeps until 6, he'll get a full 8 hours of sleep and 1 FP back. This could keep him fatigued but not collapsing for a while. It sounds pretty close to a typical, chronically sleep-deprived American to me.
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Old 04-21-2018, 06:45 AM   #7
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Default Re: Got a problem with Missed Sleep rule

In real life missing sleep does not work as give in the rules, it is much more complex.

People do seem to get a IQ and DX penalty as things get harder when you are really sleepy but for many people the penalties seem overly harsh and quick. There is likely a scale of resistance to the problems as some people seem to be affected really quickly.

Some examples:

During the first year of university I had a job as security guard in a large shop and arrived home close to 3 am and still had to get up in the mornings, so got 5-6 hours sleep during week days without any real problems except hard to get up in the mornings. On Saturday I would then sleep 12-15 hours and would feel refreshed. As that time, both before that and after year I tended to sleep about 9-10 hours normally.

There were several situations in my youth where I stayed up 48-60 hours, in those situations the "staying awake is hard" mostly happened for a few hours starting a few hours after the normal sleep time, but the next "day time" did not seem to require any special effort to stay awake until the next evening.

In the army we had many situations where we did not get enough sleep, like we had a about six day period with no real sleep, we would just get these short 10-30 minute pauses where you would fall asleep for a total of maybe 2-4 hours/day. In that you got increasingly "loopy" and even simple things became very hard and people started to fall asleep while standing, but I would not say that it seemed like we were with less FP at least in any major way, meaning that marching with a heavy pack at that point was mainly challenging because the straight road was so curvy, not because we got winded fast.

And so on.
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Old 04-21-2018, 10:20 AM   #8
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Default Re: Got a problem with Missed Sleep rule

Guys, naps are a thing.
And I've known lots of people that crash hard on the weekends sleeping nearly 12 hours from just undersleeping around a single hour each weeknight.
I don't think the rules are as excessive as all of you think.
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Old 04-21-2018, 10:40 AM   #9
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Default Re: Got a problem with Missed Sleep rule

By RAW a nap is worthless, nothing less than a full sleep period will have any effect.

And if the RAW aren't excessive, then Less Sleep must be extremely common.
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Old 04-21-2018, 11:07 AM   #10
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Default Re: Got a problem with Missed Sleep rule

Quote:
. Less Sleep must be extremely common.
I suspect that’s the case along with perhaps a HT roll being involved somewhere.

On another board I frequent sleep deprivation as it relates to exercise was recently a topic. Based on the research cited I suspect, in game terms, a large portion of the US population is constantly at -1 or -2 FP.

Quote:
we had a about six day period with no real sleep, we would just get these short 10-30 minute pauses where you would fall asleep for a total of maybe 2-4 hours/day. In that you got increasingly "loopy" and even simple things became very hard and people started to fall asleep while standing, but I would not say that it seemed like we were with less FP at least in any major way, meaning that marching with a heavy pack at that point was mainly challenging because the straight road was so curvy, not because we got winded fast.
That’s the type of fatigue I think GURPS simulates the best.

That straight curvy road was causing you to expend more energy to walk it. It may not have been obvious to YOU but you couldn’t have rucked as far, as fast at that point as if you had been caught up on your sleep.

In game terms, because of fatigue, you were failing your IQ roll to notice the difference.

Another military example is how Soldiers, if they are smart, let the LT or other leader eat first or bring him chow, lay out his bedroll while he’s at meetings and keep him off the watch schedule so he gets uninterrupted sleep.

In game terms they are keeping his fatigue as low as possible, since the leader’s IQ rolls are what keeps them alive.

Last edited by tanksoldier; 04-21-2018 at 11:21 AM.
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