04-03-2020, 11:45 PM | #1 |
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Dreamland
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Disease in roleplaying
Working on a race recently and I noticed I put "Immunity to STIs and related" on a race which in turn made me realize I don't think I've had disease come up once ever in roleplaying, writing, or programming games as a plot or world-building element. In one setting, I just flat across the board said "disease didn't exist, the world somehow works". I just plainly don't like it and I don't recall a story that used it in a way that, to me, made it stronger.
What are your thoughts about disease in roleplaying? Have you had to deal with it or use it? Have you merely swept it aside like I have, or even intentionally state it doesn't exist? What kinds of effects might this have on a setting if disease wasn't a concern (especially before the idea of disease)? |
04-04-2020, 01:59 AM | #2 | |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: Disease in roleplaying
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04-04-2020, 03:03 AM | #3 |
Banned
Join Date: Mar 2006
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Re: Disease in roleplaying
Disease, like aging or gaining skills via training in rpgs, is not something I tend to use on a regular basis in my games, and when I do use such things, it's going to be because it fits the story-arc and genre I'm running.
Like the superhero genre, for example, doesn't generally have disease as a major trope/factor, so I'd not use disease rules there. However, dark fantasy, or a horror-in-Vietnam-War story-arc, yeah, totally using disease rules. So, dark fantasy and jungle slogs, that's the top 2 situations I'd consider using disease rules, thus I'd not consider such "essential rules," in any system. So, GURPS for instance, while it's nice to have those rules in the Basic Set, I generally consider Disease/Age related traits as 0-point features because they simply don't factor in most campaigns. |
04-04-2020, 05:12 AM | #4 |
Join Date: Sep 2013
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Re: Disease in roleplaying
In an Infinite Worlds campaign, the pc visited a newly discovered Gotha-world with a lot of "zombies". They had to keep in mind that the zombies were victims of a plague and to protect themselves from them. Hard to do in zombie-shooter.
Long time ago, the heroes of a Traveller campaign discovered a forgotten ship deep in space. Inside was a woman, in cold sleep for centuries. The pc were able to resurrect and rescue her. To bad that the sleeping beauty was infected with a mild cold. Rather harmless for her, but the pc were hit hard by fever. After reaching the next star port, their ship was put under quarantine for weeks.
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04-04-2020, 09:10 AM | #5 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: Disease in roleplaying
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So there was a small village hit by a mysterious plague (the 4 Archangels were being opposed by the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse and guess who was duking it out with Rafael). The PCs faked up something with Alchemy. There are rules for it in Thaumatology. It was less dramatic than one could have hoped.
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04-04-2020, 09:11 AM | #6 | |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: Disease in roleplaying
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I have encountered a couple of instances of biological warfare in RPGs. One by PCs which succeeded in dealing with an invading species of humanoid plants, and one by NPC villains, a cult of disease, which was suppressed by PCs.
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04-04-2020, 09:45 PM | #7 | |
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: Republic of Texas; FOS
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Re: Disease in roleplaying
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The assignment was to get the nuke, drop it inside a Cheyenne Mountain style base, and get out. What they didn’t know was that the mission was totally off-book, their shady admin guy was trying to get the team to infect Reich-5 with a human-ending plague... The plague had infected the PCs, they couldn’t go home; the admin guy disappeared and left the PCs in languish in quarantine on a empty “safe” world, now viewed by The Organization as the ones responsible for spreading the plague. They ended up sentenced to Prison (or exile to Coventry) by Infinty. The party’s psi-powered healer was able to cure them, and they escaped, but on the run for a few episodes trying to clear their names. Good times. Diseases don’t come up a lot, but can be a driving plot force occasionally. GURPS Horror has some great ideas for diseases on that front.
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04-05-2020, 03:07 AM | #8 |
Join Date: Oct 2014
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Re: Disease in roleplaying
Gangrene and tetanus come up reasonably often in my games.
A simple punji pit with dung covered stakes, or a rusted iron booby trap sends a clear message that the player's enemies play for keeps. And once, my D&D characters were investigating rumors of crazed bats attacking humans without provocation, and these rumors were true, because these bats had contracted a sickness... Characters these bats infected suffered from increased saliva production, insomnia (thus a chance to not recover with a Long Rest), hunger spikes (so they needed triple the normal amount of food), photophobia (So they took the daylight pretty much like Drow), and increased aggression (they had to succeed at a Wisdom Saving throw to resist attacking people who angered them). |
04-05-2020, 03:40 PM | #9 |
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Dreamland
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Re: Disease in roleplaying
These all sound like they were fun, but reading them has definitely activated my Squeamishness.
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04-05-2020, 03:57 PM | #10 |
Join Date: May 2014
Location: Texas
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Re: Disease in roleplaying
Not really roleplaying, but Illuminati: New World Order predicted the Coronavirus! Or so some people say.
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/wei...icted-21677802
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