Alcoholism disadvantage

[JCurwen3]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

I'm going with alcoholism as one alcohol-related disorder, but not the only one, which happens to be supported by GURPS in that it defines Alcohol Addiction in a quite specific way (what's missing is adequate support for disorders other than alcoholism), and it also sounds to me as if you had an alcohol disorder that was not alcoholism (congratulations on getting over it, by the way!) but was something eltouched upon se.

I think GURPS's Alcoholism (or Addiction: Alcohol) handles most alcohol disorders, albeit in some cases with a few tweaks or modifiers needed (some potential alcohol abusers, like me, may have mitigators like special diets or meds or psychotherapy or avoiding certain "X factor" aggravating situations, for instance). But usually, at least it seems to me, GURPS handles it at more or less the resolution necessary for most games.

That said, I would absolutely adore a serious supplement that does for disadvantages what Powers did for advantages - one major part of that book could be traits (either new disadvantages or composite traits with modifiers and such) showing how to build most of the most common and / or interesting physical and mental disorders (including perhaps an expanded treatment on addictions including alcoholism). Horror touched upon some mental illnesses, but there's really so much more to do, and characters battling with addictions, mental illness, or physical disease can really add drama to a game. Now we're more or less forced to break out the DSM-IV and try to DIY-build the conditions in GURPS-stats.

And thanks for the congrats, it really wasn't very hard once I found my healthy "mitigator". Like I said, even though it didn't adversely affect my life, I still didn't want to wake up ten years from now with jaundiced eyes and realize my liver didn't love me anymore. Being alive, for all its shortcomings, frankly rules and I intend to continue to do so for as long as possible. :-)

A question occurs to me though - how do we handle a disadvantage with a Mitigator, but that Mitigator is unknown (and possibly difficult to discover) for the character when he starts out? Handle it like a "Potential Advantage" maybe?