Wanted: GURPS Power-Downs 1

[JCurwen3]

I would want to see builds for some of our most common physical and mental illnesses. RPK I think did a good build of Diabetes, for instance. In my perfect world, every mental disorder listing in the DSM-IV would get GURPS stats, as well as every physical condition (is there a "DSM" for physical maladies?). I'll keep dreaming though... maybe I'll take a stab sometime (only to finish several years later, at that point so well-educated on my medical terms and symptoms that I could pass as an M.D.).

I'd also want an expanded treatment of Terminally Ill. The disadvantage is a necessary ingredient of real terminal illnesses, but other than asymptomatic brain aneurisms that sit as ticking time bombs, it's not really "enough". We need detailed rules on progressive symptoms. After all, some forms of cancer get horrifically debilitating before they kill you, such that you're barely better physically than a brain in a jar, and others, like some heart disease, might only involve losing points of HT and maybe ST, or gaining levels of Unfit (losing levels of Fit) and such.

Speaking of cancer, it doesn't come up in the books, but it should be discussed in the context of radiation damage. Certainly, since rads are a real life unit of radiation, one could do the research and calculate risks and progressions, but it'd be nice to have it all laid out in GURPS terms. Maybe I'll work on something like that.

I second someone's mention of expanding and clarifying rules on applying limitations and enhancements to disadvantages. None come to mind at the moment, but I know I've also thought of Cosmic limitations (cosmically badly limiting things).

Maybe add some official rules on interactions between disadvantages and their mirror advantages (for instance, what officially happens when you Afflict someone with Decreased Time Rate when they have one or more levels of ATR, or vice versa - maybe explain what levels of DTR would mean officially since many people debate about that).

And maybe some meaningful quirks (maybe some of them count as full-blown disadvantages) to counterbalance perks from Power-Ups 2. For instance, there are perks for Rules Exemption, Extra Option, Rule of 17 - what about their opposites, like having a rule apply to you that normally doesn't, not having a beneficial campaign option apply to you, or having worse than the normal Rule of 16. Stuff like that.

Codifying what the various Incapacitating and Irritant conditions would be officially as disadvantages would be worth as part of a disadvantageous trait-building toolset would be nice. We have this for Moderate, Severe, and Terrible Pain, sort of detailed as disadvantages in Chronic Pain, and we can use that as a baseline for extrapolating reasonable point costs for things like a Chronic Nausea condition, but it'd be nice to have these fleshed out properly and officially as disadvantages, even if they'd be rarely used as is or in and of themselves.

Probably there's even more that could go into a book (or series of books)...