[Basic] Disadvantage of the Week: Unusual Biochemistry

[Vikingv]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

It also isn't appropriate in really cosmopolitan settings stuffed with aliens, with none of them particularly dominant an all of them Unusual to each other.

But in a Space campaign where some species are common and some rare, the rare ones could be justified to have this.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Otaku

Not really? Like I said, Unusual Biochemistry is something close to what I deal with due to my IBS. Where it differs, it is because

• Other aspects of it are covered by related Disadvantages
• Converting the experience to a generic, game-able abstract

Maybe some of the finer aspects of it could use tweaking, and I might get into that later. Not just for representing my experience, but to make it a bit better for its original, intended purpose. The issue is avoiding going into too much detail, I think.

I'd speculate that humans who experience no effect at all from one in six medications are extremely rare.

Having amplified or idiosyncratic side effects is clearly not so rare. And there are fairly well-known examples of having basically the reverse of the desired reaction to pharmaceuticals (mostly psychopharmaceuticals, that I've heard of). Which incidentally isn't an option with RAW Unusual Biochemistry, where you are guaranteed to get no effect if you don't receive the normal effect.

One might say that real humans are weirder than Unusual Biochemistry supports, depending on your metric for weirdness.

[Otaku]

Ulzgoroth, I do not disagree with most of what you said, but I may have come to a different conclusion. I believe you just explained why the RAW version of Unusual Biochemistry needs revision. With what I expect would make the trait more balanced, as well as better at describing both real-world medical conditions and the expected problems of alien life, engineered life, etc. living in a world they almost-but-not-quite fit into in terms of their biochemical needs.

I understand someone not liking Unusual Biochemistry at all, and replacing it with something else (official or homebrew).

I understand someone being fine with this level of resolution for both the needs of an alien who walks among us extending that to humans with certain (real or fictional) medical conditions.

Being okay with it for "exotic" life but drawing the line with it being used to represent real-world conditions... well, I guess I do understand that, but only because it limits Unusual Biochemistry as a potential point crock to characters with a particular origin.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Otaku

Ulzgoroth, I do not disagree with most of what you said, but I may have come to a different conclusion. I believe you just explained why the RAW version of Unusual Biochemistry needs revision. With what I expect would make the trait more balanced, as well as better at describing both real-world medical conditions and the expected problems of alien life, engineered life, etc. living in a world they almost-but-not-quite fit into in terms of their biochemical needs.

I understand someone not liking Unusual Biochemistry at all, and replacing it with something else (official or homebrew).

I understand someone being fine with this level of resolution for both the needs of an alien who walks among us extending that to humans with certain (real or fictional) medical conditions.

Being okay with it for "exotic" life but drawing the line with it being used to represent real-world conditions... well, I guess I do understand that, but only because it limits Unusual Biochemistry as a potential point crock to characters with a particular origin.

I think there's room for, and arguable need for, more than one kind of Unusual Biochemistry.

Rubber forehead aliens might fall into any of the following categories at the whim of the setting designer.

Alien aliens don't need Unusual Biochemistry, they're presumptively incompatible with human drugs altogether. It might have effects on them, but much the same as if you dosed a human with synthetic chemicals completely at random.

Unusual Biochemistry as it is might make sense for bioroids, or close enough for usability. Sometimes they flat out don't have the biochemistry the drug works on and it does nothing. Otherwise, they do have it so it can do for them what it does for 'normal' humans, but sometimes it also has unintended interactions with their way-off-human biochemical bits. If I were designing it and had more that 1d resolution to work with I'd probably add a 'side effects only' possibility somewhere though.

And then for humans, there's both highly consistent atypical reactions (like the situation with ADHD and certain stimulants, so consistent it's the basis of most treatments) and the more chaotic situation you described where the atypical reactions can vary significantly from one dosing to another depending on potentially obscure circumstance.

You could put all three of those as sub-types or major modifiers of Unusual Biochemistry, but I think all three of them call for different (if similar) mechanics.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Alien aliens don't need Unusual Biochemistry, they're presumptively incompatible with human drugs altogether. It might have effects on them, but much the same as if you dosed a human with synthetic chemicals completely at random.

Template Toolkit 2 in fact spells out something very iike that.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Template Toolkit 2 in fact spells out something very iike that.

Indeed. Though I was surprised to revisit it and find it only seems to spell that out for "Non-water-based life forms". While it certainly applies there, I'd say that much the same would hold for water-based life forms of non-terrestrial origin unless the setting posits a quite extreme level of convergent evolution.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Indeed. Though I was surprised to revisit it and find it only seems to spell that out for "Non-water-based life forms". While it certainly applies there, I'd say that much the same would hold for water-based life forms of non-terrestrial origin unless the setting posits a quite extreme level of convergent evolution.

You certainly could assume that. But a lot of science fiction doesn't, from H.G. Wells's Martians who can drink human blood to C.J. Cherryh's hani whose food is life-sustaining to a human passenger. And I think the goal of GURPS is not only to emulate plausible speculations about alien life but also to emulate fictional treatments of it.

And not having encountered any alien life, we really don't know how convergent its evolution would be. Maybe all viable biotas has essentially the same genetic material and the same enzymes and so on.

[cptbutton]

It turns up three times in GURPS Traveller.

Alien Races 1 p130:
Interpreters
These Human/facilitator hybrids (described on p. 127) are simply mouth-pieces of the squid mothers.
[...]
Unusual Biochemistry (neither Human nor Sheol, require special nutrients).

Alien Races 4 p131:
VALKYRIE RACIAL TEMPLATE -15 OR -50 POINTS
[...]
If not optimized, add Unusual Biochemistry [-5]; Weak Immune System [-30].
A Valkyrie host has its original racial template modified by the advantages and disadvantages shown above. Cost is -15 points if the possessing larva was optimized to the host’s race. If not, the Valkyrie damaged the host’s immune system while taking it over; use the -50 point cost.

Humnaiti, p123-124:
OTRAI RACIAL TEMPLATE -28 POINTS
[...]
Unusual Biochemistry [-5].
[...]
Otrai biochemistry has diverged from the Human norm due to the need to deal with the poisons found in their natural environment. They do not react as expected to most drugs.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by whswhs

You certainly could assume that. But a lot of science fiction doesn't, from H.G. Wells's Martians who can drink human blood to C.J. Cherryh's hani whose food is life-sustaining to a human passenger. And I think the goal of GURPS is not only to emulate plausible speculations about alien life but also to emulate fictional treatments of it.

And not having encountered any alien life, we really don't know how convergent its evolution would be. Maybe all viable biotas has essentially the same genetic material and the same enzymes and so on.

We're talking about Unusual Biochemistry, which is about drugs, not food. They're quite different propositions. (The book doesn't say to use Unusual Biochemistry for water-based aliens either.)

Same genetic material? Maybe. Same enzyme roles? Not impossible though I wouldn't bet on it unless you abstract 'role' pretty far. Same actual enzymes? As close to disproven as the question can get. Terrestrial lineages are substantially more divergent than that!

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

We're talking about Unusual Biochemistry, which is about drugs, not food. They're quite different propositions. (The book doesn't say to use Unusual Biochemistry for water-based aliens either.)

Same genetic material? Maybe. Same enzyme roles? Not impossible though I wouldn't bet on it unless you abstract 'role' pretty far. Same actual enzymes? As close to disproven as the question can get. Terrestrial lineages are substantially more divergent than that!

No, it doesn't, but it doesn't forbid it. It's a basic point of logic that "if A, then B" is consistent with either "not A and B" or "not A and not B."

As for drugs rather than food, it's true that drugs are addressed in the rules by Unusual Biochemistry and food by Restricted Diet. But that's a question of game mechanics. In terms of real world causality, having different biochemistry would tend to be reflected in both.

And in portraying Martians as able to drink human blood, Wells seems to be assuming an incredibly high level of convergent evolution. His Martians seemingly use iron-based respiratory pigments, for example, and there are no proteins in human blood that are toxic or allergenic to them. That may not be biologically realistic (though we won't know how much evolution actually converges until we have studied the biospheres of a few other planets; before then it's all theory, which both Aristotle and Doyle warn against relying on too much)—but it's a venerable precedent in science fiction.