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Old 08-23-2012, 11:06 AM   #41
Quixotic Qlippoth
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Default Re: Some admittedly controversial GURPS questions.

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Originally Posted by Bruno View Post
Advil/ibuprophen is addictive, and ibuprophen withdrawal involves some really brutal headaches. I got put on low doses of codeine for two weeks so I could "cold turkey" ibuprophen after a 4 week fight with sinusitis left me addicted to it (it was in my decongestant).

That may sound a bit circular, but codeine isn't habit forming for most people when taken for short periods in low doses, and my family had already proven to be partly resistant to it.

aspirin/ibuprofen are some of the safest medicines in the world UNLESS you are NSAID intolerant in which case they can be some of the most deadly. People with this condition who are subject to chronic pain have a VERY strong chance of becoming opiate addicts or damaging their liver with acetaminophen. Actually, I bet dangerous/damaging dosing is way more common with Tylenol than people think (but that's a hunch I've got nothing to back that up).
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Old 08-23-2012, 11:09 AM   #42
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Default Re: Some admittedly controversial GURPS questions.

Fortunatley I'm not NSAID intolerant (my mother is, along with being Tylenol intolerant which is a terrible combo), and I've been able to use Advil again since - but now I make a point of rotating between the big three OTCs, never taking one for more than a day, just to avoid another addiction.
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Old 08-23-2012, 04:56 PM   #43
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Default Re: Some admittedly controversial GURPS questions.

The closest I came to a drug addiction was after some serious injury and extensive surgery I came close to an oxycontin addiction but I avoided it after being cautioned about it and administering a little aversion therapy to myself.
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Old 08-24-2012, 08:39 AM   #44
Peter Knutsen
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Default Re: Some admittedly contraversial GURPS questions.

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Originally Posted by vicky_molokh View Post
For the addiction/withdrawal themselves, these are the things I'm interested in:
  • More precise rule for becoming addicted than 'run Withdrawal in reverse'.
  • Addictiveness values (HT/Will penalties/bonuses) for various drugs.
  • Modifiers to number of successful rolls required for withdrawal (or accumulated failures for addiction) for various drugs, where a change from the default value is appropriate.

And for the record, one of the current characters (NOT players) in a game I GM is addicted to stimulants, so the topic is of some interest.
For Sagatafl, I just made a more elaborate "Addiction Build System", similar to the one in GURPS, but somewhat finer-grained, and taking into account a much greater number of factors. For instance, it tries to account for drugs that are actually good for you as long as you keep taking it, such as the spice from the "Dune" universe, and it also takes into account long-term health effects, because I don't want to build a system that can't be used out-of-the-box for long-term campaigns.

It's quite possible to do something similar in GURPS. Just take the existing system and elaborate on it. Degree-of-addictiveness can be represented via a Self-Control Roll, with extremely addictive substances like heroin and nicotine having 15, and stuff that's just really fun to abuse but not actually addictive having 6 (or 9 for something seductively fun like cocaine?).

Or one could go further and add in the distinction between physical addiction and psychological addiction.

In Sagatafl every component of an addiction (which can be individually tailored, e.g. two characters may have sugar addictions that are slightly differently shaped) has a cost in Addiction Levels, and these are totalled up to yield the disadvantage cost. Originally I used a multiplicative system, but later on I decided that an additive/table based cost system was better. It's slightly less good, but benefits hugely by being more human-friendly.

In GURPS terms, the first 5 Addiction Levels could be worth -2 CP each, the next 5 -3 CP each, and any beyond that -4 CP each, so that if you have a very nasty addiction worth 12 levels, it'd be -10-15-8 = -33 CP. Or a bit simpler -2 CP for the first 7 levels, -3 CP per level after that. Or you could go entirley linear.
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Old 08-27-2012, 05:14 PM   #45
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Default Re: Some admittedly controversial GURPS questions.

I posed a solution to the issue: give the kids and the interns just the facts and let them decide what the rules for various drugs should be. My dear cousin was divided on it mostly due to her belief that she alone knows what's best for everyone, but her interns were all for it.
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Old 08-28-2012, 01:43 AM   #46
Flyndaran
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Default Re: Some admittedly controversial GURPS questions.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Bruno View Post
Advil/ibuprophen is addictive, and ibuprophen withdrawal involves some really brutal headaches. I got put on low doses of codeine for two weeks so I could "cold turkey" ibuprophen after a 4 week fight with sinusitis left me addicted to it (it was in my decongestant).

That may sound a bit circular, but codeine isn't habit forming for most people when taken for short periods in low doses, and my family had already proven to be partly resistant to it.
I didn't know that about ibuporphen. But again, not everyone can get addicted, despite nonsense scare tactics. Chemical dependency is not addiction.

I hate how my family is very resistant to opiates. It made recovering from surgery hell. It didn't help that the surgeon did a half-assed fistulotomy. (Pardon the pun.)
I do get to confuse pedants by saying that the doctor literally ripped me a new *sshole.
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Old 08-28-2012, 08:12 AM   #47
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Default Re: Some admittedly controversial GURPS questions.

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Originally Posted by Titanium man View Post
I posed a solution to the issue: give the kids and the interns just the facts and let them decide what the rules for various drugs should be. My dear cousin was divided on it mostly due to her belief that she alone knows what's best for everyone, but her interns were all for it.
I laud your ingenuity, sir. This, in hindsight, seems the perfect answer.
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Old 08-28-2012, 10:00 AM   #48
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Default Re: Some admittedly controversial GURPS questions.

Being someone who used to party a lot as a teenager, and now being in my 40's I have some RL experience with drugs but not so much in a RPG setting.

Think it was brought up earlier, and the same can be applied to drinking alcohol. Some folks can do drugs or drink and not become addicted/have adverse behavioral effects. Example is the person who drinks a bottle of wine or smokes some organic material on the weekend. Other people binge and yet some others become addicted almost right from the get go. Whether it is genetic inclination (have read about Native Americans lacking a gene dealing with alcohol use), or an underlying physical/mental condition which triggers addictive behavior.

The bad thing about trying to actually simulate it in a RPG setting is that you'd tend to only get the extremes of the drug use (physical as well as societal effects). You'll get the Reefer Madness story or the junkie's version of it being the greatest thing in the world.

The other problem I see running into is that everyone seems to have a slightly different reaction to drugs (be it legal or illegal). Sort of like how some people are quiet drunks, or angry drunks, or sleepy drunks. Sort of how like Tylonal works wonders on my headaches, Mortin doesn't do anything (unless I use it in combination with other OTCs), but some of my friends are the other way around.
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Old 08-28-2012, 09:20 PM   #49
Peter Knutsen
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Default Re: Some admittedly controversial GURPS questions.

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Originally Posted by Titanium man View Post
I posed a solution to the issue: give the kids and the interns just the facts and let them decide what the rules for various drugs should be. My dear cousin was divided on it mostly due to her belief that she alone knows what's best for everyone, but her interns were all for it.
Do you expect to have the kids make up rules from scratch, or will you give them a build system to use?
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