I've finished some extensive rules on Diseases, for anyone who might be interested. It is a subject fraught with objection, as my earlier post suggested, but at the same time it is something I've left on the shelf for, oh, I'd say the entire time I have been running the game as a DM: 36 years. Well, we get to everything eventually.
I see from the figures on my Wiki that there are a fair number of people adventuring there (40-80 unique visitors a day) whether or not I post a link on the blog. Moreover, many of those people are finding pages that I only created the day before, so they must be following the Newest Wiki Changes link on the blog or the Recent Changes link on the Wiki itself. That is most heartening. I like seeing that something I goofed around with last night is getting 50-75 page views on its own.
I'd love to hear from anyone who has experienced watching me struggle with some of these posts - for example, I did about 20 rehashes on the Disease page since yesterday, changing, adjusting, adding a table, updating a link or two . . . and all of that because I started with the Druid Sage Ability of Physiology yesterday morning. Hey what? Are you out there catching my mistakes and chuckling? Are you returning to a new page a day later to see if I finished it? There must be a significant number who are seeing the thing in construction before I move onto the next project.
That would be horseshoeing. Only it will have to wait until this evening or perhaps tomorrow. I have a job interview.
Interestingly, these rules seem to be a more well thought out and comprehensive version of the rules I started brainstorming last night for disease.
ReplyDeleteOne idea that could improve the table would be to have a list of symptoms for these diseases. Oftentimes for example anemia symptoms may present but be caused by either skeletal or digestive problems. Possibly both. Rapid weight loss could be caused by a variety of infections but combined with rapid heart rate could be a hormonal imbalance. Being able to accurately diagnose what's wrong from the symptoms is vital to treatment and is unreliable in a world without modern medicine. Instead of presenting "you have a skeletal infection" mysterious symptoms can start presenting and diagnosis be a mystery to solve.
With the infection chance, the constitution roll could be ad-hoc altered by a variety of pixel bitching like if the victim sleeps in separate quarters, if protective garments are worn by the medicant, medicants could have a higher infection chance, how stool is handled etc.
I've been thinking of these things lately using Where There is No Doctor as a reference material. It's a health care manual for people in the third world where access to modern medicine and equipment isn't assumed.
Whereas this is true, Algol, the creation of a D&D DRM for a facet of the game that no player likes at all seems an excessive amount of work for zero gain. That's why I have not considered following the path you suggest.
ReplyDeleteAt what point have you achieved a satisfactory list of symptoms? Ever? Or is the list short enough that you might just as well started with just the source of the disease.
I think, honestly, I can riff the symptoms. Mostly because I don't think they players will care. What is it, how is it cured, how much am I suffering, when can I be shed of this horror - I think that's plenty of drama for them.