Plagues aren't very fun
Cures cost in both chyen and time

I've watched some experiences lately of people getting sick IC and it feels like it boils down to paying a lot of chyen (sometimes 10k+) for a short five-ten minute interaction with someone who can administer a cure. Then you idle in your apartment for a few days. You get to ham up being sick IC but that's about it.

Am I approaching this wrong? I can see how it makes hustle for a few people but it seems to do so at everybody else's OOC cost.

Maybe they're angry at the person who got them sick if they know. Maybe they're angry at the corporations for the cost of treatment being so high. Maybe they stage a protest or a storming of a tower. Maybe they hire someone else to do that for them. Maybe they use that as a reason to plot against parties who are better off, the corporations, doctors, fixers, etc in the future.

There's a lot that can come from a disease plot, whether immediate or in the future.

It should feel privileged because the vast majority can't afford it or just don't have the right connections. We the PCs are special though, so. Yay.

This could be a player lead thing ofc, but itd take some ooc pushing.

I also think cures are too expensive just all around.

As it is now you get the jab and are sent home and told not to go anywhere. Zzz

Some players will see just about any amount of playing into it as overdramatic lazy malingering, and others will see any amount of playing around it as gamey no-selling. My sense is the game's theoretical expected ideal is players being dangerously outgoing to their own detriment but still pantomiming terrified respect of the situation.

I understand that it's a hard balance as we do have medical oriented PCs.I just think that it's easy to slow down the game a lot and take a lot of fun away from a lot of players in an attempt to cater to liven things up for characters in medical field. I'm not saying it should never be done but it is a hard thing to balance.

I just try and weather these periods and play as usual to the best of my ability. Get through it.

But crises like outbreaks are definitely a chance for newer players to show off what they can do under difficult circumstances and there are plenty of veteran players and staff members who will take notice of that kind of stuff (even if they're isolated themselves); whether it's characters trying to entertain people in isolation, or playing at Epidemic UberEats, or being a first responder, or something totally their own.

There does also tend to me some help for characters through NPC and other PC channels for getting treatment when characters can't afford it, though I will couch that tepid assurance because there is an actual risk of death or financial cost to characters, it's not an illusion. If you get creative enough someone will save you, mostly.

If I had to suggest having a calculus about it to new players I would say, if you feel like making an effort and still facing a loss is going to burn you out then keep your head down, but if you're willing to roll the dice a bit to have a chance to main stage yourself then it's a much easier time to do it than any other.

Uhm, I haven't had that experience. Cure for mystery disease #1 set my character back almost half of their wealth and then cure for mystery disease #2 was completely unobtainable due to being three times as much again. I don't think it is very fair to say this. I wouldn't call losing potentially all of your savings over several weeks a 'minor setback'.

I know Sindome is meant to be a long term thing but those were long term savings that I could've put towards a plot or something fun, but instead they evaporated because I wanted to play the game in the limited time I have to do so. You can argue the same can happen for murder/theft and yeah, it can, but at least I get a nemesis I can really lean in to out of that, you know?

This has been a unique experience but definitely one that I feel that has cut off RP for a few things. We'll get back to it tho.

We can talk them up about what is possible if only they try but there are some game elements that can stop players from playing outright and my feeling is we have to be careful about subjecting everyone in the game to them regardless of their experience.

I couldn't risk leaving the cube because I'd never be able to pay for the cure. Was it my choice, yes. Did it mean I just stayed logged off - yep as well. Did I enjoy it, no. Not at all.

We also have to be willing to take risk sometimes, be willing to fail, and be open to rationalizing why our character might do something that is "something my character wouldn't do".

Me? I love outbreaks. I think there's a lot of fun that can be had from them. All I have to do is rationalize the risk. "I'm not going outside because there's plague." "But wait...my boss won't pay me if I don't go to work. I might get fired."

OOC we know this isn't the case, but my character? Maybe not, right? That's one ambience-based example that could justify going out during an outbreak. "I might not be able to afford medicine, but if I don't go to work I won't get paid. I might starve to death. I won't be able to pay rent," etc. Risk has been created for the alternative (staying inside) and now it's a choice. Often times they don't have to be ambient. If I'm a dip, I might see it as a cash grab and ask for medical help at some location so I can pickpocket medical staff. Being the smug dip I am, I head to a clinic and buy medicine from the same people I just stole from. If I'm a tailor, my livelihood depends on well crafted clothes and speedy turn-over times. If I don't buy material today, I'm going to miss a deadline and lose a customer. Cab drivers, doctors, fixers...whatever. There's a million reasons to risk going outside no matter what job you have. All you have to do is make one up.

Even clone-less characters can reason their way into doing dangerous things. It's up to us to give our character a reason to make the choice.

Last thing here. I want to touch on a tool we all have that can help circumvent a lack of contacts/network.

5. Did your character feel desperate enough to try to do something, well, desperate to get the chyen? Did they make a hard oath/promise to repay the person if they cut them a deal? Did they try to make deals? Did they sell their soul to do it or did they promise something unsavory?

This sounds great on paper, but I need you to look at this through the lens of a newer character with very few connections or means to get any of this stuff: what are they supposed to do? Who am I meant to sell my soul to? I'm nothing, nobody, relying mostly on the OOC good will of people trying to key immigrants into things and spending a lot of their money in the process.

Pubsic is a fantastic way to plead a case for help. We don't always need to know someone or be someone for someone else to want to take advantage in a desperate situation (or any situation really). What we need is for everyone else to know we're looking for help/trying to create RP. Pubsic is a good way to send a blanket statement for doing stuff like offering services to someone in exchange for plague medicine or money to get some. We may not always get the RP we're looking for - or any at all, but the odds of finding RP are better when people know we're looking. If we hide inside and reach out to no one because we don't have contacts, we're always going to get 0 feedback.

Disease being something more akin to a progression than a state would make a lot of sense to me (if it was a video game imagine a Infection % progression bar), so that characters could have degrees of exposure of different kinds and attempt to mitigate them through things like face masks, gloves, vitamins, drugs, rest, food, et cetera. They might feel themselves getting sick during the course of roleplaying but be able to pull back from the edge through other means, take a few hours downtime, and then get back into the thick of it.

Likewise have disease become more of an identifiable threat through ambient messaging ('the crowds are heavy with sick people coughing') and status lines on characters ('He is in critical condition. His eyes are bleeding and each breath scatters droplets of blood'). Have the methods and pathways of transmission more overt and deliberate.

I'm warmed somewhat to the theory of outbreaks in the game, but never really felt personally the game mechanics were there to support them properly.

Did you lie, cheat, promise, steal borrow or otherwise RP your way into a cure?

It's not that simple. To do this you need two things. A lot of time and someone to play ball with.

I am not saying there aren't PCs and, occasionally NPCs, who will engage in this. But there seems to be this assumption that everyone knows them or can easily find them. That these others will even engage with them or take the risk of dealing with them.

There is a long of storied history of oldbies avoiding putting much time or resources into new players given how frequently they cycle through. Again, I know some will and I love them for it. But just assuming that anyone can pull these things off feels a little dismissive to me.

This is also one of the few things most characters can't do on their own. Another character, NPC or PC will have to be involved in most cases. As soon as this is the case I don't think there's room to say that the one guy just needs to make it happen. They can't on their own.

Further, you have the time investment. Maybe a player has time to log in two hours a day on most days. They might not OOCly even HAVE the time budget needed to just 'RP to a solution'. Maybe getting ebola impacts a career player for two days but it could impact a more casual player for weeks.

And assuming this time budgeted player has used their two hours a day to make the money to afford the cure and can just buy it, the impact is still pretty rough. It might take them a month to earn back what some players feel comfortable with calling 'easy money' or 'pocket change'.

Heck. If you can't lock down one of the PCs able to help during your short play window then you're going to have to wait on a puppet request. Just lining up the treatment could take someone with limited time days or weeks. Same thing for RPing your way to a savior. And these activities might be of little interest to some players. In most cases you can focus on the things that you enjoy more in the game and avoid things you enjoy less. But not here.

These things can impact ALL players, even oldbies. But mix it in with a new player who is learning the ropes and it can seem insurmountable. I fully agree that there is a lot one can do during these plagues. Or even if you get infected. I just don't feel comfortable with the implication that it's simple or easy as not everyone is in the same boat ICly or OOCly.

I am not saying plagues should stop and are terrible. And I honestly love the positive suggestions made on ways to play through these situations and infections. I just think it's important to recognize that these things don't hit everyone equally. Something that seems easy to you might be a nightmare to another, sometimes for reasons beyond their control.

My post was more about how the posts, when taken together, seemed dismissive of the impact they had on some players. I don't think anyone was trying to do that but when 8 looked at thread as a hike that was the impression I got.

Honestly, I failed pretty badly with my post. It was poorly focused and badly worded. It came out like an attack and was combative. I apologize to everyone for that.

Johnny would have more accurate stats than what I can look at in my logs, and the sample sizes are pretty small but the last three outbreak events actually somewhat coincided with population surges in those years.

Text gaming tends towards the extinct side of things so there being major events going on (good or bad) seems to be a possible attractor for players, or at least not a significant deterrent.

Players are flat out not empowered enough to do that level of complex world interaction on very short time scales (or often at all). Anything that is going to require staff getting involved takes days at a minimum just to approve and is always going to be much more limited than what is being described above even if they approve it. This is basically why I've always tried to do plots that don't require an iota of input or support from anyone but myself, because you can get the train moving instantly and pivot the whole thing on a dime as needed.

Don't get me wrong I know there has been an effort to better support players doing more ambitious plotting and getting more support for it (and I'm extremely thankful for that!), but players executing some of those plot ideas in one or two days from a standing start would require them to be delegated vastly more power than is given now to figuratively write the road in front of themselves as they run.

However, I think that mass infections that have, and are, impacting the game, require a great deal of both player buy-in and GM support. I am not going to get into too much detail, but when NPCs are staffing shops and either emoting vomiting or coughing everywhere, it's likely that they would be 'sent home' by various bosses - dependent, of course, on the sector, place, and the motives of the NPC. The required GM activity to do this, depending on the severity of the illness, would be very burdensome and likely not worth the time given how some of the coded illnesses run their course very quickly. This action, though, -would- upend the economy and I think make these sorts of plots even more immersive and interesting.

On the player side, the ambient messages and the forced emotes you get from some of these coded illnesses can be often harsh and disgusting. That's good and cool. But when there's no actual mechanical impact, it forces a situation where only some of the game buys-in to it. It's hard to parse if these motives are IC based on character choices or just an OOC ignoring of something that is not technically detrimental to your character.

Based on past comments from Mirage about bug fixing diseases I have doubts whether the anti-disease tools in the game actually work at all with the various mechanics because updates to them weren't finished, so we're left with fighting code issues more often fighting real conflicts while difficult to organize player plots collapse for yet another outbreak that for some reason we insist on having multiple times a year.

Everyone else no-sells it. Acts like it's nothing.

But if you are coughing so much your respiratory tract bleeds, elderly and children WILL DIE from the disease. If you don't believe me, google 'whooping cough.'

And roleplaying this for 7 days has been... BORING. I still log on for a couple to a few hours a day, get what little I can done, and then have no real choice but to log off, cause I refuse to be anachronistic with my character.

the whole 'it's just a flue' thing is soo... dumb. Flus kill more then 36,000 a year in the US, and hospitalize more. Now, add in that Withhmores population is MUCH worse off , health wise. it's in the docs.

The park should be killing sick people that try to walk in, there should be piles of dead babies in the corpse collection sites.

tldr: Everyone's no-selling the disease and it's not fun for anyone, especially those trying to not no-sell it, and are stuck at home, not getting much roleplay. This has been my Ted Talk.

But yeah, after a week of this,. I guess I got no real choice.

Honestly, plague rp is fine. It gives medical people rp. But the re-infection was definatly a point that made it all feel like a bit much, to me.