Anorexic Doormouse.

I think it technically -is- illegal to be -addicted- to them..  but, I dunno.

Its weird.

In short, enclosed vehicles are a LOT easier to deal with then unenclosed ones. Rest assured, I want to support unenclosed vehicles, and a lot of variety in them. Powered scooters, pedal bikes, motor bikes, hover bikes, gyroscopic balancing conveyances (kinda like a Segway, kinda like that bitching bike concept from Bombadier - google it), roller blades, etc all fall under the same notion of exposed transit.

Where's the 25th hour of the day?

Erm, yay :)

It can be hard to RP it, either your not sure how too do it, or because the conflict and the pain and the addiction are more on the inside (in the characters head), so other characters don't see it.

Quote: from Nemisis on 11:47 am on Dec. 28, 2005[br]I've seen several characters roleplay drug addiction really well and then the opposite, where there is no addiction.

It can be hard to RP it, either your not sure how too do it, or because the conflict and the pain and the addiction are more on the inside (in the characters head), so other characters don't see it.

+1.

Quote: from Nemisis on 4:08 am on Mar. 18, 2006[br]'Joe is sweating bullets and shivering all over, mumbling to himself.'

I haven't bothered searching back for this to see if it's mentioned (I'm sure I read it somewhere but I could be making this stuff up)…

...but couldn't this just use a slight variation on the Plague coding structure?
It'd require a different trigger, and different ways of staving off the symptom messages (in addition to those already there, perhaps), but essentially it'd work fairly well, I think.

Yes it will mean less player-driven RP, but it will also mean that Junkie Bob can't act like everything's okay when in 'reality' he should be shaking so bad he can't flick off the imaginary ants crawling all over his skin.

Perhaps different symptom messages relative to different drugs... and it kicks in after a different time period relative to how much was taken? (Tolerance is an interesting variable...)

If the script runs off stats, then the little skinny kid with nothing but what they got in chargen will get wiped out way quicker than someone who's poured UE into whichever relevant stat is required (again, see Plague code). That's realistic, no?

...and then, I don't know. Do you have it get to a climax - where if the person survives, they're clean, if they don't, they're toast? ...treat them with detox in the same way as a Plague vaccine (except... without the 'vaccine' part)? Would they be totally off the drug after going through withdrawal like that, or would they have residual occasional symptoms (is an addiction for "life" (or until detoxed), or something you can suffer through?)?

Even if you know they're coming, automated symptom messages are scary things, they'd add an interesting element to the concept of drug addiction.

I know. I didn't actually say that, but it's what I was talking about.

Other than one guy I know who thought that the way he felt on Tuesday after a big Saturday was just the fact he happened to be having a bad day, nothing out of the ordinary - comedown is comedown is affecting most people faiiiiirly consistently (in relation to stats, build, experience etc).

The only issue I can find other than letting it be a straight scripted experience (which yes would detract, but nyeh, people aren't RPing things, a helping scripted hand isn't all bad, imho), is the issue of tolerance / experience - not sure how that would be factored in. That is what the script kids are for, yay! :P

(See also: random timing on most/all effects, based on (n)Stats, perhaps)

…I'm also sure that there could be messages that are included in the script and only echoed to the player in question... perhaps it could go through stages (is that possible?) - starting off being primarily in the character's head only with the occasional "Hostess Mini Muffin flinches slightly, brushing off invisible ants", leading eventually to the fun Trainspotting type scenes with projectile vomiting and general feeling like death.

And these are strong drugs, so "eventually" is what, a day or so? ;)

...I did find in the older entries that discussions of this sort were rejected due to "giving the players a reason why not to use drugs" - I don't think that comedown messages will do that. It's not a downside of using the drugs - it's a downside of not using the drugs.

Those were just plain annoying, and HALF the time, they would interupt a perfectcly good series of emotes that were portraying the same thing in my own words.  Like..

'.glance around slowly as I .rub some blood from my nose, as if daring the group around me to comment on it.'

'.narrow my eye at Bob as he starts to open his mouth.'

'You reach up to scratch your nose and it feels wet, bringing your hand up higher you see that its covered in bright blood!  You stuff your hand into your pocket quickly and pray that no one has noticed!'

Those messages make me not want to emote my illness because I'm afraid my emotes will get interupted as I am forced to bend over and puke all over the floor, when perhaps I'm already bent over a toilet.  I think of it as code enforced metaposing.

Every person deals with addiction and coming down diffrently in real life, yes, there are generalized ideas of what someone on heroin goes through when there coming down but HOW that person deals with it is not general at all.  It's specific to the person.

Personally I would be annoyed if I had to deal with generalized drug addiction messages everytime my character didn't take his fix.  

An increasingly dramatic (as more time passes) message that replaces 'He is looking haggard and could use a fix.' would solve the problem without forcing messages that portray a persons character acting in a way that there controller might not agree with, on the controller and those characters around them.  While, it would still give everyone a good idea of where that person was in there withdrawl stage, so both the player and the players around them could emote and speak accordingly.  

I think what really needs to be discussed in more depth is how quickly someone comes down from drugs, what the withdrawl is probably like, etc.  Perhaps people aren't RPing drug addiction as much as they could because they just don't know WHAT to RP it like.  I have no idea how soon I would need to take my next hit of V-202 before I started to get.. Get what?  Irritable?  Dilusional?  Upset?  Emotional?  Snappy?  Suicidal?  Fiendish?  Angry?

You can tell a player he's sick and he'll pose as being a tough adamant golen. Other times you give a player a hint of how they feel and they extrapolate it so beatifully that you want to delete all other players and keep just the good ones. We have both ends of the spectrum and a lot more of the middle of it.

Sometimes we as DMs need to enforce the bad side of things on players so drastically we have to break our own rules. And as in anything that involves more than one people, everyone has to be trated the same, the ones that do a good job at RPing being fucked up by ebola, drugs, being hurt and the others that are on "a severly weaken state" and are drinking at the Drome, smoking cigarretes and threatening people left and right while saying "It's just a flesh wound".

That being said, we encourage you to RP your character's current status the way you think is right. If the automated message pops up just do it like most players do and an "ooc Ignore the automated message, my RP is way cooler and better" we all do it be it to correct a mispelling, a return that was hit prematurely or simply to correct something that was out of place.

I've seen Nemisis roleplaying perfectly addiction to drugs, and I've seem a handfull of people beyond the overdose line (that means one of your stats is negative) facing a whole gang like they were superman. And to fix the problem, we have to enforce meta-poses (as much as we hate them) to make the players face the fact that they're on a situation they can't be their normal self.

The automated messages are there, we know they are ugly and bad, but you, the players that RP you character's condition have all the freedom you want to disregard them. It is for the other ones that think their character is a ninja superman pirate.