Diseases and Disease Hotspots

[Aldiel]

So I came upon this idea because despite the fact that we all live in a third-world, garbage-strewn Zalanthas, I have really only seen people RPing a sickness once or twice, and then most often to cover up an extended leave of  absence.  When I go to the website there are tons of these really cool diseases that will turn your face in a scabby mess, woot! So here's my idea.  Is it possible to have diseases spread by rooms themselves?  If you stay in a room long enough a disease pops, much like, "a cockroach crawls across the wall" does in some rooms.  Some rooms would be hotspots, like bars and shops where diseases would have a much more likely chance to pop.  Now, if you wanted to make things really complicated and cool, you could impute an immune skill that would go up every time you got sick.  So if you make a younger character he would start with a lower immune skill, and if you made an older character he would have a higher immune skill.  If you wanted, you could make that skill drop after a certain point so old characters would be dieing off like crazy. *grins wickedly*  I really would like to have more of a reason to use a doctor, and have many, many more pills available to confuse me.

[Cuusardo]

I personally want to see more people RPing having STDs.  Cheap whores and the johns who use them should be riddled with them.

[Maybe42or54]

Find me, huh? I'll give you an STD.

IG.

[Aldiel]

Come on, wouldn't this be an awesome idea?  To get diseases as you play your character?  Please, give me love here.  Reply.  Good or bad?

[Larrath]

It could be nice if certain areas (namely the 'rinth, alleys and sewers) could have a low chance of giving people a very weak disease which was both contagious and very easy to cure.

A rash sickness, for example, which lasts one RL day playtime.  All it would do is temporarily take off 10 movement and 5 hp, and give a message when people looked at your character.  Rich folk would be able to afford to get a cure for it (say, buy some herbs for 100 'sids), which would also immunize them for a while.  Magickers could be able to cause or affect or cure these, or maybe even contract their own sort of diseases.

This isn't something deadly or actually dangerous, and 'rinthis who can't afford to get cured could just as well stay sick or wait until they got better on their own.  But it could add some to the atmosphere.

[Folker]

A good idea. Though I would've loved a toggle that would decide whether or not your disease wears off or not. To be able to keep your disease permanently, unless forcefully cured.

[Dakkon Black]

Just think!

Your encumbrance is very light.
You are:
Recruit of the Servants of the Dragon:
Relationship to the land is no so good.
You are currently speaking sirihish with a southern accent.
You are standing.
You are not refusing saves (nosave off).
You are not being merciful.
You are currently affected by:

- Hemorrhoids

Help Hemorrhoids

Painful, and tragic, your char can no longer sit without pain.

sit bar

You sit at a wood carved bar, wincing in pain as your ass touches the seat.

[Anonymous]

I think the problem with diseases in game is that it is really outside of the player's control and there are already enough things in the game that can either kill you or have you killed to be adding in something which, from a low, low-tech civilization like Armageddon, would be pretty hard to avoid.

The flip side is that people would probably approach the problem with a lot of the common knowledge that we have today as a benefit of being an advanced civilization.  Players would be making connections between coughing and dirty hands and germs in a setting where people would probably be attributing all of that to evil magic from the [north|south].

It wasn't but four or five hundred years ago that they thought one of the best treatments for Scarlet fever is to put you in a hot room wearing all red and surrounded by things that were red because doctors at the time believed that the color red drew impurities out of the body.

[Aldiel]

It wasn't but four or five hundred years ago that they thought one of the best treatments for Scarlet fever is to put you in a hot room wearing all red and surrounded by things that were red because doctors at the time believed that the color red drew impurities out of the body.

Wicked.  Then there's even more room for RP with this.    

And I'm not saying that I want people to start dieing left and right from diseases here.  What I'm saying is it would be fun to suddenly get a mild disease and be forced to RP it and find a doctor.  Think about how cool it would be to be the one person out of a two hundred to get some deadly disease that you're forced to travel to another city to find a doctor to get a cure for.  It might take let's say a month IG time to kill you.  The most fun and use for this, I think, would just be for a common cold where your stats would be temporarily lowered a bit until you recovered or took the proper medication.  If you want to be hardcore about it, it's kind of crazy that so few rinthers, who practically wade through garbage on a daily bases, RP out disease, and I don't think they will until they're forced to.

[Maybe42or54]

Think of how cool it would be to be the only one to get the disease with every PC you get.

Not very cool.

Rp out diseases. They are fun.

[Cuusardo]

Not every disease has to be fatal.

[amoeba]

I was on a mud once that had plenty of diseases.  There was a microbiologist working on his PhD on staff and he loved to code the things.

Basiclly it worked like this.  Say it was a cold, the vector would be a sneeze.  Anyone who had a cold would randomly sneeze.  Anyone else in that square had a random chance of catching that cold.  When you had the cold you would get random nag messages like "You shiver uncomfortably as fever racks your body."  This would either wear off eventually or you could pay a healer NPC to get rid of it.

In truth it was a little cute, but mostly irritating.  Of course this was not a RP mud, and the code didn't effect people in any other way so it was just a nag.  You could make it so a disease affects someone's stats a minor amount.  I do see problems with how it is spread.  I mean someone sneezing out on the dunes may or maynot be close enough to infect the other person, the same goes true for sitting in a bar.  The person infected on the far end of the bar should not be able to infect someone at the other end.

If diseases were implemented you would also at the same time need to implement coded ways to remove them, by vividuans, physicians, or a good knowledge of the right mixture of herbs and plants.

Btw, I really hated when they put lice on some animals.  You fought them, you likely caught lice.  I pretty much avoided rats after they implemented the code.

edit: Irritating typo, why can't I see these things the first time?

[Cuusardo]

I like the idea of lice on rats.  As it is, people seem to ignore the stench that comes with hunting some of the rats in game.  Giving them lice as a result would make them think twice about hunting rats all day.

[Maybe42or54]

But then again, people that hunt rats probably aren't there because that is what they wanted to do with their life.

[Angela Christine]

In most of the known world humans probably react to being sick the same way that animals do:  they try like hell to act normal unless the illness completely incapacitates them.  To be sick is to be weak, and in many situations if you show weakness you are more likely to be given a dagger in the gut than a nice bowl of chicken soup.  Kids probably pass around colds like the little plague rats that they are, but I think most adults would be more likely to hide an illness than to wallow in it.

Then again, considering the medical care available to most commoners, people with naturally weak immune systems may often die in childhood.  PCs are people who survived childhood in reasonably good condition, so it isn't too far fetched to assume that they are people with naturally good immune systems.  In real life some people seem more or less vulnerable to colds and flu than others, both in how often they appear to catch whatever is going around and in how hard they are hit by the illnesses they do catch.  In Zalanthas, people that are at the "more vulnerable"end of the spectrum are going to have a hard time of it, not only because they have to suffer through illness without the benefit of NyQuil, but also because they don't get sick pay, if you are often absent or weakened by illness it will be difficult to keep a job.


Heck, the arid climate may be hard on microbes, making bacterial disease less common.   Human bodies are warm and damp, so things that can live in human bodies probably prefer warm, damp climates.  The known world is mostly hot and dry, so organisims that flourish inside humanoid bodies probably die quickly in the open air.  That won't stop you from catching a cold if I sneeze on you or shake your hand, but it might make you less likely to catch a cold simply from touching things that a sick person has touched, or breathing air in a room recently occupied by a sick person.


I've played sick or sickly PCs before, and it was fun, but I'm not too worried about the general good health displayed by most PCs.


Angela Christine

[amoeba]

Heck, the arid climate may be hard on microbes, making bacterial disease less common.   Human bodies are warm and damp, so things that can live in human bodies probably prefer warm, damp climates.  The known world is mostly hot and dry, so organisims that flourish inside humanoid bodies probably die quickly in the open air.  That won't stop you from catching a cold if I sneeze on you or shake your hand, but it might make you less likely to catch a cold simply from touching things that a sick person has touched, or breathing air in a room recently occupied by a sick person.

A mild derailment, but not all sicknesses are bacteria or virus borne.  One good example from where I live is Valley Fever.  This is fungus borne. I've had it, it is not a fun sickness.  

Also some places IG should be vertible petrie dishes of nasties.  Think the venerable Byn latrines.  Now it could be said that commoners have developed a strong immunity to these pathogens, but that doesn't mean they can't be vectors.  If I were a noble, I'd avoid the byn like the plague (pardon the pun).  You never know what you'll catch off these people.  All the more reason to show the polarity between the noble and commoner castes.

[Aldiel]

Heck, the arid climate may be hard on microbes, making bacterial disease less common.
Angela Christine

True, but take a look at Egypt--lots of people dieing from disease.  And heat mixed with poo poo does indeed make some nasty shiot, and parasites can live in just about anything.

Someone said something about the problem with this idea being that if you were in a remote region of Zalanthas you wouldn't get diseases as easily?  Yes, that's the beauty of it.  Why do you think that Native Americans had such low immune systems?  Well, one of the reasons, among many, was that they lived in tribes not cities (That and the land bridge, and a whole load of other things, I'm sure.  I just saw that bit on the TV.)  
You tell me just to RP it out.  I'm telling you, I have, but tell me how many people are going to RP out an imaginary illness then go to a, perhaps, imaginary doctor to get an imaginary pill for the most interesting and least harmful disease on the Webpage that they themselves pick.  There is a certain point where it is nice for things to be coded.  Arm wouldn't be half as cool as it is if it was just a chat room where everything was invented.  We have poison coded; why can't we have disease?  If I told you Halflings were going to poison you with a poke of their spear, you might tell me, "Just role-play it out.  It would add nothing to the game, and it would be rather annoying."  And yet, I have gotten so much RP out of the poison code.  I don't imagine it like you all the sudden get a disease and, before you can get back to safety, you're dead, but a ten-year-old character should have suffered at least a few diseases, none vitually, in his/her lifetime.  Don't give me this poop that it's better off not being coded.  You're the very same Arm players that parade around with signatures like, "A thousands deaths is a tragedy, a million is Armageddon."  You're the same players that talk about characters living lightning lives, again and again.  Suck it up.  If this was implemented, yes, it might make it harder for you to train constantly hours on end (but I doubt it), and it might force you take a pay cut once or twice a RL year for sick-leave, but is this so bad?  Personally, I say, bring it on!

[flashz00]

Your Pc can get a disease in game. I know, because it has happened to me before. And I thought it was pretty cool that it happened.

[Agent_137]

Yeap. there is disease on the game, but it's not that prevalent. Perhaps it should be more so, since there is already code for it going around. yay pun.

[Morrolan]

I agree with more coded disease.  Why?  Because Zalanthas has less disease than American suburbs.

But...I also think that there should be an immunity code...some diseases you can develop immunity to, over time.  Maybe certain water sources make you sick, but less sick each time (provided you survive).

Heck, the same code could be used to develop immunity to any poison or pathogen.

"Sweet jes' ain as sweet anymore..."

"Over the last several years, I've been developing an immunity to metholinec powder."

Still, I think this would be cool.  Especially if the diseases would lower stats permanently by a little bit if characters became exhausted or wounded while sick.  That would be motivation to get some rest while sick.

Morrolan

[Maybe42or54]

Unless it takes into account age and all that other stuff, it shouldn't be coded.

If it does, then alright, I'd get over it.