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[ic=Philosophy Archive]
Week 1 - The Cost of Magic (http://www.thecbg.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?70759)
Week 2 - Villains (http://www.thecbg.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?71232)
Week 3 - Genre Conventions (http://www.thecbg.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?71697)
Week 4 - Design Method (http://www.thecbg.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?72101)
Week 5 - Characters (http://www.thecbg.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?72445)
Week 6 - Theme (http://www.thecbg.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?72962)
Week 7 - PCs in the World (http://www.thecbg.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?73123)
Week 8 - Politics (http://www.thecbg.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?73352)
Week 9 - Government (http://www.thecbg.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?73505.last)
Week 10 - Alignment (http://www.thecbg.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?73709.last)
Week 11 - Magic Items (http://www.thecbg.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?73886.last)
Week 12 - Philosophy (http://www.thecbg.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?74200.last)
Week 13 - Races & Ethnicity (http://thecbg.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?74353.0)
Week 14 - Tone (http://thecbg.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?74586.0)
Week 15 - Content (http://thecbg.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?74876.last)
Week 16 - War & Crime (http://thecbg.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?75008.last)
Week 17 - Names and Language (http://thecbg.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?75220.last)
Week 18 - Cosmology (http://www.thecbg.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?75504.last)
Week 19 - Transportation (http://thecbg.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?75681.last)
Week 20 - History (http://thecbg.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?75991.last)
Weel 21 - Medicine
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Medicine
* Does your setting have advanced medicine? Is it replaced by healing magic? By divine miracles? By herbal folk-medicine?
* Is disease just a minor nuisance that can be removed with a simple spell or a nanoscience-technobabble cure? Or is it something to be actually feared? Could an uncurable disease kill an important character? Kill half the world's population?
* How do medicinal/other healing options influence characters' views on violence? Is being wounded in a fight something you can routinely experience and expect to be "patched up" afterwards, or is it something that might actually put you down for a long while? What about permanent crippling, loss of eyes, ears, limbs, etc?
* Do the same "rules" apply to all characters within the setting, or do PCs (in an RP game) or protagonists (in a story) get to ignore some health hazards for the sake of convenience? Eg. just because these characters will never actually lose an arm or die from cholera, doesn't mean that such things are actually impossible within the context of the setting?
If you are running a game, do you make up the world history as you go along, based on the needs of each session, or do you plan ahead?
ME has "drugs" in it. By which I mean it has both medical and recreational. That second one I think is one that gets glossed over in alot of settings. There are medicines and remedies for curing illness and injury and there are ways to use those things to get a buzz (there are some drugs used just TO get a buzz). Actually plays a major role, factoring into the smuggling and underworld aspect of the game.
Quote from: Phoenix* Is disease just a minor nuisance that can be removed with a simple spell or a nanoscience-technobabble cure? Or is it something to be actually feared? Could an uncurable disease kill an important character? Kill half the world's population?
* Do the same "rules" apply to all characters within the setting, or do PCs (in an RP game) or protagonists (in a story) get to ignore some health hazards for the sake of convenience? Eg. just because these characters will never actually lose an arm or die from cholera, doesn't mean that such things are actually impossible within the context of the setting?
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I fall into the "rules apply to everyone" category. If you aren't going to apply these rules to the PC, then why bother having them?
In Savage Age, "magical" healing for the most part means folk medicine, which may or may not give better results than more "realistic" treatments. There is no clear distinction between the two (much like there is no distinction made between astronomy and astrology in the setting) and both are usually practiced by the same characters.
Since medicine is rather primitive (even if some surgical techniques may be fairly good) and magic does not improve things much, diseases can be very scary and deadly. Confronting a rabid animal, for example, is very dangerous - one bite could doom you to an extremely nasty death. Combat is not something to be taken lightly either. Serious injuries might not be treatable, lost fingers are lost for good, and no one ever comes back from the dead - save as living dead monstrosities.
The key to survival in the Savage Age is to act smart and avoid unnecessary risks. If you hear rumours of a plague in the town you're heading to, stay the hell away. Don't get into a fight unless you're willing to risk life and limb, and always stack odds in your favour.
Quote from: Phoenix* Is disease just a minor nuisance that can be removed with a simple spell or a nanoscience-technobabble cure? Or is it something to be actually feared? Could an uncurable disease kill an important character? Kill half the world's population?
* Do the same "rules" apply to all characters within the setting, or do PCs (in an RP game) or protagonists (in a story) get to ignore some health hazards for the sake of convenience? Eg. just because these characters will never actually lose an arm or die from cholera, doesn't mean that such things are actually impossible within the context of the setting?
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Players are subject to the same rules as NPCs. However, given that PCs are often very powerful, they can simply shrug off effects that would cripple a normal person.
As an aside Mare Eternus also has many healing artifacts. The rarity (and often power) of such things means that they often become holy grails with many questing and warring over them.
Quote from: NomadicAs an aside Mare Eternus also has many healing artifacts. The rarity (and often power) of such things means that they often become holy grails with many questing and warring over them.
Good old Holy Grails. :D
Quote from: Phoenix* Does your setting have advanced medicine? Is it replaced by healing magic? By divine miracles? By herbal folk-medicine?
* Is disease just a minor nuisance that can be removed with a simple spell or a nanoscience-technobabble cure? Or is it something to be actually feared? Could an uncurable disease kill an important character? Kill half the world's population?[/quote]* How do medicinal/other healing options influence characters' views on violence? Is being wounded in a fight something you can routinely experience and expect to be "patched up" afterwards, or is it something that might actually put you down for a long while? What about permanent crippling, loss of eyes, ears, limbs, etc?[/quote]* Do the same "rules" apply to all characters within the setting, or do PCs (in an RP game) or protagonists (in a story) get to ignore some health hazards for the sake of convenience? Eg. just because these characters will never actually lose an arm or die from cholera, doesn't mean that such things are actually impossible within the context of the setting?
If you are running a game, do you make up the world history as you go along, based on the needs of each session, or do you plan ahead?
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I might implement mook rules and have unnamed NPCs just die when wounded. So if anything, the specific rules are more (not less) applicable to PCs. But otherwise, yeah, if a plague can hit the NPCs, it can hit the PCs just as hard. I'm not sure what you mean by that last bit about world history or how it relates to illness and medicine.
Quote from: PhoenixMedicine
* Does your setting have advanced medicine? Is it replaced by healing magic? By divine miracles? By herbal folk-medicine?
* Is disease just a minor nuisance that can be removed with a simple spell or a nanoscience-technobabble cure? Or is it something to be actually feared? Could an uncurable disease kill an important character? Kill half the world's population?
* How do medicinal/other healing options influence characters' views on violence? Is being wounded in a fight something you can routinely experience and expect to be "patched up" afterwards, or is it something that might actually put you down for a long while? What about permanent crippling, loss of eyes, ears, limbs, etc?
* Do the same "rules" apply to all characters within the setting, or do PCs (in an RP game) or protagonists (in a story) get to ignore some health hazards for the sake of convenience? Eg. just because these characters will never actually lose an arm or die from cholera, doesn't mean that such things are actually impossible within the context of the setting?
If you are running a game, do you make up the world history as you go along, based on the needs of each session, or do you plan ahead?
1. Daerderak doesn't have anything that remotely resembles advanced medicine. It would totally break the mood the setting sets up. In Orrery, I would expect that most civilized countries would have magical healing available for purchase, but not as a provided service, like in many European countries. The reason for that is simply economics; there aren't enough casters capable of healing spells. In fact, healing magic would probably be more common among tribal cultures in the wild skies.
2. In Daerderak, no. Disease is a very important part of the setting. I killed a PC off in it due to disease, actually. In Orrery, for most of the diseases in the civilized countries, yes. Magical Sanitation +
Remove Disease = Healthy populace. But there are lots of exotic things adventurers can pick up in the wild sky.
3. The one campaign I ran in Daerderak, the PC's were very paranoid about getting hit, because they kept fighting creatures that had poison and/or disease. I haven't run a campaign in Orrery yet, so I've no idea how the players will react.
4. Yes. Exceptions to the rules are because of class abilities and whatnot, so not really exceptions, I guess. Then again, the Dwarven Fighter with 20 Constitution has little to fear by way of poison or disease.
5. World History comes in two flavors: What everybody knows, and what everybody doesn't know. What everybody knows should be provided easily enough for the players to have access to. What everybody doesn't know should be revealed slowly, and can be improvised on the fly. Basically, if everybody knows King Leopold died in a hunting accident, that should be the starting information of the PCs. Then they find out that the hunting accident may not have been entirely accidental, which creates the adventure. This eventually builds, false trail by false trail, to a confrontation with the assassin who killed the king. He indicates that someone in the neighboring nation hired him, which sends the PC's farther down the rabbit hole. From this point, there are about a hundred different ways to end this adventure, and continue forward.
The practice of medicine in the Clockwork Jungle is fairly advanced for a generally medieval-type setting. Surgeons, for instance, use distilled alcohol as a disinfectant and understand how to utilize animal intestine to make dissolving sutures. Most medical knowledge is really pharmacological knowledge - the identification of herbs, roots, fruits, flowers, essential oils, and fungi, and the use of them alone or in mixtures to promote healing and cure ailments. The Forest has a much wider variety of readily medicinal plants than Earth does naturally, and they are both more common and much more potent, meaning that cures to common diseases are more readily available to the average person than in our own history (the trade-off is, of course, that poisons are also more commonly available and readily used). It's debatable how many such ingredients and concoctions are actually beneficial; certainly some are, but others fall into the "dubious folk medicine" category. I'd categorize CJ medicine as sort of a cross between 10th century Islamic and Chinese medicinal practices.
Disease is still prevalent, and epidemics do happen. Because of the small size and rather low genetic variability of deep Forest communities, a caravan could carry a disease that wipes out an entire village, and this does happen from time to time. Epidemics are more common in the world's few urbanized regions, however.
Healing magic, like call magic in CJ, is quite limited. There are no "instant heal" spells (let alone spells to return people from the dead); channeling can greatly increase the speed of recovery, as well as even regenerate limbs, but this is something that happens over weeks even with magical aid. Channeling is generally unable to cure poisons, though it can delay them, perhaps long enough for an antidote to be provided. The upshot is that while
The last question - whether PCs are treated like everyone else - strikes me more as a question about GMing style than world design. My feeling is that diseases are included when they add to the story; thus, I don't make my PCs roll against catching the common cold, but if they visit a plague-infested village in an effort to find a cure, I will give them the same chance to catch it that everyone else gets.