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The Dogtor Is In, or, "Skippy's Patented Drug System Overhaul"


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INTRODUCTION:

Thank you for taking the time to read my proposal; please consider it for what it is—a work-in-progress.

Drugs are, without a doubt, both one of the most critical and most frustrating elements of any roleplay server. They are often unbalanced, out-of-touch with reality, and artificially inflate the economy with emphasis on only those substances that make combat more effective—and, reasonably so, no one wants to roleplay a meth or heroin addict if those drugs don't provide any tangible benefits or incur any real penalties for not doing them. The current addiction system is, as it stands, set dressing,

I've taken the liberty of imagining a uniform cost/benefit system that relies solely on the health pool, rather than attempting to introduce new or overcomplicated statistics or debuffing the effects these drugs provide in such a way that their abuse would be physically impossible in real life, all hopefully within the ceilings of how much someone can get out of drugs as they exist now. Only the mechanism by which they are used and divided has changed.

 


IN A NUTSHELL:

I propose a system whereby:

 

  1. Drugs are broken down in to hits and weight. Hits are particular to each drug. They are a measure of how much you are using out of a gram/milligram.
  2. Each drug has specific amount of health that it generates upon use. Soft drugs add very little but don't hurt you. Hard drugs add a lot but will hurt you. The amount added is increasingly unpredictable the more the drug is used.
  3. Over time, users develop a tolerance, which as it grows, allows them to do more and more drugs to eventually reach the highest plateau of health points.
  4. As tolerance grows, addiction does as well, forcing habitual users to continue using the drug to achieve those highs even if they aren't needed OOC.
  5. If addiction is not handled properly, it will devolve from a hangover, a temporary debuff to health points, in to withdrawal, which incapacitates a player randomly and frequently for hours or even days.
  6. Overdose is a possibility for those with no tolerance doing large amounts, or habitual users trying to get to the maximum HP pool. There is a rare chance it can happen at any time with certain drugs.

 


GLOSSARY OF TERMS AND CONCEPTS:

HP pool
The amount of health a person has.

Hit One “standard unit” of a drug that is consumed.

High A successful hit that produces a temporary, positive HP pool.

Tolerance The minimum amount of hits it takes to get a high.

Addiction The minimum amount of hits it takes to not enter withdrawal.

Intoxication The presence and varying intensity of visual or input effects a drug produces.

Withdrawal The point at which a player character begins experiencing regular negative HP feedback for tapered or discontinued drug use. If this is not managed properly, it can lead to serious injury or death.

Overdose (OD) The point at which tolerance has been so surpassed that the amount of drugs inside a person is dangerous or lethal. This requires immediate medical attention for some drugs; it is impossible to overdose on marijuana, LSD, among a select few others.

Hangover A temporary, negative HP pool that persists after the effects of a high have worn off. Aided by food and rest, cured only by time.
 

 


GUIDING PRINCIPLE:

Soft drugs—marijuana, alcohol, MDMA, amphetamine—give minimal, predictable highs and intoxication, and build up a gentle tolerance, hangover and withdrawal.

Hard drugs—methamphetamine, PCP, opiates, benzodiazepines—give massive, unpredictable highs and intoxication and build up an aggressive tolerance, hangover and withdrawal.

 


HOW THE WEIGHT-TO-HIT RATIO FUNCTIONS:

Not all drugs are created equal; where a gram of acid might contain hundreds of hits (liquid LSD would contain thousands!) or a bottle of liquor the same, a gram of cocaine may contain twenty, a gram of weed may just four, and a gram of magic mushrooms the same, if not less. The command /useitem on a drug would be followed by the item ID and amount of hits to take, excluding cigarettes. This may complicate the further subdivision of grams in to milligrams, but as long as the amount of hits remains proportional, it's still possible.

 


THE SCIENCE OF GETTING HIGH:


The first hit of any drug will always get you high. As long as your tolerance is zero, you are guaranteed to see results. As we continue to use a drug, depending on what that drug is, each hit becomes less and less likely to produce a high—for casual drinkers and smokers, this means they can do very large quantities without noticing too much of an issue, or a positive influence on their health—whereas for drugs like methamphetamine or cocaine, the high is intense, but must be chased to maintain it.
 

Since cocaine is easily the most popularized. misrepresented and over-distributed drug on the server, we'll use it as our stand-in for the following examples:

On day one, our user does a gram of cocaine, twenty hits. The first three or four continue to get them high, but the fifth one doesn't do anything. By the end of the baggy, they may have only gotten sixteen or seventeen highs, even though there are twenty hits inside. As they do more and more, this discrepancy grows until:

1.) The user runs out or stops of their own accord and/or,
2.) The user reaches the maximum amount of HP pool for their tolerance and/or,
3.) The user overdoses.

By baggy two, the user will get even less successful highs. By baggy three, it's less than half-effective, and by baggy four the returns have diminished so much that it seems pointless to continue using it. At this juncture, not only is our user risking overdose, but they've only gotten perhaps half of what present drug mechanic bonuses provide. For them to get the full benefits and ignore intoxication effects, they'll have to begin...

 


THE BUILDING OF TOLERANCE:

Tolerance fluctuates for every drug; while your tolerance for methamphetamine may build up within days, it might take someone drinking or smoking weed weeks to achieve the same level. This means that after our first encounter with cocaine, and after our user becomes sober, the next time they do it, their first baggy might only get them as high as they were by the second bag the first time. This process continues until a person builds up enough tolerance to be able to withstand so many hits of a drug that would otherwise lead to overdose in someone who's never used it before.

The question weighed here is—smoke meth for cheap and become invincible, at a great personal cost, or do a bunch of expensive designer drugs for less substantial effects at far, far less risk.

As tolerance builds, the negative effects of a drug begin to disappear as long as you're high—whereas getting adequately drunk without a tolerance will produce an effect similar to what players experience on the server today, a seasoned boozehound can polish off a bottle of vodka with barely any interference.

Likewise, our hypothetical cocaine addict would go from being initially overwhelmed by the visual and input effects, to just occasional twitchy bouts, until they reach a point that driving or combat is possible while high.

However, someone with an extremely high tolerance will not experience the high for as long, and will need to do the drug more often. Pushing your tolerance always increases your risk of overdose, but is necessary to get a higher health point maximums.

The tradeoff, however, is that tolerance correlates with...

 


THE BURDEN OF ADDICTION:

It's the end of week one for our cocaine addict. They are now very far from where they were: it takes two eightballs for them to achieve the same amount of highs they got from his first two baggies, give or take. Not only that, but they notice something the next day when they don't have any left over... their hangover is no longer temporary—in fact, it's slowly but steadily deteriorating their health pool. This is not a normal desire for more cocaine, it's burning, so much that it's starting to hurt. The longer our addict goes without, the more and more damage he will take that will persist as long as they needs the drug. For a week-long cocaine binge, this means their chances of being hospitalized due to withdrawal are slim, but possible. Most likely, they'll end up incapacitated—meaning they can be helped up, but the blackouts will continue until they've conquered their withdrawal, or do enough of the drug to sustain their tolerance, which by now is high enough they'll need to do at least two or so grams to beat the shakes. This process could last from in game hours to days, even.

The more someone does a drug beyond their tolerance, the greater their addiction will be, and the greater their addiction, the more frequent and debilitating the effects of withdrawal are. However, with most drugs, it's possible to taper off of them in a way that, given enough time, a user can gradually lower their tolerance with negligible or manageable effects. Some drugs, like methamphetamine, produce such intense addiction that after the first gram, even with very low tolerance, a user will need it within a few hours, if not immediately.

Our user is informed there's going to be a fight. He still hasn't quite maxed out his health pool yet... there's a smidgen left. We're on baggy seven when it happens...


 

THE TRAGEDY OF OVERDOSE:

Not only is overdose possibly by doing too much of a drug without tolerance; it can happen any time once your tolerance has reached its peak. Some drugs will never kill you, like weed or MDMA. Other drugs are far more likely to kill you if you binge them. This part is relatively self-explanatory, but I'd suggest that the chances of overdosing at the maximum health pool line aren't revealed quite so clearly as they are when a person first starts building up tolerance, to make habitual users skirt the line to get back up to the top again.

Sustained use over very long periods of time could even start randomly introducing injury, where every few hits damage is taken, further encouraging the cycle—two steps forward, one step back.

 


THERE ARE OTHER DRUGS BESIDES COCAINE? (AND OTHER CLOSING REMARKS):

Unexplored here are the benefits of drugs like benzos, or opiates. They might make the physical incapacitation animation occur 30-90 seconds after they would normally trigger, allowing people to “withstand pain” long enough to make it away from the scene of a crime or get in to their friend's car before they collapse—in exchange for unpredictable blackouts/visual effects regardless of tolerance. They would also be near impossible to quit safely without tapering. Alcohol, similarly, would kill those who halt a three-bottle-a-day regimen cold turkey.

Psychedelics might hurt your temporary HP pool—like a reverse hangover—but increase it semi-permanently for a few hours after use with a high tolerance cooldown.

Drugs like weed, tobacco, alcohol, crack and meth would be pungent; after using them, there's a chance that they'll smell. The time of length this persists would vary per drug, alcohol and tobacco obviously being the longest. People might be able to get rid of this by taking a shower and washing the outfit they wore while using the substance (introduce laundromats!). Make these processes take time, so that users are not encouraged to do it after every drug use. Likewise, anyone who is also on those substances or present in the same dimension when they're used should be unable to properly judge whether or not the user smells. Perhaps a dice-roll for unsmoked weed or opened containers in a car. This would create an actual justification for K9 units without being unfair to either party.

Alcohol, once used for even one hit, would become an 'open container.'

As it is, we have no items to DO drugs with. It should be necessary to purchase papers, wraps, bowls, bongs, one-hitters, straws, spoons, pookies and needles before someone can do a drug that requires a prerequisite tool. Head shops, anyone? Don't forget the 24/7 “flowers in a vase”—or a broken light bulb. Different sized items could handle different maximum amounts of hits at any one time.

I am not sure if stamina can be worked the same way that health does, but it could easily be adapted to fit our needs, as in being too drunk or high will destroy your stamina, or running too much on an upper will increase your potential for a heart attack if you push yourself too hard.

With regards to combining drugs, the easiest implementation I can think of is a massive multiplier for passing out and overdose, depending on what's being combined. Mix wisely, because not all of them play nice with each other.

When it comes to cutting or adulterating, that's remarkably simple: the more cut a product is, the less likely it is to produce a high.


This is a very loose, simplified proposal. There's a lot of number-crunching to be done, a lot of drugs yet to be explored, and if this proposal is to be realized, it will need so much more input and testing. It would truly take a village. Your time spent reading this is very much appreciated, and, please—I cannot make this proposal better without your input. Tell me if you love it, hate it, have a suggestion, or a crazy idea. Consider this a living document that will, paws crossed, evolve in to something everyone here can enjoy... even if they don't do drugs.


 

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