Thread: Alcohol in Legend

So I've been attempting to put together rules for alcohol in Legend, because it has come up in my current campaign that players are putting people on alcohol IV drips and other such unusual uses of alcohol.

I'm hoping for some feedback, and I will try to refine what I've got from there. I have the base mechanics for alcohol overall, but I dont have quick tables for different types of alcohol calculated yet.

Let me know what you think.

Thanks guys.

Alcohol in Legend - Downloads - Basic Roleplaying Central

At the moment, it looks impressive but isn't really that useful.

I see that your players like to put people on whiskey drips, which explains the Alcohol by Injection table, but that wouldn't be that common.

What it really needs, in my opinion, is:
1. A list of common alcoholic drinks and their effects (I don't know what 10 ounces of alcohol relates to in the real world, for example.
2. What is the cumulative effect of drinking alcohol?
3. Does Resilience have an effect?
4. Ideally, you would want some worked examples of alcohol consumption.

Remember the drinking contests in RQ3 Vikings? They were easily usable and fun. For a RPG, you need something similar. If you can make it realistic as well, all the better.

Originally Posted by soltakss

At the moment, it looks impressive but isn't really that useful.

I see that your players like to put people on whiskey drips, which explains the Alcohol by Injection table, but that wouldn't be that common.

What it really needs, in my opinion, is:
1. A list of common alcoholic drinks and their effects (I don't know what 10 ounces of alcohol relates to in the real world, for example.
2. What is the cumulative effect of drinking alcohol?
3. Does Resilience have an effect?
4. Ideally, you would want some worked examples of alcohol consumption.

Remember the drinking contests in RQ3 Vikings? They were easily usable and fun. For a RPG, you need something similar. If you can make it realistic as well, all the better.

Hmm. Havent looked at RQ3 Vikings. I'll look into that though.

Injecting Alcohol may be uncommon, but it could happen, and the effects would work. I would also use that table if someone put alcohol in other places its not meant to (the membranous walls there go to the blood stream without the liver filtering anything).

1. Yes. I definitely need to make a list to speed things up.
However, it should be fairly easy to convert. as its just percentages. I agree that in a finished product, having more common drinks already figured out would save time.
10 ounces of 100% alcohol is equal to 17 shots of 40% whiskey/rum/vodka, 50 ounces (~1.5L) of 20% port, 100 ounces(~3L) of 10% table wine or very strong 10% beer, 200 ounces(~6L), or 17.5 standard north american size bottles of regular 5% beer, or 300 ounces (~9L), or 26.25 bottles of really weak 3% beer.
They should cover any type of alcohol of any strength, but having some pre-done would be a time-saver.
2. That is what the two bottom tables are for. Number of 100% Strength Drinks taken, and Chest HP show you your % in Tolerance Level, which tells you which stages of effects you're making going to suffer; and that % in Tolerance level is the Potency you roll against for your Resilience (1 roll for each stage). While the rolls dont make the effects go away, they let you ignore the strongest one for 30 minutes, in a cumulative fashion.
So if your tolerance level is 65%, you'd roll Resilience 5 times. Each time you succeed, you get to ignore the worst effect of the alcohol, in reverse order.
So if you got 4 successes, you'd only take exhaustion, and be at a -10 to all actions. If you got 3, you'd have exhaustion and fever, and you'd be at 50% skill, -10, to all actions. If you got 2, You also take the effects of Nausea, and if you got 1, you get confusion as well. If you failed all the tests, you're passed out.
I can see how examples would be needed though, now that you mention it.
3. That example above should show how resilience works.

As for Duration, the little formula there shows the speed the alcohol leaves your system, and again, you just look at what range you're in on the table and it tells you which effects have worn off after so much time.

I think it should be fairly realistic, but at the moment it probably does involve too much math, and some sample drinks and rules examples certainly couldn't hurt.

And thinking of it now, an example/explanation on how mixing different drinks of different strengths and waiting a while and then drinking more works, just to make sure its understood, couldn't hurt.

With that bit of explanation, do you have any criticisms of how I mean for it to work? I'm not 100% confident in how the implementation of the Resilience rolls should work. Should the action penalties from Exhaustion and Fever apply?

Originally Posted by Darkholme

Injecting Alcohol may be uncommon, but it could happen ...

I suspect this is a bit beyond the average Legend setting, the hypodermic needle
is an invention of the 19th century, and an injection with medieval technology in-
struments would almost certainly result in rather nasty complications.

Oh?

I didn't realize needles were that new. Didnt they sometimes use needles to drain puss and whatnot?

Originally Posted by Darkholme

Didnt they sometimes use needles to drain puss and whatnot?

The closest they had to hollow needles were small tubes, but their diameter
was much too big for an injection, and since they did not know much about
bacteria and desinfection any attempt at an injection would most probably
have resulted in an infection, which could even have become fatal because
of the lack of antibiotics. Of course, magic could change all that, but histo-
rically an injection under medieval conditions would have been a bad idea.

So... Comments on the Mechanics?

I am somewhat sceptical, because in the real world the relation between the
amount of alcohol a person has consumed and the symptoms the person suf-
fers depends on a multitude of factors and is impossible to reduce to any sim-
ple formula. While the body mass index helps to calculate the alcohol concen-
tration in the blood, the consequences of this alcohol concentration vary wi-
dely. A well known factor which makes a simple relation between alcohol and
body mass and resulting symptoms questionable is food (e.g. when, how much,
how fat did the person eat ...), but there are also subtle differences in the in-
dividual biochemistry which influence how fast the alcohol is neutralized. So in
the end a blood alcohol concentration which is sufficient to kill Person A can
result in only comparatively mild symptoms for Person B. This is of course im-
possible to simulate with game mechanics, even a random "fudge factor" is un-
likely to work well, and therefore I prefer a referee decision based upon the
specific situation to a formula. But this is just my opinion, if your system does
work well for your campaign it is of course fine.

Originally Posted by rust

I am somewhat sceptical, because in the real world the relation between the amount of alcohol a person has consumed and the symptoms the person suffers depends on a multitude of factors and is impossible to reduce to any simple formula. While the body mass index helps to calculate the alcohol concentration in the blood, the consequences of this alcohol concentration vary widely.

Hmm. alright, this is true to some extent or another, there are other factors to consider, but a simple formula can give a decent approximation, if well tailored to the task.

Certainly more accurate than just handing it over to DM fiat.

Originally Posted by rust

A well known factor which makes a simple relation between alcohol and body mass and resulting symptoms questionable is food (e.g. when, how much, how fast did the person eat ...),

Also True. Perhaps modifiers in onset time based on food eaten?

Originally Posted by rust

but there are also subtle differences in the in dividual biochemistry which influence how fast the alcohol is neutralized. So in the end a blood alcohol concentration which is sufficient to kill Person A can result in only comparatively mild symptoms for Person B. This is of course im possible to simulate with game mechanics, even a random "fudge factor" is unlikely to work well,

Well, currently it factors in CON+SIZ. However you're right, there is also the specific genetic traits that determine how a single person handles alcohol, like how effective their liver is. I'm not sure it's impossible to handle, but perhaps saying that's represented as part of CON is insufficient?

I can recall a time a few years ago that I got really drunk(I usually don't drink that much in a night). According to the app I mentioned, my BAC had me in the "Danger of Coma" range (.37%), but I only had the effects of the "gross motor impairment" stage (.13%-.15%). I'm not a big guy; I'd probably only have a 9 or so in SIZ, but with this representation, I'd have to be making up for that with a high CON, which is more abstract.

Originally Posted by rust

and therefore I prefer a referee decision based upon the specific situation to a formula. But this is just my opinion, if your system does work well for your campaign it is of course fine.

At the end of the day it doesn't need to be 100% perfect for a tabletop RPG, it just needs to be close enough to be believable. A formula is going to help the referee make more consistent and better informed decisions - particularly if it somehow considers the specific situation. And that's kindof the point, right? If this were a computer-aided game, making it substantially more complicated and trying to include more variables might be more important, because you never need to worry about the time it takes to add stuff together or multiply some numbers; the machine does those things just fine. But with people and dice, I can see that it should be simplified down if you dont want the game to go really slow.

For me a pet peeve is inconsistent GMing, and I always prefer when the GM has guidelines to show him what the right call to make is about how something works. "Just make a ruling on the fly" is almost never satisfactory to me unless the GM is somehow internally consistent, in which case he's likely keeping track of previous rulings for comparisons. I try to be accomodating of it as a player even though it bugs me, but as a GM, I want a bit more consistency. If I want something to be a part of the game, I want some mechanics to represent it. Otherwise I would be willing to play in online forum games without rules & woulndt need a game system.

So with that out of the way, what I'm trying to say is:

As far as I'm concerned, any halfway decent mechanical system is going to represent something better than GM Fiat, simply by being more consistent between occasions.

Originally Posted by Darkholme

So with that out of the way, what I'm trying to say is:

As far as I'm concerned, any halfway decent mechanical system is going to represent something better than GM Fiat, simply by being more consistent between occasions.

Agreed and if you can make it easily usable and fun to use as well as being fairly accurate then it would be a good set of rules.