Physical Ailments at Character Creation

I like this idea enough, I wanted to pull it out into its own suggestions thread for people to discuss rather than being tucked away in the skill exp thread.

The original idea proposed was that of having potential physical ailments for older characters - but I want to take it one step further and make it something that you can take for your character.

It does tend to be generally true that one can develop more physical ailments as one ages, so I think it would make the most sense if you get, say, points you can use to "buy" these chronic conditions for your character, and you get more of those points if your character is older. Similar to the way you get more skills. So you can still play a twenty year old with, say, arthritis that acts up when it rains, or a bad knee, or some other mostly-just-annoying physical condition. But if you want to have a bad knee, and arthritis, and back pain, and gout, and an ulcer, you'd probably be looking at more like fifty plus.

(And, of course, if this gets implemented, you'd need ways to develop them through gameplay - but that seems a given.)

This is a cool idea. 

I think it would be more of a compelling character-generation feature if it wasn't for AFFLICT which already lets people give themselves (potentially chronic) custom diagnose-able ailments, even ones with coded symptoms. There's no real limitation on this command either.


Still not sure about age-related effects but maybe this could be a good thread to discuss them? 

One of the things I considered (with p of Ariziya's help) was maybe just flavor messages. So far I haven't seen much of a need to code in mechanic penalties for age, but if there were any, they might be anything from stat mods (like if you're over 70 you get -1 strength) to an RNG-generated chronic condition every year or so (arthritis, heart problems, amnesia) to like making it easier for your bones to break.

I think if I did code these sorts of things in, I'd want to also code in more environmental factors that were appreciative of the elderly -- VNPCs being more willing to help you with their gossip, it being cheaper to hire laborers to help you move heavy stuff, or law enforcement seeing you as less of a threat, or elder-respecting NPCs starting off with more affection points for you, et cetera. Otherwise it strikes me as a bit borderline ageist to revel in all the potential drawbacks to age, with the only benefit being that elders get more xp.

In general, we really want people to be able to develop fun niches in the world and characterize their characters in realistic ways that also treat all differences in a respectful and kind way OOCly. But I'm probably over-mechanically thinking about this, as is my wont, and should probably get right back to bug-fixing. Anyway, feel free to discuss it. 

> I think it would be more of a compelling character-generation feature if it wasn't for AFFLICT which already lets people give themselves (potentially chronic) custom diagnose-able ailments, even ones with coded symptoms. There's no real limitation on this command either.

Oooh! I didn't know about this one!! Honestly, that already fills pretty much everything I wanted right there, haha.

On the note of character age, though, I do really like that idea of balancing age-based effects by giving potential physical drawbacks along with potential social benefits.