Random Medical Affliction

[kato13]

On the Morrow side of the forums, one of our members mentioned a recent gall bladder attack (and subsequent surgery) and I started thinking about the odds that a character or NPC would just get an affliction out of the blue.

I don't know if i ever have seen anything which would say afflict a character with appendicitis or such (depending on a series of rolls).

On the old site Targan/Major Po provided us with really neat Psychological Affliction tables (found here) and I was wondering if anyone had such a table for modern games or some type of house rule.

TIA

[jester]

Think about this, there are countless medical issues that will be a pain in the @$$ (hemroids litterarly) that won't kill you, but certainly cause you discomfort and quality of life. Other nasties a GM can throw at you;

Herpes...shouldn't of played with that whore in Krakow
Kidney Stones...caused from hard water....painful but temporary.
Hemoroids....reserved for staff NCOs
Plantars warts....painful irritating, but not life threatening.

Remember, people are no longer getting check ups, or getting preventative care or even over the counter meds like they did prewar. And basic sanitary measures are also a thing of the past.

I can see all manner of skin diseases too, scabies, life, dandruff and other issues for a lack of real soap and ability to wash yourself or your clothes right.

[Sapper31]

What about appendicitis? Apparently 1 in 15 people in the US get it, and it's pretty much a death sentence if you don't get prompt surgery and antibiotics. Always nice to have a useless organ which serves only as a ticking time bomb inside you.

[JHart]

The USN was worried about appendicitis cases on submarines in WW II. So much so they started training corpsmen on how to perform an appendectomy. I would thinks a well trained Morrow team medic would know how to do one. In T2K, depending on the location, odds are pretty good there would be someone who is capable of performing the surgery. It will certainly be harder to locate someone and won't be cheap, but shouldn't be an insurmountable task.

[Cdnwolf]

How about diabetes and other blood infections... like gonhorrhea.

[cavtroop]

Keep in mind the fun level of the game. As a player, it wouldn't be much fun to be doing your thing, making strides in the campaign etc, then suddenly, due to a random dice roll you're dead because you got appendicitis. Or through nothing you did, no decision you made, you're suddenly inflicted with the plague.

Random sicknesses like this wouldn't be fun at all unless they serve a significant plot-point - say you caught the plague - now you and the team are in a race against time to get to the old medical storage facility across the county, or you need to find a proper operating room to take care of the lung clot you got or something. But just inflicting random infliction on players wouldn't be much fun.