Food Allergies Trait

[retsaot]

I submit for the approval of the midnight society a new negative trait: Food allergies (specific). Players would be able to trade the ability to eat specific food for trait points. I value this burden at +2 trait points for the first allergy and +1 for a second allergy. 

 

Peanut products kill ~100 Americans every year. It is estimated that .75% of the US population suffer from peanut allergies. Other common food allergies include: meat, shellfish, eggs, gluten, and milk. 

 

Players who choose the food allergy trait will acquire a negative moodlet when consuming forbidden food stuffs. Penalties may include reduced breathing, pain, and anger. Allergy penalty may only be removed only by medication (epinephrine, steroids or antihistamines). Allergy penalty consists of three stages: Mild, Severe, Dying.

 

Mild: Anger (irritation), pain and unable to reach full health (similar infection).

 

Severe: Mild + exhausted (reduced run), reduced vision (swelling) and slow health loss.

 

Dying: Fast health loss (similar to bleeding), exhausted (reduced walk), sensory deprivation. 

 

Dying may be counteracted only by epinephrine. 

[syfy]

interesting idea. as we do have pharmacies and a doctors office, it would be easy to place the epinephrine in there along with the "good" bandages, and if/when trade comes into the game it would be a potentially valuable commodity.

 

don't think the shellfish would be a concern, unless they let us catch crawfish/crayfish/crawdads out of the river in West Point

[Daec]

Is there some natural alternative to epinephrine? Or something similar you could make yourself? Cause there may be a point where there is no more epinephrine in the City and if you can't make a alternative you would be pretty f@*&ed ^^

[uberevan]

Then don't eat that food silly!

I had this idea once but it was nuts alone and i was requesting the addition of wild nuts too to add to the effect.

It's a good idea though!

Also, my peanut allergy just makes me itchy, so you could add an even lower level, uncomfortable.

[ApolloDiaspora]

Could probably add in degrees of allergy, much like how we have the Strong/Stout/Weak/Feeble traits now. Something like Irritant/Allergan/Anaphylaxis could be an idea, using whatever medical terminology is used to describe the severity of a person's allergy.

 

The more serious a player's reaction to an allergen, the more points they get to add positive traits at character creation. But, you would need to be careful implementing it. Why? Every player would end up taking a severe allergy to something they wouldn't encounter often (such as shellfish) to get points for positive traits. You'd need to balance it carefully.

 

Here's an idea. A character who chooses 'allergic' as a starting trait is given a randomised allergy or combination of allergies, at game start. Any prepared food they encounter (mainly non-perishables, such as chips or cans) can be examined before consumption (checking the label). Food without any explicit allergen labelling (such as pancakes/waffles/cupcakes/etc) would need to be carefully tested by rubbing it on the skin and/or ingesting a small amount. True, a player could simply remake a character from scratch to get the allergy they want, but it would be a tedious process, generating all those game worlds, so they could be inclined to stick with what they end up getting.

 

However, the main problem with an allergen trait is the amount of coding would need to balloon out enormously. Take foods for example. canned soup coming in several varieties, different types of chips, and so on. Allergies such as hay fever, or a reaction to animal skin/fur would need 'allergy zones' marked on the map. Just imagine someone allergic to cats setting up in a house that formerly had a cat, or someone allergic to hay setting up in a barn for example.

 

I dunno. Be an interesting playing as a character with an allergy or some other medical condition such as diabetes, but the amount of coding and game balancing needed to make such a playthrough enjoyable would be... non-trivial.