Rework of Hemophobic and Blood/Dirt Mechanics

[Sedgwick]

Hey survivors! Going to list off my thoughts, ideas, and reasons for reworking the -5 point trait hemophobic as well as an additional mechanic for dealing with blood and dirt. Changing the point value won't be part of the discussion, I don't know how the values are calculated to begin with. First a review of the hemophobic trait description:

 

"Panic when performing first aid on self, cannot perform first aid on others, gets stressed when bloody"

 

One of the things about hemophobic that seems odd to me is that while hemophobia is a fear of blood, the only fear inducing part of the trait is when you have to perform first aid. Your character seems more scared of the wound itself than the blood. What happens when you are covered head to toe in the blood of the undead? Stress, not fear. Probably being pedantic at this point, but it's closer to Traumatophobia than it is hemophobia. Contrast hemophobic to the other two phobia traits, claustrophobic and agoraphobic, which do induce panic in the appropriate situation.

 

Reworked Hemophobic: So, you kill your first zombie and get a splash of blood on you: Slight panic. Increasing amounts of blood lead up to the extreme panic. Treating your wounds would still cause panic, but this is where I would apply stress from the trait. Continuously tending to wounds or one severe wound that's still bleeding would continue adding onto the stress, eventually leading to sadness from prolonged stress on top of the panic while tending yourself. You still would not be able to tend to other people's wounds.

 

One of the common tricks players use now to manage hemophobic is to also take smoker, since smoking a cigarette can reduce stress you can stave off the stress of being covered in blood by smoking. The rate at which you have to smoke is ramped up to a half dozen a day instead of the 1 or 2 just from being a smoker, so it does add up over time. Someone scared of blood probably wouldn't be relieved (even temporarily) by smoking a cigarette like a hemophobic smoker would in PZ, but you could still reduce it medicinally through beta blockers. In this way you could still manage the panic caused by blood the same way you would manage the zombie stress using beta blockers to help you with some temporary combat effectiveness. So a hemophobic player could still benefit by being a smoker, but not for the fear of blood, but the stress of the wound tending.

 

Why change hemophobic? Currently hemophobic creates a weird scenario where you build up stress, and once you learn that's the effect, you just stockpile cigarettes and take an additional negative trait that is relatively easy to manage to stave off the symptoms while you fight off the undead. There's no panic, no fear of the blood which doesn't make sense as a phobia trait, and if you don't want to be a smoker your only way to manage it is in safer scenarios back at base by reading books or other stress reduction methods. In addition, I think it would pair well with my additional blood and dirt mechanics I'll describe below. I'll list some ideas I had about a hemophobic player may have to deal with:

 

• Do you remove some layers of protective clothing while in a combat to reduce your panic while dealing with a combat against zombies?
• The water is out and you don't have enough water to both drink and wash your clothes. Are you willing to sleep without all that clothing on to lower your panic and sleep?
• Provides a good reason to collect a few sets of clothes you can swap into to stay in clean clothing to avoid panicking.

 

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Additional blood and dirt mechanic: A character without hemophobic would still not want to be covered in blood. All characters would slowly build up stress over time from wearing bloody clothes, with a minimum threshold that would need to be passed before there is any accrual. I think dirt should be a factor here as well, but it should be a fraction of the stress gained over time by being covered in blood. In this way if you've got a little bit of blood on your boots from squashing a zombie skull, you'll not be building up stress. You don't want to be baked in dirt either, but it's not going to be as stressful as a biological contagion like zombie blood.

 

Why change this? Well right now there's no reason to ever wash your clothes except for aesthetic reasons. You can be as dirty, bloody and disgusting as possible and it won't affect anything. Sure it's the apocalypse and there are other pressing matters to attend to (zombies), but the blood and dirt is still a threat that does need to be managed, just lower priority. I also think this isn't as detrimental as another change I've heard people mention, which is bloody clothes increase the chance of zombie infection. Code wise, from my understanding, this is difficult but also I'd rather not so harshly penalize someone for having a bloody jacket.

 

This would finally add in some other reasons for non-hemophobic characters to manage cleaning clothes. I'll list some idea I had here that are blood/dirt mechanics that may factor in with this:

 

• Early on keeping your clothes clean is easy while the water is still running, so before the water runs out you've got another resource that might be good to collect: an extra set of clean clothes.
• If you can't keep your clothes clean, you've got additional incentive to read those stress reducing books instead of hoarding them on the shelf.
• Swapping out sets of clothes if you don't have water to wash. Most players put on 1 set of clothes for a lot of protection then never take it off unless they have to.
• Incentivize getting some renewable water working at your base so you don't drain the pipes washing clothes when you also need to drink it.
• Hey, maybe actually collect some soap ya filthy animal!

 

So what do you think? Hemophobic becomes a trait that actually causes fear, dirty and bloody clothes need to be managed, and the apocalypse rages on. Thanks for checking out my suggestion!

Edited November 4, 2021 by Sedgwick