Catching the Zs, penelties for no sleep? Options

[Karaden]

I was just reading through the book a bit, and noticed that there are several mentions of taking penelties of some kind, but these penelties are never actually mentioned directly.

Is it that each day that a character goes without sleep he takes 1 point of stun damage as per the fatigue rules, thus allowing the average person to go 7 days without sleep if forced to (Which is actually fairly accurate as to the max a person can go without sleep, though they'll be halusinating and such)

And since sleep regulator says "...and stay awake for 48 hours before modifiers start to take effect." does that mean someone with a sleep regulator could stay awake 14 days before dropping?

I know this doesn't usually come up, it is assumed characters sleep at some point and everyone is happy, but I'm sure there are times when you really can't sleep. Maybe you have a timed cortex bomb and you need to do stuff before it goes off, or maybe your on your own and can't risk getting caught in your sleep, or any other number of possible reasons.

So, in these cercumstances what sort of 'modifiers' should be applied? 1s damage every day just seems like far too little, I'd rarely have my sleep regulated character sleep more often then once every 6 or so days just because of how efficent it would make him at extended tasks like programing.

Personally I think a -1 or -2 dice pool modifier should be applied to all skills for each day that you go without sleep. What does everyone else think about this?

[Konsaki]

A standard RL human starts gaining reaction losses equivilant to being drunk at around 18-24 hours, dependant on the human in question. (Pullin this info out of the dark recesses of my mind, so they might be slightly off in number, but not in idea)
I figure after 24 hours of being awake, barring any stimuli like Crank or the like, the character would have take a stun damage soak test every 2 hours, starting at 3 stun and raising by 1 each time he takes the test. Note that all neg modifiers due to physical and stun damage take off dice on this test.
Any Stun overflow doesnt go into physical unless something is keeping the person awake past unconsiousness, like STIM patches.

This way he doesnt just automaticly crash due to one failed test, but takes gradual damage to show increased sleepiness along with factoring in any damage already taken.

Bob the healty human (3B, 3W) is trying to stay up late to write an exam paper over the weekend. It's Saturday at 0400 and he's been up for 24 hours, at 0600 he rolls for exhastion, rolling his 6 dice and getting 2 hits. He's getting tired but he's ok at 1/8 stun.
Fastforward 6 more hours, 1200, and he's almost faceplanting on the desk with 5/8 stun filled. He rolls his 5 dice (6-1 for damage) against 6S and only gets 2 hits. The other 4 damage maxes out his Stun track and an hour later he wakes up to find himself facedown on his desk covered in his own drool.

[Kyoto Kid]

...once stayed awake in RL for an entire 54 hour call-in Trivia marathon at my college. We did it on am alternating intake of coffee Mountain Dew (Jolt Cola was still about two decades away) occasionally tempered by a beer or two when we became too wired. Our team - Three Mile Island - came in 4th out of 450 teams.

About a dozen years later stayed awake for an entire SF con (~56 hrs) in addition to the 5 hr drive each way between Seattle & Moscow Idaho (fortunately I was not the driver). Things got pretty interesting. I completely lost my voice at about 1:00 on Sunday & had to communicate by written notes for the rest of the day.

Sleep deprivation...
...not recommended.

[Zak]

Yea it sucks. The most annoying thing is that you can't choose when you feel fine and when you just want to drop dead. And that this condition can change within minutes.

Really not fun when driving.

[Karaden]

I don't know, that seems a little -too- harsh for sleep deprevation, as many people can easily stay awake 36 hours without any real prompting (I do it all the time, and I -never- drink caffine or anything that would keep me awake) But your rules make it very difficult to stay awake more then 32 hours, at least for joe average. And if you assume that someone is drinking caffine then that amount could be passed with ease.

As Kyoto kindly demonstrated it is quite possable to keep awake far far longer then that with enough caffine. I do like the idea, but it seems a bit on the harsh side, and I'm sure most collage students would agree that staying up for an all nighter is common fair, not somthing they fall asleep in the middle of.

[Konsaki]

[Fortune]

Well, I found this under the entry for Long Haul ...

[Karaden]

Yes, that is the one that led me to believe it was off of fatigue from the start, but as I said, that seems a little too lax, but Konsaki's seems a little too harsh, I don't know how mine of -1 DP per day without sleep works out, but of course I'm bias and like it.

Any other imput out there?

[Wounded Ronin]

Everyone is messing the best medically factual effect to come out of not sleeping: psychosis.

It's a medical fact. Use it in your game.

[Konsaki]

[Kyoto Kid]

...yeah that happened during those long stretches I mentioned about.

[Stahlseele]

one of you ever had the "pleasure" of having a bad case of caffeine-poisoning?
when you WANT to sleep but CAN'T? been there, done that, did not like it in the least bit. 72 to 96 hours of being awake without WANTING to be awake is a kind of hell i'd wish on nobody. of course at first you're wondering about the fact that you're not really tired anymore. and you basically get a pretty good power-high once you realize that your senses and reactions are as sharp as never before due to the caffeine. it's a pretty good trip, if you can manage to go to sleep before reaching 60 hours. after that it's a bad trip, not even such a bad crash, as the brain DEMANDS sleep whether or not body-chemistry says otherwise. The Crash is nothing to laugh at either. you basically go from zombie like state to feral anger and sadness bordering on depression to as close as coma as possible without actually being comatose. i've been out of it for a whole week all included. 3 to 4 Days awake, 3 days to recover while not even eating and just ocassionally drinking something that was in arms reach of my bed, as i decided i would just lay there to wait and see if i would get to faint or something else resembling sleep.

[Konsaki]

[Stahlseele]

right now? yeah, pretty good actually . .
aside from having 34 hours of work left to do this week, only one day of free time before christmas(222nd), having had no time as of yet to buy presents and getting to work from 23. to 28. i'm doing just fine! . . /sarcasm . .
but at least i get to sleep when i want to, that's important to me.

[Fortune]

[Stahlseele]

whatever the definition of normal is concerning you O.o

[Ustio]

I got a case of caffeine poisoning at Game 07 here in UK, mainly because I was too busy to actually east and people kept giving me coffee, now I normmally drink my coffee like it was about to become illegal so I figured no problem right?

...however much gaming later we wnet to a noodle bar round the corner for some food during on of the lulls, one mouth full of Yasi Yaki Soba and its time to worship at the porcellin throne, later came shakes and a nice (mild) paranoid episode - fun for all the family.

[Jack Kain]

Late night gaming secessions have taught be that going with out sleep really does start to duplicate being drunk. Poor reaction, stumbling, finding things that are unfunny funny.

[Stahlseele]

and the hope that nobody will remember whatever happened that night . . whatever DID happen that night anyway?

[deek]

Funny...we just had this in our last session.

I too, used the fatigue rules. I made them take the test (Body + Willpower (2)) every Body hours and applied a -2 die pool modifier every additional test. At the point they failed, they could no longer engage in any sort of activity but rest/sleep.

It worked out pretty good.

[GryMor]

I did around 80 hours once in college, with the last 60 of it being a coding binge. I don't actually remember the last 4 hours I was up but my friends do, as I ran into several of them on my meandering walk back to the dorms and carried on conversations that were coherent, but strongly indicated a need to sleep. File revisions indicated I was doing useful work at the 76 hour mark before finishing the program and wandering off to bed.

Assuming I have no racial max attributes, that would have require at least 9 runs through the test (I was up, walking and talking for the last portion, even if secondary effects demonstrate it was unwise). The first 3 are easy, the next 2 are possible, the last 4 are impossible. In other words, your system caps 'awake' time at 24+Body*(Body + Willpower)/2. Even with 6s across the board, you cap out at 60 hours.

[deek]

So we really need to discuss the dissimilarities between SR4 and the real world?

[Karaden]

[Moon-Hawk]

[deek]

Hehe...my bad...I SHOULD know better!

I still think the way I am doing it works fine. If it truly does cap at 60 hours, that's not so bad. I guess if someone wanted to stage in some sort of die pool penalty to along longer wake times, then that would probably be good. Personally, I didn't want that...