Have you ever thought about food and nutrition in role playing games? I get the feeling that it's one of those details which most people would rather gloss over but personally it's something that comes to mind because of my background.

Yesterday, I was laid up in bed with a case of food poisoning. As I lay there in an uncomfortable semi-sleep state I began to half-fantasize, half-dream about the classic Dungeons and Dragon's module, In Search of the Unknown.

According to the blue D&D basic rulebook "standard rations" went bad overnight in a dungeon setting because dried fruit automatically dies when it goes indoors whereas "iron rations" of hard tack and beef jerky were okay because hard tack never rots. So, imagined a newbie adventuring party raiding the pantry room of the castle because all of their "standard rations" had gone bad and finding the big supply of rock candy which was kept there.

Fighter: A lot of this food is bad, but this rock candy seems okay.
Magic-user: Because we're medieval people, we love sugar. It's a huge luxury. Let's live on rock candy till we can get back to town and buy those overpriced "iron rations".
Thief: Rar, let's stuff ourselves with rock candy and cram as much as we can carry into our bags!

Dungeon Master: Okay, you all eat as much rock candy as your stomachs can hold. We won't use the rules for starvation because you've got calories coming out of your ears but you're all massively hypoglycemic most of the time. You all lose a point of CON (subtract your hitpoint bonuses) due to hypoglycemia until you get back to town and lay off the sugar for about a day.



Perhaps because I was myself incapacitated by food I realized how important food is for healthy growth, development, and everyday vitality. If a D&D character never eats any vegetables he should have to deal with constipation and scurvy. Same thing with a shadowrun character who only ever eats processed soy protiens.

These kinds of malnutritions, realistically, would actually have a big affect on the game world. In developing countries today, for example, vitamin A deficiency is a big problem because it makes children go blind in extreme cases. As soon as the kid gets enough vitamin A eyesight returns to normal but if an entire society were completely vitamin A deprived the next generation would go blind in childhood.

Therefore, it dosen't necessarily make a lot of sense, for example, that in the Shadowrun world all the poor people eat only soy protiens, because that would fail to take into account the effects of vitamin A deficiency. From a perspective of realism to explain how most poor people aren't physically crippled in the SR world I'd have to say that all the soy products are massively multivitamin enriched and therefore the world isn't so bad after all.

All in all, these thoughts make me think that the cash-for-karma rule for "amoral" campaigns actually could make more abstract sense than using karma to raise physical attributes. I would argue that a top athelete needs to eat a special diet for top performance and optimal health. It makes less sense for a nice guy with a Squatter lifestyle to be running around with STR 9 than it does for a PC to pay a buttload of money to convert to karma to raise his STR to 9, because then I can say that the money spent abstractly represents money spent on "real" nutritionally balanced food, on medical checkups, on protien supplements, and so forth. Then, you could use the cannon poor diet and low qualities of food to justify why it costs thousands and thousands of nuyen to maintain a healthy body in the barrens.

As long as there are soup kitchens, Stuffer Shacks, and Nuk-it Burgers, nobody in the Sixth World is going to die of starvation and/or malnutrition. Diabetes and high cholesterol, maybe, but so long as some squatter isn't eating month old beef he found in the gutter instead of fresh puppy, he should be ok.

Great topic...

I can easily imagine the local stuffer shack to sell soy by-products enriched with any vitamins you want to ensure the perfect diet...

Heck, they already do this with the milk today... Even if it's kind of abnormal for a human to drink from a cow... To make the product more interesting, they add D vitamins, more calcium and some companies even add other vitamins. Well, the milk industry is kinda flourishing those years, isn't? That's especially true here in Quebec since we get a huge number of milk producing farms... Everyone purchase milk. And the government do PR to encourage peoples doing so even if it's been proved that childrens who drink a lot of milk tends to be overweighted and some of them have knee problems due to the bones that grows too fast (veals don't have the same rate of growth than a human don't they?) Not to mention the huge quantity of people that are lactose intolerants...

Forgive me if it looks like I'm paranoid... I do buy milk/cheese/yogurt anyway ^_^

My point is that whatever algea/soy based food you can purchase, they can make it the taste, color, nutritive and texture they want. After all, it's made by AZT, isn't? ^_^

I know RoleMaster had extensive charts for food quality and food poisoning. But they had charts for everything.

I wouldn't think that nutrition was too hard in the SR world, mainly because it would be so easy to provide decent nutrition. But in less advanced gaming worlds, you could make it an issue if you wanted.

Plus, many people have fun with characters who are excessive drunks or excessive twinkie junkies, etc. Why take that away from them? Of course, they should reflect their diet in their description or stats - even something like "my character would have a higher INT if he actually slept properly instead of subsisting on caffiene"

I think the adage--never before, in the history of mankind, have so many calories been so available to so many people--will apply just as well in the 2060s as it does today. Rather than legions of tall, thin, leggy 80s rockers, I see my SR world populated by fairly short, squat, tubby corporate citizens whose answer to "eat less, move more," is to plug into a jogging sim in the matrix.

Proper nutrition, and access to "real food," is one of the hallmarks of the cyberpunk setting. Next time your players are offered a real steak, with real potatoes and onions on the side by their J, have them make Willpower tests to refuse!

Barrens kid is out of his element:

"What the hell is this?"
"It's a potato."
"Huh?"
"It's what french fries used to be made from."
"Oh, I like those..."

I agree. Food and socialization are closely linked in every culture, so there are lots of role-playing opportunities. But I think the spoiling of food would be less of an issue in an SR game because everything would be so processed it'd last for years.

As for health issues. There's an opportunity there for character development, but I wouldn't impose it on a character. One aspect of a fantasy world, I suppose. That'd be like rolling on a chart each week to see if they catch a cold. Sure it might be more realistic, but would it enhance the game experience?

Decker: Type 2 What?

Street Doc: Diabetes

Decker: You'll have to speak English or Japanese 'cause I don't understand Martian, Chummer.

Street Doc: Diabetes was a disease that was common in the 20th century. Type 2 is usually a result of poor nutrition and obesity.

Decker: So you just give me some vitamin pills and a diet shake?

Street Doc: No. I give you a supply of thiazolidinediones, insulin, and a blood glucose meter. You take a pill, check your glucose, and inject yourself every day. When you run low come back. You'll be doing this so the rest of your life. Your pancreas is no longer producing insulin on its own so you'll have to moniter your glucose carefully. All the skills you need are on this chip which I can see you for an extra 399.95 . I may be able to procure a new pancreas for you to reduce your insulin dependance but that'll be costly.

Decker: Umm. Okay.

Which is exactly why a PC in the game Im running has greatly entertained me by taking the hydrophonic gardens flaw on her lifestyle. Her fixer comes over for dinner once a week just for the fresh salad.

Yeah, I tend to use food, especally quality food, as a discriptor in situations. I had to remind a player whos got a squatter life style that this was the 11th day in a row of un flavored ramen noodles, and the J is paying for dinner.

Sure it would. And it would be connected to your auto-injector. It could notify you when it was time for a refill, or even talk to your commlink and order more when you're running low. If your bloodsugar crashes or spikes it can alert an ambulance or Docwagon. Isn't technology grand?

But think of the lost profit. A 1 time fee for a biomoniter and an autoinjector is nothing compared to a lifetime of disposable syringes and lost glucose meters.

I wouldn't think a new pancreas would be that costly. Counts as a small organ, right? So about 8,000 nuyen, according to SR3. You take insulin for three weeks, and then a bit of out-patient surgury and you're good for another five year twinkie-binge.

Oh definitely. I was thinking more the perspective of the average SINner. Of course, if you're a runner it would be on your skinlinked PAN with the wi-fi disabled, not your secondary commlink that you use for communication.

I can see this being good as a generalized theme element in a game, and something that comes into play with people who don't generally have access to good food. Though what if a player plays a street lifestyle eating soy and kibble, but takes vitamin suppliments perhaps given by a doc contact or even stolen from a medical facility?

Just add it to the number of pills some people take for various reasons. Like I know one person who takes ten pills in the morning, three at lunch and five for bedtime, some for medical issues, some for psychological issues, and some for dietary issues. So, I can see some shadowrunners in the same way. Uppers or downers, maybe something for nerves (paranoia can be a common ailment), and the list can go on. Perhaps even have vitamins in slap-patches, maybe time released to seep through the body in intervals rather than flooding the body with all the stuff at once.

Not all characters in the world would think of that, but part of it depends on the players. Some groups I've seen let metagame thinking influence their characters. An example from D&D 1E; players spot some gold dropped on a shelf in the wall in the temple and one reaches for it, having a blade fall down to cut into their hand. Now, that player's characters all tend to poke and prod everything before picking it up. So your players might start looking at their players diets by having them go out and eat at a good place every so often or start taking suppliments or whatever, but it is something good to think about.

Edit: And what about cloned or replacement implants, or even some new bioware options for people with medical issues? I mean if bioware can make it so you can eat dirt and get nutrients from it...

Edit 2: I do know this is CP2020, but it could give some interesting ideas for SR. Environmental Maladies

Type 2 diabetes could be treated with the application of a new pancreas and improved diet/exercise. I'm under the impression that Type 1 is/can be genetic, which would make replacing it with a clone of the old one difficult.

Under SR3, you could fudge the "Toxin Sac" into being a source of insulin.

Type 2 Diabetes may be genetic, as well. The exact causes aren't known. A new pancreas may help with insulin production but it will not help the problem of insulin resistance, which is a problem which Type 2 diabetes. In many cases the pancreas still produces insulin or can be stimulated to do so with medication but medication is required to make cells respond to the insulin.

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...9&hl=breastpump

Hell yes, I'd buy human breast milk. According to medical literature the breast is the best.


-notice how the breast pump discussion segues into a gun discussion and quietly slips back. What's the best rifle caliber for making delicious buffalo sausage?

1) Yes, I'd love to have fresh human milk from the source. And why do you think I'm feeding my pregnant wife so much chocolate? Chocolate milk is my favorite.

2) No, I do not want to drink fresh cow milk from the source. Those machines in the middle help prevent socially unacceptable scenes.

How can it be!?!?!?! RPG players having WIVES who are PREGNANT and who have ACCESS TO BREASTS!

Transmetropolitan (a must-read for any serious SR GM, in my opinion) had a great world bit involving cloning. Since the cloning of human body parts without the creation of an entire clone had been made possible, there's nothing amoral about cloning, right? Boom, instant fast-food franchise: "Long Pig"

I don't know why you find that surprising at all. The whole point of Islam was to be a continuation, as it were, of Judiasm and Christianity. So it makes perfect sense for ol' Gabby to be popping up since it would help to legitimize that idea.

We were talking about my kid (due in August) named Lucien and my brother Damien, I think.

I was wondering, what would royal jelly do? Nutrition wise? I remember the older chemical gland heading talking about all the things you could make it produce, including that royal jelly. Would that act as a lifestyle supplement for things such as the older rules on Superthyroid/etc type bioware upgrades? Could you live on just royal jelly and water?

Hey.... there are no Bee Insect Spirits.

Boo! No Royal Spirit Jelly!

The problem with a royal jelly gland or any other food producing gland is that your own body is making the food. It only contains the nutrients that you put into it. It is equivilant to drinking your own breast milk or eating your own legs. This self-canibalism is counterproductive. It can relieve hunger but it cannot sustain you. You actually lose nutrition in the process. It is far better to allow your body to break down its own fat and muscle naturally.

In the end, you can't beat the second law of thermodynamics. You have to eat someone else in order to survive.

Right, so it's a bad idea to get the lemon pepper or soy sauce producing implants before going on that vacation in Denver...