Aging and Such

[Mike Holmes]

I'm such a damn simmie.

HQ allows you to do a lot of "what if" sorta sim stuff. In another thread I was mentioning the idea of using the resolution system to represent aging. Now, for normal aging, the problem is that it's a process. Aging doesn't occur in episodes - or so it seems. The point is that, I was imagining that if I had a PC who using the "Saga" rules, took a year to be one of the Queen's Guard, that I would have him get attacked by aging. If he makes the roll, he suffers no apparent affect. If he fails, then I assign him some trait to represent the level of loss. A Hurt might just be aches and pains of age that apply a -1 to any physical activity. Etc.

The problem is, what strength do I make the aging opposition have? It's quite likely that most characters are going to resist this at the default of 6. I may allow them to use something like Hardy or something, but, overall I think resistance is pretty low, typically.

So, what would you set the opposition strenght at for one year of aging? Would you make it dependant on activity or diet, or such? What about multiple years? More rolls? Or just one bigger roll? Should the strength for year 35 be the same as that for year 80? Or would you just rely on the normal penalties from earlier failed rolls?

Also, can the effects of aging be healed? I'm thinking not without the fountain of youth they can't. But I worry that aging will pile up too fast. Does that argue for rolling only ever few years?

I'm sure that there are other such contests that are long term or erosive that are similarly problematic.

Thoughts?

Mike

[Mr Darran Sims]

Okay.
Why do you not just use the age as opposition?

Default of 17 from the Homeland keyword but augmented with things like Wilderness Survival [but with - modifer], Strong, Tough, Endure Weather, and the like against the age of the character.

So a Tough, Helamakt warrior will have a resistance of 2W [17 keyword +1 Wilderness survival, + 2 Tough, + 2 Endure Weather].
If he is 17 that is 17 vs. 2W no touch of aging there unless unlucky.
However at 35 that is 15W vs. 2W certainly the odd -1 or -10% would have slipped by. The warrior would be feeling a little stiff especially on cold mornings.
Chances are some would have surcome to old age by then.
Some heroes will be able to resist the aging process by much more though as some abilities will be higher and may also be able to augment with more abilities.
Thoughts?

[Mike Holmes]

It's a neat idea, and one I considered. I should have mentioned that this was broken off of the other thread. IOW, it works if elven immortality is magical, making the mundane resistance only 14 no matter what. But what if I have "Unaging 5w2" and it's natural? Means that I can't live much longer than a normal human, and certainly not 12,000 years.

The other issue is that your average human with a 6 rating has to be able to live a decent lifespan. Don't want them aging by the age of 12. Or is there something wrong with how I'm thinking about that?

I mean, you really wouldn't roll during adolescence, would you. So maybe this is all just more relative than I'm thinking about it. Maybe for an elf 12,000 is no more than 30 is for a human. OTOH, the problem there is that we're no longer putting the same abilities on the same scale - the elven one is having an effect in addition to the normal mechanical ones.

I sense that maybe I'm just not thinking about this open-mindedly enough, but my head won't open any wider right now so...

Mike

[RaconteurX]

I would use Ars Magica as my inspiration, and give aging heroes an ability called "Decrepitude" which increases with the passage of time and due to the long-term deleterious effects of serious injury or illness. It could even be developed as a keyword, with specific flaws like "Bad Back", "Arthritic Knee", or "Gout In Left Foot" as sub-abilities to represent each hero's individual burden.

[Mike Holmes]

That's a cool idea, Michael, but how does one aquire the keyword (how about calling it Mortality)? I mean, sure, I can just rule as the result of a failed roll or something that you get one of these Flaws to add, or I can just say that it advances at the same rate as the other Keywords increase (per the Saga method, about a point a year). But that's all pretty arbitrary. I was hoping for a use of the normal resolution method.

Note that my Currency method would do both of these things (you'd get to roll, and get Flaws as a result), but still leaves open the question of where to set the difficulty at.

Mike

[RaconteurX]

That's a cool idea, Michael, but how does one aquire the keyword (how about calling it Mortality)?

Everyone has it at a default of 6, just like every other ability. A narrator can give it to a hero at 13 with a directed Hero Point award on receipt of his or her first serious injury or illness, or at the onset of middle age as defined for the hero's species (whichever comes first). Increase it by one each year, and by an additional amount based on the number of serious injuries or illnesses the hero sustains over the course of the year. You can even tweak it for the severity of the injury or illness: being reduced to Dying might increase Mortality by three; to Incapacitated, by two; to Injured, by one. Harsh but realistic... :)

[RaconteurX]

Almost forgot to mention that, in my opinion, the weight of age should put up resistance at least on a par with recovery from Dying, perhaps with Mortality augmenting the resistance. Of course, serious magic would reduce the resistance to 14. Maybe that is all that immortal and nigh-immortal species have... a magical "Resist Aging" talent at a mastery or three. This makes the longevity of Tolkienesque Elves and High Men easy to interpret in HQ.

[contracycle]

I suggest that the resistance be the age of the character in years.  It actually happens to fit the HW scale quite neatly.  I like the acquisition of complaints, but there would need to be some system for deteriming the TN of an acquired complaint.  Also, how is death determined?

[buserian]

contracycle wrote:

I suggest that the resistance be the age of the character in years. It actually happens to fit the HW scale quite neatly. I like the acquisition of complaints, but there would need to be some system for deteriming the TN of an acquired complaint. Also, how is death determined?

I know it gets complicated, but what about running the entire aging process as one very long extended contest? Have one contest each year during Sacred Time or whenever, plus one whenever it is appropriate (major illness or injury), and just keep track of the AP? Each time the hero drops below 0 AP, he gets a normal penalty, that remains even if he later wins a round and comes back up above 0. He is Dying when he reaches -31 AP and doesn't recover in the next contest (which means he might die right away if he attempts a Final Action, or else he might succumb to a lingering illness if he waits for Age's next scheduled attack). If he gets to -40 or below, he dies immediately -- heart attack, stroke, something like that.

Depending on the narrator's whim, when a hero does suffer a Hurt or the like due to Age, it might not automatically (or only) have a physical effect -- you might rule that the Hurt affects his magic or memory rather than his body. For even greater effects, any Injury inflicted by Age could start a Flaw of some kind at the negative AP rate (so if the hero dropped to -22 AP, he might get an Alzheimer's 2W flaw, with appropriate game effects).

The initial AP from when the contest starts (see below) would not change except as the result of the contest, but the target numbers can change over the years, primarily as Age increases each year by +1.

The contest would start either the first time the hero reached a Dying result that had physical ramifications, or at a pre-determined age for his species, whichever comes first. The initial ability rating of Age would be the hero's age, but it might get an automatic augment if the hero has appropriate flaws. The initial resistance offered by a human hero would normally be 14, but a hero with an appropriate ability would start with that instead (so if his family is Long-Lived 17, he starts ith that), and of course he can augment with appropriate abilities like Tough, Wilderness Survival, etc. as discussed by others.

Throughout his life, certain events, objects, or magic could affect the contest by being treated as augments or AP Lending. Get a Reverse Aging spell cast on you, or drink water from the Fountain of Youth? This could lend you 30 AP for the contest. Get a Ring of Vitality? Get +3 to your Resist Age base resistance.

This does require some additional bookkeeping, but it seems to be quite an accurate way to model aging and have it determine when you die. And also keep some mystery in the process, as well as perhaps injecting a sense of "feeling your age" into the game -- if a hero knows he is at -15 AP in the Age contest, as Sacred Time approaches he will know the next contest is coming, and definitely his hero's bones will creak and muscles ache that winter. Especially if the narrator reminds it of him once in awhile. (Hell, if his gaming group is anything like real life, his fellow heroes will tease him about his arthritis and difficulty sleeping every change they get.)

Just some ideas.
buserian

[Mike Holmes]

The magic "Resist Aging" works as has been proposed elsewhere. And I totally agree that the resistance to fixing aging problems should be high. In fact, I'd say that it's harder than fixing dying. Fixing aging seems to me to be the sort of legendary thing that puts it in the 10W4 range at least.

I'm still interested in the idea of a mundane unaging, but it's out of genre for most folks so if it doesn't get addressed, then that's fine. For most games years as the TN is a fine number to use.

The extended contest idea is intriguing, but I think there are problems. What does Time bid for a normal year of aging? If a species has a later start date for rolls, the rolls are harder to make?


BTW, I didn't state my model very clearly here. The way that you would die would be to get a Complete Failure on a roll. That's usually a 1:400 chance. Alone, that means an expected age of 420 assuming I start to roll at age 20 and roll once each year (about a 1% chance to make it to 1850 years old). But this, to me would be the chance of a heart attack or some such sudden event caused by the progress of time. Aging, would be the effect of the "wounds" sustained by the one passing year. So, while I won't get that complete failure, I'll get Hurts, and injuries and such. So, let's say that a character getting a -1 gets that defined as having less endurance. The next year, when he rolls he'll have a -1 on that roll due to the effect. Eventually the character will have so little that they'll succumb more quickly. Meaning larger penalties, and eventually death.

I like the idea of using the Survival skill as the character's TN, because that means that there's somewhere down for him to go. My original idea of using the default 6 is problematic because that score doesn't get much lower with abuse. OTOH, this means that I'll have to raise up the TN of the Aging attack, meaning that I'll have to jack up all my Species Long Lived abilities. Because as augments, they just won't cut the mustard.

I'm going to run some spreadsheet tests to see what happens with different models.

Mike

[soru]

I'm a sucker for this sim stuff every time...

If you wanted to play Archbishop: the Aging 'can you outlast your patriarch to make it to the top of the pile?', then an extended contest for aging might work.

Most of the time, if it came up at all, simple contests would be more reasonable:

'1 year passes - no hero should fail, no roll needed'.

'20 years pass - roll against a difficulty of 20 to see if you pick up (or increase) a flaw'.

soru

[Mike Holmes]

That's the "as dramatically appropriate" argument, interestingly. That is, from a sim perspective, that actually doesn't make sense. I mean, why is it one roll agianst 20, rather than 20 individual automatic failures? I can play this way, but I was hoping for something that would mechanistically explain the rates of aging and death. Beyond Simulationist ala GNS or threefold, to simulation. I like the mechanic to have the feeling that it does explain the universe.

So, yes. But still looking. I won't have the spreadsheet done until tomorrow.

Mike[/i]