Photo Credit: FreeImages.com / Ken Thompson

I wasn’t going to make this a two-part article, but – as happens all too often – there was simply too much to include in the one post. Part two of this article will appear next week.

I’ve often seen it suggested that players get addicted to the ease of healing that comes with “Holy Water Drip Bottle” syndrome. Run, Fight, Heal, Loot, and Repeat. Sounds like a videogame – and one without a lot of depth, right?

I don’t know what your first reaction is, but mine – whenever I hear that suggestion – is, well, why not make it really addictive – with all the attendant problems that come with that problem?

Background Information

A lot of the research for this article was actually done for my Zenith-3 superhero campaign, where one of the characters (Runeweaver) is becoming addicted to magical power-ups / mana boosts. In fact, it is all based on four saved web pages that I compiled years ago. I don’t know if these are still available, but we’ll see how we go.

• Stages Of Alcoholism and Drug Addiction – This was a page from “Nickscape.net” but it is no longer available, and the domain is for sale.
• Stages Of Substance Abuse – This was a page sourced from join-together.org, which was a project of Boston University’s School Of Public Health, but which no seems to available.
• Symptoms Of Addiction is an excerpt from “The Most Personal Addiction: How I Overcame Sex Addiction And How Anyone Can Overcome It” by Joe Zychik. This page is still online and the chapter excerpt is unchanged; the website is at this link (reader discretion advised).
• Classic Story Structure meets the Phases Of Addiction – this page is from EIC, the Entertainment Industries Council, whose purpose is to encourage a more accurate and beneficial depiction of major health and social issues. This specific web page no longer appears to be available or has moved, but EIC are still there and deserve recognition and support. Note that their brief is far more diverse than simply dealing with addiction.
• I also drew quite heavily on the Iron Man plotline now known as Demon In A Bottle, especially in terms of the initial stages and development of the disease. However, the recovery process depicted, while also referential, is completed in the course of only a page or two, and I have always felt that it lets the story down, as a whole, so that was something that I deliberately wanted to avoid in my “addiction plotline”.

Putting the information from these together, I came up with the following synopsis:

Stage 1: Experimental/Recreational/Social

Characteristics:

1. Substance is used to achieve some perceived or actual benefit without perceived negative consequences

Stage 2: Dependance/Excess

Some impacts may persist for some time before the first occurrance of #3.

Characteristics:

1. Addict seeks out, creates, or invents opportunities and reasons for further Use for its own sake.
2. Addict denies there is a problem.
3. Addict uses to excess, resulting in unwanted problems, which the addict blames on outside factors.
4. Addict begins to conceal additional supplies in regularly-frequented locations
5. Addict grows defensive when the issue is broached
6. Friends and Family begin to grow concerned and seek to limit or restrict the addict’s intake

Stage 3: Addiction

While the suggestion is of a hard-and-fast demarcation between stages 2 and 3, reality is usually messier. For example, Runeweaver, the mana-addicted PC that I mentioned earlier, has already achieved items #2 and #3 or this list, even though he is still on the downward slide through item #3 of stage 2. Stage 3 begins to end when the final item (#10) is achieved, though the next step may not take place for days, months, or years (if ever).

Characteristics:

1. Satisfaction of the addiction becomes a dominant personal objective
2. Addict persues addiction to the point of damaging other areas of his personal or professional life
3. Existance of a problem is clear to friends and family
4. Addict vehemently/violently denies theree is a problem
5. Addict begins to experience increasing tolerance toward the source of addiction – it takes more to get the same effect
6. Addict engages in behavior he would have considered reprehensible, degrading, or even criminal in order to satisfy addiction
7. Addict begins to realise that there is a problem and attempts to stop, may even promise family/friends/etc that he has stopped/will stop. He is clearly sincere.
8. Addict experiences withdrawal to the point of incapacity.
9. Addict yields to his addiction during a time of increased percieved need.
10. Addict realises that he is addicted.

Stage 4: Recovery

Characteristics: Some people never reach this phase, even after acknowledging that their addiction now rules their lives. Pride, or the loss of support of friends and family, or the social consuences of their addiction, or any one of dozens of other factors prevent them from achieving the self-respect necessary to regain the self-confidence to go day-to-day without satisfying their addiction. The struggle to overcome an addiction is as heroic and difficult as any other struggle faced in a superheroic campaign.

Recovery is achieved through a four step process:

1. Acknowledgement and Removal of temptation
2. Recovery of trust and support / Withdrawal
3. Recovery of self-respect
4. Recovery of self-confidence.

Recovery is very much considered to be an ongoing process. Addicts can slip back into Stage 3, and quite often will delude themselves into thinking that this time they can “handle it”, operating in a state of denial.

How I used this in the Zenith-3 Campaign:

The methodology which I employed to translate these general symptoms into in-game events is very instructive for any GM contemplating this approach.

In some ways, it would make more sense to actually leave this discussion until after I’ve talked about the healing variation, but because it follows on so logically from the previous section, I’ve pre-empted it and brought it forward.

Adaption

I created a list of subplots reflecting one or more of the characteristics of the current stage of addiction. At the moment, the plotline has Runeweaver in the last period of Stage 2, gradually seguing into Stage 3. In the course of this stage, there have been the following subplots/plot elements:

• RA 4. Runeweaver prioritises END cost reduction over Mana reduction in designing his spells, to force Glory to boost the frequency of Mana “recharges” she provides him.
• RA 5. Runeweaver denies there is a problem throughout this stage.
• RA 6. Glory grew concerned and decided to restrict the occasions of her Mana boosts to circumstances of Dire Need.
• RA 7. Runeweaver becomes increasingly moody and irritable due to initial withdrawel symptoms.

These four actually took place in the course of the previous campaign.

• RA 8. Runeweaver begins creating his own mana batteries within gems and concealing them about his person.
• RA 9. Runeweaver begins using the “rush” to alter his moods.
• RA 10. Runeweaver develops a secondary supply, purchasing mana batteries from Avalon.
• RA 11. Runeweaver implants mana batteries on each wall of the base “so that he can get to them quickly if he needs to”.
• RA 12. Runeweaver begins involuntarily expending excessive mana in his spells, miscasting spells, etc as though drunk creating side effects, sometimes beneficial, sometimes undesirable.

These subplots / plot elements then played out in the course of completely unrelated adventures, and RA 9 and 12 are still continuing. In fact, so far, RA 12 hasn’t had any major effect. Just to help complete the picture (without giving too much away, as the plotline is still very much ongoing), here’s what will happen next, as the first step into Stage 3:

• RA 13. Runeweaver begins to start each day with a secret “pick-me-up” from a mana battery.

Of course, there have been a few other incidents along the way, most of which were logical outgrowths or interpretations of the ‘planned moments’, but several of which were spontanious and unplanned – just another case of an ongoing aspect of the characters’ “lives” within the campaign.

• At one point, Runeweaver (who also serves as the team’s Field Commander) found himself Acting Chairman, and took advantage of the opportunity to authorize himself visiting Avalon to obtain the needed supply of Mana Batteries in the form of fragile gems; crush one, and a quick boost of Mana is released.
• When the real Chairwoman returned to the job, she discovered this authorization. She was concerned because there was growing awareness amongst the PCs that something wasn’t right with Runeweaver (the players knew darned well that there was a Mana Addiction plotline underway, and that it was going to pose serious problems for both themselves and the mage), but reasoned that if she blocked him, he might very well go behind her back to do it anyway. Nevertheless she had a talk with him in which RA 5 was clearly on display.
• When Runeweaver approached St Barbara with the idea contained in RA 11, she wanted very much to argue with him but the arguments he put forward to justify it were so logical that she couldn’t muster a good reason to deny him. She did her best to restrict the damage by laying down some very strict rules about how they should be spaced and where they should not be placed, and hoped that would be enough.
• Zenith-3’s headquarters, The Knightly Building, hadn’t been designed at the time this plan was drafted, so it wasn’t clear how many “mana gems” would be required. When I started to do the calculations, it became clear that the total required would be truly horrendous (I’ll get to that total in a moment). The total completely outstripped the “industrial capacity” of the fantasy environment of Avalon, so Runeweaver began ordering them and then time-travelling into Avalon’s future to collect his order and place a new one – deciding to omit briefing St Barbara about this ‘so as not to worry her’ (the player knows, but the character doesn’t). This behaviour is tantamount to a stage-3 addiction symptom, lacking only the personal harm that stage-3 actions cause an addict.
• Emplacing the ‘mana gems’ was an ongoing subplot for some time, even to the point of Runeweaver eschewing other social activities (he has resumed them since completing the task).
• When the group were visiting their parent team (who operate in a parallel dimension), Runeweaver happened to mention the project to the overall Chairman, Bioman, who – knowing nothing of the context or background – replied that he thought that was a good idea and when Runeweaver finished, he might want to do the same thing at their new base, then under construction, alarming St Barbara and placing her in the difficult moral position of supporting her friend and teammate or spilling the beans. Reluctantly, she told Bioman of her concerns. Fortunately, because of the supply situation, it was not possible for Runeweaver to accept the offer to fit out the new facility.
• The next thing that happened was that St Barbara recieved a report from Kira, the A.I. who runs the Knightly Building, indicating that the installation of the ‘mana gems’ was complete:

  “Summary: Construction enhancements of the Knightly Building are now complete as per specified parameters with minor variations documented. Specifics: Installation of three thousand, two hundred and sixty-five mana batteries. A hardcopy of this report has been routed to your inbox for formal acceptance. Do you require additional details?”

  *** pause for reply (expect ‘yes’ given that number).

  “Background: Authorization was granted for Runeweaver to emplace gemstone-based mana storage devices throughout the facility within the following parameters and restrictions:
       “One. Within small rooms, 1 each on two opposing walls and 1 mounted in the ceiling.
       “Two. Within medium rooms, 1 on each wall plus one ceiling mounted.
       “Three. Within corridors and rooms larger than 25m in one or more dimensions, additional wall and ceiling emplacements permitted provided that no mana battery be less than 20m removed from it’s nearest neighbor within the corridor or room.
       “Four. Vala’s personal quarters to be excluded at her request.
       “Report Request and Authorization: This unit was specifically requested by the current Chairman of Zenith-3, known locally as The Champions, to “keep an eye” on Runeweaver’s implementation of this task and specifically in referance to variations of these parameters and other relevant behavior noted in the course of that implementation. This was interpreted as a resquest to monitor activities within the scope of the project, to document any variations on the approved project parameters, and to generate a report stating these observations at project conclusion, or sooner if deemed to be warranted.
       “Report Contents: The following variations on accepted parameters have been observed and documented:
       “One. Stairwells and escelators have been treated as non-horizontal corridors for the purpose of determining mana point installations.
       “Two. Elevator Cars and elevator shafts have been treated as seperate rooms, the former being considered vertical “corridors”.
       “Three. No emplacements have been made in areas designated as restricted to individuals of the female gender such as rest rooms, changing rooms, etc.
       “Four. No emplacements have been made in areas designated as high-security or prisoner-confinement chambours. However, emplacements in areas providing access to such chambers have been increased 50%.
       “Five. With the exception of the lift lobbies and the Hanging Gardens no emplacements have been made within the residential chambers of any Zenith-3 member, *excluding* Runeweaver’s own quarters.
       “Six. Runeweaver has stated that he developed and refined his emplacement techniques by practicing upon the walls of his residential chambers, resulting in a significantly higher emplacement density on those floors. The exact count of emplacements in unmonitored spaces is unknown.
       “Seven. Not all gemstones designated for the purposes of emplacement have been utilized in this manner. It has been observed that after using his abilities to emplace 25-50 stones, Runeweaver would “consume” one of the stones to replenish his personal mana levels.
       “Eight. Runeweaver has further emplaced in various locations quantities of stones described as Emergency reserves. These include potted plants, air conditioning ducts, plumbing and wiring accesses, etc.
       “Eight-A. It is believed that Runeweaver has modified his accoutrements and attire to include concealed spaces for storing mana recepticals. The estimated number of such mana recepticals has been included in the total of additional stores specified in the summary appended to this report.
       “Nine. The parking garages on levels 29 and 30 and the Hanging Hardens which occupy the centre of the building from floor 2 to floor 18 have been treated as a single large space.
       “Ten. Where strict interpretation of the parameters would have resulted in installations within the operational field of transporter devices, additional wall mountings were used instead.
       “Eleven. No emplacements have been installed within the Danger Room environment but additional programming subroutines have been inserted to incorporate simalcra of emplacements in any appropriate simulation setting by default, which can be overridden by the console operator. Exception: the control room itself.
       “Total emplacements: 3-2-6-5. Additional stores: 4-5-0. Consumed during emplacement: 8-2. Unused, stored in official locations: 2-0-3. Project Total: 4-0-0-0 mana gems. Total project duration: 5-7-point-7-5 hrs over 6-point-1-2 days.”

  In summary, if anything, Runeweaver was more restrained than St Barbara had required him to be, so there was nothing for her to complain about – but the grand total was still a hugely revolting number far in excess of St Barbara’s expectations, who thought that the discussion would be dealing with two or three hundred of them. Five hundred, tops.

So that’s an example of how to take an addiction concept and incorporate it into game-play.

The Future of the Runeweaver Addiction plotline

Of course, darker days are ahead for the character, and the player knows it. He has asked me to accelerate the plotline as much as possible, and I have been doing so; but, at the same time, addiction is too serious a subject to trivialize; the road through purgatory to redemption will not be a quick and easy one, but the character will get there in the end – and, much later, will discover that it holds far greater significance than is currently appreciated. In fact, it – and its resolution – are pivotal developments in the broader plotline, and the latter will be one of the character’s most heroic achievements.

Beyond that tease, I can’t give anything away, I’m afraid.

What is addictive?

So, let’s turn our attention to the concept of Narcotic Healing. There is some real medical science that we can employ; painkillers aren’t given to people post-surgery just for their comfort. Pain causes all sorts of biological responses, and alleviating it speeds the recovery and provides better patient outcomes. Without painkillers, the system shock that arises from many surgical interventions kills more than such intervention can save. So there is some foundation in reality for the concept of some accelerated healing being addictive in nature.

There are a lot of aspects to addiction, something I’ll look into in more detail a little later. Among other aspects that will have to be considered, we have dependance, both physical and psychological, and withdrawal.

Before we can go there, we first need to ask just what forms of healing are to be considered by us as potentially addictive.

Healing Potions

The most obvious type of healing that could be addictive in nature is the ubiquitous Healing Potion. This is, after all, a foreign substance that is introduced to the body to induce rapid recovery from injuries. So quickly do they take effect that any adrenalyn rush from the incident that caused the injury, not to mention any biological responses to the injury by the body, have not had time to wear off. The effect would inevitably be an exhiliration, a rush, not unlike the results of consuming a narcotic. Yet PCs and NPCs toss the things down like candy. Even if there is no physical addiction, those vulnerable to addiction would undoubtedly suffer from psychological dependance if healing potions were consumed too frequently.

Clerical Healing

That wouldn’t do much to resolve the “Holy Water Drip Bottle” effect, however. For that, we need something else to be addictive: Clerical Healing Spells. Why might they be addictive?

Aside from the psychological dependance on the resulting rush, to answer that question fully, we need to understand what the character would experience when they are the recipient of a Cure Wounds spell – whether that be Light, Serious, Critical, or whatever. If the character experiences nothing more than the rapid cessation of pain, there isn’t a lot to discuss. But if there is some metaphysical contact with the divine being actually providing the healing, we enter a whole new realm of possibility. “The cleric touches your hand, and you feel the warmth and affection of his God. You feel safe and cared for by the ultimate Mother figure (or Father figure if a male deity), as if – for that instant – you are the most important thing in the world to her/him. You sense her/his concern that you are hurt, and a loving determination to make you feel better as quickly as possible, and then the pain is gone and the injury healed.”

If that isn’t going to be addictive, I don’t know what would be.

It also begs the immediate question of whether or not this effect would be experienced even if there was no injury to heal. But I’ll come back to that later.

Image Credit: FreeImages.com / Stuart Bryce
Colorization & Photoediting: Mike Bourke

Physical vs Psychological vs Emotional dependance?

First, let’s look a little more closely at the types of dependance that we’re dealing with.

Physical Dependance

Physical dependance is a biological effect that the body becomes accustomed to and even demands. It’s the most tangible form of dependance, and implies that there is a long-term biological alteration induced by the effect to which the individual is addicted. If we were talking real-world biology, now would be the time to wheel out terms such as “neuroreceptor”, “bioelectrical signal conversion”, and possibly “synaptic resistance”. All of which sound wonderfully technical, but clerical healing occurs in a fantasy domain in which these are meaningless (except, perhaps, in the grittiest possible expression of low fantasy).

No, to be meaningful in the more common fantasy milieu, we need a more abstract concept of physical addiction, and the simplest one that I can think of is this: if it isn’t exercised regularly, a muscle becomes weak and flabby. By analogy, then, if characters do not heal naturally for any period of time, their ability to do so could be compromised, leaving them physically dependant on external sources of healing.

At first, that might not seem such a bad thing; healing in fantasy games is plentiful and reliable, and far more efficient than natural recovery. To maintain some sort of cost-benefit parity, there need to be some additional negative consequences to physical addiction.

The ones that occured to me immediately are (1) the limits of external healing, and (2) the indiscriminate nature of external healing.

The Limits Of External Healing

Cure Wounds spells can’t do much in the way of reattaching severed limbs or replacing lost organs. If the character has not yet been maimed, if there is still some biological connection to work with, then the healing might be in with a shot; if not, then the best that can result is that the stump heals over. That suggests that critical wounds, i.e. those resulting from a critical hit, might not heal properly if the sufferer is exposed to external healing. That’s a prospect that was discussed in earlier parts of this series, so I won’t go into it any further at this time; but, in the interests of making this approach to limiting the effectiveness of external healing, why not assume that this isn’t the case. So long as the injury is fresh, i.e. rot has not set in, a cure wounds spell CAN reattach a severed limb, reconnect a lost eyeball, or whatever – you simply have to put it back into place before beginning the healing.

External Healing Is Indiscriminate

That leaves option B. The human body is far more complex than a single organism; all sorts of other biological entities have entered into a symbiotic relationship with it. In particular, there are bacteria in the gut that aid us in harvesting the nutrients from food, the loss of which have some nasty effects: digestive upsets, malnutrition, and dehydration. In a weakened individual, these can be fatal; in a healthy individual, they are uncomfortable.

Modern medicine also has artificial supports for healing bones properly, transplants, and other invasive technologies. Rejection is a serious problem that even today can be hard to manage. In some cases, we have devised better materials, in others it becomes necessary to reduce or even shut down the natural immune responses.

It’s a good thing that those techniques weren’t in place in our fantasy world, because external healing would also be akin to super-charging the immune system (enabling the character to fight off wound infections). It’s a near-certainty that if Cure Wounds spells can’t handle maimings, existing prosthetics would no longer fit properly after being exposed to such healing.

Fortunately, we’ve already decided that we want our cure wounds spells to be able to cope with such maimings, at least to some extent, reducing this impact. It can also be said, fairly reasonably, that – provided the character’s diet is adequate – the application of external healing would mean that they are not ‘in a weakened condition’, and hence would experience only the painful and irritating consequences of drinking strange and possibly tainted water.

Well, since there seems to be nothing more to add to the list of negative consequences from a standpoint of physical dependance, if we are to achieve something closer in cost-benefit parity between external and natural healing, we are going to have to find what we need in some other form of dependance.

Psychological Dependance

Euphoria can make people reckless and foolhardy. Aside from the direct dependance on the ‘rush’ after healing – it feels good so you want to feel it again – that naturally means that judgement is impaired in such a way that a repeated exposure to external healing becomes more likely to be necessary.

This is a fairly subtle effect that can be induced by careful choices in narrative by the GM; simply choosing descriptive terms that underestimate the danger a subsequent encounter or situation represents. Playing down the danger level that such encounters represent encourages players to engage – which is when they discover their misjudgment.

Beyond that, psychological dependance can be viewed through the prism of our ‘flabby muscle’ analogy. Just as physical dependance might impair natural healing, so psychological dependance may impair or inhibit the feeling of pleasure except as triggered by the healing.

This is not depression, or not acute depression, anyway. That is accompanied by a sense of helplessness, of being trapped by circumstances; that would not apply until late in stage 3 of the addiction cycle. Prior to that, the worst a character would experience would be the occasional passing lack of enthusiasm. Food might be tasty but it might as well be cardboard. Drinks may be alcoholic – they would certainly still impair judgement – but they might as well be alcoholic dishwater.

There are some who might become more dangerous enemies under these circumstances. Dispassion and ruthlessness can’t be far away, and sociopathy just one step beyond. But that (hopefully) would only be for extreme cases. On the other hand, such symptoms might explain a lack of old adventurers.

Nor would such effects necessarily be linked in anyone’s eyes to the effects of external healing. ‘The trauma and misery and pain of adventuring takes its toll on us all’ would be the more popular explanation. “I’ve seen so much death and destruction that I have no enthusiasm for living” might be another common complaint. In many ways, this would be an induced form of post-traumatic stress disorder (or whatever they are calling it these days).

Spiritual Dependance

And then there’s the potential for spiritual dependance (I couldn’t come up with a better term). That’s the dependance on the sense of protection and love of the deity doing the healing that I suggested earlier. At first, that sense would linger, and the character would feel more connected to the world; as dependance grew, the world after coming down from the healing ‘high’ would seem empty and bland. This is, in effect, an altered state of consciousness.

If this effect can be experienced without actual damage that needs to be healed, some people would deliberately induce it to gain a sense of protection and invulnerability in combat that would make them fearsome enemies, unconcerned with their own preservation, confident in being healed and cared for by the deity providing the healing. In effect, it would remove the DEX bonus and any level-based improvements from AC and add it to attack rolls.

If actual damage is required, then a more extreme outcome would take place amongst a smaller number who ritually cut themselves before going into battle to then be healed, inducing this same spiritual euphoria. Some might even rub dirt into the wounds to ensure a scar as a lasting symbol of the love of their god.

This could only exacerbate the psychological ‘rush’ and corresponding dependence discussed already, and the trend for the effects of addiction to include behavior that was more likely to trigger a renewed need for healing.

Again applying the ‘flabby muscle’ analogy, it could also become possible in advanced stages of addiction that the character would become conditioned to the point where they could only truly feel one with their god during combat. That would only make the character even more likely to engage in ‘risky behavior’.

An unhealthy plausibility

There is a definite sense of these effects being all-too-plausible in terms of how most of us perceive addiction. The need for ever increasing doses, either in active substance or in frequency or both is a known trait of most addictions. At the same time, there is a strong internal logic at work that holds the idea together. Certainly, the idea seems to posses a conceptual validity that is both fascinating and frightening in its implications.

….and that’s where I ran out of time. Part two will apply the broad general symptoms of the different phases of addiction (discussed above) to the specific concept of narcotic healing, will look at game mechanics to simulate the risks of narcotic healing, examine the impact on both a typical fantasy society of this concept and on an addicted individual within such a society, and wrap up with some metagame implications that would need to be considered before implementing this policy, With one or two interesting side-turns along the way. You’ll never look at Cure Light Wounds the same way again…