Anagathics

[phild]

I've finally returned to my chargen spreadsheet after a 6 week work-induced hiatus, and it's Anagathics time. The rules (as ever) aren't 100% clear, so I thought I'd check people's views on some things.

1. Stopping anagathics causes an immediate roll on the Aging table. If this should be done using the character's physical age, it's hardly a disadvantage if the character started taking them aged 18 or so, as it's impossible to get a negative effect. It seems likely to me that this should be made using the characters actual number of terms served.

2. Have there been any articles (eg TAS, S&P) around anagathic variants, e.g. drugs that give modifiers to the aging roll but don't stop the physical aging process; drugs that partially slow down aging so there's one roll every 2 terms; etc. (this is less for my chargen sheet, and more for curiosity).

3. Has anyone got a robust in-game rationale for why battlefield injuries can be fully healed without a scratch, but even minor decreptitude from aging is permanent? :wink:

 

[ShadowDragon8685]

I've finally returned to my chargen spreadsheet after a 6 week work-induced hiatus, and it's Anagathics time. The rules (as ever) aren't 100% clear, so I thought I'd check people's views on some things.

1. Stopping anagathics causes an immediate roll on the Aging table. If this should be done using the character's physical age, it's hardly a disadvantage if the character started taking them aged 18 or so, as it's impossible to get a negative effect. It seems likely to me that this should be made using the characters actual number of terms served.

Because that's the point of Anagathics - they stop aging. If you begin to rebuild a car, then leave it in the garage for a year and come back to it, it hasn't rebuilt itself any further. If you stop aging, your physical age stays where you stop aging at, and if you should resume aging, any attempt to make you start aging again by calander age is just a way of punishing you for trying to cheat the reaper.

2. Have there been any articles (eg TAS, S&P) around anagathic variants, e.g. drugs that give modifiers to the aging roll but don't stop the physical aging process; drugs that partially slow down aging so there's one roll every 2 terms; etc. (this is less for my chargen sheet, and more for curiosity).

No, though I don't see any reason you couldn't simply extrapolate some.

3. Has anyone got a robust in-game rationale for why battlefield injuries can be fully healed without a scratch, but even minor decreptitude from aging is permanent? :wink:

Nope, no good reason. I think the only reason for Anagathics being such a Big Damn Issue is because character generation is tied to your character's age, and with that aging comes that aforesaid decreptitude.

This isn't a case of putting the cart before the horse, this is a case of tying the horse's rear to the cart, and tieing the cart's rear to the horse's bridle. Just go ahead and say whatever you want for your game. Mongoose isn't going to sail up to your house with Her Majesty's Royal Space Navy and have you keelhauled (either the Malcolm Reynolds way or the traditional way) for not playing the game the way they wanted you to play.

 

[kristof65]

3. Has anyone got a robust in-game rationale for why battlefield injuries can be fully healed without a scratch, but even minor decreptitude from aging is permanent? :wink:

I assume you're referring to the fact that if you take a -1, or -2 or -6 or whatever to your End, Dex or Str during combat, you can heal it back to full, but if you take a DM from the aging chart you can't, right?

Here's the way I look at it: The full value of the physical stat represents the PC at their best during the day - its their baseline, rather than actual. Actual value is how they're feeling at that given moment. Cbt damage affects the actual, while aging affects the baseline.

So to apply an anology to that, let's say my physical stats at age 18 were 888 - that was my baseline at age 18. If I got hurt, those would go down - let's take the time I got zapped by a good bolt of electricity and nearly got knocked out - let's say it did 15 points of damage to me, making my actual stats on that day 810. Ouch. But my baseline is still 888, and that's what I'll heal back up to.

Now let's take a look at me today, at the ripe ol' age of 44. I'm still as strong as I was 26 years ago, but I'm nowhere near as flexible, and I tire more easily - making my current baseline more like 877 (probably even less). If I were to take that 15 points of electricity damage today, it likely would knock me out, making my actual 700, until I healed back up.

If I had been smart enough to really work on keeping in shape the last 26 years, my baseline would likely look quite a bit different. Anagathics would have allowed me to freeze my baseline. But since I didn't exercise regularly, and no one's invented a Traveller like anagathic yet, my baseline fell - irregardless of the fact that I've been in good health all that time.

So the in game rational is - wait for it - Age.

 

[ShadowDragon8685]

I think his question was, if Traveller medicine can be almost as effective as a shot of Cure Critical Wounds, why can't the same medicine rejuvenate aged flesh and sinew to the state it was when it was healthier.

A question which you dodged.

 

[Dave Chase]

Clones, thats your answer.

Dave Chase

 

[GypsyComet]

Ah, sweet acrimony, the Nectar of the Fans.

Ahem.

In-game is harder than the meta-game answer, which is that games about immortals are more removed from the "20th Century in the 57th" experience that is Traveller than the authors were aiming for.

The level of assumed but unstated medical technology in the 3I should be able to roll back the years fairly simply, but the fact that the game makes a lot of noise about anagathics indicates that, for whatever reason, aging and trauma repair are two different medical paths that do not meet.

As Dave suggests, cloning appears to be a big part of the trauma repair equation. Imperial law equates a full-body clone with a sentient being, so no brain transfers are allowed.

At least one prior edition made reference to the Imperial nobility having a long tradition of avoiding anagathics specifically to keep the seats of power moving through the generations, though I could also see an outgrowth of the "with age comes wisdom" line, to the effect that "avoiding one also avoids the other". Wisdom is, after all, the ability to avoid those mishaps you can no longer outrun or grow back.

 

[Woas]

Isn't this what stat augments are for? When you grow old and your heart and kidney aren't working like they used to resulting in a lower stat, grow a new test tube cloned heart (or get a crazy sci-fi mechanical version) as a stat augment to counteract the aging penalty.

 

[Jacqual]

IMTU if someone wants to start taking anagathics is fine they have to be able to afford them, which is like 25,000 Cr/term or somewhere like that. I cant remember right off the top of my head, If they have been taking them for awhile they need to make the roll that the OP listed which is based on the age they were whne they started. If the character decides to continue travelling as soon as they hit there first time in Jumpspace they start aging like Mel Gibsen in the movie Forever Young. The rabid aging does no start until they do a jump and can be stopped by starting up with anagathics again, at this point if stop using anagathics before a game year is up rapid aging continues again. They will only rapidly age until they reach there actual age. If they decide to just stop with anagathics and live on one planet and never entering Jump space again. they dont age. This rule helps prevent abuse of the anagathics but allows them to stay in game it helps preserve game balance in my campaigns. If the character goes through the rabid aging process they have to make the aging rolls they had skipped due to the anagathics use and the aging occurs over the course of a game month.

 

[Custodian]

3. Has anyone got a robust in-game rationale for why battlefield injuries can be fully healed without a scratch, but even minor decreptitude from aging is permanent? :wink:

Here's my stab at it ...

Battlefield medicine is about restoring you to your default physical state and when you age that default state degrades.

That field of medicine is not about immortality, for that is concern of anagathics.

 

[phild]

Typical of me, wrapping 3 questions up in one guarantees that the one I'm least interested in gets all the coverage

So is the consensus that on stopping Anagathics you make an aging roll at your Apparent Age rather than Actual Age? The wording in MTB is vague, and I feel that rolling at Actual Age simulates greater withdrawal shock from a longer period of use - i.e. the aging roll is as much to reflect Withdrawal / Cold Turkey as it is the resumption of aging. But I know a number of people have made PCs using anagathics, so wondered what they'd used.

 

[Custodian]

Typical of me, wrapping 3 questions up in one guarantees that the one I'm least interested in gets all the coverage

So is the consensus that on stopping Anagathics you make an aging roll at your Apparent Age rather than Actual Age? The wording in MTB is vague, and I feel that rolling at Actual Age simulates greater withdrawal shock from a longer period of use - i.e. the aging roll is as much to reflect Withdrawal / Cold Turkey as it is the resumption of aging. But I know a number of people have made PCs using anagathics, so wondered what they'd used.

Well your last question was easier to answer directly ...

I believe you roll using Apparent Age, when you stop taking anagathics because it says the requirement for rolling on Aging Table is "to simulate the shock due to his system starting to age again" (page 37).

So they seem to act like hitting a big pause button on someone's aging.

 

[Klaus Kipling]

I believe you roll using Apparent Age, when you stop taking anagathics because it says the requirement for rolling on Aging Table is "to simulate the shock due to his system starting to age again" (page 37).

So they seem to act like hitting a big pause button on someone's aging.

Which means that if you start taking them young and stop it's better on your system than if you didn't start until you were a giffer.

 

[kristof65]

I think his question was, if Traveller medicine can be almost as effective as a shot of Cure Critical Wounds, why can't the same medicine rejuvenate aged flesh and sinew to the state it was when it was healthier.

A question which you dodged.

I didn't dodge it, I just didn't read it that way. Simple enough, though.

What if it's not possible to roll back aging? Anagathics can stop it, but they can't truly reverse it. That is, if the cells are damaged by aging, they're damaged.

Like rust on a vehicle. Once the rust grabs hold, you can stop it, but you can't get the metal to "grow" back. You can get rid of the rust by replacing all of the affected parts with new parts, but good luck keeping the the original body panels.

 

[ShadowDragon8685]

Because cells are constantly dividing, regrowing, etcetera. If you have the means to halt aging in it's tracks, by which I mean that your body stops producing imperfect new cells (thus indicating that they produce perfect new cells,) it should be a very, very simple matter to rejuvinate the parts of the body that produce new cells as well, to the point that they produce healthier, younger cells.

Your car analogy is inapt. The oldest cell of your body is no more than about eight years old. It's like a car that is constantly regrowing new steel.

 

[kristof65]

Because cells are constantly dividing, regrowing, etcetera. If you have the means to halt aging in it's tracks, by which I mean that your body stops producing imperfect new cells (thus indicating that they produce perfect new cells,) it should be a very, very simple matter to rejuvinate the parts of the body that produce new cells as well, to the point that they produce healthier, younger cells.

Your car analogy is inapt. The oldest cell of your body is no more than about eight years old. It's like a car that is constantly regrowing new steel.

I did say "what if".

Still not a major issue in game terms. Your cells also carry the blueprint to rebuild themselves. Like a document about a business process passed from an old employee to a new one, things get missed/added/changed with each employee turnover. So if the cells in a person's body are no more than 8 years old, it shouldn't be possible to repair them prior to that point - unless you happen to have the original blueprints around somewhere.

Regardless - he was asking for an in-game reason. We don't actually know how anagathics in the TU works, so even though anagathics can stop cell aging, we don't know that it's logically simple to reverse things. Maybe it is, but there are other side effects that are just not desirable - like wiping out memory or something.

 

[ShadowDragon8685]

Actually, it is logically simple. In fact it's exactly that simple - hell, the most optimistic projections point to it being possible by around the year 2060.

And I mean real projections, not just Shadowrun 3rd/4th Edition.

 

[Klaus Kipling]

And I mean real projections, not just Shadowrun 3rd/4th Edition.

If by projections, you mean the wish fulfillment of Ray Kurzweil, the Extropians, and other transhumanist tunk-fer-brains then logic has nothing to do with it.

And while I trust Alan Moore with extreme hirsuteness, him being an artist cum magus and all, but Aubrey de Grey is meant to be a scientist, and his beard is just too big to take seriously!

 

[Dave Chase]

...

Like rust on a vehicle. Once the rust grabs hold, you can stop it, but you can't get the metal to "grow" back. You can get rid of the rust by replacing all of the affected parts with new parts, but good luck keeping the the original body panels.

Note to self: Do not let rust borrow any of my vehicles. It sounds as if
1) I will never get them back
2) the said vehicle will require all new parts if I let rust use it and happen to do get it back.

:lol:

Dave Chase

 

[rust]

Like rust on a vehicle. Once the rust grabs hold ...

Ahem ... :shock:

I know I am a terrible driver, and it would indeed be unwise to lend me
any kind of vehicle, but I still think you are slightly exaggerating ... :lol:

 

[Gaidheal]

Be careful of attempting to slag off all Transhumanists with the same brush you use on the nutcases associated with it (Kurzweil) and remember that 'real' scientists agree it's simply a matter of "when, not if" for functional immortality through biology.

Anyway, the roll for aging is made at the age you last started taking the drugs - you resume aging and as a result face an immediate possible degradation due to shock, etc, etc. In other words, it's not Vampire: The Masquerade; people are not in danger of magically turning to dust because "age caught up with them".

The in-game rationale for the apparent discrepancy is about the same as the real world one; medical advances often, indeed overwhelmingly often, are the result of military desire. Healing soliders quickly to full health so they can go back out and resume the conflict is going to be seen as far more useful than keeping them alive indefinitely outside the combat theatre, it will therefore be culturally more acceptable, more researched and funded and ultimately achieved and implemented sooner, if it's possible.