Side effects of long-term cold sleep

S

Sylvre Phire

Mongoose
I'm running an OTU campaign where one of the characters is brought out of cold sleep after being "out of it" for an extended period. It's kind of a "Buck Rogers" scenario - they went in shortly after the Fourth Frontier War (1084 or thereabouts) and are waking up in 1105 - so it's a period of 21 years.

The character was put into cold sleep using not only the standard drugs, but also anagathics to prevent any additional aging. So far the health problems I'm coming up with include:

* Muscular atrophy and skeletal problems
* Possible neurological damage/memory loss
* Aging crisis (even multiple ones) due to anagathic withdrawal
* Organ failure?
* Sensory loss/damage (ala Han Solo)

Anything else you can think of that I might be missing?

Pax et bonum,

Dale[/list]
 
Nerve 'twitching' and facial ticks; and, temporary, stress induced, involuntary muscle control ;)
 
If you are going by OTU standards then 21 years of cold sleep are negligible. Canonical uses of cold berths lasting centuries at a time have been reported for millenia with no ill effects for the travellers, even at TLs lower than the norm in Spinward Marches during the 10th Century Imperial.

And why were anaghatics used? Cold berths effectively stop the ageing process.

Of course, if what you really want is to screw the character you can always rule the berth has malfunctioned and give him/her whatever health problems you can come up with.

Failing cold berths usually end up with the occupier dead though...
 
If you really want to have the characters squirm, make them re-roll their physical stats, taking the lower of their original stat and the new one to simulate "freezer burn". :)

A nicer variety of that might be to have them make "stat checks" against their stats (roll +DM from their original stat for 8+), and have negative effects reduce their stats (-1 to -5 = -1, -6 = -2) slightly.

In either case, you should then tell them what caused their reduction. Just make something plausible up, like muscular problems for a STR reduction.

Having said all that, it's probably easier to have them make a single aging roll when they wake up.

If you're looking for temporary effects that will hit everybody, you could have them make an END check against 12+, with the (probably) negative effect being the magnitude (0 is 1-6 sec, -1 is 10-60 sec, -2 is 1-6 min, etc.) of how long they need to recover, and a separate d6 roll choosing what's wrong with them. For extra fun, don't tell them that the effects are temporary. :)

Maybe something like:

  • Long-Term Sleep Recovery
    (12+ END check, negative effect is duration, roll on following table for disability)
    1 Blindness
    2 Neurological Problems (DEX=0 for tests, unable to use devices)
    3 Muscular Problems (STR=0 for tests, unable to walk)
    4 Auditory or Visual hallucinations (INT=0 for tests)
    5 Memory Loss (EDU=0 for tests)
    6 Unconscious/Catatonic
 
Vargr said:
And why were anaghatics used? Cold berths effectively stop the ageing process.
Click to expand...

It was originally my understanding that cold sleep slowed biological processes, including aging, down, but did not act as stasis (ala Star Trek). Thank you for the clarification, though. It does clear some things up.

Pax et bonum,

Dale
 
Here's a thread link that might be helpful:
http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=40380&highlight=low+berths
 
:lol:

Lets see? We have Strength.., Dexterity.., Endurance.., Intelligence.., Education.., Social Standing.. Ah! Ha! ..Mojo is missing...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top