Why are Anagathics Illegal?

[BP]

MGT explicitly states there are dangers in using anagathics.

Characters can prolong their youth using anagathics (drugs that slow the aging process), but these are hard to find, expensive, and illegal or socially unacceptable in many parts of the Imperium. ...

If a character stops taking anagathics, then he must roll immediately on the aging table to simulate the shock that comes from his system beginning to age again....

Anagathics have two drawbacks. Firstly, the risk of trying to obtain a reliable supply and the disruption to the character’s biochemistry means the character must make a second Survival check if he passes his first Survival check in a term. ...

As anagathics effect the whole body and the fundamental mechanism of aging, we are talking a pretty serious drug here. The fact that it is a 'choice' to take does not, just as in the real world, remove the generally accepted responsibility of most societies/governments to protect their citizens. Freedom to commit suicide is often restricted - as is voluntary and involuntary manslaughter...

 

[Mongoose Pete]

Maybe in some locations the drugs are illegal because the government (with pressure from corporate lobby groups too) can't afford to be paying out pensions forever.

The collapse of pension funds on the first TL15 worlds created a financial domino effect. Fearing economic breakdown, the Imperium has now made anagathics illegal for anyone receiving a pension or claiming welfare*. :twisted:

*Yes I know that anagathics would be too expensive for most folk claiming social support, but some planets are far wealthier than others or have different social systems. Besides which its probable that the drugs will eventually become cheap and commonplace.

 

[DFW]

I eliminated anagathics from my games years ago. I "replaced" them with longer life spans at each TL above 8. Provided that the person has access from birth to medical treatment at that TL...

TL(): 1st aging roll/Avg. life span

9: 40/94
10: 44/106
11: 50/119
12: 54/131
13: 60/143
14: 64/156
15: 70/168

 

[BP]

... Besides which its probable that the drugs will eventually become cheap and commonplace.

They will have to be banned to prevent comm and data networks from being saturated by ReAgeYa adds... :lol:

 

[rinku]

Hmm... thinking about TL related lifespan, how about this little house rule:

"The medical technology available to a character has a direct effect on the aging process, even without anargathics. A character applies a DM to any aging roll, using the average of their homeworld TL and the TL of the world on which they are currently living as a characteristic (Interstellar travellers assume current world tech to be TL10).

For example, Jain comes from a TL5 world. During character generation her aging rolls will be taken with a -1 DM unless the Referee rules that she has moved to another planet (some events mention this). If she were to move to a TL15 world, further ageing rolls would be taken at the average TL of 10 = a +1 DM."

 

[CosmicGamer]

Hmm... thinking about TL related lifespan, how about this little house rule:

While this may work for you, I think it causes more trouble than it is worth.

Many careers such as navy, merchant and so on involve a lot of travel and even a regular citizen with a some credits to spare can travel to a different world (or maybe even the local star port, star town, or visiting higher tech ship with medical facilities or auto doc) if they need better medical than is available or even for their regular checkups.

 

[rinku]

Where they spent their first 18 years is going to be pretty important as far as general life expectancy is concerned, though. Also, people on low tech planets will have less purchasing power and the costs of off-world travel (and back) or imported medical care will be higher. They could travel by low berth, but that's *more* likely to shorten their life...

Just putting it up as an idea for anyone that wants TL to have an effect on lifespan. DFW's house rule gave me the idea, but I thought it should work in the negative for low tech as well and the characteristic DM table mapped neatly to TL.

You could also take into account socioeconomic factors by applying your current Social DM to your effective TL (applying it directly to the aging roll looks a bit extreme). So Soc 5 TL 9 is effectively getting TL 8 medical care and has a +0 DM. Soc C in TL 1 gets +2 to effective tech and only suffers a -1 ageing DM.

 

[CosmicGamer]

I think TL only directly correlates to medical capability and age expectancy or effects of aging if no other factors are involved.

TL isn't the only factor when considering a variety of worlds. A social DM has already been mentioned. In some situations TL may not always have the greatest effect compared to other factors. How about things like diet, environment, work or hobbies that cause physical stress, mental stress, or exposure to dangerous chemicals and so on.

Examples:
- Living on a high tech world but it is poor and most people can't afford medical care.
- A high tech non industrial world off the beaten path doesn't have a regular supply of medical equipment and drugs.
- A high tech asteroid run by a mining corporation. No unions. The corporation/government works the people hard and doesn't care what their health is like when they get older (rather they die early and not have to pay out pensions)
- A high tech world with high or low gravity. Unless you spend all your time inside a gravity controlled structure, this could be a factor.
- A high tech world with low law level. Brawls, gun fights and other violence may have an effect.
- A high tech desert world. People may often have occurrences of dehydration due to a lack of water.
- A high tech world with a tainted atmosphere. It may be hard to live your entire life here without some exposure.
- A high tech world with a high population may not be able to adequately feed all it's people.
- A high tech garden or agricultural world might have a population that eats a more nutritious variety of foods than other high tech worlds.
- This is all just off the top of my head. The list could keep on going.

A team of experts could probably write an entire book simulating all the factors that go into life expectancy and aging and still not cover everything.

Personally, as with most things in the game book, I accept it as an average and on occasions when a there needs to be an adjustment, I think it can be done without additional rules to memorize, tables to look things up, or an entire manual on aging.

As always, just discussing things. Feel free to brainstorm.

People often do things their own unique house-ruled way. I like to have a more standardized/generalized system because I often play with pick-up groups on-line. I'm just trying to explain why I want to keep it simple rather than open a can of worms.

More on topic though. Someone taking non aging drugs is not immortal. The use of non aging drugs does not negate injuries, diseases, exposures to dangerous chemicals and many other things that can occur. These things can be lethal. When not lethal, they can leave a person with permanent side effects.

Here's a question. What percentage of the population dies from 'old age' and not from accidents, diseases and such?

 

[DFW]

I think TL only directly correlates to medical capability and age expectancy or effects of aging if no other factors are involved.

These types of rules are ALWAYS predicated on "all else being equal". Default skills based on the characters home planet UWP are a good example.

 

[rust]

Anagathics are on my list of ideas I will probably not use in my current
setting, together with sentient aliens, artificial intelligences, psionics and
pirates.

In this setting the average character will probably start at an age of 35
to 45 years. If we play the campaign our usual way, with about 2 adven-
tures per game time year, the characters will have seen circa 60 adven-
tures when (if ...) they reach our campaigns' common retirement age, at
between 65 and 75, and become NPCs after about 30 game time years
- 60 adventures are usually enough to explore the roleplaying potential
of a character and to think of starting a new character.

In my experience a former PC who has lived long enough to become an
NPC continues to influence the campaign for no more than 10 or 20 addi-
tional years before the players finally get bored of him and I delete him
from the setting or otherwise replace him with someone new.

So, in the end a player character has a "campaign life expectancy" of a
little less than 100 years, with his last 10 to 20 years mostly inactive. For
this I do not need anagathics, high tech medicine is sufficient to reach the
age.

The only other possible reason to introduce anagathics would be to avoid
the aging rolls. However, if I wanted to get rid of the aging rolls, I could
just as well ignore them without using anagathics. Besides, until now no
player has ever complained about an aging character, they obviously ac-
cept aging as a plausible part of their characters' biographies that offers
an additional opportunity for roleplaying.

 

[Captain Jonah]

In this setting the average character will probably start at an age of 35
to 45 years. If we play the campaign our usual way, with about 2 adven-
tures per game time year, the characters will have seen circa 60 adven-
tures when (if ...) they reach our campaigns' common retirement age, at
between 65 and 75, and become NPCs after about 30 game time years
- 60 adventures are usually enough to explore the roleplaying potential
of a character and to think of starting a new character.

So you expect to have characters making aging rolls and adventuring at age 75 :shock:

Where do they park the zimmer frames and electric carts :lol:

Ok we spotted the smugglers, you two amble round the corner and set up your tripod mounted snub pistols to cover us. We will call them out and attack them from this side with our faster OAP electric buggies and our pintle mounted shotguns :twisted:

 

[rust]

So you expect to have characters making aging rolls and adventuring at age 75 :shock:

To give just one real world example (there are many):

General Blücher was 72 when he led the cavalry charge at the Battle of
Ligny, his horse was killed and fell upon him. Despite his injuries he led
his army to Waterloo and commanded it during the battle there.

This was in 1815, and I would expect the medicine of TL 10 to turn what
was still an exception then into something normal in the year 2400+.

 

[aspqrz]

So you expect to have characters making aging rolls and adventuring at age 75 :shock:

To give just one real world example (there are many):

General Blücher was 72 when he led the cavalry charge at the Battle of
Ligny, his horse was killed and fell upon him. Despite his injuries he led
his army to Waterloo and commanded it during the battle there.

This was in 1815, and I would expect the medicine of TL 10 to turn what
was still an exception then into something normal in the year 2400+.

Indeed, average life expectancy has increased dramatically in the last 100 years or so, mainly due to basic public health measures, enough so that most wealthy countries are in the process of either raising the age of retirement or discussing doing so.

The reason is that not only is life expectancy increasing, but active life expectancy is also ... now, depending on what a TL actually represents (that's another argument) you can reasonably expect that by TL 13 (Average Imperial, IIRC) the average Life Expectancy will be in excess of 100 YoA (I believe demographers/medical scientists have projected 120[ish] for the relatively near future, based on current trends) and the *useful* life expectancy (aka "Retirement age" for our purposes) to see a similar increase ... and, very likely, certainly I would say, a slowing down in the rate of characteristic loss in game terms (i.e. intervals to much more than 4 years per roll).

I, personally, find it terribly silly that a character raised at TL/0 should have exactly the same life expectancy chances and aging rolls as someone raised at TL/15 ... at the very least, there should be substantial modifiers.

Of course, others will disagree :lol: :lol: :lol:

Phil

 

[rust]

I, personally, find it terribly silly that a character raised at TL/0 should have exactly the same life expectancy chances and aging rolls as someone raised at TL/15 ... at the very least, there should be substantial modifiers.

In the current setting we will start with the aging rolls at age 50 and make
aging rolls every 5 years, and we also use a modified table for the results
of the aging rolls - for example, we will delete the possibility for a reduc-
tion by 2 points, because such a rapid deterioration within only 5 years
should only be caused by a disease or an injury, not by aging alone.

 

[DFW]

Indeed, average life expectancy has increased dramatically in the last 100 years or so, mainly due to basic public health measures, enough so that most wealthy countries are in the process of either raising the age of retirement or discussing doing so.

As a note. the VAST majority of that increase has been at the bottom end (decrease in infant/childhood mortality) very little on the top end...

 

[CosmicGamer]

As a note. the VAST majority of that increase has been at the bottom end (decrease in infant/childhood mortality) very little on the top end...

Definitely. The life expectancy for someone that is 2yo is lower than the life expectancy for someone that is 50. Childhood illnesses, the sometimes dangerous activities of teenagers, young age drivers get in more car accidents, and so on.

I believe my father has a life expectancy in the high 80s.
My grandfather has a life expectancy of over 100. EDIT: He is already past his 80's.

 

[rust]

As a note. the VAST majority of that increase has been at the bottom end (decrease in infant/childhood mortality) very little on the top end...

This is not quite true, the infant and child mortality of the high tech socie-
ties have not changed much over the last decades, while the geriatric me-
dicine has improved considerably over this time.
I have been a geriatric nurse for 35 years now, and today my patients do
not only get older on average than they did those 35 years ago, they can
also remain physically active for some more years. When I started in my
job, a 90 year old active patient was considered unusual, today he would
have to be at least 100 to be noteworthy.

 

[CosmicGamer]

I, personally, find it terribly silly that a character raised at TL/0 should have exactly the same life expectancy chances and aging rolls as someone raised at TL/15 ... at the very least, there should be substantial modifiers.

There are lots of 'silly' things in the rules.
- A drifter and other careers with 4 year terms.
- Only one promotion is possible in 4 years.
- Promotions are the same difficulty whether you are going for a junior position like manager or a senior position like director/president of a corporation
- Promotions don't have specific prerequisite characteristics and skills

The list goes on and on.

Again, I just take the rules as an average which is needed for game simplicity and playability. It already can take several hours and possibly more than one game session to finalize chargen for a group. Make the 'perfect' simulation and character creation could take as long as the character is old as you simulate every possible thing that occurs every minute of their life. I know some people like more simulation/realism in their games. This is fine. My question is where is the limit for you so that you are not spending all your time creating additional rules and tables instead of just playing the game?

 

[DFW]

This is not quite true, the infant and child mortality of the high tech societies have not changed much over the last decades,

That is in fact, extremely incorrect.

http://www.faqs.org/childhood/In-Ke/Infant-Mortality.html
"In the last third of the twentieth century, the decline of mortality among older infants slowed to a snail's pace. Among neonates, however, it quickened precipitously, falling over 50 percent in some developed nations."

This factor, in the late 20th century has been the largest factor, statistically driving up average lifespans. And, in the 20th century as a whole, is overwhelmingly, the single largest factor in the statistic change.

 

[Captain Jonah]

So you expect to have characters making aging rolls and adventuring at age 75 :shock:

To give just one real world example (there are many):

General Blücher was 72 when he led the cavalry charge at the Battle of
Ligny, his horse was killed and fell upon him. Despite his injuries he led
his army to Waterloo and commanded it during the battle there.

This was in 1815, and I would expect the medicine of TL 10 to turn what
was still an exception then into something normal in the year 2400+.

True enough but using the standard aging rolls from 34 up every 4 years most characters will not be leading cavalry charges at 75
The average character will be ok for mental (Int, edu, soc) stats but the important physical ones will be shot by 75.

Higher tech higher base for aging, its more a thing for char gen with characters doing a lot of terms and getting hooked on the stuff. I love the idea of your game running 30 game years, I did, many many years ago, start a very long term game with characters starting 1115 then going through the rebellion and hard times and thier children getting to inherit their ships in TNE (well whatever of thier ships were left) Group broke up with uni which stopped it