Since this was already necro'd I thought I might as well throw in some suggestions. I think drugs, or rather the effects of drugs should be included, I say that because I don't think that recreational drugs can really be separated from medicines, magic, poisons or anything else that alters the mind. I'd prefer making some of the pre-existing plants psychoactive. I'd prefer that "drugs" were basically plants that herbalists or other foraging dwarves would bring into the fort from Food Gathering zones. Initially speaking it could be accidents caused by inexperienced herbalists, then as dwarves consume them they will have some experience that they could have any number of emotional responses (ecstasy, horror, joy, love, peace, rage, relaxation) and physical effects (slowed down, speed up, confusion, work/creative obsession, hallucination, numbness, paralysis, unconsciousness) and then they (and the player) could learn from the dwarves behavior and thoughts that something is going on with the food.
Drug effects are relevant to medicine (pain relief, anesthetics, healing, treating Depressions or Insanity) and magic (spell effects like Haste, Sleep, Confusion, etc), alchemy (poisons, love potions, healing potions) head injuries (confusion, memory loss), insanity (hallucinations, disassociation, paranoia), noxious gasses used by FBs or exposed while mining. To me it seems drug effects would be a logical inclusion in the magic arc.
Adding drugs could add a lot of other things that are desirable to the game examples-
Adventure mode
• foraging on wild plants causes bizarre effects to the player
• being poisoned - like someone earlier in the thread said, drugs are mostly poisons people use in small doses. So you could get poisoned (poisoned blade, or food from an assassin) without dying but still have serious side effects to deal with (exhaustion, confusion, hallucination). It could do any number of things, change the players view of the screen, add a [MEANDERER] tag so you can't run straight, increase or decrease movement speed, make you drop items because your hands aren't working correctly.
• unpredictable venom effects
• pain relievers to help with injury and healing
• stimulants for globe trotting, staying awake all night or to keep running from enemies without getting exhausted
• running into addicts and thieves in city sewers or bandit camps. People willing to sell things cheap for money or try to rob you
• God-vision - being able to see unobstructed through trees and things like how the god-like game player would see
Fort Mode
• interrogations- drugging goblins to yank information out of them or to torment them
• keeping prisoners docile (not that it's needed but it would be interesting)
• poisoned weapon or spike traps for sieges
• drugged soldiers or war animals for battle (drug induced martial trances, no fear, no horror, no over-exertion). Maybe a war tiger on rage inducing mushrooms would be good in a fight. I know it's cliche but it's happened a lot in history, the celts, the vikings, the nazis, and even modern militaries uses a lot of stimulants to get work done or maintain watch.
• keeping caffeine-like mild stimulants around could increase speed and work ethic, decrease eating and sleeping breaks.
• something for an alchemist to do- making potions/poisons, combining drugs for new effects, concentrations, etc.
• medicine - if you have drug producing plants or extracts around and a doctor assigned as a scholar they could experiment with those drugs and learn to make medicine over time. It would likely involve a lot of testing drugs on injured dwarves but I could imagine a notification that the "Dr learned the effects of Kobold Bulb creating medicine from it's extract!". But also "The Dr drove Urist insane with an overdose of staring eyeball juice!"
• FB that could make all the soldiers fighting it turn into raging lunatics (hopefully temporarily) or a titan that "emanates an aura of giving and kindness" could turn your military into an overjoyed group-hug while being torn apart.
• personality changes - I think we're all weary of this because of the rain, but it's based in reality, that's what all the recent psychedelic research is about, temporary use of hallucinogens and therapy causing long term positive emotional effects and dealing with extreme mood problems (PTSD). "Urist has come to terms with loss after a psychedelic experience", "Urist no longer hates nature after communing with Armok under the influence", "Urist finds peace to be of the highest priority after consuming gnomeblight", "Urist no longer trusts using mind altering substances after a bad trip"
I'd suggest adding one each of the major drug groups
• Stimulants - stimulants are used globally in various works for stress relief, concentration, and physical motivation (coffee, chat, tobacco, Ritalin). A plant with stimulant effects could boost positive emotions and cause minor-medium speed increases
• Depressants - slows down movement speed, dulls strong emotions, demotivates the user from working but generally make people feel good. It could temporarily boost positive emotions while tampering down any emotions in the extremes (hate slugs? just dislike seeing them while your high)
• Hallucinogens - there is a large possible effect range here from 'colors are more vibrant' to 'I'm a space worm tunneling into the heart of the sun god'. That could also be racial if there are limited hallucinogens in the game, from humans being super sensitive to dwarves not so much. Or in the case of procgen drugs it could just be a matter of how strong the game happened to make them (I guess that applies to them all though...). The stronger the effects the less work (or anything) a dwarf can do, they may just roll around in the eyeball grass for a couple days muttering to themselves, or if minor just get a lot of mood boosts from enjoying everything they see being beautiful.
• Dissociatives - IMO the worst wildcard, drugs like ketamine or PCP. Makes people think that they are watching themselves as an outsider, makes the feel invincible but also can lose grasp of reality. Could have effects like making dwarves believe they are on fire, or can fly or they are a forgotten beast and start rampaging. These are the ones you want to avoid but could be really funny/FUN too.
• Opioids - poppy-milk type drugs are highly enjoyable recreationally but wonderful medicine once your scholars/doctors learn to use it. Could induce euphoria and laziness, if a mechanic was added making dwarves heal better the longer they stayed in hospital beds this could be the way to achieve that. Could also tamper mood effects from suffering a major injury if they had anesthetics.
• Inhalants - this is the outlier but I think a good example of the further benefits of drug-like reactions. Randomized effects from the other 5 types (with possible physical effects too) and used as a noxious/poisonous gas that can come from FBs, magma, gas pockets in rock, alchemical/magical accidents/fires. (I know potions burning are not a dev priority but it would be really interesting if a wildfire hit some potions they create gases that are unpredictable).
I think drugs should come in four forms, smokables, eatables, drinkables, chewables (though that could just be a type of edible for simplicity); processing into powders or injectables it too real world for me. Basically while foraging you find hallucinogenic mushrooms you can eat, leaves you can chew for upper or mood lifting effects, kobold bulb that you can make plant extracts of (potions/poisons are basically drugs), or tobacco/pot like plants you can smoke to relax. It would also be interesting to have different effects on different races, gnomeblight could melt gnomes, depressants to goblins, addictive stimulants to kobolds, make humans go insane/berserk, and make dwarves hallucinate. The different races could have different preferences too, dwarves alcohol, humans everything, elves hallucinogens, goblins dissociatives, goblins uppers, etc. (could be another procgen thing for variety).
Different drugs grow in different biomes obviously, and it would follow that evil biomes (or sphere influences) would produce more sinister drugs (glumprong extract is a dissociative, with extreme effects, paranoia, fear, violence and high chance of overdose, similar to PCP) and good biomes could have more generally positive effects (feather tree eggs could make be a stimulant with mild hallucinogenic effects that encourages socializing and peace-making, similar to ecstasy).
There are a couple of ways I could imagine it going.
First- Realistically you'd only need maybe 5 drug-containing plants in the game (maybe ten, for an above ground and subterranean version of each), maybe alchemists could mix those with other drugs like alcohol, potions, poisons or extracts for more effects in the long term game development cycle.
Second- Procgen drugs. I imagine this is the route Toady & Threetoe will actually want to go. This was you could still cover the 5 drug types per game but they would be part of procgen plants, OR normal plants with procgen drug effects, OR the same plants every game but with randomized effects/strength. You might have to abandon your foraging when you realize your fort is surrounded by plants with extreme dissociative effects, or you could be lucky and plump helmets will contain caffeine and everyone works longer and happier. Effects could go from very mild to extreme and in any combination (100% stimulant and hallucinogenic strength, yikes; goodberries boost all good mood effects and make users permanently like nature).
From there it could get any amount of weird physical effects, mushrooms that make you start growing more mushrooms off your body after eating them, or a mushroom that turns you into a PHM (origin story!). Plants that make you permanently or temporarily grow extra arms, a slug body, or spider legs. Potions that make dwarves able to breathe underwater or climb walls like a spider. You could go nuts with these effects.
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I know I said a lot here but I'd prefer drugs be a minor but interesting part of DF gameplay. When you start a fort you might have a patch of something psychoactive growing on the map and you don't realize it until your dwarves start acting really weird. You could then roll with it because it's funny or if the effects are disruptive forbid the plants and move the food gathering zone. I think if Toady added in the basic effects and a handful of plants that cause them modders could then go nuts and add a million slightly different psychoactive drugs from fantasy or real life, and the people that have moral hangups about the idea of drug use could mostly ignore them without it being a big deal.
As far as junkies, crime and other things people were talking about, you don't get addicts and laws without a serious industry to fuel them and personally I think making farm-able drug plants wouldn't be very fun. I do like the idea though of a player seeking out biomes they know grow certain plants used for drugs, then trying to create their own drug industry that way. That just sounds like a new type of mega-project and more power to them. I could also see traders bringing small amounts of drugs with them to trade depending on what the race preferred, a barrel of goodberries with very positive effects for instance would be interesting. To me plant based drug harvesting has more ritualistic, druidic and religious connotations which is why I imagine that being more of a elvish activity. Running with that idea elves could be the most drug focused group while dwarves are more accidental, bumbling drug users (though not opposed to it per se). I imagine elvish civs would generally have access to most positive natural drugs and on the rare occasion when the stars align (perhaps the world just has a lot to of drugs to offer, or the civ is highly economically motivated, once entities are procgen) elves could start 'opium war' style drug-based empires through trade.
Edit- oh so many typos
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Topic: Recreational Drugs (Read 31590 times)