Mushrooms & Opium vs. New World Tech

[Chakravanti]

Lets face it, we already broke the theme by letting anything be smokeable. Smoking of drugs was a practice stolen from the new world. The Spanish had no way to describe what they saw upon arrival in the new world. They described it as 'Drinking Smoke'. (Andrew Weil, 1983).

So lets add two stages to the poppy plant after flowering. Wilted & dead.

For a few days after the flowers fall off a poppy pod you can take a tool (Ghetto version is a spoon cut into a quarter moon with teeth) and scrape cuts into the side of the pod (being careful not to breach the inner side of the hull). This is usually done early in the morning and then, in the heat of the midday sun, gatherers will take a wide knife-type tool and scrape the scabs off the pod. This is raw opium. This product can be safely smoked given no other medical factors and appropriate dosing margins for an individuals tolerence (Do your goddamn research before attempting this kind of thing...this is not a fucking tutorial and I am not responsible for your life or inclination to believe everything you read on the goddamn internetz).

This process can be preformed up to eight times per pod by a skilled opium harvester who harvests twice a day. The pod will die within a week tops. At this stage the pod must be cut about a foot below the pod and tied into a pod bundle which is hung to dry for a few weeks or baked-dried at low temperatures (quicker, less risk of fungi) or cured like tobacco in heated barns.

The resultant pod can then be crushed and a chemical or water based extraction can be preformed to create 'cooked' or 'flake' opium. This product can be further refined into morphine, codeine or thebaine (for the synthesis of fentanyl and derivatives). Heroin is made by acetlyzing morphine extractions.

The pod, in the TRADITIONAL fashion was never bled or refined. It was just harvested, dried, crushed and boiled into a tea as has become quite the fad in opiate culture today due to the quasi-legal status of doing so in most countries. Ingesting any drug is by far the least addictive and safest way to consume any drug. If you're interested in more information I will link to a podcast which goes in depth into the history of psychedelic drugs and is a worthwhile lecture to listen to for anyone by the foremost expert on drugs both entheogenic and pharmacological for medical, recreational and spiritual purposes, by Dr. Andrew Weil, given in 1983. You can listen to it on a podcast courtesy of the Psychedelic Salon. Incidentally it is also available as a free podcast via Itunes.

I suspect, however, since we have already violated history and thematics by smoking TOBACCO and weed that however this is implemented shouldn't be to far a cry from the any current thematics.

SO at the very least let's add Pod tea if not the harvesting and smoking of raw opium.

Incidentally which we're talking about tobacco, opium, and weed let's address the addictive factors on a Scale of 1-10. Alcohol, as our baseline is 5. Weed is 1-2, Opium is 3-4 (ingested, 6-7 smoked), tobacco is 10 (smoked, since we don't have sublingual preparations...yet?).

On to...MUSHROOMS!!! Our fungi ancestors. Either Psilocybin or Amenitas can be found througout the northern hemisphere of the globe with dozens of psilocybin varieties and almost half a dozen amenitas. Amenita's are less hallucineogenic and more dissociative leading to otherworldy experiences and contanct with extradimensional beings whereas psilocybin are hallucinogenic and result in epiphanies and revelations about the world we live in.

Btw, if you are unfamiliar with Amenitas think of the Red & White spotted Super Mario Mushrooms. Those are Amenitas. That's right folks. THis is not the first game to implement drug culture references into the play. It's just the first one to do so blatantly.

------I'm not actually suggesting anything....this is just a useless post saying MOAR DURGS PL0X-------

How all that might translate into game effects is a great point of discussion. Feel free to suggest ideas.

I post this not to suggest in game effects & mechanics but to try to give information about real world operations and history in brief so that the inevtiable discussion surrounding these things is not based off misinformation.

I still regret suggesting that hemp be smoked. IMHO marijuana should be an entirely separate plant from hemp like it is in reality.

[DatOneGuy]

I like the idea, but if mushrooms were able to do this, what could they provide that other drugs don't already cover (as a buff that is). Unless they boosted psyche, that would be cool.

As for Opium, sounds very complicated although it is much lower on the ladder than some of the other things I'll admit, just not sure where it lays with the current technology and 'scraping pods' and all that jazz.

[squfar]

What in-game effects would ingesting psilocybin mushrooms, or smoking opium, have in-game? This is the first thing that should be discussed before it is even considered. So far I can think of nothing in-game whose quality would be greatly improved by the consumption of these drugs. In reality taking mushrooms can provide very positive spiritual and mental growth, and opium can provide? I'm not sure what positive benefits opium has if any, I've never tried it and certainly never tried its more potent derivative heroin, I suppose it is a good pain killer since it contains so much morphine.

How would this affect anyone in-game? Your characters by virtue of being virtual and therefore not real already are immune to pain. They have no conscious will or desires of their own, they are made out of code. Your characters would have no desire to explore their inner world, or numb their pains, whereas smoking hemp in-game provides a boost to FEP gains thus giving the player a reason to consume hemp, which I must agree is silly that hemp is whats smoked in-game and not cannabis, given that hemp is grown specifically to contain less THC and stronger fibers than its medicinal cousin cannabis. Tobacco somehow magically reduces travel weariness, though I'd say opium should take this place, it makes more sense that a pain killer would reduce travel "weariness" more than a completely useless (for medicinal purposes) substance (tobacco).

That's all I can think of is that opium should take the place of tobacco if implemented, tobacco should be relegated to something else, and mushrooms might provide higher psyche boost? That doesn't really make sense given that psyche affects the jewelry craft in-game, though most hallucinogen users I know are into making jewelry for some odd reason, though this is of course anecdotally speaking. Maybe ingesting mushrooms would provide nothing other than a cosmetic effect whereby the colors on the screen would become distorted and "trippy" though I think this is stupid and would only cater to the stupid crowd, though that is probably the majority of people who exist.


All in all this suggestion seems pretty impractical to implement and I'd venture to guess it suits only your personal desires to ingest virtual drugs for no reason other than "its like totally cool bro".

[Blxz]

I would actually like to have opium as a psyche boosting drug. Supremely relaxing, destress.

Alternatively if and when happiness is ever given a role then drugs could be used to boost that up. I seem to spend a massive amount of time in the unhappy phase; while that does nothing yet it will eventually. Being able to be happy without slaughtering a whole herd of animals would be a nice change.

Further to this I think addiction should play an in-game role. Diminishing returns on the drugs as addiction builds and side effects or a debuff for a few days if the drug needs are not met. This could possibly be countered with a greater bonus to the drugs in the initial phase to still encourage their use, or at least leave the choice there to counter-balance the side-effect.

[fistintinyass]

good because I smoke weed EVERY DAY and entoit the this game

[Blxz]

good because I smoke weed EVERY DAY and entoit the this game

Maybe the side effects shouldn't be made this bad in-game though....

[squfar]

No mushrooms should affect psyche not opium

Further to this I think addiction should play an in-game role. Diminishing returns on the drugs as addiction builds and side effects or a debuff for a few days if the drug needs are not met. This could possibly be countered with a greater bonus to the drugs in the initial phase to still encourage their use, or at least leave the choice there to counter-balance the side-effect.

If you are going to add addiction then you have to also add sobriety, you have to get into a plethora of other effects; drug use, addiction, sobriety, and others would have on the hearthlings. Ultimately I'd say just keep it simple, let your mind wander but trim the hedges. Drugs should just effect certain simple things, easily communicable ideas, let us not become lost in our imagination. Opium = psyche, tobacco = travel weariness, hemp = fep gain, 'shrooms = god knows what, but to add an overly complex system such as "taking x amount of shrooms for x amount of days leads to y result" takes a lot of joy out of simply "taking drugs" in-game for stat boosts.

Although if you are going for realism (which the designers of this game aren't no matter how much protestation they might have against this claim) you would be remiss if you didn't include such an overly dramatic and complicated system with regards to drug use.

[Blxz]

No mushrooms should affect psyche not opium

Opium = psyche,

Well I'm glad you agree with me...sometimes. As for addiction. It is simply solved via a debuff of some sort if you don't take more of the drug. Can be set to wear off once the debuff times out; possibly a few days. Very simple. Just wait out the debuff and you are back to sobriety.

[DatOneGuy]

If we ever get crack cocaine, I hope it quadruples CON.


Back on topic -cough-... I can't think of many simplified uses for mushrooms either really, that's a tough one to translate it from what it really is, to an already ingame feature.

[squfar]

No mushrooms should affect psyche not opium

Opium = psyche,

Well I'm glad you agree with me...sometimes. As for addiction. It is simply solved via a debuff of some sort if you don't take more of the drug. Can be set to wear off once the debuff times out; possibly a few days. Very simple. Just wait out the debuff and you are back to sobriety.

sorry i got confuSED i was just taking so many drugs in real time