Seasickness

[Steve]

How would you model motion sickness in Hero terms? Some people are never bothered by seasickness and others are really miserable. Could immunity to motion sickness be a 1-point LS power?

[Pegasus40218]

I guess one question would be:  is it more common for the average person to get seasickness, or is it more common for them not to?  If it's more common for people not to become seasick, then maybe it could be modeled as a disadvantage with an activation roll (since a person doesn't ALWAYS get seasick), rather than setting up a game where immunity has to be bought by everyone to avoid it.

[Michael Hopcroft]

In game terms, it would be a question of adaptation. You could assume, for example, that anyone going on a sea voyage for the first time in their lives will get seasick. No need to roll for it, or put it on the character sheet. It just happens. You'll be miserable for a few days, and maybe not be able to do much for the first eighteen hours or so (stuff just won't stay down). But once you've gone through that, that's it. It'll probably be a while before you're comfortable at sea, but you're not going to be over the rail puking your guts out anymore.

 

Of course, that's not how motion sickness really works. It's not even close. But it's enough to make it a good roleplaying point that you don't have to worry about ever again.

 

Now you could have a PhysLim for someone who never did get the hang on ships and always gets seasick the first couple of days every time he sets foot on a ship, and is never comfortable even after that. That character had better have a pretty darned good reason for wanting to go to sea anyway!

[mhd]

I don't really think this is important enough for most games to be worth a complication, unless we're talking about the social ramifications of it (i.e. a seasick Viking warrior).

[Ndreare]

I would call it a susceptibility.

I think in the stories were it comes up, like in real life it is the exception. Most people do not get it.

Hornblower had an issue with it and it was obviously his weakness not a common ailment.

[Michael Hopcroft]

Hornblower had an issue with it and it was obviously his weakness not a common ailment.

Forester went out of his way to give Hornblower minor impediments. He was balding, overweight, and tone-deaf. He was middle-class at best and not liked by his superiors despite his success. His promotion schedule was based on his place on the "Captain's List" maintained by the Admiralty, not on his ability.

 

All this gave him a distinct lack of self-confidence. He was very talented, brave, and imaginative -- yet even those were seen as weaknesses as his superiors did not value imagination. He was trapped in a loveless marriage with a homely, unintelligent woman (who he rarely saw, partly by duty and partly by choice). He constantly feared that his men hated him, which was not aided by orders he was given that virtually guaranteed crew discontent..For example, when a ship was captured by the Royal Navy it was sailed back to England by a "prize crew" and sold to the Admiralty (warships were expensive to build, and many RN vessels began life in enemy fleets). A cut of this was distributed among the surviving crew of the ship that "won the prize", with the Captain and officers getting the biggest cut but the ordinary sailors getting substantial money by their standards. But Hornblower was told at one point to capture a rich prize and hand it over to an allied rebel leader. When that leader turned into an enemy, the prize was sunk in the ensuing battle -- which meant instead of a rich prize they got nothing.

 

Hollywood was clueless to all this -- when they compressed the first three Hornblower novels into a film, they cast the dashing Gregory Peck in the lead.

[Ndreare]

I did not know they made a Hornblower Movie. I will have to look into it.

 

But you are right he was a tragic character, the only good thing that ever happened to him was his wife dying and I would say that is pretty messed up.

[Greywind]

1. Hornblower: Duty (2003) (TV) Played by Ioan Gruffudd (as Commander Horatio Hornblower)
2. Horatio Hornblower 3 (2003) (TV) Played by Ioan Gruffudd (as Commander Horatio Hornblower)

   ... aka "Hornblower: Loyalty" - UK (original title)

3. Horatio Hornblower: Retribution (2001) (TV) Played by Ioan Gruffudd (as Lieutenant Horatio Hornblower)

   ... aka "Hornblower: Retribution" - UK (original title)

4. Hornblower: Mutiny (2001) (TV) Played by Ioan Gruffudd (as Lieutenant Horatio Hornblower)

    

5. Horatio Hornblower: The Wrong War (1999) (TV) Played by Ioan Gruffudd (as Lieutenant Horatio Hornblower)

   ... aka "Hornblower: The Frogs and the Lobsters" - UK (original title)

6. Horatio Hornblower: The Duchess and the Devil (1999) (TV) Played by Ioan Gruffudd (as Acting Lieutenant Horatio Hornblower)

   ... aka "Hornblower: The Duchess and the Devil" - UK (original title)

7. Horatio Hornblower: The Fire Ship (1998) (TV) Played by Ioan Gruffudd (as Acting Lieutenant Horatio Hornblower)

   ... aka "Hornblower: The Examination for Lieutenant" - UK (original title)

8. Horatio Hornblower: The Duel (1998) (TV) Played by Ioan Gruffudd (as Midshipman Horatio Hornblower)

   ... aka "Hornblower: The Even Chance" - UK (original title)

    

9. "Alcoa Premiere"

   ... aka "Premiere, Presented by Fred Astaire" - USA (alternative title)

       - Hornblower (1963) TV episode, Played by David Buck (as Captain Horatio Hornblower)

    

10. "Conflict"

        - Passage to Maranga (1957) TV episode, Played by Rex Reason (as Capt. Horatio Hornblower)

11. Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N. (1951) Played by Gregory Peck (as Capt. Horatio Hornblower R.N)

    ... aka "Captain Horatio Hornblower" - USA (alternative title)

[Ndreare]

Bummer not on Netflix.

I will have to try Amazon Prime.

[GhostDancer]

 

Speaking as someone who served at sea, if the weather is severe enough, knocking your vessel about violently for long enough, many of you will get seasick.  If your last meal was greasy, the odds go up.  And this is the case even if you have a lot of sea time under your belt, and never got seasick before.

 

Some people routinely have motion sickness, and they are in the minority.  That could be worth a Complication/Disad in a game in the modern era, since this includes car and train travel, etc.

[Michael Hopcroft]

I wonder what would happen if you were called upon to fight while seasick. The kind of weather that would have that effect on experienced mariners is obviously not the sort of weather sailing ships can fight in, so you probably won't have to deal with dodging broadsides or fighting off boarders. But you don't always get along with your own crewmates, or with any passengers you might be carrying. And if you're a prisoner or human cargo and willing to brave the condition it might be the perfect opportunity to steal some weapons and try to take the ship.

 

The conditions will affect you too, of course, but even at best only some of the crew would be able to fight during a storm. Most of them will be struggling to keep the ship afloat.

 

I'm also curious about how alcohol affects the equation. Sailors on Age of Sail ships needed alcohol. Brewing it into very weak beer was one of the few ways available at the time to make sure shipboard water remained safe to drink. They also liked stronger stuff, of course, and depriving a misbehaving sailor of it was a common form of discipline when the offense wasn't serious enough to merit a flogging.

 

(One other note; the last episode of a BBC/Masterpiece Theatre biographical series about Nelson took place on the gun decks of HMS Victory in the Battle of Trafalgar. Few things were closer to Hell on Earth then the gun decks of a Ship of the Line in pitched combat. Navies recruited almost exclusively by force at the time -- if you actually wanted to go to sea, you hired out with a merchantman or whaler where you would be treated like a professional).

[Michael Hopcroft]

I did not know they made a Hornblower Movie. I will have to look into it.

 

But you are right he was a tragic character, the only good thing that ever happened to him was his wife dying and I would say that is pretty messed up.

The clincher came at the end of the third novel, Flying Colors. Hornblower returns to England after escaping execution by the French to find that everything he could ever want is happening: he's a national hero, the prize he just brought in will make him a rich man, he's been told to expect a knighthood, and the wife he despises is dead freeing him to marry the woman he really loves. But as he finds his new fame is being manipulated by shameless political operators and he is still resented by the Admiralty, he finds the taste of it bitter as opposed to sweet.

 

The three first Hornblower novels represent a virtually perfect trilogy, but the demand for more Hornblower was so great that Forester wrote six more and was working on yet another one when he died (which was published posthumously).