Sleepy Time!

[Steve]

The average human needs to sleep 6-8 hours out of every 24. How would you model a Disadvantage where a person needed more sleep, like 6 hours out of every 12, or 3 hours out of every 6? A Physical Limitation would be a simple way to describe it, but I wonder if Dependence could be used to model it.

[SleepyDrug]

Re: Sleepy Time!

 

I would definately use a Physical Limitation.

[AliceTheOwl]

Re: Sleepy Time!

 

On that note, are there rules that cover sleep deprivation? Josh tried to find something a few months ago, said he couldn't. I'd think it would create penalties and things, but is it actually written down and statted somewhere?

[ghost-angel]

Re: Sleepy Time!

 

Physical Lim is the best bet.

 

Alice: there are, I'm not at home so I can't look now, if no one posts 'em by the time I get home from work I'll look it up.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Sleepy Time!

 

On that note' date=' are there rules that cover sleep deprivation? Josh tried to find something a few months ago, said he couldn't. I'd think it would create penalties and things, but is it actually written down and statted somewhere?[/quote']

Well damn .. if it's in 5ER I can't find it... I'm asking Steve.

[OddHat]

Re: Sleepy Time!

 

There are no rules that cover sleep deprivation. Therefore, your characters never actually need to sleep, unless they take a specific physical disadvantage. Also, there are no rules for eating, drinking, or going to the bathroom, so your characters are basically set to adventure forever. Groovy.

 

You can spend points on LS: Need not Sleep, Eat or Drink, but since there are no penalties for failing to do these things it's just a role-playing thing.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Sleepy Time!

 

http://www.sleepnet.com/depriv.htm

 

Best of luck turning that into rules though....

[LoresLost]

Re: Sleepy Time!

 

There may be no rules, but in RL sleep depravation affects jugdement in a simular fashion to alchol in the 30 + hour range, delusions in the 60 + hour range. Research by the US Military states that cat naps of an hour or so every eight and 'go drugs' will strech that out for a longer period but will require a hard crash (12 - 48 hours of sleep) to recover from this. My model would be for a normal person is -1 on ego, int, dex and skill rolls for every 2 -3 hours beyond 32 hours awake and a ego drain after 60+ every hour and a roll to see if the shadows are comin' to get 'em.

 

For some one who needs twice the sleep I would half all times. (This would be interesting)

[Lucius]

Sleepy Time!

 

Reductions in effective Dex, Int, and eventually Con, and all rolls associated with them, such as perception and combat value. Eventual loss of Speed as well.

 

Loss of long-term End, an inability to recover long term End, perhaps reduced Recovery in general. Increased End costs.

 

Gradually increasing penalties to everything - a sort of negative overall skill level.

 

Eventually, gradually increasing dice of uncontrolled Mental Illusions.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

You might start seeing a palindromedary

[ghost-angel]

Re: Sleepy Time!

 

I like everyone's ideas ... wow, that's rare.

 

I especially like Lucius' idea of using LTE, it's where I would start myself.

[AliceTheOwl]

Re: Sleepy Time!

 

All I know is, I've been 30 hours without sleep before, when I was already tired. I started dreaming while I was awake.

 

I'd say that the penalties start after about 20 hours without sleep, or at less than 6 hours' average per night for 5 nights.

 

And I'd think that INT would get the fastest and hardest penalties, since that's the first to go when you're tired. Also, you should get penalties to concentration-based powers.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Sleepy Time!

 

It depends ... I can usually make 30 hours with little issue.

 

Around 40-50 I get funny.

 

Over 50 and some serious brain juice starts leaking out, I see things and really become incoherent (more so than normal). I've never made it to 60 hours.

[AliceTheOwl]

Re: Sleepy Time!

 

I keep forgetting my source, but after a full week without sleep, a person is legally insane. Not a whole lot of cases of it, but very few people come back from it. I understand it gets to endangering physical health, to the point where the immune system is highly impaired, eating and digestion are a problem and the body is basically a sack of autonomous functions.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Sleepy Time!

 

a week ... 168 hours. Yeah I'm not even gonna try for that.

[SSJ Archon]

Re: Sleepy Time!

 

If my memory serves, The world record is infact held by a 31 year old woman whom made it 11 Days without sleep, though is now permanently mentally damaged, and requires 24 hour care. I believe the longest without permanent damage is held by a now ex-army 61 year old male, recorded as going 8 Days while searching for his group in Vietnam. Of course, who knows what the OSI has done.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Sleepy Time!

 

There's two main effects I'd try and model:

 

1. The penalties - lack of concentration and tiredness - probably a CON roll every time you miss a sleep period: failure means that you take a -1 on all rolls, including future CON rolls.

 

2. Nodding off - EGO rolls when your character is not doing anything or doing something boring - failure meaning that they fall asleep without realising it. The penalties for missing a CON roll effect the EGO roll.

 

I'd halve the penalties mentioned in 1. for combat: adrenaline will tend to counter tiredness effectively - and I'd give bonuses to EGO rolls for staying awake for the use of stimulants, which could also temporarily counter some or all of the penalties for missed CON rolls, but they wouldn't help with the CON rolls themselves (or the penalties applied to them).

 

Hallucination and such like COULD just be a sfx of the penalties to rolls: your vision is swimming...take a -3 to that 'disarm bomb' roll....

 

BTW although I can't find it on the Guinness site, from memory, the world record for continuous role playing is about 8 days. I think they were allowed an hour's rest a day or something like that, but it had to include comfort breaks and meals, so they didn't exactly get a lot of shuteye.

[zornwil]

Re: Sleepy Time!

 

If my memory serves' date=' The world record is infact held by a 31 year old woman whom made it 11 Days without sleep, though is now permanently mentally damaged, and requires 24 hour care. I believe the longest without permanent damage is held by a now ex-army 61 year old male, recorded as going 8 Days while searching for his group in Vietnam. Of course, who knows what the OSI has done.[/quote']

From an MIT class I found, at http://ramonycajal.mit.edu/kreiman/academia/sleep2000/Lectures/l01182000.html#humans_overview, which professes awareness of the Guiness experiment you mention:

 

"Sleep deprivation in humans: summary

 

 

 

Behavioral changes

 

No psychotic behavior (Most of the evidence of people with psychotic behavior during sleep deprivation comes from schizophrenic patients, people with abnormal behavior in normal life or particular situations like a military regime). In a study of 112 hrs. of sleep deprivation, 7/350 people had symptoms resembling acute paranoid schizophrenia. All 7 showed some predisposition towards psychotic behavior.

Visual misperceptions are common, the extent depending on the length of the deprivation.

(Interesting example of suggestibility; i.e. experimenters commenting that this and this may happen ...)

Mood changes incl. irritability, difficulty in concentrating, disorientation and fatigue.

Sleep-deprivation as a treatment for depression. A review of 61 papers showed that depression symptoms were ameliorated in 1003/1700 depressed patients. Serotonin increase?

Determinants of the impact of sleep loss.

 

Sleep-circadian influences.

Prior sleep amount and distribution (like nutritional status and fasting).

Length of time awake.

Circadian time.

 

Situational characteristics.

Noise.

 

Exercise.

 

Temperature.

 

Drugs.

 

Subject characteristics.

Interest level in test/experiment.

Motivation. Nice well-controlled experiments can be done to test this factor.

Subjects were rewarded monetarily upon correct performance in a vigilance task. This improved performance in the first two days of sleep deprivation.

Knowledge that the sleep-deprivation experiment is going to finish soon also increases performance.

History of exposure to sleep loss.

Age. Interestingly, there does not seem to be any important difference in coping with sleep loss depending on age. It must be noted that the baseline performance in some of the tests (like reaction times) is age-dependent. The decrease from baseline levels is what seems not to change significantly.

Good/poor sleepers. There was no significant difference when comparing insomniacs and normal sleepers.

Recovery sleep

 

More slow wave sleep during recovery. This occurs even in babies (who are known to have a large proportion of REM sleep).

 

Neurological Changes

 

Hand tremor, mild nystagmus, intermittent slurring of speech.

 

Slowing of the EEG signals even while subjects are speaking and clearly awake!!!

 

Sleep-deprivation as epilepsy inducer.

 

Autonomic changes

 

No changes in blood pressure, heart rate, respiration rate, skin conductance.

 

Thermoregulation: No clear indication of deterioration.

 

Some studies claim there is a 0.3C decrease in temperature. There is a clear circadian rhythmicity (as in non-deprived subjects).

 

But:

 

We do not know about the longer-term deprivation (and actually, in rats, temperature effects were not noted until after a week of deprivation).

 

No clear record of clothing status.

 

An 84-hr. deprivation study reported no change in overall body metabolism (cf. animals).

 

No changes in body weight. Subjects do tend to eat more during the first days of deprivation. The reason for this is unclear. It could be that they think they will get debilitated if they don't.

 

Biochemical changes

 

No changes in cortisol, epinephrine, hematocrit, plasma glucose.

 

No change in adrenal or sex hormones.

 

Increase in melatonin.

 

Immune system. Controversial."

 

I could have sworn I'd read of a military experiment with 11 days of sleeplessness, with no long-term health impairment but short-term many issues, of course.

 

As to Gardner, I'm not sure about the mental damage and 24 hour care claim. I could find no such reference. http://www.nichols.edu/faculty/davis/py353/The%20Psychology%20of%20Sleep%20Randy%20Gardner%20record.doc claims "He has since been followed by Dr. Johnson for whom he worked in the ensuing years and appears to be completely healthy and unaffected by the experiment except for whatever effect being a transient celebrity might have had on his psyche. " However, this paper also cites Gardner was largely unaffected during his period of wakefulness, and at least one observer, Lt. Cmdr. John Ross, indicates quite the opposite, as opposed to the more "official" history as recorded by a researcher who spent less time with Gardner, William Dement. But in every case the references I found indicated there were no long-term health issues, regardless of whether the Dement or Ross account was more trusted as to his actual state during those 11 days.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Sleepy Time!

 

Sleep-deprivation as a treatment for depression. A review of 61 papers showed that depression symptoms were ameliorated in 1003/1700 depressed patients. Serotonin increase?

Interesting...

 

I may have beaten Depression because of Insomnia. There was a period I wouldn't go more than an hour asleep, and sometimes I would go a couple of months without ever entering deep sleep.

 

huh. Next time I'm feeling depressed I'm pulling an all nighter.

[AliceTheOwl]

Re: Sleepy Time!

 

From an MIT class I found' date=' at http://ramonycajal.mit.edu/kreiman/a...umans_overview, which professes awareness of the Guiness experiment you mention:[/quote']

That's interesting. I'd heard the exact opposite effects in PSY 101 when we were studying sleep, and our professor had done several sleep studies in grad school. It was his specialty. He already knew about the brain going into REM faster the more deprived the brain was of it (in fact, he ran the first study to wake people up in the middle of REM and study the effects - apparently that's the phase the brain needs the most), but he didn't mention any of THAT.

 

Apparently, he surmised, hallucinations and such from sleep deprivation come into effect when the brain does 'waking REM.' That's when you're awake, eyes open, and dreaming. They touch on it above (the 'slow wave' that sleep-deprived individuals were going into), but seem to have disproved the effects. Hm.

 

But sleep deprivation as a symptom easer for depression - that's VERY interesting. And here I thought that my insomnia was only a symptom, not an attempted cure. Must attempt sleep deprivation as self-therapy in the near future.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Sleepy Time!

 

I've always been surprised by what the body will do to correct its own problems. And then, I haven't considering what length it will go to do fix things.

[sinanju]

Re: Sleepy Time!

 

There may be no rules, but in RL sleep depravation affects jugdement in a simular fashion to alchol in the 30 + hour range, delusions in the 60 + hour range. Research by the US Military states that cat naps of an hour or so every eight and 'go drugs' will strech that out for a longer period but will require a hard crash (12 - 48 hours of sleep) to recover from this. My model would be for a normal person is -1 on ego, int, dex and skill rolls for every 2 -3 hours beyond 32 hours awake and a ego drain after 60+ every hour and a roll to see if the shadows are comin' to get 'em.

 

For some one who needs twice the sleep I would half all times. (This would be interesting)

 

Don't forget a new drug called Provigil. It was originally developed for another purpose, but it makes a very effective anti-sleep drug. It's an antagonist for the chemicals that signal sleepiness--you remain alert and don't get sleepy--rather than acting as a stimulant like caffeine or amphetamines.

 

From what I've read, the military has tested it for periods of up to 40 hours. Subjects remain alert, they don't get punchy or lose coordination as would people kept awake by stimulants--they simply don't get sleepy. It doesn't eliminate the need for REM sleep, so long-term use would probably cause problems. But for periods of up to 40 hours it works very well.

[zornwil]

Re: Sleepy Time!

 

Interesting...

 

I may have beaten Depression because of Insomnia. There was a period I wouldn't go more than an hour asleep, and sometimes I would go a couple of months without ever entering deep sleep.

 

huh. Next time I'm feeling depressed I'm pulling an all nighter.

I'll say that depression is neither worsened nor bettered by me sleeping more, normally. Although I have often gone to sleep/sleep when I didn't intend to because of depression.

 

On an odd note, I have found every time I've had a cold and had to work through the night for some reason, I burned through the cold more quickly than as if I'd rested, in the cases I recall being cured by the end of the next day after sleeplessness (or like 1-2 hours of sleep). Then again, I was pretty miserable so it's not as if I prefer to repeat it voluntarily when I have a cold. It was few enough times, too, that it may have been pure coincidence.