Getting High is Only the Beginning - using (and abusing) Drugs in K:DL

 

The question occasionally comes up: How to handle drugs in Kult: Divinity Lost? 

It's by no means an unreasonable request to wanna know about - the game revolves all around the dark aspects of the human psyche, after all. Suffering, desire, anxiety, nightmares, insanity, obsession, expansion of the senses to perceive other realities... Surely intoxication, addiction, hallucinations, and other aspects of drug (ab)use firmly have a place in this!

 

Jeez, man - what the fuck you put in this drink??

(Salvador Dali)

However, the Corebook doesn't really dedicate a lot of space to the mechanical representation of this whole topic. We get the Drug Addict Disadvantage, but apart from that there are only occasional mentions, and we are never given any hard and fast rules for it.

Why is that?

Fun fact: As backers of the original K:DL kickstarter may remember, there was an early draft of the open beta for the 4th ed. Corebook which had a table with Attribute modifiers according to the effects of different drugs you might ingest. 

But it was ultimately decided to cut it out - so it never became part of the published book.

Here are a few excerpts from it:

As you can see, amphetamines improve your reflexes, while alcohol boosts endurance.
Also, cannabis apparently allows you to ignore injuries just as well as alcohol does.

Heroin looks suspiciously similar to alcohol, except it doesn't improve endurance, but at
least it also doesn't reduce your willpower. Otherwise it's much the same, just stronger.

 Evidently the effects of LSD on your intellect and perception are about on par with those
of cannabis... but you get funky visions from it, too. Sniffing glue on the other hand is the
only drug that doesn't care about which Attribute it affects - it fucks them all up equally.

(If you're interested in the full table,
find me via DMs and I'll send it over.)

Here, for comparion, the equivalent table from old Kult:

 

This one shows a very different approach. Not concerned with individual Attributes, but rather interested in the user's mental, emotional, and physical conditions - in other words, their fictional positioning... and you know what I find funny about it?

It seems perfectly fitted for adaptation into a PbtA system, with its tiered results and all!

Sure, there's some solidly Old-School Simulationism involved, with its calculation of CON-rating fractions - but just think if the terms given in it were distributed across (-9), (10-14), and (15+) instead... 

In fact, I have occasionally in my K:DL games drawn inspiration from the oldKult drugs table, playing it by ear to gauge the effects of intoxacting substances on PCs. You can let them roll +Fortitude (or +Willpower if you feel that fits better) to see how well their metabolism (and/or their mind) takes it, then adjudicate on the fly what seems to make the most sense / best drama / most terrifying horror / ... (as needed), taking into account the drug's dosage, purity, and other circumstances in the fiction.

So in comparison, this strikes me as a much more useful 'guide to drugs' than the above shown table could ever hope to be. Seems understandable why they decided to leave it out after all, eh? 

It would have just been a lot of miniscule bookkeeping for the GM, and at the same time disappointingly inconsequential most of the time.

Somewhere between the cumbersome 'keeping track of five distinct -1 penalties every time a character gets a bit drunk', and the hard-to-rationalize 'tripping on LSD or snifffing glue also giving me no more than a bunch of -1s'... 

...well, I feel like there has to be a better way to handle this.

Because sometimes, all you want is a quick way to gauge a drug's impact on your general narration, i.e. on your game's fiction.

But sometimes, you may wish to represent a PC's intoxication mechanically in the game.

It can at times become hard to distinguish which parts
are the hallucinations and which ones are real...

(Nostradamus)

 

Here's my take on how to go about it

in six (mostly) brief steps:

- Use what the Apocalypse engine already gives you

In truth, drugs are already (kind of) part of the PbtA system. When the ingestion of stimulants or narcotics becomes part of the shared narrative, the rules for it behave exactly as the rules for any other story elements: We are being fans of the player characters, so we are highly interested in -

• "Why do you consume the drug?"
• "How do you do it?"
• "When and where? In whose company?"
• "What do you feel it helps you achieve or accomplish?"
• "What are the downsides, the complications and troubles it gives you?" 
• ...
  

In other words: What are the drug's manifold narrative functions?

- Tailor it to your PCs' needs

Discuss the characters' drug use with the player, and judge any intoxication effects accordingly, tailored to the individual user.

Does the PC snort coke to stay awake and alert for his shift at work? Or to party through the night afterwards? 

Does she shoot up heroin to soothe her wounded soul and find some small measure of comfort in this cruel world? Or pop some amphetamins to distract herself from the guilt and shame that haunt her?

Does he eat shrooms to expand his conscience and pursue his spirituality? Or smoke some weed to relax and have some laughs with the boys while playing videogames?

There are dozens of different types of drugs, and hundreds of reasons and techniques how to consume them. Find out about your characters' preferences, habits, pressures, hopes, and fears - and how they connect to the drug use.

- Tie it back to Basic Moves

One of the best game design advice I ever got for Kult: Divinity Lost was from Robin Liljenberg, when I made some writeups for the monsters and NPCs in one of the campaigns we published. I was highly enthusiastic and thinking about all kinds of special abilities and unique powers I could give to the various monsters in there, and what custom moves might be uses to represent them. Robin suggested to not focus on writing too many new special moves for each monster - but rather to simply tie things back to the Basic Moves, as much as I possibly could. 

He taught me that the game's basic engine is strong enough to carry many variations of all kinds of narratives within its genre, on the shoulders of those 10 moves alone. And as time has since proven to me, he was right. 

With this in mind, there are few very simple, and very intuitive things we can do with regard to drugs:

When Philipp gets shitfaced-drunk to forget his worries, he becomes disoriented and insensitive. Actions that would normally easily succeed may instead require a roll for him, such as Observe a Situation or Read a Person. He also becomes completely unable to meaningfully Investigate anything in this state. 

When Kenny gets shitfaced-drunk to suppress his nightmares, he becomes abrasive and clumsy. Attempts to Influence Others and Act under Pressure that would normally easily succeed may instead require a roll for him. He also automatically fails the first attempt to Avoid Harm he has to make in any given scene while still drunk.

When Gabby snorts some speed to get hyper before an illegal street race, she may take +1 to any rolls to Act under Pressure and Avoid Harm during the race, until the high wears off. Every time she wins a race while under the influence, she must Keep it Together or become Addicted to the white powder.

When Tricia is whacked out on morphium because sometimes she just needs a break from it all, it makes her feel numb and deeply at ease. She feels no pain from any kind of Wounds, and automatically succeeds to Keep it Together, should she have to. However, she must Act under Pressure in order to do anything except lethargically lie around or sluggishly shuffle about. 

When Ben hits the cocaine to get into his party mood, he becomes active and extroverted. He takes 2 Edges, usable to apply a +2 bonus when rolling for any Basic Move. At the same time however, passive and inert behaviour such as sitting still or shutting up for more than a few moments requires him to Keep it Together, and a fail compels him to keep moving and talking.

...

As you can see, positive and negative consequences can come from the same substance. All drugs have beneficial benefits (the consequences desired by the user) and unpleasant downsides. Be sure to mix up both in your custom drug moves. If the people who use drugs wouldn't get something out of it, nobody would be using them at all.
(At least before they fall victims to a crippling addiction, that is. But that comes a bit later.)

Use Basic Moves, simple numerical modifiers, and the occasional automatic success for the beneficial effects. As a general rule, make the positive aspects of drug use comparatively small bonuses, or with only a few uses.

For the downsides, employ your GM Moves, give (stronger) numerical penalties (and the occasional automatic failure) to certain Basic Moves, and generally adjust your measures for when something should and shouldn't be a roll in the first place.
Make the complications that arise from intoxication rather situational perhaps, but more severe.

Example: For people who like dropping acid, it's not normally a huge problem that you would be very bad at talking to your parents, teachers, or boss while under its influence - because you wouldn't usually be around them when you're tripping on it. But if you are forced into that situation anyways... it's not unreasonable that you should suffer strong complications.)

This precarious balance between effects and downsides is fluid, however. 

Eventually, When Addiction sets in, i.e when a PC gets the Drug Addict Disadvantage, this should mark the point when the positive effects rapidly start to diminish, and the downsides escalate to swiftly become dominant in the user's life. 

As the GM, you are always free to drift and change the details of your players' custom drug moves, according to whatever the fiction suggests and your devious mind sees as fitting.

They say drugs, you say how high!

(Mahadma Ghandi)

- Explore the Fiction: habits, rituals, attitudes, uses...

We are already knee-deep into this, in fact, but it cannot hurt to recall: The fiction is the most important thing. Take care not to get lost in just numbers and dice rolls. None of that is important (or interesting) if it doesn't facilitate the telling of a gripping and horrifying story. 

Take a look back at the first two headers here, What the Apocalypse engine already gives you and Tailor it to the PC's needs, and double-check the questions there. Are they being answered? 

It's okay if they are being answered in-game, doesn't have to be up-front. As long as you got the feeling that the conversation is moving in a way that is getting you closer to getting them answered eventually, you can afford to be patient for now.

- 'Specialize' your rulings from Basic Moves to Dis/Ads, Stability, Relations...
  (but only if you're feelin' it)

There are some situations that justify writing up your very own, unique special moves for a game. Compare, for example, my recent blog post about Refusing Death, which I think constitutes such a case. This is comparatively rare however, and most of the time you should prefer to employ the core mechanics that already exist in the game.

This doesn't have to be Basic Moves only. It can easily extend (if you want it) to Advantages, Disadvantages, Stability, Relations, Wounds, personal drives, etc.

In real life, drug users - especially the more experienced and routined ones - often have very precise cocktails of substances, or ways how they use them, in order to achieve highly specific results. They're proficient in using their drugs of choice, you see. All of these substances have very particular effects, and we are extremely adept at tailoring our consumption to meet our individual needs.

Even outside of illegal/excessive drug use, people are taking their psych meds to counteract their depression, anxiety, or schizophrenia. They take sleeping pills against their insomnia, and painkillers to make it through the day in spite of their bad back. Coffee to get started into the day fresh and vivid, an aspirin against the headache, a glass of wine to enliven the conversation... 

We have our habits, rituals, and custom using techniques with these substances, as well. We know to take our dixanephram with half a cup of coffee, to even out the early onset tiredness. We have learned that smoking cigarettes and drinking beer combines to produce that mild euphoria we so like. We bring a whole assortment of different pills and powders to the party, to finetune our personal experience for many hours to come.

Applying the same ideas to encompass a PC's various mechanical Traits, then:

We have already gotten to know Kenny, above, who uses strong alcohol to suppress his nightmares. This might be ruled to, unsurprisingly, affect his Nightmares. Perhaps when he gets hammered before going to sleep at night, the GM rules that he automatically passes his roll for the Disadvantage that night. 

(Although maybe after a while the effects become weaker as his metabolism becomes more used to them, so he merely gains a +2 to his roll against the Nightmares anymore... and it may deteriorate further from there.)

We have also briefly met Gabby and Ben, the racer and the party tiger. For Gabby, an alternate ruling for her consumption of stimulants before a race might be to give her bonuses on her Driver Advantage.
For Ben, we don't know precise what it is he does when he gets into his "party mood" - but it might be that he snorts the coke to boost his abilities related to the use of Forked Tongue, Artistic Talent, or as a Seducer. 

(Note that such a limited area of benefit is much 'weaker' than the blanket bonuses to any Basic Move that we gave him above. Perhaps, therefore, grant a slightly larger number of Edges to him, or even allow the occasional auto-success perhaps?)

Conversely, maybe Tricia doesn't shoot up heroin in order to suppress any particular one of her chronic mental or social problems (i.e. Disadvantages), nor to improve her performance in certain fields of expertise (Advantages). Instead, perhaps she uses it to soothe her tormented soul, seeking to regain a measure of comfort and stability amidst her cruel and miserable life. 

The GM may therefore change her Heroin Move to: 

When you shoot up heroin after suffering a shock, trauma, or other severe emotional pain, you may retroactively ignore your most recent decrease in Stability. Unmark those boxes on your sheet as you regain these Stability levels.

In any such endeavors, remember to mix benefits and downsides into interesting cocktails of potential narrative developments - related both to potential progress, and looming complications.

Except for dope, we operate in all aspects of organized
crime. If there's one thing I'm sure of, it's that drugs
destroy your mind, and destroy your family.
In the end, it will only lead our country into ruin.

(John F. Kennedy)

 - When they break, escalate the Bad Things... hard!

When a PC goes Broken in the course of drug (ab)use, the time for being patient with them is over. No more slow buildup of tension, gradual deterioration of social relations, creeping threats to their bodiyl and mental health, etc. Make a Move, and make it hard.

You may confer the Drug Addict Disadvantage on the PC, if they don't have it yet. If they are already addicted, consider giving them a Mental Compulsion, Obsession, Phobia, or even inflict Schizophrenia, a paranoia of imagined (or are they?) Stalkers, or simply a cripping Depression.

Certain drugs also have the potential to take our minds to the borderlands of the Illusion, and sinister otherwordly entities are always lurking there, waiting for confused and helpless victims to stumble by. So you could also choose to subject the PC to a Curse, have them become Haunted, or turn them into an Involuntary Medium perhaps?

From this point onwards, continued consumption may see its benefits diminishing rapidly, or no longer apply at all - while the downsides should escalate radically. It's all in your GMly hands now. The player character has ventured too deep into the forbidden abyss, and their compulsion have gotten out of hand, driving them to ever greater depravities, and tormenting them with ever worsening consequences.

 

 

Hangovers - the Inevitable Price We Pay

Those precious moments when you swear you're never drinking again. They're fleeting, but right then and there, the sentiment is usually an honest one.

Much less fleeting are the various physical, mental, and emotional aftermaths of drug (ab)use, that can plague the afflicted for hours, an entire day, or even several days after the high wears off. 

We have described benefits and downsides of drug consumption, but these mechanics are only applicable while the intoxication still lasts. They only shape up into a wholesome trinity when a third aspect is added: the drug's after-effects. The hangover. The crash. The puking. The shakes. The relentlessly racing thoughts. The itching. The restless legs. The intermittently returning hallucinations. The insomnia. The screaming agony from the yawning void inside yourself.

It's bad enough to make you go look for another hit, just a tiny little one perhaps... just to take the edge off. And most usally, you'll give in. You go score some more of that good stuff, sooner than later.

Such is the cycle of using, elation, suffering, abuse, and addiction. 

Mechanically, when representing the effects of a hangover, try and go for those aspects of the rules that were not employed by either the drug's benefits or downsides. 

• If the rush gives the PC a numerical bonus to some roll or other, don't give them a numerical penalty the next day. Perhaps target their Stability instead.
• If the ingestion of a feel-good drug raises their Stability, the hangover might see them feel jaded and detached - reducing (either temporarily or for good) one of their Relations by 1 level...
• ...or perhaps they get nauseous, distrought, and bad-tempered upon coming down, and take -1 ongoing to all rolls, until well-rested or using again.
• If you have to (or want to) use numerical modifiers on both sides of the comedown - which you fully might, it's totally up to you - try and vary up which of the PC's Moves are affected. Perhaps a drug that makes them astute at paying attention to people and situations (i.e. bonuses to Intuition and Perception) leaves them fatigued and shaky (translating into penalties to Fortitude, Reflexes, and Coolness) the next day...
  

This, too, may be expanded to include Dis/Advantages as well. Perhaps when coming down from heroin, every roll against your Nightmares automatically fails for the next three days. Or maybe you get a -2 to your next roll for being an Exorcist during the after-effects of the mescalin. This too is fluid, and can (and should) be gradually drifted according to how the ongoing fiction of the game develops across time.

Doing this mechanical switch-up between benefits, downsides, and after-effects creates a well-varied playing field - while still firmly rooted in the game's existing core mechanics - on which you can establish interesting trade-offs, hard choices, and dramatic challenges for your players to enjoy as they steer their characters across the slippery, and ever-steepening slope they have maneuvered themselves onto. 

GM-Note about "reparation shots": Of course it is possibe to find a different drug which counteracts the after-effect of the one you took before. IRL drug users do this all the time. Naturally however, that new drug will have after-effects of its own... But you shouldn't shy away from letting players try to alleviate their problematic consequences in this way. Ultimately, it will only feed into them getting further entangled in the vicious cycle(s), and allow you to explore yet more of their personal horrors.

What Music Would You Like Them to Play at Your Funeral?

In the long run, using drugs rarely works out well for those who do it. But then again, in Kult, what else ever does? And ultimately, it is the journey that counts, not the doom it ultimately leads you to... right?

But will it be worth it?

Will you be able to rise above your addictions, to become something more than a glorified animal enslaved by its own brain chemistry?

Or will it end up consuming you, devour you whole and destroy you... just to spit you right back into the endless cycle of hopeless misery and blind ignorance that we call life?

Go ahead, give  your next character the Drug Addict Disadvantage, or even just a mild flirtation with some substance-related habit or other... and play to find out!

Hey children, drugs are bad,
and if you don't believe me ask your dad.
And if you don't believe him ask your mom,
she'll tell you how she does 'em all the time.
So kids, say no to drugs
so you don't act like everyone else does.
You know there's really nothing else to say,
Drugs are just bad, m'kay?

(Friedrich Nietzsche)