Drugs In Your Campaign World

[Clavis]

I recently DMed a session that consisted completely of the PCs' hallucinations after a night of smoking hashish & opium, and eating hash-laced candies and psychoactive mushrooms. Drugs and drug use have always seemed to figure prominently in my campaign worlds. PCs smoke hashish in brothels. Elves often spend most of the day stoned on various drugs. Dwarves are frequently drunk. Halflings are always smoking their "pipe weed", make moonshine, and will whore themselves to get cheese. Gnomes don't take many drugs themselves (other than cherry brandy), but will happily sell them to others.

I handle potions as if they were drugs, complete with causing headaches, nausea, and various side effects. Some "potions" are meant to be smoked, snuffed, or taken in pill form.

I was wondering how drugs are handled in other campaigns, especially drugs other than alcohol. Do you use real-world drugs, or purely fantasy drugs (like Howard's Black Lotus)? Is drug use considered "evil", or generally accepted? Let's confined the discussion to in-game situations, not stories about the time some players showed up high on LSD.

 

[Belbarid]

I was wondering how drugs are handled in other campaigns, especially drugs other than alcohol. Do you use real-world drugs, or purely fantasy drugs (like Howard's Black Lotus)? Is drug use considered "evil", or generally accepted? Let's confined the discussion to in-game situations, not stories about the time some players showed up high on LSD.

Real-world drugs? Not so much, although I will use fantasy-equivilents. Various plants that can be smoked for various effects, that sort of thing. However, D&D is a fantasy world with magic, so most of the really cool drugs also have a magical component, and not always good ones. Sure, there's drugs that use Illusion magic to enhance a psychadelic experience, but there are also drugs that use Enchantment and Alteration magic to insure physical and psychological dependence. Smoke once, and you're hooked for life. Or at least, until Remove Curse (or somesuch).

I have a hard time treating drugs themselves as "evil", because I myself view drugs as ranging from an irritant to monumentally stupid. Neither of which, in my mind, constitutes being "evil".

However, there's an evil church that spreads some of the more dangerously addictive substances in my campaign world. Other than that, in some areas, certain substances are illegal. In others, they are very legal (and sometimes encouraged). In others, they're either cultural or just ignored because the area hasn't "civilized" to the point of noticing or caring.

OTOH, in a SHadowrun campaign I ran, the Rigger (cybernetic vehicle operator, for the SR-challenged) was a serious drug addict. Sure, it affected most of his abilities, and since his drug of choice was a hallucinagin it made most long drives interesting, but it was one of the more fun characters in any campaign I've run.

 

[S'mon]

I usually completely ignore drugs IMCs, except for alcohol. I might mention hookah-smoking in the Arabic-esque lands, but I spend no more time on such than I do eating, washing, or going to the toilet.

 

[darthkilmor]

The Ptolus setting defines various drugs and their effects. Shivvel and a few others I think, don't have my book at the moment though.

 

[Masquerade]

Recreational drug use exists in my homebrew, but the drugs are fictional analogs rather than real-world drugs transplanted in the setting. For the most part, use and marketing of these substances is discouraged by the law. I use the drugs purely as a plot point and to add verisimilitude--there are no outlined mechanical effects (and certainly no benefits).

 

[Shadeydm]

Booze and some types of halfling pipeweed are usually the extent of it IMC athough in a large enough city I suppose I would include some variation of an opium den in the seedier section of the city should te PCs atually seek out such an establishment.

Actually now that I think about it in my old Greyhawk campaign I treated the "black wine of the pomarj" as having a powerful and addictive narcotic component.

 

[Blackwind]

Characters sometimes use recreational drugs in my campaigns. Aside from alcohol, they are always fantasy drugs that we've made up, even if they might be based on real-world analogues. Most of the time we gloss over the effects in the same way that we do with drinking (i.e. "Okay, Bargle, you're really, really high right now"), although when I create a fantasy drug I usually do stat up simple in-game effects (e.g. -2 to WIS) and a Fort DC. In other words, I handle them the same way that poisons work in the core rules. Except that some of them have benefits as well as drawbacks, like some drugs aiding scry checks or that sort of thing. Some drugs IMC are herbal, others alchemical, and some magical. As in the real world, some drugs are more socially acceptable than others in certain parts of the world, religions, etc.

 

[Maikl]

I used to add lots of drugs in the campaign. Most of them gave the PC benefits like +2 INT or DEX. This way PCs (and players) wanted to use them, to get the bonuses. However, after some time they would became drug addicted, and got, for example, -2 INT if not being 'high' and +2 again if they were. Moreover, it could have gone worse, so they had -2 all the time, and the basic one (without any changes) only while being 'high'.
That's how drugs can destroy your organism IMO.

 

[Ace]

I have several drugs IMC

Marijuana is widespread and legal.

Dream Dust (made from Tran flowers) is an alchemical drug, that creates pleasure and dreams. Its often illegal and very dangerous. I lifted this from Misty lackey I think.

Ernai aka God Call (borrowed from Brian Daley's Corramonde series) allows brief contact with other realms, but sgain is very dangerous and often illegal

Opium is available and used -- Opium syrup exists but its expensive

there are a wide variety of mushrooms too.

really mild drugs include Coffee (which is rare as if yet) Cacao (also rare) and Blackroot which is a mild stimulant, the root and leaves are chewed -- its processed form is called Kef. Its a little addictive but pretty safe. Soldiers sometimes use it on long marches.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I've had a PC who was introduced to magic through a warlock dosing him with Mordayn (BoVD). A major villain also sought to corrupt a town's youth through liquid pain.

On the whole, I like to use drugs to represent the immoral elements, but I also imply that many people use them.

I've always wanted to come up with rules that really represented drug addiction, but I've never had the time. Real-world psychoactive drugs are fascinatingly complex from a scientific perspective; the rules hardly do them justice.