D&D and the rising pandemic

[Zardnaar]

In the US, many of the plans I see are them wanting to force teachers and students back to school. I expect lawsuits will break out when people catch it from their students and/or people die from catching it from the kids. May bankrupt a school district or two before they actually realize that it was a bad idea to force people to go to schools full time in the middle of a pandemic.

The bigger irony is that many of these are the anti-maskers that want to proclaim their freedom, but have no qualms about denying others their freedom and wish to force students and teachers into confined closed spaces for hours a day.

Bringing this full circle, Most D&D modules don't seem to have these situations. Normally, you are the party of adventurers sent to find the cure or to find ingredients to cure the disease which is going around. The town is having problems and everyone is afraid. I can't recall adventures where you have people actually denying the disease or trying to go out and get it themselves (or, in zombie movies where you have a group denying that there are undead, or trying to become the undead themselves. Normally they run screaming from it instead).

Weird dynamic. I wonder how a module or gaming adventure would run if you had a group of inhabitants as an obstacle to the adventurers in a plague adventure.

In D&D you can murder hobo stuff. Takes care of it

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Preliminary, but ominous.

The new research based on data from 69 countries, published in the European Heart Journal and commissioned by the British Heart Foundation, found that 55% of 1,261 patients scanned had abnormally functioning hearts.

Around one in seven patients who were scanned showed "severe abnormalities" which were likely to have a significant impact on their chances of survival and recovery.

A majority — 901 patients — of those with abnormally functioning hearts had not demonstrated heart problems before, leading the authors of the report to conclude that the coronavirus is responsible for causing heart problems.

Coronavirus can damage the heart, according to a study which found abnormalities in over half of patients tested

A growing field of evidence suggests coronavirus damages not only the heart but also other major organs.

www.businessinsider.com

 

[Deset Gled]

"Orange County education leaders voted 4 to 1 Monday evening to approve recommendations for reopening schools in the fall that do not include the mandatory use of masks for students or increased social distancing in classrooms amid a surge in coronavirus cases."

Orange County education leaders want schools to reopen without masks or social distancing

The Orange County Board of Education voted 4-1 to reopen school campuses but is leaving the decision up to individual school districts.

www.latimes.com

So, that's happening, I guess.

 

[Deset Gled]

In the US, many of the plans I see are them wanting to force teachers and students back to school. I expect lawsuits will break out when people catch it from their students and/or people die from catching it from the kids. May bankrupt a school district or two before they actually realize that it was a bad idea to force people to go to schools full time in the middle of a pandemic.

I don't think any districts will end up being sue-able. As long as there is a set of "recommendations" from the government at some level and the school districts can show they made an effort to follow the guidelines, they will be legally protected.

Which puts us in the unfortunate scenario where school guidelines and recommendations are being written to protect the government from lawsuits, not to protect the students.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

Weird dynamic. I wonder how a module or gaming adventure would run if you had a group of inhabitants as an obstacle to the adventurers in a plague adventure.

That brings to mind a PF adventure "Seven Days to the Grave" in Curse of the Crimson Throne where, iirc, a plague was spread on magically befouled gold coins. I don't recall much about that particular story, but I could certainly envision a subtler version of that in which very powerful interests in banking (or politics or criminal orgs or whatever) pitting the health of the townsfolk against the health of the economy (or the power of local temple hierarch or the thieves guild or whatever).
Layering a deep intrigue onto a slow-burn plague scenario could be interesting....

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Weird dynamic. I wonder how a module or gaming adventure would run if you had a group of inhabitants as an obstacle to the adventurers in a plague adventure.

Yeah. It's crazy to think about. Real life seems crazier than D&D adventures right now. The townsfolk in a plague adventure are always the victims, not the problem.

I guess if we want D&D plague adventures to be realistic, we're going to have to make groups of people who insist that the plague isn't real/isn't a big deal.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

”Doubting Thomas” looking down from heaven saying, “Y’all been ragging on me for 2000 years, but now look at you!”

 

[Umbran]

Yeah. It's crazy to think about. Real life seems crazier than D&D adventures right now. The townsfolk in a plague adventure are always the victims, not the problem.

I guess if we want D&D plague adventures to be realistic, we're going to have to make groups of people who insist that the plague isn't real/isn't a big deal.

Well, so, here's a bit of a difference between what we are experiencing now, and what the pseudo-medieval reaction to plagues we expect to be....

The Black Death killed something more than 25 million people over the course of five years. Perhaps 30% of the population of Europe died. It took two centuries for the population to recover. There was nothing in human knowledge at the time that could be done to stop it.

Covid-19 has killed something over half a million worldwide over seven months or so.

The difference is that the impact of the Black Death was undeniable. If you were in it... a third of the population died in front of you. Right now, people dying from covid-19... are not seen. They are someone else, somewhere else, off in the hospital. You don't see so much as a funeral procession. It is invisible. And our cognitive apparatus is not built to take invisible things seriously.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Just remembering...

The best campaign I ever ran was a supers game set in the year 1900 using HERO paired with an expanded version of the setting from Space:1889. That was for a group in Austin in the mid 1990s.

Just a few years ago- 2014-15, I think- I tried updating that campaign setting by advancing it a decade+ and using Mutants & Masterminds for my group here in Dallas. It flopped (for a variety of reasons) and ended before it gathered any steam. But one of the things that was a part of the planned story arc was the outbreak of WW1 and the Spanish Flu...

 

[Hussar]

Well, isn't Tomb of Annihilation based around a plague of sorts?