RPGs and "Bodily Functions"

[LurkAway]

Usually in D&D it's handled the same way it's handled in books and movies.

Which is to say it isn't.

Same here.

So brusque. Does that mean that this thread and D&D bodily functions are going to disappear into the annals of history?

 

[Corathon]

Intestinal distress has been used to excuse the lack of participation from the characters of absent players. The players have been attacked while heading into the bushes to do their business, but never in flagrante delicto. Nor have they ever attacked an NPC with his pants down.

 

[was]

we don't get into the bodily functions

 

[Janx]

I suppose if a DM were to consider the issue, but not utilize it to take advantage of the PCs, one could consider:

any living space/encampment would have food prep area, sleeping, latrine areas.

People who are not on guard/relaxed with an area probably go to the bathroom more often/casually. They assume they are in a safe place, etc.

People who are on guard/ready for action (like an adventuring party) do not tend to have the bladder of a 3 year old on a car trip. They can hold it for the duration of any action that is about to go down.

When a person wakes up, they most likely to need to go. In fact, indians would drink a bunch of water before going to bed, which would wake them up early (to go on an early morning raid/hunt). A primitive alarm clock.


As a GM, I would certainly gloss over any details of catching somebody with their pants down. that's just gross. Even in a planned ambush, you'll catch him as he was about to drop 'em or as he was just buttoning up.

I have no plans to model the bathroom cycle of the NPCs or PCs. If the PCs are monitoring the bad guys, I suppose I might have an NPC go off to the latrine, in order to introduce a variable the PCs might take action on (because I get bored of describing the NPCs as sitting around the campfire, while I wait for the party to take action).

If the PCs do somehow make it a frequent tactic to attack at the bathroom, they'll get a reputation as FecalFreaks or somethhing. If you make it a practice to not leave a man his dignity, you must have none of your own.

 

[ComradeGnull]

WFRP referenced this at least twice- in the same publication, I think. In the adventure 'With a Little Help from my Friends', one of the tactics the party can use is ambushing a gangster as he uses the privy outside a townhouse. In a magic item description later in the book, there is an indoor toilet that makes use of a (hopefully) one-way portal to the Chaos Wastes to dispose of excrement.

That one raised all sorts of interesting possibilities- Chaos Spawn interrupting your morning constitutional, or leaping into the toilet to escape from an attacker (and then succumbing to mutation and becoming a thrall of the Ruinous Powers). I always figured there were some Nurgle cultists building a shrine at the discharge end of the portal.

 

[Gilladian]

I once had a PC witness a pickpocketing in a busy tavern. He followed the pickpocket out of the building to the latrine out back. He went in and took "the next hole over". He was quite surprised to realize suddenly that the thief's feet had disappeared, and when he forced that stall door open, saw a rat's tail disappearing down the hole...

What? Were-rats and sewers - it seemed reasonable to me! But it definitely grossed out my players.

Other than that incident, we essentially ignore the whole issue. Guards on watch never need potty breaks, nor do prisoners. However, most residential buildings have garderobes and/or latrines, and many a wizard's tower has had a bag of devouring or something similar at the bottom of the privy.

 

[pemerton]

about seven years ago, the PCs were coming up with ideas for an ambush, and one of the Players suggested they pull it off while the NPC was in the latrine. I interrupted this time and offered the agreement that if they avoided doing that to the NPCs, I'd keep the NPCs from doing it to their PCs. The Player who came up with the idea started to dismiss the agreement, but the other five Players argued him down and accepted the agreement.

Other than those two instances over 30 years of playing, it has been an unspoken agreement with all DMs and Players I've ever played with. How about you and your DMs and Players?

We take it for granted that "bodily functions" don't come up unless the players bring it up for some reason. This is not to prevent an "outhouse arms race", but I think more out of a prudish sense of decorum. So the gameworld has latrines in its houses, filth heaps in the gnoll lairs, sewers, etc, but the use of these is generally left to the individual imagination of each player rather than the shared imagination of our roleplaying. Bathing is narrated from time to time, but only as a bit of colour in bridging between scenes (say, between a combat and an audience with the baron).

There are only two exceptions I can recall.

In a game about 15 years ago, a PC arranged a meeting with a rival NPC in a public bath (the setting was roughly Roman). The idea was that it would be a "no weapons" meeting. Except the PC had a spell that let him summon his sword from an extra-dimensional pocket. So the meeting didn't go so well for the rival.

In a session earlier this year, the PCs were engaged in tense conversation/negotiation at a dinner party. The weak point in the conversation was the party fighter, who was the accepted party leader, and so the main focus of the NPCs' attention, but who has the weakest social skills in the party, and hence was a weak link in the skill challenge. At one stage, one of the other players, in order to relieve the pressure on the fighter, had his PC say "Derrik, time to take a piss!" Which the two PCs went off and did. This is the only time I can remember urination - PC or NPC - coming up in a game, in nearly 30 years of playing.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

Pooping and peeing have been an important component of adventure design for me since 1e days. Typically, I insist on regular scheduled bathroom breaks for PCs (and players, for that matter). Wise players post guards, whilst their comrades are relieving themselves. PCs also have the option of forestalling bathroom breaks, with the understanding that:

1) If their fluid intake is insufficient, they may get migraines and become dehydrated

2) Dwarves with constipation suffer a -2 penalty to all Charisma-based checks because they are grumpy


Actually, no. Not really.

 

[MortalPlague]

It really hasn't come up in my games in any meaningful way.

In the game I'm about to run, four of the five characters are very promiscuous and highly charismatic. I expect a great deal of fooling around with NPCs. At one point, I want to have an ambush while they're in the middle of enjoying the fruits of a high-class brothel; I think it would make for a memorable encounter.

 

[Zelda Themelin]

Ah depends. Long time ago it was running joke to find all goblin toilets. Guy dm:ing these majorly did Paranoia, if that gives any clue.

Really disgusting assasination of wizard in bathtube very recently. And escape through sewers full of crab.

Going to bushes and being ambushed by mobs was common too back in day. Those days players also insisted on sleeping in their fullplates.

Generally toilet time is only taken into account if some attack happens during it. Otherwise it's kinda ignored. Though some players want to describe how they prepare for such things when in privy. Most ignore that too.

Hanky-panky ambushes are far more common. Sometimes people are kinda picking time and place to provoke doom.

Recent adventure path I run had some pretty nausaiting (sp?) landcapes, yep they caused that status effect too. Lot of puking the lunch followed. I kinda like to discribe these thing otherwise my stupid players want to search those places taking hours, yes I think not.