Why aren't there good alcohol rules for D&D?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

As a rule, they don't.

Two things:

1) Different people request different rules. See enough requests for different rules from different people, and they all blur together so it seems everyone wants rules for every specific situation under the sun.

2) Drinking and drunken adventurers are a staple of fantasy fiction, particularly of the chest thumping, mighty thews variety. Lieber's boys got their drink on, and Conan might as well have changed his name to Crunk for all the drinking he did. And given that the bar fight is such a staple D&D session filler that people groan at its mention, rules for drunkeness are a pretty glaring ommision.

What he said.

To be honest, I'm in the "make it up on the fly" camp for the most part, but I think something like 50 percent of the AD&D games played in the 1980s (and this isn't an exaggeration) involved fighting in bars, staging fights in the bars of inns so members of the party could rob the rooms upstairs, hitting on barmaids or spending time in jail after fights in bars.

So I almost certainly have a skewed perception of how important this all is to the D&D experience. I imagine if I'd played with the future botanists of America or something, I'd be the target audience for all those herbalism articles "Dragon" magazine has trotted out over the years. It is a shocking statement on our society that there has been more attention paid to picking wildflowers in "Dragon" than there has been to getting schnockered in D&D.

 

[green slime]

As a rule, they don't.

Two things:

1) Different people request different rules. See enough requests for different rules from different people, and they all blur together so it seems everyone wants rules for every specific situation under the sun.

2) Drinking and drunken adventurers are a staple of fantasy fiction, particularly of the chest thumping, mighty thews variety. Lieber's boys got their drink on, and Conan might as well have changed his name to Crunk for all the drinking he did. And given that the bar fight is such a staple D&D session filler that people groan at its mention, rules for drunkeness are a pretty glaring ommision.

So are horrible injuries, beggars, incurable diseases, prostitutes, .... Certain elements are best left unmentioned, or over-simplified

Actually I find the lack of decent rules for marine and submarine environments a far more glaring omission.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

So are horrible injuries, beggars, incurable diseases, prostitutes, .... Certain elements are best left unmentioned, or over-simplified

You know, I thought my AD&D adventures were wacky, but if you're regularly having players get horrible injuries and incurable diseases and earn their living on the streets as beggars and prostitutes, that's a lot more wacky than anything I've ever done.

(And if you are seriously equating drinking with a horrible injury or an incurable disease, you're really going to have to stop drinking Budweiser.)

 

[green slime]

You know, I thought my AD&D adventures were wacky, but if you're regularly having players get horrible injuries and incurable diseases and earn their living on the streets as beggars and prostitutes, that's a lot more wacky than anything I've ever done.

(And if you are seriously equating drinking with a horrible injury or an incurable disease, you're really going to have to stop drinking Budweiser.)

Adventurers regularly get the absolute stuffing knocked out of them, burned to a crisp by fireballs, immersed into clouds of acidic vapour, injected with enough poison to float the Queen Mary, suffer falls from which most mortal people would suffer at the very least a sprained ankle......

Yet they suffer no scarring, no broken bones, no blood loss, no broken ribs or punctured lungs, no gangrene, cancer, nor heart disease, in fact no unpleasant side effects beyond the temporary loss of a few hit points. There are no examples of real world diseases (malaria, cholera, dysentry, hanta, ebola, measles, small pox, or tooth decay)

Whoring is also part of an "adventurer's life" in fantasy literature ... yet I doubt there are many games with rules for STD's.

This is the way I like it. If I want/need rules for getting drunk, I can create them as I need. In fact, I'm glad they don't exist in a WotC product. It gives me the freedom I need to create something that entertains in my game, without a player interuppting and pointing to some dark corner of a book that I have not read.

 

[Voadam]

Beyond monks has some intoxication rules for cinematic bar-room scenes along the drunken master genre. It is by Chainmail Bikini and available as a 3.5 pdf on www. rpgnow.com or as a 3.0 print product by MEG. I remember they looked all right when I read them years ago, although I haven't had a need for intoxicated rules yet. (My eldritch knight character used to go to bars but never had to cast spells or fight while intoxicated, and none of the current PCs in my game go to taverns or bars to drink except in down time with my old PC.)

 

[Voadam]

I forget if bride of a portable hole has d20 alcohol rules as well. It is free on www.rpgnow.com as well and published by ENPublishing.

 

[Bran Blackbyrd]

So I guess there are all kinds of rules for alcohol, you were just too drunk to notice.
The only character I had that had a penchant for getting hammered was my fighter/cleric of Bacchus. His religion sort of demanded it...

 

[Snapdragyn]

Whoring is also part of an "adventurer's life" in fantasy literature

*nods sagely* Yup, most of my chars do it -- great way to earn a bit of extra coin.

What?

Hey, my barbarian just got a DM grant of 1 skill point in Profession ('entertainer') last session since I've been roleplaying it so well (in the 'fade to inn door closing' tradition)!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Whoring is also part of an "adventurer's life" in fantasy literature ... yet I doubt there are many games with rules for STD's.

Dunno, I don't own the Book of Erotic Fantasy (although I've been thinking about getting it) or Nymphology. I wouldn't be surprised to see them covered.

Surely alcohol merits as much coverage as those two books have given getting it on.

 

[BSF]

Beyond monks has some intoxication rules for cinematic bar-room scenes along the drunken master genre. It is by Chainmail Bikini and available as a 3.5 pdf on www. rpgnow.com or as a 3.0 print product by MEG. I remember they looked all right when I read them years ago, although I haven't had a need for intoxicated rules yet. (My eldritch knight character used to go to bars but never had to cast spells or fight while intoxicated, and none of the current PCs in my game go to taverns or bars to drink except in down time with my old PC.)

I don't remember MEG doing anything with Beyond Monks. Goodman Games has a print of the book out though. Sadly, Chainmail Bikini Games is no longer listed on RPGNow and their website disappeared a while back. I haven't gone looking lately, but I think they might no longer be around.