• Welcome to the new COTI server. We've moved the Citizens to a new server. Please let us know in the COTI Website issue forum if you find any problems.
  • We, the systems administration staff, apologize for this unexpected outage of the boards. We have resolved the root cause of the problem and there should be no further disruptions.

Futuristic Medicines

AlHazred

SOC-12
Knight
So, I have a doctor PC, and I'm feeling bad that, while I have plenty of goodies for the military types, and the pilot/engineer, and the merchant captain and supercargo, and even the Ancients researcher, for the doctor all I've got is four medicines and a small handful of drugs (slow, fast, combat, truth, sleep, etc.).

What other futuristic medicines might be appropriate for the Traveller setting? I mean, we recently had the discovery of injectible oxygen at TL 7/8; there's got to be more out there.

And before anybody mentions it, there's Wikipedia resources for this kind of thing, but they're not necessarily appropriate for the Traveller universe:
List of fictional medicines and drugs
List of fictional toxins
List of discredited substances
 
So, I have a doctor PC, and I'm feeling bad that, while I have plenty of goodies for the military types, and the pilot/engineer, and the merchant captain and supercargo, and even the Ancients researcher, for the doctor all I've got is four medicines and a small handful of drugs (slow, fast, combat, truth, sleep, etc.).

Are you counting metabolics?

What other futuristic medicines might be appropriate for the Traveller setting? I mean, we recently had the discovery of injectible oxygen at TL 7/8; there's got to be more out there.

Travellers' Digest had a number of articles about medical equipment. Look under EQUIPMENT, a bit over halfway down the index.

GURPS Ultra-Tech, GURPS Ultra-Tech II, and GURPS Bio-Tech have stacks of medical drugs and equipment. Some of them are not appropriate for Traveller, but others fit just fine. GURPS TL8 corresponds reasonably well to TTL 8, GTL 9 to TTL 9-10, and GTL10 to TTL 11-15 (Officially GTL 10 should correspond to TTL 11-12, GTL11 to TTL13-14, and GTL12 to TTL15, but a lot of people (me included), think that most GTL 11+ stuff is above TTL15. YMMV). Some work is needed to convert from GURPS mechanics to Traveller mechanics, but there's a lot of inspiration to be found.


Hans
 
My wife's character is ships doctor (qualified trauma surgeon). She normally carries a full backpack trauma kit when she is out and about with the character group.

The most important kit she carries are nanoheal drugs and patches. (House rule simply reduces heal times and trauma effects by a third).

There are other types of medications and medical equipment available at TL12-15 that she uses as well.
 
Last edited:
What other futuristic medicines might be appropriate for the Traveller setting? I mean, we recently had the discovery of injectible oxygen at TL 7/8; there's got to be more out there.

A few idle speculations which may be of use to PC types...
Anti-Rad drugs: Would seem a must for any spacegoing crews or mercs in hot zones.
Low Berth drugs: Makes going into/out of low berth safer.
'Glue' drugs: Fixes internal bleeding from the inside.
Synthetic skin: Patch up holes and abarasions quickly.
Universal Blood: Synthetic oxygen carrier that acts like real blood but you dont have to worry about typing, expiry dates, etc.
Zero G/Low G drugs: Prevent bone tissue/decay.
Medical computer: Not quite a Trek tricorder, but there is currently a 10mil prize current for the person who invents a simple one.

And then of course you have the whole genetic engineering angle - eg: an engineered organism you 'breathe in' (and takes up residence in the lungs) which produces oxygen for those thin atmospheres or scrubs out toxins.
 
Are you counting metabolics?
The four standard Traveller medicines: TL5 Vaccines, TL6 Antitoxins, TL6 Antibiotics, and TL8 Metabolics. And that's it, as far as Classic Traveller is concerned, for technological advances on the medical front.
Travellers' Digest had a number of articles about medical equipment. Look under EQUIPMENT, a bit over halfway down the index.
I'll check it out! Thanks!
GURPS Ultra-Tech, GURPS Ultra-Tech II, and GURPS Bio-Tech have stacks of medical drugs and equipment. Some of them are not appropriate for Traveller, but others fit just fine.
I'll have to track those down. My GURPS resources aren't as widespread as others.
My wife's character is ships doctor (qualified trauma surgeon). She normally carries a full backpack trauma kit when she is out and about with the character group. The most important kit she carries are nanoheal drugs and patches. (House rule simply reduces heal times and trauma effects by a third).
Yeah, my doctor has her medical scanner (essentially medical tricorder) and multi-purpose injector (essentially hypospray). It's Star Trekky, but that seems to be the way the medical technology is leading.
There are other types of medications and medical equipment available at TL12-15 that she uses as well.
And those would be? :-)
A few idle speculations which may be of use to PC types...
Anti-Rad drugs: Would seem a must for any spacegoing crews or mercs in hot zones.
Low Berth drugs: Makes going into/out of low berth safer.
'Glue' drugs: Fixes internal bleeding from the inside.
Synthetic skin: Patch up holes and abarasions quickly.
Universal Blood: Synthetic oxygen carrier that acts like real blood but you dont have to worry about typing, expiry dates, etc.
Zero G/Low G drugs: Prevent bone tissue/decay.
Medical computer: Not quite a Trek tricorder, but there is currently a 10mil prize current for the person who invents a simple one.
Nice! I'll have to do some thinking about mechanics!
And then of course you have the whole genetic engineering angle - eg: an engineered organism you 'breathe in' (and takes up residence in the lungs) which produces oxygen for those thin atmospheres or scrubs out toxins.
Yeah, I'm not even going to get into that. I've mentioned "genetic therapy" in my game in the past, but nobody's taken me up on the hints and that's just as well -- I don't have enough knowledge of the topic to make even an informed guess as to what that technology might look like three thousand years from now.
 
Somthing I thought of later, (but didn't add) was if the Doc PC complains about his stuff being junk or essentialy his role just being a walking first aid station.

Spray on Cast: Like todays plaster casts to help bones heal, you spray this stuff from a can and get a lightweight instant cast (which can breath etc). Need to restrain a prisioner? Spray his legs with it and watch him try to run away. Or spray it on a door and watch them try to open it.

Electronic anasthetic: An electronic band which 'interrupts' motor functions. Allows the Doc to stop those annoying patients wriggling around causing more damage. Also useful for interrupting electronics and retraining captives.

Designer Drugs: Knock up a special perfume/aftershave (with certain phenomones) and that obstructive secretary may become more helpful. Not quite truth drug, but essentially makes 'greasing the wheels' a bit easier.

Medical Implants: High tech RFI devices which relay your medical stats to scanners. Like in aliens you can have a constant readout or the patients medical status, or maybe even a small microphone. Now implant one during a 'routine examination'...

Smart Drugs: Learn new skills faster or easier (less xp/time).

Repellants: Doctors have access to some pretty noxious chemicals. Make an industrial grade stink bomb to make those Vargr go away
 
Last edited:
I don't have enough knowledge of the topic to make even an informed guess as to what that technology might look like three thousand years from now.

That probably means that your way-out guesses will be more accurate than the 'blinkered thinking' of todays 'experts'.

Three thousand years ago they used a patch of moss, a flame and an axe. Prehistoric 'experts' trying to figure out what shape of axe we'd use in AD 2012 would get them nowhere...
 
Sounds like a role needs to be defined.

The medic is the tech equivalent of the Shaman.

When landing on a world, does any atmospheric analysis improve the odds of not being eaten, or succumbing to a local spore, or mutated bacteria? Can a medic also figure out, due to schooling, which plants and animals are edible, what parts of said plant or animal to avoid, and how to prepare said food? Can a medic have xeno knowledge that extends into tactics, I.e. which animals to avoid, and which ones respond to intimidation, and which ones just need to be shot at?

A medic can train others in basic first aid, typically best in an actual "real life" situation, so the characters can to some degree do triage until the medic is ready to treat the root problem.

And then, the medic has street cred on most worlds... The healer always has skills in demand, and therefore has leverage with locals that others may not have. This puts the medic in a mediating position, a position of strength over both the party and the NPCs.

Finally, the medic deals with PCs and NPCs indirectly, but decisively. The "doc" is never told how to do his job. The unruly NPC is almost casually drugged without even knowing it.

With Medic skill comes a small degree of sight of hand, and psychological manipulation. Wear the white lab coat and the psychological impact is magnified.
 
Last edited:
Sounds like a role needs to be defined.

This more than anything else.

Traveller tends to have this "hands on" anachro-future where there's a lot less automation than you'd think there would be: drive engineers still have metal shops with milling machines and hand align Jump Drives and fusion reactors, TL15 battle dress still requires the user to aim and won't hit automatically under normal circumstances, navigators are still required to compute Jump-1 trips. GMs don't simply roll with the Pilot to see if they can evade the pirates, no there's excrutiating detail about where the ship hides and how and so on; diagnosing a problem is just one roll and then drugs fix the problem. There's a tremendous amount of automation in medicine which isn't reflected elsewhere.

Medical treatment should be more hands-on, not less.

For instance, something I use in my games:

TL15 "Etheric Surgery" - 450,000 Cr, 5.5kg. The name is obviously a trademark. It has integral batteries that will power the device for 5 hours of continuous use, though the surgery is limited in itself and most users hook up a variety of peripherals to it to get the most use out of it. It has adapters to be hooked up to external power supplies, wider-screen viewers, manipulator gloves, and so on. These items are included in the cost and come in a small armored briefcase-sized unit. The surgery itself it consists of an imaging viewer, three "microsurgical quality" gravity generators and atomic force manipulators, and an advanced computer. It is housed in a hand-held "pistol" shaped device with a flip up screen though it has no "barrel" so doesn't look like a weapon. It weighs 1.5kg by itself. Due to the nature of its use, it also comes with a tiny tripod for hands-free operation (an anti-gravity generator on the device would interfere with its surgical field generators so it uses a tripod). It's staggeringly expensive, but doctors who have one will tell you it's underpriced for what it does.

The system uses advanced sensors that allow a medical specialist a magnified view inside of a body and can be used to examine living cells in situ. It uses extremely finely tuned gravity fields to effect surgery as well as aid in diagnosis (for instance, gravity fields are useful for slowing the circulation of blood in a certain area to "poll" for red/white cell count, pathogens, and so on). The manipulator fields and viewer are fine enough to be able to pull apart individual molecules.

The system is non-invasive; it doesn't break the skin. This makes it very popular with frontier and combat doctors who can work in less than sanitary conditions. It can also be used on populations with cultural taboos about breaking the skin. The surgery can be used to effect all familiar 20th century invasive and non invasive surgeries, ranging from destroying tumors, destroying bladder stones, excising infected or dead tissue, fixing internal bleeding, setting bones for true seamless healing ("as good as new"), removing bullets and other foreign matter, reshaping corneas, widening arteries, getting rid of vericose veins by reconditioning leaflet valves, and thousands of other surgeries. The catch is that the user must know what he or she is doing; the device as rudimentary "learning" ability where once shown what it has to do, it can "search and repeat" with only oversight by the doctor, but it has to be shown what to do first and stops on all errors for safety reasons, so the doctor is still involved in the diagnosis and treatment.

The system is short-ranged for reasons of safety and to keep the weight down: its fields and sensors penetrate about 150mm. It cannot jury-rigged to become more powerful without replacing components as a failsafe.
 
A few idle speculations which may be of use to PC types...
Anti-Rad drugs: Would seem a must for any spacegoing crews or mercs in hot zones.
Low Berth drugs: Makes going into/out of low berth safer.
'Glue' drugs: Fixes internal bleeding from the inside.
Synthetic skin: Patch up holes and abarasions quickly.
Universal Blood: Synthetic oxygen carrier that acts like real blood but you dont have to worry about typing, expiry dates, etc.
Zero G/Low G drugs: Prevent bone tissue/decay.
Medical computer: Not quite a Trek tricorder, but there is currently a 10mil prize current for the person who invents a simple one.

And then of course you have the whole genetic engineering angle - eg: an engineered organism you 'breathe in' (and takes up residence in the lungs) which produces oxygen for those thin atmospheres or scrubs out toxins.
At TL (say) 11+, you might also see true antivirals. Possibly also retrovirals.

Universal Blood: If it's not already effectively here, we're probably pretty close. Go google up some perfluorocarbons...
 
Recramerol: A memory / learning enhancement drug that allows you to learn a skill etc., much faster. Taken over several weeks you can easily learn most skills to lvl 1. The problem is that if you don't continue using that skill fairly regularly for several months after learning it you will not retain it.
 
New Medicines

Panacea
A universal wonder-drug stumbled upon by Jensen Pharmaceuticals, but to whose research and development Dr. Jeremy Stone was the first to object. Panacea is effective against every known virus, bacterium, fungus, and parasite, and even cancer. It is rumored to also be able to replace cells and extend life indefinitely.
Side Effects
Research of Panacea was halted and knowledge of it was covered up after it was discovered that whoever stopped taking the drug died between 1 and 3 years after stopping the use of the medication from bizarre and massive infections "no one had ever seen before," most likely because the body becomes so used to the drug fighting off infections, that it shuts down its natural immune system. It is believed that Dr. Stone still to this day (220 years after first discovering the drug) applies it to himself monthly as he continues to find a way to correct the dosage to stop the deadly side effects.

Mentaltopian
Given to young children before trials in an attempt to stimulate suppressed mental abilities. It enhances the child's abilities to learn and control Psionic powers. The results of testing indicated that the drug only worked on candidates already with an inherent psionic ability but doubled the power output of the child.
Side Effects
Use reduces the child's STR, DEX or CON by 1 point permanently.
 
Lipometaboline.
Dosage: IV drip 2.5cc/hr, 2x 5cc IV carotid injection, plus IV feeding.
Reduces subjects metabolism to a minimal safe resting state, while also encouraging the burning of lipids. Originally considered a dangerous side effect, it's now used for induced non-functional state. Since it slows, but does not stop, metabolism, it can be used to prevent healing while in transport, without full cryogenic processes.

Side effects:
shut in - many skiinny patients remain conscious, but unable to move enough to even speak.
Fat Reserves: it was originally intended as a weight loss drug; obese patients will maintain a higher metabolic rate as the metaboline renders the lipids into sugars, for the body to use, rather than suppressing the metabolism.
Slow Healing: generally, wounds will take 4x longer to heal than normal. In cases of transport of individuals with certain forms of trauma, this enables appropriate setting at the other end without rebreaking.
Coagulation: it renders the clotting factor highly reactive to air; while the underlying wound doesn't heal, it does form scabs much faster. Coupled with the lowered blood pressure and heart rate....

History: originally developed as a fat-removal drug, the metabolic suppression was a very undesired side effect. It's since been restricted highly for its potential in slave transport, but is used by some military units to allow individuals to be transferred to rear area, and renders the golden hour into the golden watch...

1st injection is the "drop dose" - it rapidly reduces the metabolism.
the IV is to maintain the stable state. The 2nd injection is an antagonist, administered at revival, changing the 4-8 hour recovery to a matter of about 5 minutes.
 
Monday Morning pill

Mond-ade
Formulated for people who fear, dread, hate or detest Monday mornings. These pills are for those who might have had a little too much fun over the weekend, liberty or those who simply can't find the energy or desire to go to work come Monday morning.

Relieves common Monday morning symptoms including:
* Drowsiness
* Blood-shot eyes
* Depression
* Vomiting
* Hopelessness
* Irritating boss

Side Effects
*Caution* Prolonged use of this product may make the user feel invincible. Some users have experienced feeling as if they can do better on their own than working for someone else and have quit their jobs to start their own company to (successfully) compete with their former employer.
 
I would suggest a console device to manufacture targeted nanites. Like at TL10, it could make nanites to target cancer cells, viruses, etc. After TL11, the nanites could be programmed to handle deep organ damage or knit bones in a matter of a few hours.
 
Feeling "stressed"? take A Damnitol !

I bought some in high school. Over rated.

AAAAC4V63GsAAAAAARwFFA.jpg
 
Last edited:
Back
Top