Sneezing?

[returner]

The natural way - discovering cures by accident, could never happen in Cantr.

That said, it's patently unfair to make any Cantrian disease too serious.

I agree with you on that level Doug. However, consider this.. If Cantrians have this innate ability to understand how to make every single weapon, shield, building, vehicle, machinery, tool, and item ever conceived in the Cantr world, surely they would be predisposed with the knowledge of how to cure a particular disease.. thus if a serious disease was ever to enter the Cantr world, Cantrians should be allowed to instantly know the cure (via OOC research on the wiki), as they were taught about diseases when they were in their pre-twenties.

Based on this ideology in relation to sneezing, I think the cause, symptoms, effects and remedies should be publicly/OOCly available on the Wiki.

[Doug R.]

Based on this ideology in relation to sneezing, I think the cause, symptoms, effects and remedies should be publicly/OOCly available on the Wiki.

The disease mechanisms are as highly guarded as are maps. Not even the GAB knows how they work. Jos is the only person that can change that policy, and last I knew, he wasn't interested in doing so.

That said, I don't know if I support your argument. Some things -should- be kept secret from the players, but only if there is a reasonable chance that the players can figure it out for themselves (like maps, or faintness).

As far as I can discern, the cause of the sneezing sickness is other people that sneeze, and the only cure is isolation for at LEAST 3 entire days after the last sneeze occurs (I feel this is fairly common knowledge, so no danger of being a spoiler). Where the first sneeze came from, I have no idea. Maybe there is no cause and someone was randomly picked from the DB to start sneezing and set the whole thing into motion.

Maybe a cause could be found if someone started sneezing spontaneously, but the sneezing is so wide-spread, and the effects of it so minor, that no town would ever undertake the massive quarantine necessary to rid themselves of it, especially when it would just be brought back in by the next traveler.

There were rumors quite a long time ago that they were caused by eating too much of the same food, but that was never backed up with any evidence. It will probably always remain a mystery.

[Rob Maule]

Maybe some people sneeze because they're allergic to their location. I swear I've had an isolated character that started sneezing or witnessed someone, when they hadn't had visitors in a long time. Just sort of sprung up.

[Sabsi]

I think the rumors about eating too much of the same food are wrong because most of my German characters eat the same food all the time and I have never seen somebody sneeze on these islands.

[notsure]

Hmm...very interesting, Sabsi. None of my French charries has ever sneezed or seen anyone sneezing.

The cause is speaking English, apparently.

ns

[Piscator]

If there was indeed a single source for the sneezes, it's not very surprising that it hasn't spread to other islands yet.

[SumBum]

The cause is speaking English, apparently.

ns

I think that is the cause for a lot of problems.

[SekoETC]

I've seen the source code for illnesses and it's pretty logical. I think one problem is that there's no indicator of being ill unless you sneeze, and sneezes are random (for the people who are currently ill - healthy people never sneeze). The game records who was the source of infection, so it would be possible to track down who infected whom among the currently infected, but the records are deleted after a person gets better (or at least I assume so), so you couldn't track down who infected the infecter unless the infecter was still ill himself.

Edit: I would suggest that people with the sneezing sickness should develop a fever in 1-3 days, which would be visible in the character description ("He/She looks feverish") and after getting better, there should be a period of immunity for at least 5 days. I would also propose random sneezes for healthy people but that could only happen if no one else sneezes during that tick, and could only happen to one person. Also since the person wasn't actually ill, it couldn't infect anyone but the others wouldn't know the difference unless they wait for a fever to appear, which wouldn't happen.