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As anyone who remembers the old “Medical Bag” feature in Fortean Times knows, people suffer from a lot of strange and bizarre medical conditions. These can be used to crank up the quirkiness of an adventure GMC, or (for particularly brave players) even a PC. Except for conditions with obvious effects, I’ve provided very brief summaries here. You’ll probably want to do some research on the details before using any of these in your game. Also, while many of these conditions are really weird, they are real problems that real humans suffer from, so if you need to be reminded not to be a dick, consider yourself reminded.
- Foreign Accent Syndrome
- Congenital Insensitivity to Pain
- Hypertrichosis (aka “werewolf syndrome”–excessive body hair, including on the entire face)
- Pica (compulsion to eat non-edible objects such as rocks, dirt, and glass)
- Capgras Delusion (the belief that a friend or family member has been replaced by an identical imposter)
- Alien Hand Syndrome (the belief that the actions of one of the sufferer’s hands is out of his control)
- Cotard Delusion (aka “walking corpse syndrome”–the sufferer believes himself to be dead and that his body is decaying)
- Prosopagnosia (the inability to recognize faces)
- Reduplicative Paramnesia (the belief that a place has been exactly duplicated in another location)
- Jumping Frenchmen of Maine (an extremely exaggerated startle reflex)
- Fregoli delusion (the belief that multiple people are actually all a single person who shapeshifts or wears disguises)
- Alice In Wonderland Syndrome (a neurological disorder that causes things to appear smaller or larger than they really are)
- Akinetopsia (motion blindness–sufferer can see stationary objects, but doesn’t perceive motion)
- Photic Sneeze Reflex (sufferer sneezes when exposed to bright light)
- Exploding Head Syndrome (sufferer hears loud, imaginary noises that seem to come from inside his own head)
- Congenital Erythropoietic Porphyria (hypersensitivity to light)
- Fatal Familial Insomnia (sufferer loses the ability to fall asleep)
- Fish Odor Syndrome (sufferer’s sweat, urine, and breath have an extremely strong fishy smell)
- Moebius Syndrome (complete facial paralysis, including the inability to close or move one’s eyes)
- Stendhal Syndrome (sufferer experiences extreme anxiety, dizziness, confusion, or even hallucination when he sees beautiful works of art)
