Pedantic Quibble About Aspirin and NSAIDs

So…in the real world, aspirin is only one of a fair variety of low-level painkillers that are commonly available. Here in the US, it isn’t even the most common. For the sake of not burdening the player with semi-obscure products or clogging up inventory space with needless labels for functionally equivalent medications, it’s not TERRIBLE that Cataclysm uses aspirin as a sort of catch-all for all such things. But it’s always rubbed me slightly the wrong way that aspirin is the only low-level analgesic available.

As a possible alternative, maybe change the item description for aspirin to something like “These pills might technically be one of several types of low-level painkiller commonly available in a variety of brand names before the cataclysm. Examples may include true aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid), acetaminophen, ibuprofen, naproxen sodium, and others. Commonly referred to as NSAIDs by the more medically-minded.”

I wouldn’t just change the name to NSAIDs because I think that title is a little obscure for the general public. And if one wanted to be unflinchingly, obsessively realistic…one could increase the number of aspirin required for crafting recipes involving aspirin, to represent picking and choosing actual acetylsalicylic acid from an assortment of different pills.

As a stopgap, we could have aspirin, ibuprofen and acetaminophen items that work the same when taken, but act differently in crafting recipes, and if someone decides to make their effects diverge they can.

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