Great post on sleeping patterns...

> On 2 May 2014, at 13:01, Carlos <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Naive PC: "I go to sleep."
> Nasty Referee <rattle>: "You have a lot of trouble sleeping. You stay awake for two hours until you literally collapse due to exhaustion. When the computer wakes you up, you feel drowsy and barely rested. Your concentration is way down. You drop your first cup of <insert local TU hot beverage name> on your foot. You operate at -1 INT, -1 END and -1 DEX for the day, oh, and you walk with a limp. Now time for that mission you had planned."
>

I'm not entirely sure that is a "nasty" referee.  I think that would
add so many role playing opportunities that I'd hope my referee did do
that!

>
> Experienced PC (sweating): "What do you mean, the sleep-induction field is broken?"
> Referee <evil grin>: "Oh, and you've run out of sleeping pills."

If it helps add any data points, I used to do nightwatches a lot on
board ship.  Midnight - 8am most usually.  Around 4am I would often
hit a low point and have to actively move around on the gangway or
quayside to stay awake.

Of course, when I was back on normal day shifts I'd wake up at 4am and
be completely unable to sleep!

I also used to reckon that the last hour of that watch dragged by as
slowly as the previous 7 and that every minute I was late being
relieved was like another hour again!  I always made sure I was a few
minutes early if I was ever relieving the nightwatchman rather than
dead on time or be late just because I knew how painful it was.

On sea watches we'd do four hours on eight hours off which gave the
weird effect of feeling as if you were living two days for everyone
else's one.

Nowadays I'm on a very odd regime.  With no cure for Chronic Fatigue
Syndrome, the best advice I get is to take three thirty minute 'stops'
through the day.  I'm not supposed to read or listen to music but just
stop.  They also said they weren't intended for sleep but not to worry
if I did.  It's actually harder than you might imagine for social,
logistic and psychological reasons.  (Work is also very accommodating)
But anyway, when I started, I did them because I'd been told.  Now, a
few years on, I do them because otherwise I wouldn't get through the
day.  Sometimes, if the exhaustion is really bad, I can sleep all
three times which gives me a weird effect of four days/day as it were.
 It can be quite disorientating and I've fallen asleep on my bus
before, woken up and had no idea for a moment or two whether I was
going to work or going home.

I agree with the comment that it might well be easier to keep standard
time and adjust to the local time as need be rather than expect humans
to adjust to extreme variations.

tc