If you play a medic in a contemporary or science-fiction game, but don't happen to be one yourself, it can be quite hard to sound convincing... so here's a handy system to generate likely sounding drugs and derive their uses, side-effects, etc. Likewise if you GM such a game and want to expand on what can be a quite limited list in your chosen ruleset, this will be of use.
Basically, the product consists of a wealth of tables which cover everything from how legal the drug is to how it should be administered, how effective it is and what side effects it may have, as well as a rather nifty name generator that enables ready creation of the tongue-twisting monstrosities of names that adorn most packets of pills. However, there are notes on how to come up with a shorter 'use name' for the drug that you have created, as most of the time if you say the full name, the patient will have expired before you can administer it!
The one thing that isn't covered is what condition the drug is supposed to treat... no doubt this will be the topic of a future 'generator' book. Until then, cobble together a few symptoms and call it the 'plague' or the like.
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