This classic post was originally run on September 8, 2009.
Most people know that I’m a huge fan of the television show House. I also know quite a few folks who would like to run “medical drama’-style roleplaying games, but run up against one major obstacle: lack of medical knowledge. Programs like House have consultants on staff to make sure that the information is accurate, but as a gamemaster or player you don’t have that sort of budget. I’m here to tell you that for a roleplaying game, the accuracy of the jargon doesn’t matter. As a viewer, I have no idea what they’re saying or if the symptoms and treatments they’re pitching are correct. All I know is, it’s never lupus and most wrong treatments apparently do permanent damage to the kidneys. Most of the actors, in interviews, have stated that they have no idea what they’re saying.
In medical dramas, including House, E.R., and going back to Marcus Welby and General Hospital (when it was actually about a hospital) , the medicine is a subplot at best. It’s about what else is going on in the lives of the player characters, and how they interact with the guest stars. The guest start are single-serving friends, there to push the buttons of whatever personal issues the regular characters are dealing with. allegory. Greek chorus. Author’s message.
Keeping that in mind, all you really need to keep down are the “beats” of diagnosis and treatment. I’m going to work on some medical jargon generation tables to make it sound good (and no doubt make people with actual medical knowledge fall over laughing). The beats of the medical portion of a game session would go something like this:
The patient is displaying [RANDOMLY ROLLED SYMPTOMS].
It could be [RANDOMLY ROLLED DISEASE].
Except [RANDOMLY ROLLED SYMPTOM] doesn’t fit, either because that symptom isn’t present in the patient or it isn’t a normal symptom of the disease.
The treatment for the disease is [RANDOMLY ROLLED TREATMENT].
The downside of the treatment is [RANDOMLY ROLLED SYMPTOM], which can either be a general side effect or something that can happen if it’s not the disease they think it is.
There is a low percentage the treatment works and the patient is cured. There is a chance the patient will get better, then suddenly get worse, and display a new symptom. There is a chance the patient will go into code and display a new symptom. Repeat the process. The chance that the disease has been diagnosed and the treatment is effective increases with each repetition of the process.
I’m going to flesh this out a bit more and release it as a PDF. I thought about writing this as it’s own game, but I think it will be just fine as an aid/cap system for the game of your choice. Use it to create a medical show for Primetime Adventures, or to add some forensic medicine to Call of Cthulhu, World of Darkness, or other modern and near-future games.
After watching Trauma I had a huge urge to work out the best way to to actually run a Trauma Team in Cyberpunk without it being almost exclusively about the Solos and the extraction. I never did get a satisfactory way of making the medic the focal point.
Posted by Bob | May 20, 2011, 9:18 amIt’s always tough playing a character without a combat focus. Combat (and sometimes magic) tends to be mechanically deep, tactically complex, and time-consuming, while other vocations boil down to a single skill check and waiting for the GM to tell you the result.
It all depends on the choices the game designers make. Any kind of play could be satisfyingly complex and involved, it’s just that combat tends to be What the Game Is About. It doesn’t help aspiring RPG medicos that a deep, complex, time-consuming medical system would stretch out the dreaded Downtime, and in most games that means less xp. Horrors!
This system pushes my buttons in lots of good ways. One of these days when I’ve got time I wanna whip up an app that handles all the rolling and makes the results look like a medical chart.
Posted by Xose Lucero | May 20, 2011, 10:59 amI’m formulating a theory defining “Gygaxian fantasy”, as separate from Tolkienequse, S&S, Vancian, High Fantasy, etc. based on how many “stat-able” elements it contains (monsters, magic items) plus traps and puzzles. Something can be both Gygaxian AND another subgenre, if it meets the criteria of both. But that’s a whole other blog post.
Posted by Berin Kinsman | May 20, 2011, 1:08 pmThis would be interesting in a science fiction game, too. Think of how many Star Trek episodes involved a medical mystery!
I wonder if the same thing can be done for a “Law and Order” type show, too?
Guy
Posted by Guy Hoyle | May 20, 2011, 3:10 pm