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Old 08-19-2018, 04:54 AM   #1
WaterAndWindSpirit
 
Join Date: Oct 2014
Default Fire Rescue campaign?

While most adventures involve violence, one could run an exciting campaign with no violence whatsoever. Firefighters would be perfect for that!

Plenty of opportunities to have out of adventure mischief, and plenty of adventures. What if you had to deal with both a fire and hazmat hazard at the same time?

I do think there's potential in a campaign where the PCs are elite firefighters, maybe part of a specialized team made to tackle the highest risk situations, where they'd never have to shoot a gun or throw a punch but instead had to keep risking life and limb against fire, collapsing buildings, hazmat and so on.

To the GMs here, would you try to master such an atypical campaign, if your players were willing to try? To the players here, would you be willing to try this style of campaign if your GM asked you to try?
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Old 08-19-2018, 05:50 AM   #2
johndallman
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Default Re: Fire Rescue campaig?

I would try running this, if I had an idea for a larger story than just "Incident of the week." Many of the games I run don't have much violence anyway, so I would not find that a problem.

I played a one-off scenario somewhat like this, which was a demo for Disasters: Meltdown and Fallout. We were IAEA nuclear inspectors in a fictional African country that was setting up a nuclear power system, and trying, it proved, to evade safeguards. A fair amount of investigation and stealth was necessary to find out what was going on, but the only violence was voluntary on the part of the PCs.

We ran across a group of rebels who were attacking the nuclear power station with a heavy mortar. We attacked by surprise, armed only with pistols, routed them and captured one. He proved to be a government soldier, and revealed that the whole attack was a false-flag operation. We smuggled him out of the country, and brought down the government.
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Old 08-19-2018, 08:54 AM   #3
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Default Re: Fire Rescue campaig?

I'm a little surprised that RPGs don't delve more deeply into non-combat action on a big scale (as in, entire adventures or campaigns of such action, not random bits among the usual combat action). Firefighting or other rescue sounds perfect, as you suggest. (Then again, maybe it's just not as fun in play as it is on paper. I don't know.)

I imagine the keys to fun rescue games would be good background info (research into how rescue operations actually work, the strategies and tactics rescuers use, etc.) and good expanded rules (more detailed "exploits" for all the things rescuers do).

On that latter point, long ago I had a passing thought that big fires could be gamed like a foe – maybe a multi-hex swarm? – in some sort of combat-like fashion. The hexes would move and spread, gaining "HP" up to some maximum per hex (probably largely dependent on what material is burning). Water, chemicals, and other extinguishing "attacks" would inflict "damage" on the fire (though, watch out, it can regenerate...). The right skills and tactics would presumably have a big effect on how well that all goes.

I never did anything with the idea, though. Maybe some other RPG has come up with something similar?
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Old 08-19-2018, 10:03 AM   #4
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Default Re: Fire Rescue campaig?

Quote:
Originally Posted by tbone View Post
On that latter point, long ago I had a passing thought that big fires could be gamed like a foe – maybe a multi-hex swarm? – in some sort of combat-like fashion. The hexes would move and spread, gaining "HP" up to some maximum per hex (probably largely dependent on what material is burning). Water, chemicals, and other extinguishing "attacks" would inflict "damage" on the fire (though, watch out, it can regenerate...). The right skills and tactics would presumably have a big effect on how well that all goes.
The Basic Set has rules for setting things on fire, and I added rules for putting out fires with water in Chinese Elemental Powers. Perhaps those could be the starting point for a GURPS treatment. You'd need further rules for the fuel value of various substances and for radiant heat and reflectivity, I think.

There's a supplement for Transhuman Space about an international rescue force based in Japan. That might suggest some ideas about how to run scenarios. The rules on asking for help in Pulling Rank are also probably relevant.
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Old 08-19-2018, 11:59 AM   #5
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Default Re: Fire Rescue campaign?

See if you can dig up an old TV series called Emergency.
It was about a team ofparanedics and involved various medical and fire issues.
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Old 08-19-2018, 10:36 PM   #6
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Default Re: Fire Rescue campaign?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Refplace View Post
See if you can dig up an old TV series called Emergency.
It was about a team ofparanedics and involved various medical and fire issues.
I'm fairly sure calling it "an old TV series" that one has to "dig up" may offend some of our more... experienced forum members.

But, yes, if you want to do a game based on fire/rescue, it should be almost required that you watch at least a few episodes.
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Old 08-19-2018, 10:55 PM   #7
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Default Re: Fire Rescue campaign?

Quote:
Originally Posted by RyanW View Post
I'm fairly sure calling it "an old TV series" that one has to "dig up" may offend some of our more... experienced forum members.

But, yes, if you want to do a game based on fire/rescue, it should be almost required that you watch at least a few episodes.
I think a show that aired closer to the advent of broadcast tv than to the present legitimately counts as old, as tv goes. Also many show from the 70s are quite hard to find nowadays, though this particular one seems to be easily available.
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Old 08-20-2018, 05:50 AM   #8
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Default Re: Fire Rescue campaign?

I think that, as with TV treatments (ancient and modern), it would be important to have something more to the game than the basic firefighting in order to give it legs.

My inclination would be to look at the characters and their personalities: how do they feel about what they're doing and the hard choices they're making, how are their relationships with each other and with outsiders, and so on. I find GURPS a great system for combining this sort of thing with procedural content like fighting fires, examining evidence, and so on.
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Old 08-20-2018, 11:34 AM   #9
Žorkell
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Default Re: Fire Rescue campaign?

Seems like the movie Backdraft might fit as inspiration for this type of campaign.
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Old 08-20-2018, 12:48 PM   #10
Pmandrekar
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Default Re: Fire Rescue campaign?

Quote:
Originally Posted by WaterAndWindSpirit View Post
While most adventures involve violence, one could run an exciting campaign with no violence whatsoever. Firefighters would be perfect for that!

Plenty of opportunities to have out of adventure mischief, and plenty of adventures. What if you had to deal with both a fire and hazmat hazard at the same time?

I do think there's potential in a campaign where the PCs are elite firefighters, maybe part of a specialized team made to tackle the highest risk situations, where they'd never have to shoot a gun or throw a punch but instead had to keep risking life and limb against fire, collapsing buildings, hazmat and so on.

To the GMs here, would you try to master such an atypical campaign, if your players were willing to try? To the players here, would you be willing to try this style of campaign if your GM asked you to try?
I never ran it, but go through a lot of campaign concepts before I find one that I want to actually run. One of them was based in the Traveller Universe where the PC's would be a rapid reaction force assigned to a Starport. Of course, some of that is violence, but some of it is rescuing people trapped in starships, getting ships underway, Rendering medical assistance when a ship full of refugees show up, etc.

The original Traveller had an adventure where you had to steal the other guy's fire engine on behalf of your patron in the rival city.

So, good luck!
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