Realistic Human DR

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

"Medical / paramedic / rescue drama" is a valid genre of TV, it might work for tabletop games. Just need someone with the right hobby or day job to write the supplement!

As an RPG, unless you're running a one-shot game or mini-campaign, you need something which allows characters to be proactive rather than waiting for problems to come to them.

Ideally, that "something" is more creative than a series of fetch-quests. I think that's why so many medical/first responder dramas always have sort of non-medical "B-plot" in addition to the main medical drama.

The closest you might get to a typical RPG game is if the PCs start with a medical mystery to solve and have to save NPCs who might provide useful information or other types of aid (with the "monsters" being death itself) on the way to solving the mystery.

As a follow on, they must verify their research and gain allies within the scientific and medical communities to build scholarly consensus in order to gain social support.

Finally, they must deal with various hostile forces while they try to implement a solution to the problem.

The "treasure" in such a game is information and lives saved or improved as well as tangible and intangible rewards from a job well done.

The same concept applies to any other attempt to improve or "improve" society, whether you're trying to save an endangered species, improve civil rights for some marginalized group, or pushing in the other direction to destroy a noxious pest species or drive out some group of people who represent a threat to the larger community.

Originally Posted by Polydamas

And MASH, Gray's Anatomy, Flashpoint, House, etc. rarely go into detail about how to manage common injuries.

Ideally, GURPS gives you three levels of complexity: completely abstract (Action style play or mass combat style combat resolution), mostly abstract (Basic GURPS rules with some details), and Detailed.

The Detailed rules kick in when the players and type of campaign demand it (e.g., all sorts of unarmed combat techniques in a Martial Arts game) or when the GM is forcing PCs to work at a penalty under severe time pressure.

For example, if you're a firefighter and you've got 3 minutes to get out of a building before it collapses, suddenly exactly how long it takes you apply a tourniquet matters if you're treating someone who will bleed out if they don't get first aid within the next 2 minutes.