Realistic Human DR

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Varyon

I average man has a chest depth of 10 inches), .

For ballistic testing purposes the FBI assumes 12 inches front to back and 18 inches side to side. That may be the upper range of "average" but you don't want a bullet that fails to penetrate adequately 50% of the time.

At 6' 190 lbs I might be at that upper bound of "average" but I'm not huge and with my back to a wall and using a yardstick my straight sternum to backbone distance looks to be around 11 1/2". That's the minimum distance for actually going through the center of mass. Travelling at an angle increases the distance of course.

Anthony's 6" looks like a grazing rib hit rather than true Torso penetration and his methodology looks suspect to me..

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Anthony's 6" looks like a grazing rib hit rather than true Torso penetration and his methodology looks suspect to me..

I'm using "random location on the torso". Which does include grazing hits, and hits in thinner parts. The FBI isn't interested in average thickness, it's interested in thickness through what GURPS classifies as 'vitals'.

[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.

[cptbutton]

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!

OTOH, there are reasons why fantasies often start by adding better-than-our-world healing powers. And MASH, Gray's Anatomy, Flashpoint, House, etc. rarely go into detail about how to manage common injuries. Plots are built around rare conditions or problemsolving.

GURPS Transhuman Space: Wings of the Rising Sun (4E) is an existing supplement where emergency rescue is the central idea, but a quick skim doesn't show many more detailed medical treatment rules.

(Kinda GURPS: Thunderbirds, basically, reworked for the TS setting.)

[Kaspar]

Here are my houserules regarding this:

Toughness: Innate DR (Tough skin) vs crushing only. Default is ST/6 (round down). Thus 6-11 ST is 1 Tgh, 12-17 ST is 2 Tgh, 18-23 ST is 3 Tgh. Full Tgh for Torso, arms, thighs and legs, half (round down) for hands, feet, neck, and zero for head, face and eyes.

intDR: Skulls have internal DR 3. This means that first 3 points of damage do not have the x4 multiplier, while 4 points of incoming damage would result in a 3+1*4=7 point wound.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by cptbutton

GURPS Transhuman Space: Wings of the Rising Sun (4E)
(Kinda GURPS: Thunderbirds, basically, reworked for the TS setting.)

More than "kinda". :)

There was some authorial grumpiness when it was pointed out that the orbital basing was actually slower than the Thunderbirds island base. Going sub-orbital would always be faster than de-orbiting.

[Ulzgoroth]

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!

OTOH, there are reasons why fantasies often start by adding better-than-our-world healing powers. And MASH, Gray's Anatomy, Flashpoint, House, etc. rarely go into detail about how to manage common injuries. Plots are built around rare conditions or problemsolving.

In rescue drama, I'd expect the actual treatment of common injuries beyond stabilization for transport to not be a plot point. You get them to a hospital, the rest of their care is out of scope for the rescuer!

And a lot of the reason for fantasies needing super-healing decreases when the injuries are on NPCs for whom a hospitalized recovery is a perfectly fine chapter, as opposed to PCs who are supposed to be in the main action rather than sidelined.

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

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.

Not entirely sure that's true...

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Most MMA or similar full-contact fights, which are the closest thing our culture has to legal unarmed combat, are far shorter affairs with one fighter being knocked out or otherwise decisively defeated within a few minutes. They track far more closely to GURPS combat.

Maybe more closely, but a few minutes is incredibly long by the standards of GURPS combat. A single minute is incredibly long by the standards of GURPS combat.

[mburr0003]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Maybe more closely, but a few minutes is incredibly long by the standards of GURPS combat. A single minute is incredibly long by the standards of GURPS combat.

Only because Evaluate, Concentrate, and "Catch Your Breath" (aka Do Nothing) are suboptimal choices in GURPS.

If they weren't, then you'd see combat stretch out a bit more, instead every combat is a fairly cinematic Jason Bourne/John Wick dance of death.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by mburr0003

Only because Evaluate, Concentrate, and "Catch Your Breath" (aka Do Nothing) are suboptimal choices in GURPS.

If they weren't, then you'd see combat stretch out a bit more, instead every combat is a fairly cinematic Jason Bourne/John Wick dance of death.

Uh. Yes, doing nothing while somebody is whaling on you is pretty suboptimal, and all those maneuvers deliver that. Evaluate is the only one that even pretends to be contribute, and it doesn't really. (And the only way making it better could make fights slower would be if it gave defensive benefits.)

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Uh. Yes, doing nothing while somebody is whaling on you is pretty suboptimal, and all those maneuvers deliver that.

Not attacking is not doing nothing. Not attacking is not attacking. The real world reason people don't just spam attacks is that it doesn't work well, if you don't take some breaks to think and catch your breath your effectiveness drops off rapidly.