Medical System part-1

Development & Feedback Suggestions
1

Hey all. I’ve some ideas for the game concerning the medical system. I intend to present them in 3-4 parts, this being the first.

Having played a variety of MUDs and conventional games, I’ll say that in nearly all of them, the medical system has been unsatisfying and very rudimentary. The only medical system in a game I’ve liked is SS13, Cybersphere Mud comes second. In most games medicine just involves usage of the heal command, a skill test, and a few recipes for advanced drugs/cures/potions that the medic can craft. Now, especially in a role play intensive Mud, playing a medic is mostly sitting in bars or combat if your character is statted and skilled to participate in it. Now, for someone whose character is, at its core, a healthcare professional, the experience is mediocre.

To prevent this, what I am proposing, is to make the medical system in-depth and robust, so those characters that are designed to be healthcare providers either main, or sub, have lots of things to do.

Firstly, medical professionals ought to be tiered: a medical subclass/package capable of basic first aid, or assisting other, higher tier medical professionals to improve rolls, that most anyone can take in addition to their mains. For example this could be a military corpsman (combat medic) , or the banker that took a CPR course etcetera.

Secondly, we’d have paramedics, nurses and auxillaries. They could have a basic/intermediate medical skillset as their main, and this class could be available to everyone or locked by karma/roleplay points (like how Armageddon and Harshlands do it for certain classes/roles) at staff discretion.

The third tier would be Physicians/Surgeons/Cyberneticists etc. These would need higher roleplay points/karma (again, if staff decide to go that route) and have advanced medical skills, far, far beyond the basic. The number of 3rd tier Medical specialists may have to be restricted to keep them rare and valuable.

I proposed a roleplay point system for 2nd and 3rd tier because these aren’t skills someone can pick up overnight. It requires years of study and training, so they’d have to be ‘main classes’.

This system could also be applied to other fields such as engineering (amateur tinkerer <Technician/mechanic < Engineer) or combat (martial arts enthusiast/firearms enthusiast/Security Guard/Bouncer/Thug < Police/Colonial Militia/Corporate Security/Regular Government Military < Government Spec Ops/Police SWAT)

Thanks for reading. Feedback is welcome.

2

First time poster. My friend introduced me to this effort, and it looks very cool.

I like this idea. Like a combat medic might have solid fighting ability, or an EMT might be an accomplished driver/pilot, so it would be a more well-rounded support role for most medical help. Then as the game develops, you can have dedicated physicians as the game requires and have few enough that they have something to do.

3

Apologies in the delay for getting to this, it’s been a busy week.

Some good ideas here, we agree we’ve similarly found the medical system in other muds unsatisfying.

The medical factions which are not player-driven (since you have the full freedom to start your own medical services group) will likely start with only a single rank or two, and slowly expand to a fully fledged medical system similar to what we can find in rp servers in SS13.

Since we’re planning on including “origins” which can be unlocked through roleplay, there will definitely be some “pre-skilled” characters you’ll be able to bounce into the game ready to rock your surgical skills without starting from the ground.

While we won’t be presenting a choice of archetypes or “guilds” in character creation, those options you’ve listed could most certainly be taken as RP avenues. Someone who picks up just enough medical skill to act as a field medic before focusing on combat, versus someone who dedicates all their time training cybernetics.

4

I don’t believe this was posted on the forums, but it was discussed a bit on Discord. My own opinion is that the best approach towards this is to have a system that follows the following: stabilization < tending < treatment < healing.

What I mean by this is stabilizing someone shouldn’t be too hard to do. Why? People can mess up in writing and having someone die because you mis-typed something is not fun for anyone. So even someone not too trained could inject a medipen or something to stabilize someone.

Next comes tending. A tended wound will very slowly heal up. This will take time and someone can’t mess around or they risk re-opening a wound. A tended wound still applies its debuffs.

After that is treatment. Professionals can properly treat wounds, which works like a much better tending. A tended wound no longer debuffs someone and heals much quicker, but can still re-open if you mess up.

Lastly, healing. Some expert or who knows what technology could just outright heal a wound. This of course being some expensive thing or gatekept somehow.

Wounds is the catch-all term for damage past a certain point which applies to you. Take too much damage and you accrue them, with them lowering your capabilities somehow. Impacted stats, skills, maybe accuracy, etc.

Basically, damage isn’t just a value, but ultimately a quantifiable injury. You SHOULD be able to be treated without having to seek out a professional, but you’ll be dealing with a long convalescent time or maybe even long lasting injuries.