Medkits???

[GhostWolf69]

My comments are from a military and civilian paramedic standpoint. I CANNOT do my job with any of my medical supplies. So I would assume the medkit is required to perfom any first aid treatment. And I can perform my job 3 or 4 times without restocking my medic bag. After that I'm done. Fortunatly I restock after every call at the local hospital or go back to the station to resupply. Yeah, I still have the knowledge in assessing a pt and I might be able to state whats wrong and how to fix them but without equipment thats all I can do. I would assume the same goes for a doctor. Hope that helps.

Superb comment! Thank you.

/wolf

 

[cbrunish]

Great to have some input from a pro. From the first aid training I've done as an employee and martial arts instructor, I think you're defining your job as "patching someone up enough so you can get on to the next one and they won't die before someone checks on 'em". Is that fair? Because there are some (albeit limited) things I've been told you can do without gear (though gear makes those things more effective and helps remove the need to keep hands on the patient). Or is it that the training I've had is hopelessly optimistic? I'll freely confess to never having had to stop a serious bleed or give CPR.

On to your bag: what sort of size is that? Does it include bags of fluids, or are those additional and drawn from other stores?

Hey anybody out there that knows basic first aid and cpr is a great asset!! It usually takes us from 2 to 5 minutes (10 to 15 in the rural areas sometimes) to get to the pt. Anybody there at the time with some knowledge helps.

An to the bag size, say 1 ft by 2 ft by 1ft deep. Carries assorted IV supplies (fluid and IV catheters), bandages and gauze, intubation equipment with bag valve mask (to help the pt breath), first line drugs (usually to get the heart started to help it along). The military has some great extras (which I retired before getting them, just read journals). And thats not including the Oxygen tank, drug box and backboards.

And the TL thing actually makes sense. If I had to choose between a tech level 2 med kit or tech level 6, I would take the 6. I could just imagine what a tech level F (15) would be like. Probably something out of "Bones'" from Star Trek kit. :lol:

 

[Shiloh]

The military has some great extras (which I retired before getting them, just read journals).

They've got some great clotters and wound closers now, haven't they?

And the TL thing actually makes sense. If I had to choose between a tech level 2 med kit or tech level 6, I would take the 6.

From what I've read about the new stuff being used on "our boys out there", I'd class us as having jumped a TL boundary for that tech.

I could just imagine what a tech level F (15) would be like. Probably something out of "Bones'" from Star Trek kit. :lol:

I think that's one of the Space-Opera-y elements that would possibly jarr traveller sensibilities - a ray that knits flesh? Though the tiny sensor packages aren't far away.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Sounds like someone with a medical background needs to write up an OGL product here defining the futuristic Medical Equipment and Tasks...

 

[fireyphoenix22]

here's what a medkit looked like in the early traveller rpg
http://www.robcaswell.net/data/popups/medkit.htm

 

[Myrm]

And what benefit there is in being a Doctor trained at TL/15 as opposed to one trained at, say, TL3 :shock:

Likewise, we are led to believe, by default, that there is no difference in healing rate based on Tech Level ... even without equipment ...

Think the difference between the Four Humours theory vs. the actual reality of the circulation of blood etc.

Of course, this has never ever been covered in any iteration of Traveller that I can recall (or not in anything resembling a realistic and believable way, anyway).

Phil

Ummm a lot of it was actually covered fairly extensively in T20, and I do find it surprising that T20 would be the first iteration to do so

Tech Level of the medical environment made a difference in medical rolls and hence the likelihood of a successful long term care roll with increased healing rate. The system differentiated between the medical environment as well, so the Tech Level modifiers to medical care changed based on where you were from in the field through to major trauma centres and a big facility of TL-n was better than a field medical kit of the same TL. Higher level tech stuff then introduced various medical gizmos - so the TL13 trained doc would know how to use and have access to an autodoc so they would have more options for medical care.

The combination of requirements for detailed training and the equipment driven modifiers allows you to build limited medical skills of low tech cultures. Add to that the techno-limited barbarian class and cross class skill limits and T20 did simulate TL based issues that you describe quite well.

I always felt that Traveller in general, and T20 was no exception here, seems to work on the assumption that for PCs medical training is done in surroundings with access to 'modern medicine' and that galactic level training was available for all so eliminating a number of the issues - at least most that cannot be managed wth equipment based modifiers to introduce TL. More limited training can be simulated for low tech culutres by lower skill levels and EDU based modifiers.

Also lets be fair to the ancient cultures as well here. Their medicine in practise could in fact be pretty damn skilled in many areas, even if their theories of why and how the body worked were at wild odds to our modern methods. Read a few decent works on Ancient Egyptian medicine befoore it went all mystical. I think the TL differences in training might not in fact be as problematic as you might think - especially if a lot of the modern stuff is actually present as equipment to do stuff. Your initial question removed equipment from the equation - I think thats the problem with your idea here - a doctor relies heavily on their equipment, medicines and tools to do his job and by their nature they limit what the doc can do

However within the context of Mongooses Traveller - EDU based modifiers, TL based modifiers for medical equipment and possibly Tech Level based limits on the medical skills will all serve to model the issues you raise rather well.

 

[Shiloh]

...TL based modifiers for medical equipment and possibly Tech Level based limits on the medical skills will all serve to model the issues you raise rather well.

Could it be as simple as using the TL of the kit available as a modifier as if it were a stat? Would mean that someone with a mid-TL kit could do their job "as expected", and availablilty of higher-TL kits could increase effectiveness, and someone with only their bare hands would have a TL-0 kit, so -3 on their rolls. So long as you aren't *too* prescriptive in your descriptions of wounds, a good roll could mean that the wound wasn't as difficult as it looked (no need to go hunting around for the vein to be clamped f'rex) rather than some sort of improvisation with a clothespeg...

It'd be fair to assume "galactic" training at TL 13ish was the standard, and make special arrangements for players who want their characters to have spent their whole medical career on low-tech planets...

Higher TL kits might be more compact/get more stabilisations out of the same sized kit too.

 

[Myrm]

...TL based modifiers for medical equipment and possibly Tech Level based limits on the medical skills will all serve to model the issues you raise rather well.

Could it be as simple as using the TL of the kit available as a modifier as if it were a stat?

That or a closely related model would work. I guess you have to define your zero point. If you define it where the zero stats are then yes its that simple. If not a similar progression rate of modifiers where 0 is say TL12 or the TL of your choice is another option, though that is one step more complex (another chart or an equation of Stat DM -3)

 

[atpollard]

I would imagine that the size of the 'kit' would relate to the skill of the Medic and the dificulty of the task. A Medic-3 Surgeon attempting to repair the damage from a chest wound is probably going to require more and better supplies than a Medic-0 just trying to stop the blood flow from a leg wound.

The two options are 1) a far too detailed system of charts or 2) dump it all on the Ref to decide on a case by case basis. (at least until a 'Mercenary' like book comes out for 'Doctors').

 

[far-trader]

MegaTraveller did fairly well on Medical treatment through supplemental material in Challenge(?) magazine.

As to (Full) Medkits, I've done two things in my own games that mirror some of what's been said already.

First you need a Medkit to do more than stabalize for a short time. And said medkit is good for more than one treatment, usually. I handled it by allowing the first use without penalty (successful or not) and each subsequent usage (successful or not) without restocking imposed a cumulative penalty.

So you'd probably get 3-5 uses, maybe more if you're very good/lucky (like everyone needed a different kind of treatment, or all the injuries were minor). If you were faced with a single serious case you might use up all your supplies in the first go (and not successfully treat anyone else due to the minuses).

Second I've long had First-Aid kits as a fraction the size of (Full) Medkits but allowing the same level of treatment but for only a single treatment.

 

[Xoph]

What do you do for a doctor that wants to have a Medlab and do surgeries, install implants, and such? I can’t tell her she can’t do that sort of thing. She has the stats and is willing / already said she would buy or bring the equipment with her from her old life as a cybernetics/biotech medical researcher. She wants to travel around the Spinward Marches and bring medical care to the mildly rich and in need of enhancements and high end Medical services.
I think it is a great angle, would bring a nice income to the team, fits the character, and brings nice adventure opportunities too. This means I need to create some sort of medical system that works with the current material that is consistent and includes costs of medical equipment, drugs, and raw cybernetics/biotech implants. If anyone has a chart or task system like this I would love a copy of it, and if any doctors or medical professionals want to make one I would be very happy!

 

[Shiloh]

What do you do for a doctor that wants to have a Medlab and do surgeries, install implants, and such? I can’t tell her she can’t do that sort of thing. She has the stats and is willing / already said she would buy or bring the equipment with her from her old life as a cybernetics/biotech medical researcher.

What would I do? Well, first I'd outline to her the constraints on what she can bring with her. Fully-equipped operating theatres are not cheap, and medical equipment beyond immediate trauma care is not generally designed for portability. I would consider the rest of the team and its capabilities and depending on many variables, I'd start thinking about two options:

1) explain that such an aim is a great campaign objective, but will require lots of backing from somewhere, or cash to buy the facilities.

2) considering making this (a) focus of the campaign, bunging a Lab ship (medically focused, obviously) at the party and making it a driving force of your characters' intial aims. Depending on what you *actually* had in mind for the game, this could become pure backdrop, or simply incidental background "intention" as the party become embroiled in something altogether more... convoluted...

She wants to travel around the Spinward Marches and bring medical care to the mildly rich and in need of enhancements and high end Medical services.

Now *that's* speculative trading...! She really would need a lab ship or an equivalent I think, and a staff. The trouble is, that the "mildly rich" are:

a) rich enough to travel to get their treatment;

b) numerous enough that you land once and don't need to head elsewhere because you're never going to get through them all.

or

not rich enough to pay you enough to cover your running costs.

Potentially, letting your ?idealist? doc find this out the hard way and have to find another way of turning a living out of a hip-deep lab ship debt, is a direction you could drive your campaign.

I think it is a great angle...

It's certainly interesting. You have the option of getting them involved in disaster relief at Imperial behest, and all sorts of other doctoring. Or just using the "peripatetic quack" as cover for any number of different shenanigans.

...would bring a nice income to the team...

This, I think, is entirely at your discretion. Clinics are not cheap to run. Star-travel capable ones especially so. The market could be quite difficult, with long lean periods.

...I need to create some sort of medical system that works with the current material that is consistent and includes costs of medical equipment, drugs, and raw cybernetics/biotech implants.

And the staff you need to provide the care for your patients... also, the market in OTU for implants is pretty small. Military and traumatic amputation/destruction replacements are the traditional limits, though obviously that's your call for your TU. Perhaps a good guideline is base cost of half the RAW price, if that includes installation. p94 gives some prices for extended medical care.

If anyone has a chart or task system like this I would love a copy of it, and if any doctors or medical professionals want to make one I would be very happy!

I'm not sure your game would be improved by going into the minutiae of clinic adminstration. Your big ticket items in the budget are personnel cost and equipments, as well as specialist drugs and augments. You don't want to have a game of "Hospital Administrator"; have someone make Admin and Broker rolls and handwave the details...

 

[Xoph]

Thanks Shiloh, but I think your approaches are either too extreme or too "you can't do that" to the player.

I just want the rules and prices to run a single Medlab as a side thing out of a 400 dton Corsair class ship full of an odd assortment (Doctor, 2 high ranking nobles, engineer, pilot, and marine) of Traveller style (Lets be free and do whatever we can to make a credit) adventurers.

I hoping this would be the type of thing to bring adventure hooks and some credits... plus pulling the player into "The Traveller Adventure" by tailoring some of the encounters like the Oderlind passage (maybe he need secret surgery) to the my odd party.

 

[aspqrz]

Which helps not at all if you want some consistency

I call this 'DnD-sickness' and I'm trying to get rid of it. But yeah, I hear you.

Don't much like DnD.

Played the original 3 LBB ("Little Buff Books") version, played V3.0. Never bothered with 3.5, and am not interested in a FPS clone for miniatures which, so I hear, is what 4.0 is.

What I DO like is something that doesn't require me to go out and create something from whole cloth because the designers ... either haven't bothered :x or haven't thought of it :shock:

Consistency in the sense that whatever I decide I know how it was supposed to be, whether I agree with it or not :wink:

Phil

 

[aspqrz]

Read a few decent works on Ancient Egyptian medicine befoore it went all mystical.

Umm. All two (or is it three?)?

AIUI (and I teach it, well, at Senior High School level, anyway), the few (almost, if not actually, literally) ancient egyptian papyri referring to medical knowledge ALL seem to be copied from two sources ...

One, a very archaic one, suggested by some Egyptologists to be Imhotep (the one who organised the construction of the Pyramids), from the Old Kingdom (c. 3000+ BC), which takes a scientific approach that would not be amiss today

The other(s), much newer, which are all mystical bs about casting spells.

The implication is that the Imhotep version was continually copied and recopied not so much because people actually practised medicine the way he described it, or even used the methods he described, but simply because he had been deified and it was, ipso facto, a sacred text (there is evidence to suggest that there was a large temple to Imhotep near the Pyramids dating from later periods than the Old Kingdom, but unfortunately razed in ancient times).

It seems that most Egyptologists accept the fact that Egyptian "medicine" was almost entirely "magic driven" ... of no medical value at all ... for anything beyond binding up (but not otherwise treating) wounds or setting (but not otherwise treating) broken bones.

Anything disease based or internal based and you were s*****d. A lot of ancient "medical practise" was like that.

Good for basic first aid, absolute c**p for anything serious.

Of course, gather two Egyptologists in the same place and you'll find at least three opinions on any given topic :lol:

Phil

 

[cbrunish]

Actually the Dark Ages did much to destroy medical knowledge. And the Catholic church didn't help either (not knocking the Catholic church in any way, just a fact). I think that once medical practitioners were able to begin learning A&P the medical knowledge grew in leaps and bounds.

As with the tech level idea. Personally I feel that tech C (12) would be a great base. Any kits under this would progressivly become worse and above would become better. As long as the person knew how to use it. This is important. There is alot of equipment that I would not even try to use from the mid 1800's. Where as if somebody dropped a tech level C item on me now, I would probably be clueless. Just something to think about.

An the sick bay of a ship would probably be similar to a room in the ER with the proper equipment. Also be tech level dependent. If the ship is tech level A (10) then the sick bay would be that tech level unless the crew spent credits to upgrade it. So saying that, then Mongoose should make sure they include the tech level of the ship with its stats.

 

[Shiloh]

Thanks Shiloh, but I think your approaches are either too extreme or too "you can't do that" to the player.

Sometimes you do just have to say: "I'm sorry, but that [whatever] doesn't work for these reasons..."

I just want the rules and prices to run a single Medlab as a side thing out of a 400 dton Corsair class ship full of an odd assortment (Doctor, 2 high ranking nobles, engineer, pilot, and marine) of Traveller style (Lets be free and do whatever we can to make a credit) adventurers.

Yeah, I get that, but there (IMO) have to be parameters. A "medlab" running surgical procedures is not a small installation that can be packed into a few Td of crate. It probably requires expensive gear that might be beyond the reach of a character's starting money. It certainly requires more than one doctor: are any of the other crew medically trained? Sure, you could run a "bush doctor" travelling clinic, but a cybernetics shop is not a "side thing", IME, and any "rules" I offered would be based on that premise, so wouldn't fit what you want to permit your characters to have the option of doing..

I'm not saying it can't be done, but I think you're going to have to be a bit "loose" with the background to make it possible within parameters that maintain verisimilitude, and I think you'll have to make your own rules so that the scale of what the team do actually ends up having the effect you want rather than being a money pit that the characters have to spend their entire time servicing, like a ship debt.

I hoping this would be the type of thing to bring adventure hooks and some credits... plus pulling the player into "The Traveller Adventure" by tailoring some of the encounters like the Oderlind passage (maybe he need secret surgery) to the my odd party.

It doesn't have to be as elaborate as the initial concept you've outlined to create adventure hooks. And medecine is not a profit-making enterprise, by and large, unless it's industrialised.

 

[rust]

It certainly requires more than one doctor: are any of the other crew medically trained?

There is this Autodoc robot, TL 12 with an integrated medkit and a skill
of Medic-2, for just 40,000 Cr. - I really think that most crews that can
afford one will have one installed on their ship.

 

[Shiloh]

It certainly requires more than one doctor: are any of the other crew medically trained?

There is this Autodoc robot, TL 12 with an integrated medkit and a skill
of Medic-2, for just 40,000 Cr. - I really think that most crews that can
afford one will have one installed on their ship.

Not sure a standard 40k Autodoc would be much use in surgery. There are probably versions that will handle the life support of the patient on behalf of a real surgeon, removing the need for an anaesthetist, and they'd probably be okay for some kinds of post-surgical care, but they'd be more expensive.

On the other hand with Dex, Edu and Int bonuses and Medic-2, who needs a human doctor? Which raises the question: if the autodoc will do, how does our wandering cyberdoc fit into the market?

 

[rust]

On the other hand with Dex, Edu and Int bonuses and Medic-2, who needs a human doctor? Which raises the question: if the autodoc will do, how does our wandering cyberdoc fit into the market?

In my setting I will restrict the use of autodocs to basic first aid and life
support in order to keep the patient in a stable condition until he can be
treated by a human doctor - or put into a low berth, for transport to a
medlab.
So, the robot will be extremely good at this specific task, but unable to
do anything different or more complicated.