Do you suppose a game about rescue operations could be interesting?
I've been somewhat obsessed with this idea of the PCs being a contract rescue crew who goes into high risk situations to rescue and recover people and objects. Less overt violence and more focus on the environment and scenario as the main antagonist.
Sounds like a cool idea for a game to me.
Sure. I think "high-risk rescue ops" is a clear enough theme to build a mission framework around, while still leaving a good amount of open space for expansion and mission variety.
Could entail some fun mechanical variation for different hazards and/or victims. Limited oxygen for low ox/shipwreck rescues, spreading fires as a creeping stage hazard etc.
Do you envision this in more of a RPG or boardgame type format?
I suppose you could blend the TT and board game but this idea is mainly for table top. A big aspect of it would be how random the scenarios could or would be. Like you said, one rescue op you have low/no oxygen or another where you have to prevent the ship's engines from leaking radiation and turning everyone into night lights.
The main challenge in a game like this is making the environmental dangers fun to interact with. It's like making a dungeon where there's nothing but traps: you can do it, but coming up with unique challenges that are actually playable is pretty tough.
Thunderbirds or Robusters the RPG? Sounds fun.
There's a thunderbirds co-op board game. Never played it, but I have a friend who owns it and says it's decent.
>Shadowrun
>you are DocWagon crew
OP said less overt violence, docwagons basically flatten a landing area, grab the patient and gtfo.
Absolutely. Imagine instead of regular shadowrunners, you had a docwagon team in hot rodded ambulences and fire trucks, driving into firefights and hazardous environments, extracting paitents, stablilizing them, and getting them the frick out of there.
Music vid vaguely related.
BAYWATCH RPG.
Mission Briefing
Loadout/equipment/vehicle decisions.
Deployment.
Solve early Hazzards/Traversal/On site complications/Bonus objectives, locked doors ect.
Set up staging area, work area if needed, investigate ect..
Solve primary problem of the week.
Extraction/evacuation.
Sounds like a reasonable gameplay loop, how would players get rewarded though? Was thinking it might be like rescue firm vs rescue firms. So the more missions accomplished with minimum casualties or drawbacks, more dangerous missions and get gear will be given to the team.
OP listen here, this anon is right
we can have multiple models based on different genres, like modern, scifi, cape, heck even high fantasy is possible (although iffy).
*Better gear
I'd hardly say High fantasy is iffy. At that point is a matter of image. If you're an autist who absolutely insists on an accurate representation of 12th century europe while also having armor, weapons, and concepts/ideas from later history then such an idea wouldn't appeal to you.
In that regard, Red Market seems like it would fit what you're speaking of because the idea of job satisfaction is built into the reward mechanics.
Autism will inevitably sharpen the point to a razor's edge and lead to the creation of a purpose built, hyper focused system or board game (what really is the difference after a certain point?).
>Sounds like a reasonable gameplay loop, how would players get rewarded though? Was thinking it might be like rescue firm vs rescue firms. So the more missions accomplished with minimum casualties or drawbacks, more dangerous missions and get gear will be given to the team.
Add a
DEBRIEFING stage.
I was deliberately loose because the genere/setting and base rules werent' really set, and it makes more sense to work with whatever setting.
It makes some sense to use existing settings and systems. EG Call of Cuthulu, where your team is to go after the archeologists who went to the MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS.
Multiple bosses.
Eg. modern government context.
POLICE chief.
>Two criminals taken into custody. Two died. Two escaped. Good enough for the situation.
Paramedics
>Four people extracted. Two more got out on their own. Two fatalities. Good job.
Assessor
>You weren't able to contain the damage and you lost three vehicles! Terrible job!
Mayor
>Two criminals stole a helicopter right in front of the TV cameras! Was that really the best you could do?
Just wanted to second this. Super fun as long as your players aren’t window-lickers.
>BAYWATCH RPG.
stat Pamela's floating devices
>Baywatch RPG.
I don't recall David Hasselhoff or Yasmine Blithe boarding a moving cocaine sub.
But I could absolutely picture David Hasselhof doing a submarine's worth of coke.
>that was the delivery for Mötley Crüe!
Oh no, the tour is over man!
I think it's a great concept.
My question for this kind of ideas is always the same:
How do you make the obstacles interesting, requiring meaningful choices, rather than just being solved with the roll of a dice?
For combat, the situation is clear, easily readable, the players can make informed choices and these decisions have a huge bearing on wether they lose or succeed and at what cost.
Natural obstacles in hazardous situations are a lot more of a black box, especially given how varied they are.
Hell, even just performing first aid is tricky to make it involve meaningful choices rather than just "roll to heal".
I have a very concrete example:
In a previous scenario, the PCs had to cross a cliff.
As a GM, I have two options:
>Either the degree of danger depends wether or not the players mention they take the necessary precautions ("we rope up before climbing") and have the necessary equipment.
>But then if the character is supposedly trained at climbing, it makes no sense for him to forget to do this. And it brings a (perhaps) unfair advantage to players with IRL skills in this area.
>Or they just roll to climb and then there is no meaningful choice.
>It also raises the question: "what happens if the roll is failed?". Having them die on a bad roll isn't good form. Perhaps they are just put in a worse position, but then how do they get away from it if it isn't with just another roll?
And even if somehow a solution can be found specifically for climbing, presumably every obstacle or so is going to be different, but have the same issue.
Yes, pic rel.
One benefit of this, is you will be able to completely railroad the game and choose what missions they go on, at least for a while.
I like to think of this in terms of DnD, give them some transportation like an airship or a boat. Give them equipment that will help, like a grapple cannon, a flood light, fire extinguisher, a cutting tool, maybe a flying carpet or broom, or some other means of movement.
Then come up with very specific “situations” they are put in, choices they have to make. I’m thinking of that old flash game War Bears, you had 4 or 5 bears, one with sword, one hacker, one with a gun, and one with explosives or something. The situations would be giant diasaster puzzles, with possible combat or dilemmas that occur.
Have them ear money based off how many people they rescue, in big chunks. Then between each rescue mission, have them upgrade their stuff, and give them down time activity time.
Might not work for a long time, but would be a good way to start a campaign. Maybe have them incur debt to pay for damaged ship, then have them hired for a big mission to rescue a single person, who they find, but runs away, and they have to delve into a different story tracking them down because they need proof of life for payment or will become debt fugitives. You could loop this person into a cult or foreign kingdom or anything.
Neat starting idea, levels 1-4
There are two components to dealing with every obstacle: character skill, and player skill. The tool and the hand that wields it. Both are important, and neither can be dismissed. You can make up for a bad tool (low character skill) with good technique (high player skill), and vice versa. However, any challenge must require both in at least some capacity.
Knowing about climbing *should* give the player an advantage. That's their player skill. If you got rid of that, then the true game (which is to say interesting decisions being made by the player) would end at character creation.
>And it brings a (perhaps) unfair advantage to players with IRL skills in this area.
That's why you play with people who actually know the genre you want to recreate in a game.
Honestly sounds like a lot of fun, but not suited to a long form campaign, which assumes a higher goal than whatever you're doing that week. Sounds like it'd be more of a series of episodic oneshots.
And there's n nothing wrong with that, of course. I just think it would be hard to direct the campaign to a conclusion.
A long form campaign wouldn't work well for something like that and would be better done as an episodic sort of deal. That said, you can always keep elements that pull forward for one scenario to another like if an situation was caused by a terrorist group or something then maybe they might show up again or you might even wind up rescuing the sabotuer.
I believe a game like that equally requires the pulp aspect to be interesting.
>Coast Guard Rescue Swimmer / Pararescue RPG
frick yeah
keep me posted OP
This is dope and has potential. Among your standard rescue from ships or weather,
>WW2 theme, hunt German U-Boats, Convoy escorts, Convoy rescue.
>Miami Vice City theme, Cuban migration humanitarian crisis, Drug enforcement, Piracy and hijackings
>Permits and Papers, checking compliance of safety measures, Fishing limits and environmental regulations
I'd add an issue: Think up a reason why all those people (as in, enough for the rescuing to be a regular job) got caught life-threatening situations through little/no fault of their own. Otherwise some players are just gonna go "welp, no point rescuing morons who are gonna get back into that shit anyway, natural selection do your thing!"
Plus, if you show the reason as a violation of established reality (say anomalies appear and places become Roadside Picnic zones or get dimensionally shifted around), make it rare or limited so the overall realism doesn't get thrown out along with it. Like you're fighting against the results of an unnatural disaster instead of constantly living in one which would shift the convention into magical post-apoc.
Then what about stuff like putting out a fire, or forensic, where you will very rarely run into a player (or even a GM!) with these skills?
And still, for the example I mentioned (climbing) once the few good practices are known, they are mostly the same every time. Not much meaningful choices to be had there either.
I'm assuming you meant to reply to
.
Usually it means transplanting the actual skill (climbing, forensics) into another, mental challenge, hopefully while retaining some resemblance between the two.
It's most often done for combat. The real-life skills (knowing how to swing a sword, footwork, making decisions in a split second) are handled by the character automatically (and informed by their stats), while the game substitutes other challenges (making deliberate tactical decisions, positioning, discussing battle plans with other players). They are clearly similar, but not quite the same (real combat is hectic and much less coordinated). They also demand player skill—stats alone won't save you if you don't know which abilities to use and when. There is no "Tactics" roll to win a battle. The game doesn't let you opt out of thinking, and player thinking translates directly into their battle prowess, bypassing character stats.
You need to do similar things for non-combat situations. Unfortunately, most RPG systems don't handle this for you, the DM. Yes, that means you need to be able to intuitively deconstruct a real-life skill, identify key decisions that go into it, find a way to represent these using your game system, and figure out how to plug character knowledge, stats and abilities into that. You usually need to figure it out on the fly, in response to player actions. Yes, it's ridiculous. If being good at real-life skill makes the player reasonably good at the game representation of that skill, you've succeeded.
As a few people have mentioned, getting through the player-character disconnect is the main struggle. I really like the point you make about player skill at the "Tactics Wargame" complementing character skill at actual combat. Trying to get the same dynamic with environmental hazards is tough. Here's a few examples of ways it might be done.
>Disasters as Resource Management Problems
The classic D&D dungeon was all about managing limited resources: HP and spell slots, torches and 10' poles. You could do the same thing with a big disaster (highrise inferno, sinking ship, mine collapse, etc.) The characters know how to use their limited equipment, and the players have to decide where to use them. Run it with a series of countdowns that are all going simultaneously.
>Disasters as Exploration
Again, similar to a dungeon: if the area the characters are in is sufficiently complex, just exploring through it gives the players important choices to make. Collapsed or flooded passages, impassable roads, or an unknown internal floorplan (especially when filled with smoke) turn everyday environments into natural mazes.
>Prioritization
Without combat, character skills are going to do more heavy lifting, so they should be filled out a little. A big part of the tactics game is target prioritization. Other skills could be use it too. Give your doctor a triage situation where they have to prioritize treating victims based on their symptoms. A sudden storm might leave multiple groups of hikers stranded in different locations, forcing your search-and-rescue ranger to choose who to track down first.
>Risk vs Reward
Heroic stories involve the characters putting themselves in danger, but it only makes for good gameplay if they're doing so knowing the risks. How deep into the capsized ferry do you want to go, knowing the victims may already be dead? Do you take the longer, safer route up the face, or the treacherous direct ascent?
(con't)
>Mystery
Forgot to include this one earlier. There's a whole genre of games that aren't combat centric, but revolve around solving a mystery of some kind. The hikers never checked in, but where did they go off the trail? The epidemic is spreading through the city, but who was patient zero? The spaceship is in a disabled and its orbit is decaying - where is the chief engineer?
It’s completely counter to the point of the setting, but what you’re describing is the High Programmers supplement to PARANOIA. It very specifically deals with every point you brought up, but assumes the players are goofy megalomaniacs more interested in backstabbing than solving problems. If you had the right group and a REALLY good sense of humor you could probably run a game where the goal is to solve problems for real.
>You need to do similar things for non-combat situations. Unfortunately, most RPG systems don't handle this for you, the DM.
That's exactly the crux of the question:
Wouldn't it be possible to design a system that could
1- at least help to do some of that legwork for the GM, even if it's in a gamey/abstracted way
2- for a wide-ish arrey of situations
A general system would be a silver bullet, yeah. But I would appreciate even the intermediary step of it being more common to model key non-combat skills in greater detail. Make the norm that DM doesn't have to invent interesting rules for disarming traps or wilderness survival at least.
Goblin Punch has a nice writeup about diplomacy: https://goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2023/03/how-to-handle-parley-as-osr-dm.html?m=1
>And still, for the example I mentioned (climbing) once the few good practices are known, they are mostly the same every time. Not much meaningful choices to be had there either.
And yet ever single fricking hiking season I hear about more morons who go to mountain trails and refuse to educate themselves in absolute basics or use a modicum of common sense. And every time I think "what a waste of resources and rescuer effort that could be better directed into saving someone who deserves it".
That's actually why I mentioned the issue: how are you gonna get more victims to save without going into "shit that's well-known and preventable" territory?
(not sure what forensics has to do with that though)
If you're in a rescue situation in an RPG scenario you're not focusing on the run of the mill rescues where someone does something stupid and you have to bail them out. That's assumed to already be the case.
The game is on an extrodinary situation like, this is the most convulted murder schemes where the perpetrator tried to make it look like an accident, fricked it up, and now they are both stuck on the side of a mountain in a cave and the home made explosives they planned to use is still active.
I think it could be cool
A Heist by any other name would smell as sweet.
A high-risk non-combat scenario, requiring a team of skilled individuals, complicated PC plans going awry and needing to adapt, drama between team members, and asshats in positions of power who could have prevented the entire scenario using an ounce of empathy.
Also they need massive fricking boots that make KH characters green with envy.
no. fine to have some rescue misions, but it's too narrow to make a campaign out of. go for a "rules-light" hipster bs game with fancy layout and trans activism, you'll sell a few hundred.
Just as you felt obligated to make that, I feel obligated to respond. We are acting in accordance with nature it seems.
the worst part of being a cynic is being right all the time
That's confirmation bias, you cynical dumbass.
>Do you suppose a game about rescue operations could be interesting?
Sur...
>I've been somewhat obsessed
Nope, it's going to be a clusterfrick, now drink bleach already
Don't say that, turbo autist can be the only one motivated enough to do the heavy lifting that other will copy later.
Does a dedicated system really need to be made to faciliate such a game? I suppose if you're going for a very specific kinid of feel I suppose and the idea of a board game was brought up as well but I could just as well imagine using D&D and you and the PCs going into pocket dimensions to rescue people as firing up Shadowrun and playing as Doc Wagon employees.
>Does a dedicated system really need to be made to faciliate such a game?
I don't know enough systems to answer if it is "needed". Maybe something "good enough" exist, I don't know.
But entertainment is a long list of autist putting effort to go from "good enough" to "better" or hit a different spot.
Maybe in the far future when mankind number in the trillions you'll have sub-genre of sub-genre for simulated TG mid-fantasy single-dimension rescue game.
Also nice art.
If I ever need a mech to navigate within a mega jungle biome built in a low gravity colony I know what I'll imagine.
https://chenlongque.artstation.com/
>Do you suppose a game about rescue operations could be interesting?
Interesting is subjective. For example, Settlers of Catan is something I find to be fun despite there being almost no fighting in it, but I recognize that others would turn their noses up at it because they can't (metaphorically) punch other players in the face, or some who would be interested but feel the game doesn't go into nearly enough detail that they would want (which would be something like simcity)
But as long as the gameplay is 'fun', there will be an audience.
The trick will be keeping the tension high. Keep a series of clocks running to indicate when a victim will die of suffocation/exposure/injury etc. and track actions in combat time. Make it so players feel like they need to account for every step and action.
That's a good idea. Give the players a starting prep time to assess the general situation, view an incomplete map of the area, select what gear they think they need, and organise the general rescue op. Then when they get to the area the timer starts. New information gets revealed, problems arise, resistance in some scenarios or complete lack thereof in others puts their plans into disarray.
Gonna get some sleep now but I wanted to mention that the DM can have multiple event timers running and not reveal them until the players discover them.
That's a good Cyberpunk or Traveler theme. Maybe Battletech if you RPG it with lots of 'Mech time.
I'm guessing you're the parent of a 3-year-old boy who's obsessed with Paw Patrol?
Or an old Thunderbird's fan.
that's just first responders
https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/392831/first-responders
the cypher system isn't for everyone, though. and it's a fairly grounded setting, so more fantastic or epic disasters would require some retooling
>you are one of the select few who have been granted access to the new and improved DriveThruRPG
So they're either starting the customer relationship by lying, or they're forcing some nu-shittified version on a random customer who never asked for one and doesn't want one, without a visible option to decline. Thanks for vindicating my decision to not use your site, I guess.
i browse mostly. the site is ok for the most part, but there's definitely glitches they haven't worked out. the pdf for the game is on /Cypher, anyways
It doesn't seem suited for long-running narratives, that's going to be a turn-off for some people.
Why would you make it into a long-run campaign. That's like saying fighting the monster of the week is bad. Not every game session has to trek through some DM's failed attempt at a novel.
different people and different strokes innit
Sky isn't even the limit.
>show should be another terrible 3DCG cash-in
>creators actually love the original series and do their hardest to capture the feeling of the original Thunderbirds while adding action sequences puppets just aren't capable of
I hate to admit it, Thunderbirds GO had soul.
>Not heroically fighting major forest fires with your mecha animal bros.
>Not doing deep sea rescue and salvage and military operations with your robo whale bros.
Let's build one OP I'm down, what we'll need to decide
>Is it class or Skill based, or both
>Gameplay loop has to be something fun
>Let's have a randomized scenario load out
>Players need to feel like their characters need urgency in these scenarios
>Promare comes to mind but less homosex flashy stuff
>Need good social mechanics, they can navigate through the map clearly but get clapped up by interacting with frenzied victims
Also a name for this genre will be great
I'll gladly help out if one is being built.
Seems totally feasible to me. You just follow the same structure as your regular mystery of the week show. Rescue ops get sent out on runs, sometimes pick up clues connecting them together, eventually the players find a big reveal during one of the ops that ties it all together or piece it together themselves. Like getting sent out to leveled skyscrapers and office blocks all the time, finding weird damage all over the place, bam: secret kaiju the government was keeping under wraps, group can leak evidence or side with the cover-up. Or rescuing a series of bombing events and the group has to collect as much evidence as they can to help track the bomber down. Or having to rescue the victims from the SAW movies, or whatever you want. You can easily have a running narrative thread through a whole campaign, or just do rescue-of-the-week stuff and focus more on group dynamics like working under budget cuts or government meddling.
The genre flavor will have a big impact on all of those things. Although channeling a bit of MHA I could see a game based around capes whose specialty is specifically search and rescue while the regular heroes do fight the world ending threats.
Pretty sure there's a trauma team one whose individual session sheets are the clients with random tables relating to situation-specific disruptions during evac (and the specifics of their worsening condition).
Sounds like a solid idea, by making retrieval the main objective you have a nice 'consequence' mechanic that doesn't directly ruin characters. You can even go so far as to have factors in "customer satisfaction" depending on general treatment and completion of secondary objectives (find the research I left before we leave!), with some clients being locked behind whether you've garnered a higher or lower reputation (low-rep jobs could involve more wetwork and skeezier clientele, high-rep for lucrative highbrow cases but are much more scrutinizing of your performance).
Tired of fantasy slop, OP or someone run these ideas
I can actually confirm this.
I ran an episodic campaign of Cyberpunk (Red Rules, 2070 setting since Edgerunners had dropped and everyone was hungry for it) where the party consisted of a pilot team of Trauma Team ‘glory boys’ recorded and shilled for PR purposes like a (heavily edited by the corp) season of COPS. Everyone had a great time including me as DM.
My recommendation is to put a lot of work into the scenarios you throw them in. Think Mogadishu from black hawk down or a ship like in the perfect storm. Downtime / after hours / getting coffee between rescue calls was also clutch for keeping the players invested in each other’s characters. Helps for drama. (Do you let billy the PC die on the burning oil rig if it means saving those 5 orphans?)
Godspeed OP. Have fun.