Tuesday and Wednesday evening I sat at the Red Cross building in San Francisco, taking a class in Basic First Aid and CPR. It’s the first time I’ve ever actually done so. And while I don’t want to imply that I spent the class sessions thinking of ways to milk a game out of the course materials, I had a lot of gaming stuff to think about after the class was done.
I’ve come to the conclusion that every Player, GM and Game Designer should take a First Aid course from the Red Cross. Arguably, everyone everywhere should take at least a CPR class. Sure, it’s handy knowledge to have when someone chokes on a nacho flavored corn chip. But there’s much more to it than that.
How many times have you run into this:
You’re playing a modern era game, where there’s no magical healing abilities in the party (Maybe 1920s Call of Cthulhu). The party has a designated medic who may be an actual doctor or an EMT, or even an actual field medic. Due to bad luck, the medic gets hit and goes down in an unconscious heap.
Player A : “Anyone have First Aid?”
Player B : “My default is a 30, I can try.”
It may even go further.
Player B : “Ok, my default is a 30, I rolled a 2.”
GM : “The Medic gets 1d6/2 hit points back and you revive them.”
Medic : “Can I use my Medicine roll now that I’m awake?”
And soon before you know it, what was a near-fatal fall is brushed off to some bruising and a close call.
I know games are supposed to be able heroes and so on. But the thing about humans is, we’re much more fragile than that. This should be reflected in our games.
I’m not going to turn this into a post that tears down any game due to a lack of realism in wound management. But having just come out of the class with these thoughts, I wanted to share a few things that might help.
Take A Class Yourself
This is the best piece of advice I can offer. A little bit of training can go a long way and you never know when it’s going to come in useful. Additionally, you will get a better sense for the limits of First Aid training and what you are taught. Go to http://www.redcross.org/ and click on “Preparing and Getting Trained” to find classes near you.
“Default” Means “Untrained”
If you have never taken a formal First Aid course or learned First Aid in Boy Scouts, you have a default First Aid skill. That means everything you know about treating wounds you picked up in school, from your mom, or from watching tv. This is EXTREMELY limited information that more or less means “Apply Pressure,” “Cold Water For a First Degree Burn”, and “Call 911.” You might also have something in there like “Keep Them Warm” and “Put Cornstarch On A Bee Sting.” That’s just about everything a default First Aid skill will give you.
Basic First Aid Training Means Stabilize
Your mileage may vary on this one. Looking back at the course I just took, I sat in a classroom for seven hours over two nights, and learned basic First Aid, CPR and AED use. That is a lot of material to cover in seven hours, and most of it consisted of driving home one main point: that your job is to keep things from getting worse until someone with better training comes to relieve you. Currently, the average response time for an ambulance in San Francisco is 8 minutes. So keeping someone calm, covering a wound, performing CPR if necessary, it’s something that’s done for a short period of time until the professionals get there.
We didn’t learn how to put a dislocated shoulder back in place. We didn’t learn how to set a broken arm. We didn’t learn how to stitch up a wound. We didn’t even learn how to clean a wound. What we learned was how to take control of the situation and how to try to keep things from getting worse until the ambulance arrives.
Giving First Aid Takes Time
Even a professional isn’t going to be able to give First Aid in combat rounds. If your character is giving or receiving First Aid, they’re essentially out of the scene unless they stop. It takes time to dress a wound or tie a sling, even for a professional. In particular, with combat rounds, if you ARE in combat, a trained professional’s first task will be to move the patient to a safer location for both of them. That would essentially remove them from combat anyway.
Recovery Takes Time
It can take at least a couple weeks to recover fully from an injury that doesn’t break bones or damage organs. It can take months to recover from a gunshot to the shoulder, and there may be long-term effects. Serious injuries require long term medical care to deal with infection and complications. We have all played in games where characters have gotten beaten up pretty badly, rested for a couple days and then started jumping around on rooftops. It doesn’t work that way.
What To Do As A GM
As a GM, you might feel handcuffed now. If the characters get badly hurt and have to be written out of the story, things can get complicated fast. One effective tactic I’ve seen used in this area is to specify severe injuries to a limb, such as a badly broken arm or leg. This can allow you to keep the character around (hobbling on a cane or with an arm in a sling) while driving home the seriousness of the injury (such as when they need to run away, or pull someone back from the cliff). It makes no difference how you choose to handle it as a GM – you may ignore all this completely – as long as it’s consistent. You shouldn’t feel like you need to make injuries and recovery 100% realistic, but it can be helpful to know when things have crossed into the absurd.
Taking the class was a good experience for me, and one I recommend to anyone. If you’re a game designer, a gm or a role player, you can get a little extra use out of the class by bringing some realism into your games. You might find your characters treating potentially hazardous situations with a little more respect.
