Surgical Mistakes Options

[SpellBinder]

We all know mistakes can happen, despite how much doctors and other medical personnel try to be perfect something [bad] happens at some point. What I'm curious about is what people here think the odds are of something like this happening in Shadowrun? I'm leaving this open to all editions, but my primary interest is in SR4a.

Now I know there's the Mystery Mod negative quality, but that's not what I'm talking about here. No, what I'm talking about is something like nameless-shadowrunner gets shot up and goes to a street doc to get patched up and wakes up with a new [to him/her] datajack in the head that wasn't asked for, or a corp school brat goes in for a Silky Skin treatment and instead gets Fiberoptic Hair.

[Draco18s]

Or one I heard the other day (admittedly this was from the kid's mother, not a doctor): "He doesn't have a fracture, he's got a broken arm."

There's also one I read about on Not Always Working (I'd link, but the entire family of sites appears to be down) about someone with a serious allergy to a common pain medication. So they got an armband, which every nurse then proceeded to ignore (citing "there's no way you could know that, honey, I'm a trained medical professional!"), causing the patient's arm to break out in a rash as the drug traveled up their veins.

Might be this one (thanks TV Tropes!)

[Mantis]

Isn't this what glitches and critical glitches represent? I know the default rules say just give them some extra damage by why not just use weird medical complications instead? Just be sure to tell your players this is what you are doing so they don't get all bent because you changed the rules on them.

[hermit]

Might be this one (thanks TV Tropes!)

Appears to be down.

[Draco18s]

Appears to be down.

Yes, I think I mentioned that.

[Sendaz]

Have you been injured on a Run and it wasn't your fault?

Have you or a loved one woken up with a cranial bomb installed by a shadowy corporation?

Then contact us at ShadowLawyers4U.



On a more serious note, I know what you are talking about Draco.

My wife is allergic to penicillin and there has been a number of times she has been in hospital and even been given the band clearly marking her allergy, but then the doctors just start prescribing penicillin and I have to track them down and have them change it is just appalling.

Granted it is the NHS, so they are often overworked and not always paying as much attention as they should due to workload, but this sort of thing can kill.

[SpellBinder]

Isn't this what glitches and critical glitches represent? I know the default rules say just give them some extra damage by why not just use weird medical complications instead? Just be sure to tell your players this is what you are doing so they don't get all bent because you changed the rules on them.

Maybe, but I wasn't exactly looking for something like a base game mechanic in something like this. Glitches aside it seems that maybe doctors are God and never make mistakes?

[Sendaz]

I would say mistakes still happen, so long as you have a (meta)human element in the equation, there is always a chance for error.

However, most of them so long as they were not fatal would be correctable in short order, assuming the proper facilities are available.

That said, this would be more down to GM fiat than any hard mechanic as to how and when they occur.

[Mantis]

Maybe, but I wasn't exactly looking for something like a base game mechanic in something like this. Glitches aside it seems that maybe doctors are God and never make mistakes?

Could be. You can look up how often those mistakes happen per 100 or 1000 surgeries or something and come up with some sort of odds from that. Create a mechanic from there. I suppose it depends on how often you actually expect it to come up too. If your players have it happen more than once in a given campaign they might feel they are some of the unluckiest people alive. "Why is it every street doc we go to seems to always install the damn cyber eyes without color enabled but with the optional cortex bomb? Like, what are the odds of that happening anyway?"
If you want it for a plot device then no mechanic is needed, you can just say it happened and now the Johnson the players are talking to wants it fixed.

Something else to consider though, is how easy it is to heal in SR. So maybe medical mistakes just don't happen, thanks to things like the medkit systems providing up to the second diagnostics and feedback. Maybe in the 2070s they've medical tech down to such a fine art that mistakes are now a 1 in a million chance. Not really keeping with the dystopian future but the rules support that view.

[KCKitsune]

I would go with what Mantis said and add in each Doctor has an Agent or two going over his orders and catching mistakes like Sendaz wife's allergy to penicillin.

[SpellBinder]

So I guess unless hacking is involved, or someone is dumber than a retarded troll, there's next to no chance of someone waking up with a new commlink in their head that they didn't ask for.

Trying to figure an in-story way to have a magician start considering some cyber. Had originally thought of an attack from a vampire and losing a point of Essence from that, but Augmentation is quite clear that something like this doesn't leave an "Essence Hole" that could be filled with implants.

[Sendaz]

well, part of the disconnect in the game is there are no real rules on permanent damage, ie you never have a hand blown off from a gunshot/grenade explosion, so yeah there is no rule mechanic to suddenly have a need for some cyber.

That said though, I almost always recommend that a mage sooner or later spend a little ess on a good set of Rating 3-4 cybereyes.

Why? Because having a combination of low light/flare comp/vision enhancement/vision magnification and thermo pretty much means being able to see things anytime/anywhere which is a real boon when casting a spell.

I usually throw in the smartlink too, because sometimes it's smarter to use a gun than sling a spell and every bit helps since you probably don't have an uber skill in this.

[bannockburn]

Trying to figure an in-story way to have a magician start considering some cyber. Had originally thought of an attack from a vampire and losing a point of Essence from that, but Augmentation is quite clear that something like this doesn't leave an "Essence Hole" that could be filled with implants.

Well, the cellular repair gene therapy would restore that essence, but leave the magic lowered. As a result, the mage could start thinking about the quick and easy power boost of trauma dampers and / or cybereyes, especially in a peer situation where someone already has the ware. OTOH, this would also lower the current magic rating even further, but if it's background story, who cares. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[...] there are no real rules on permanent damage, ie you never have a hand blown off from a gunshot/grenade explosion

But there are. Augmentation, p. 120, Optional Rule: Severe Wounds.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

well, part of the disconnect in the game is there are no real rules on permanent damage, ie you never have a hand blown off from a gunshot/grenade explosion, so yeah there is no rule mechanic to suddenly have a need for some cyber.

Not True (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) - SR4A has those rules, but they are optional.

That said though, I almost always recommend that a mage sooner or later spend a little ess on a good set of Rating 3-4 cybereyes.

Why? Because having a combination of low light/flare comp/vision enhancement/vision magnification and thermo pretty much means being able to see things anytime/anywhere which is a real boon when casting a spell.

I usually throw in the smartlink too, because sometimes it's smarter to use a gun than sling a spell and every bit helps since you probably don't have an uber skill in this.

1 to 2 Essence worth of Cyber is always a boon to those of the Awakened and/or Emergent persuasions. SR4A was the best system for such things, since the 'ware actually, you know, Helped rather than Hindered. Ahh well... *shrug*

[Lionhearted]

Kinda in the same vein of thinking, I've been wondering for a long time how removing implants work... I mean the game system encourage you to upgrade as you go along... kinda like it's gear, but it just doesnt make sense to me how you would remove say... most bioware? have a neutralising agent that makes the flesh normal? cut out the flesh and stitch on some normal unaugmented one? how does that even work for invasive implants like synaptic boosters? or the most obvious example I can come up with... what kind of trouble are you in when you need to get your yearly upgrade for your implanted commlink? you better hope you put it in the arm or something because getting it out of the head sound really quite cumbersome to do some hardware upgrades...

[SpellBinder]

Regarding the commlink implant, and I've mentioned this in another post somewhere years ago, I see it more like an adapter to the brain and body rather than the whole thing being wired in. To upgrade the commlink itself you just have to open it to remove the commlink hardware and plug a new one in, like swapping the game cartridge (the commlink) of an old NES (the implant).

Bioware... yeah, that one's more questionable as it's not exactly hardware that's replacing flesh but synthesized flesh itself. Already we've got documented medical proof that the human body will slowly overtake a transplanted organ, so in a way it's possible that a bioware implant will slowly be absorbed by the body. Whether or not it's still functioning would be another question entirely, and I kinda doubt most shadowrunners will live long enough to find that one out.

As for my character thoughts, I'm thinking I'll use a similar SIN glitch (kinda like the Spammed negative quality) to cause something to happen and get an implant by mistake.

[Sendaz]

Call the NQ 'Should have checked the fine print' (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

it can imply either the item was part of a package or the doc installing didn't look too closely at the work order. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Kinda in the same vein of thinking, I've been wondering for a long time how removing implants work... I mean the game system encourage you to upgrade as you go along... kinda like it's gear, but it just doesn't make sense to me how you would remove say... most bioware? have a neutralising agent that makes the flesh normal? cut out the flesh and stitch on some normal unaugmented one? how does that even work for invasive implants like synaptic boosters? or the most obvious example I can come up with... what kind of trouble are you in when you need to get your yearly upgrade for your implanted commlink? you better hope you put it in the arm or something because getting it out of the head sound really quite cumbersome to do some hardware upgrades...

Depends upon your version of Upgrade path. If you determine that the old must be removed to replace the new, that is a far different thing than grafting additional neural paths (or whatever the organic system you are upgrading) to go from one rating to another.

Ahhhh, the headware Comlink... Easy, just have a system like Scorpius in Farscape. Press a button and it slides out of the cranium so that you can remove and upgrade the device, and then replace it and let it slide back into the skull. Or just go with SpellBinder's solution. Does not have to be all that difficult, really. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[kzt]

People are not going to be installing expensive gear in you unless you have paid for it. In SR a street doc is not going to leave it in you for free.

Accidents happen, but they are typically going to be disasters. Like operating on the wrong limb or doing the entirely wrong surgery on you. These have the secondary effect of not fixing the whole reason you are in surgery to start with. Sometimes you get things like cut blood vessels or similar. These generally will ruin your entire weekend.

I know people going in for hand surgery to use a sharpie to mark the hand not-to be operated on with "other hand" in block letters.

The fact that this happens in real life doesn't mean that I wouldn't walk out of a game where this happened to a character of mine. Life is to short to spend it with jerks.

[Sengir]

Ahhhh, the headware Comlink... Easy, just have a system like Scorpius in Farscape. Press a button and it slides out of the cranium so that you can remove and upgrade the device, and then replace it and let it slide back into the skull. Or just go with SpellBinder's solution. Does not have to be all that difficult, really. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

It's also how cranial decks were described in Shadowtech, you could even swap out individual chips.

[Glyph]

People are not going to be installing expensive gear in you unless you have paid for it. In SR a street doc is not going to leave it in you for free.

Accidents happen, but they are typically going to be disasters. Like operating on the wrong limb or doing the entirely wrong surgery on you. These have the secondary effect of not fixing the whole reason you are in surgery to start with. Sometimes you get things like cut blood vessels or similar. These generally will ruin your entire weekend.

I know people going in for hand surgery to use a sharpie to mark the hand not-to be operated on with "other hand" in block letters.

The fact that this happens in real life doesn't mean that I wouldn't walk out of a game where this happened to a character of mine. Life is to short to spend it with jerks.

Yeah, bizarre accidents may happen in real life, but in a game, they only happen by GM fiat. And augmented characters get picked on enough.

[Tias]

Augmentation specifically mentions that Evo has Crashcart doctors working via telepresence through drones, and that "since hours have gone up and personnel has gone down, medical mistakes have been on the rise".

I'd mess with players using Crashcart because it's too tempting not too (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Sendaz]

Cop On Duty: How's the patient Doctor.

Kirk: He's gonna make it.

Cop On Duty: He? You came in with a woman.

Kirk: One little mistake. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)