Okay. I specifically need a ttrpg suitable for a one shot that is basically an episode of House MD. Thoughts? Probably not Heartbeats.
Theme: Medical TTRPG Ideas!
Here are some Tabletop Games, Systems or Supplements that might help you run that controversial medical drama that you're looking for.
Exploratory Medicine, by Rupert Spore.
Your experimental care unit explores avant-garde medical treatments for desperate patients. Exploratory medical procedures are imperfect, nebulous, and risky. Your patients may die or have complications. It will be your responsibility to provide the best care possible and to console the patient if anything should happen.
Exploratory Medicine is a one-page journaling ttrpg that requires you to track a patient's stability score. Based on the results of 2d6 rolls, your patient will either get slightly better, or experience complications.
The pros of this game is that it's one-page and designed for a short play time. The cons are that it's designed for one player, so you'll likely have to hack it a bit to make it suitable for a multiplayer game. However, it's pay-what-you-want with a suggested price of $1 so it's not too costly to check out!
Fae's Anatomy, by Hebanon Games. [DrivethruRPG] [Website]
Anybody can be an expert in Fae’s Anatomy. The game is set in a world where all forms of magic, spirituality, and mysticism are science. Science? Just another form of wizardry. Quackary, superstition, and pseudo-science work, but so does chemotherapy, antibiotics, and sound medicine.
Fae's Anatomy: A Melodramatic Medical Mystery is meant to replicate medical dramas such as House and Grey's Anatomy, but with a supernatural twist!
The game comes with a handy little app that can help the Patient randomly generate a supernatural disease for the Providers to diagnose. Each disease has three factors: Category, Family and Disease. The Providers must determine all three factors in order to figure out a solution for whatever is ailing their Patient. The app has a progression tracker for the Patient, and background information for the Providers, which reduces the amount of time required for character generation and session planning!
The Ward: Acute Care Edition, by Magpie Games.
This is a game about life and death... and the stress of dealing with everything that happens in between.
The Ward is a Powered-by-the-Apocalypse game about the drama we usually see in medical shows. It's less about the procedure of diagnosing a problem and more about keeping your cool in a high-stress environment. The game comes with playbooks for your character, as does most PbtA games, but you can customize your character's stats, specialty, and addictions. There's also a few special mechanics. One mechanic, called push, may help or hinder a player by adding or subtracting to their roll. Another, called stress, acts like a player's hit points: you mark stress as your day gets worse. Stress incurs conditions, which inhibits your character's ability to do things.
If you're looking to replicate the stress of working in a medical facility, and you want some control over what kind of Ward you're working in (whether it be realistic, fantastical, or futuristic), this might be the game for you.
Doctors Without Sectors by Fandible. [Website]
Doctors Without Sectors is a Star Wars supplement that focuses on the difficulties of medicine during wartime and disaster. Inspired heavily by the real-world organization Doctors Without Borders, Doctors Without Sectors explores the challenges of trying to do no harm in an ever-changing hostile situation.
While Doctors Without Sectors is primarily focused on providing ways to roleplay medical emergencies in the Star Wars setting, it also provides some really useful tables for setting the scene for your medical drama. Sometimes the biggest challenges in a medical setting have more to do with an ongoing outside situation than the actual medical problems in front of you. After all, setting a broken leg in a regular hospital is very different from setting a broken leg in the middle of a war zone. If you have a rules system that you're already comfortable with, you could use this supplement to make your story focused on medical emergencies, drawing from the roll tables to get plot threads and add nuance to the characters you put together.
Redacted Materials (External Containment Bureau) by Mythic Gazetteer.
While External Containment Bureau is a game about paranormal investigators, the Redacted Materials design doc might be incredibly useful for a medical drama. It is designed to help you roleplay investigative scenarios that: reduce prep for both players and the GM, encourage generative solutions, and provides resolution mechanics that tie the action to the consequences in the characters' world around them. External Containment Bureau costs $20, but the Redacted Materials Hacking Guide, which is found on the game webpage, is free! The rules are a tweaked version of Forged in the Dark so if you are familiar with Forged games, this should be an easy enough adaptation. The con: you'll have to do a little bit of game design before you have something that you can sit down and play.
