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Medical Roleplay: how to make it fun-er?


latte
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Hi guys, it’s latte back again.

 

I know i made a status update asking the same question if medical roleplay was fun- but I was wondering, what would medical roleplay fun for you guys, either as a patient or the medic in question ?? I'm simply trying to gauge at the community's thoughts, as well as to most likely incorperate some ideas within the future. 

 

I personally like when the medic involves the patient within the roleplay , and asks them questions instead of just straightforward doing a couple of healing emotes then done, making it more engaging for the person on the other side of the screen, opposed to just going afk. I also think tying your style in within the sort of nation you're in would make for interesting results as well, like if (and they might) Yong Ping had its own historical-cultural medical techniques opposed to Haense medicine. I just think standardizing everything and seeing the same sort of medical roleplay everywhere is boring . At the opposite end of the spectrum, I don't think people should rp there being medical miracles [lest alchemy] , or being 21st century doctors. It's just unrealistic and unplausable. idk just my thoughts, you thoughts?

 

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Personal hot take. The level of depth you go into the roleplay really defines the immersion of any niche RP, medical roleplay included. This by no means that fluff equals depth. Both parties have to be equally engaged in the act - if I'm wounded and things are just happening to me, I have no choice but to sit and watch you type out paragraphs. I really like the attention to nuance that you mentioned, such as different cultures having different procedures for healing. A lot of meaningful change can come about if we view this as a niche of roleplay to be respected rather than dealt with after an event or battle.

 

For instance, I heard about the aftermath of an event in Luciensberg where wounded soldiers were shuttled to the medics in an absolute disaster of a scenario. They weren't quickly healed and sent home - it was a gruesome ordeal that had roleplay consequences for the foreseeable future. Much of that begins with the depth of what you're roleplaying, and how much you can own your personal space of the medical niche. A good place to start would be with a guide. Include medical terminology, but make it appropriate for the magical/medieval context of the world. Incorporate different healing practices into this, such as holy magic, druidic magic, and even plain old medieval solutions. Give it the depth that it deserves. The rest comes after.

 

Here's a guide I've admired for a long time. Good place to start.

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

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I feel like each nation having their own lil ways of treating patients would def add alot more flavor to medical rp, im certain some nations have begun doing so, but I would love seeing posts about how a nation treats patient in their own way, it just makes medical rp in general look less bland and instead more fun to people looking to become clinicians irp, as well as patients since they'd have alot more to see than just the same old procedure being done on them.

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34 minutes ago, latteTM said:

Hi guys, it’s latte back again.

 

I know i made a status update asking the same question if medical roleplay was fun- but I was wondering, what would medical roleplay fun for you guys, either as a patient or the medic in question ?? I'm simply trying to gauge at the community's thoughts, as well as to most likely incorperate some ideas within the future. 

 

I personally like when the medic involves the patient within the roleplay , and asks them questions instead of just straightforward doing a couple of healing emotes then done, making it more engaging for the person on the other side of the screen, opposed to just going afk. I also think tying your style in within the sort of nation you're in would make for interesting results as well, like if (and they might) Yong Ping had its own historical-cultural medical techniques opposed to Haense medicine. I just think standardizing everything and seeing the same sort of medical roleplay everywhere is boring , idk just my thoughts. 

 

I would have to agree with you about it being engaging for the patient, Latte. It also works in reverse too. I have multiple characters that are healers, all with different ways of approaching things and handling issues. Across all of these characters, I've had multiple people that, as soon as whichever medic or healer I'm RPing as, get there and tell me in LOOC that they're just gonna AFK through it. On my side, the healer's side, this is just kind of disheartening. You don't even get the chance to interact and involve the other person in the process.

 

Something that I personally enjoy is fitting technique to the characters and wherever they live. Writing out medical things as that character is pretty interesting, in my opinion. Some of the most fun I've had with medical RP is teaching people how to do things and writing out things as that character would.

 

It's also been a great learning experience. There are plants that I didn't realize existed in real life until people told me they were real life plants. Like Witch Hazel. I had no idea before RPing as a medic.

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Medical roleplay is fun for me as a doctor because you are actually learning how to describe things better within your emotes. Having the medical roleplay gives players the ability to become better descriptors and with basic medicine, how to care for people. Some people oocly know nothing about medicine and roleplaying it would actually teach them. If it weren’t for the LOTC medical roleplay I’ve done, I never would’ve learned how to treat a concussion before ETMS come. 

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Being a bad doctor always helps. Doing incorrect things like leeches and bloodletting is always good RP. Give them an insane amount of opiates and drugs. Prescribe tobacco as you don’t know any better. Prescribe Mummia.

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Medic RP is already fun, its mostly up to the patient and how well they understand how the body works etc. 

 

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ive grown to hate a lot of medical rp for how modern people make it

 

medical roleplay is almost often used for people to erase conflict or to avoid consequences for their character to have, as if an hour of a sea of emotes is sufficient for their character to be immediately back on their feet and themselves again; such a mindset has made me disinterested in RPing as a medic since that's what it feels like those characters are valued most for, as a means to take away problems someone doesn't want to deal with.  I often refer to medics as "clean up" crews for events; they don't partake in the fun part, but lick everyone's wounds that did so they can return to their standard hero or slice of life rp

 

Of course, the text above also highly depends on the patient too - but I had rarely come across someone willing to deal with their RP consequences or would be willing to emote their injury's effects on their body correctly.  I think that if I were to ever get back into medical RP, I would be less passive in watching my patients trying to brush off a stab to their gut

 

sure, not all injuries are severe, but come on

 

i recall seeing former medic rpers in haense talk about the stress of their positions, about how much they need to study oocly (as in literally going through mayo clinic pdfs on eye diagrams or learning about the nervous system).  LotC should NOT be like that, it's making something more complicated than it needs to be for a minecraft server

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I feel like both parties need to get a sense of how longlasting injuries can be even for minor reasons, and get into it on both ends. That involves playing with the timescale of lotc a little too. If you quickly heal a person up with little follow up other than "give it a month or so" it feels like they're being healed to full HP in an RPG style, and if they're not online for the next two days then they can just come back fully healed. You need some kinda narrative around recovery, and both parties have to put effort in for that. There also has to be some engagement with being injured and how it affects a person beyond getting a cool scar from an epic battle or losing an arm.

 

After my persona broke a nose and a nearby healer made up a bandage (getting involved in nearby injury roleplay is also good to spark medical roleplay), I then kept that for a week and spoke about it in roleplay bc it would realistically be both annoying and obvious. (Use prefixes too that helps immensely) Even though it was minor, it would seriously impact my persona's life for a while. This was more of a personal preference thing, but I also decided to give my persona a permanent scar for it, even though it was the result of rolling 1 to throw a rock and getting hit in the face -- not all people get anime backstories for this stuff. My main point being: the healer noticed the injury and initiated the roleplay, and I then kept it up based on that.

 

I also think people need to be more willing to have longterm, disabling injuries -- it helps on both ends by allowing more opportunities to roleplay with a medic and allows for more impact onto personal roleplay. I decided that another now-shelved persona would have permanent pain issues after a leg injury. I then stole medicine from a clinic and left enough clues to have them figure out what went on -- they then replied by giving me medicine. Longterm stuff provides more opportunities for roleplay on both ends, and also opportunities for more engaging roleplay than "I stitch you up now you won't die"

 

Finally, I touched on this earlier but I really do think people should treat "minor" injuries in a more in depth manner, and actively choose to have their persona injured when they realistically should. In a recent event one person's persona was injured due to a poor roll, but also emoted having a sore throat after nearly drowning -- this gave me an opportunity to roleplay making tea to help with it. Additionally, I wasn't described as injured by the host's emotes, but realistically would be after using a too large weapon for a while, and now I'm planning a whole event based on the fact my persona has badly injured hands and can't use them like before while they recover.

 

To sum up, I think both parties need to put effort in for injuries beyond dramatic ones made in combat that heal in a day and only scar if its cool, and that involves both the healer treating them, explaining how they'll affect the person and what they need to do from now on, and on the injured person to allow themselves to be injured in the first place and to keep up their end of recovering.

 

But again, you can't expect someone to spend a week recovery roleplaying after every PVP conflict, so if you're active a lot in battle stuff then simplify as much as you want without metagaming ect. It's all down to preference for how much depth ya want. Just don't expect a healer to put much depth in either.

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One way that I've always thought would make medical RP better would be destroying an item each time after it's used, whether that be making an actual crutch item to give someone or destroying herbs after use. Broad "fixing" emotes are generally low quality but often times the player being healed accepts them anyways. People doing field medicine should have to really think about if the player is worth the herbs they're using, and if it's worth using bandages on this soldier when they may run out before they can fix the next.

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I hate medical rp because it bores the hell out of me. After asking the patient to identify the problem I drop long ass emotes after emotes of fixing the issue. I do go into details but not too much cuz I'm slow typer. I try my best to strike a convo with a patient but it's often hard when they are seriously injured 

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7 hours ago, latteTM said:

I also think tying your style in within the sort of nation you're in would make for interesting results as well, like if (and they might) Yong Ping had its own historical-cultural medical techniques opposed to Haense medicine.

 

I completely agree, though, I enjoy medical rp in Yong Ping! Something we take part in is acupuncture, which we've had a few people come and seek that out especially and people are usually forced to deal with injury rp or find someone for it, cause the medics get paid to heal them ^ Implemented the equivalent of healthcare, fun times.

And the Kha have an interesting factor on both medicine and diets, I know they have an entire post on it, too. I find it really interesting, cause it's stuff to prevent overheating, salves and certain herbs used medically, like different variations of cold-based things if say a Kha is well, overheating, which is a problem sometimes due to fur and what might be going on.

 

On another note, I have a medic persona from an entirely different place who I've been playing two irl years now, it usually depends on who I'm healing, if that makes sense. Sometimes people don't want to interact or don't know how, other times I'm going into details and asking them how their day went and the rp goes on for a while but it's interesting. Generally, to each their own and all ^

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I'll preface this by saying I used to hate medical roleplay to the point where I entirely avoided it at every given opportunity - and I am a graduate nurse.

 

I got into it though. All it took was a simple alteration in my mindset. I used to hate it because the patients (generally) don't know how to RP their injuries and lotc medicine is just entirely unrealistic as much as people try to twist it to be similar to modern medicine.

 

I just had to get it through my head that this is a medieval fantasy server and that medics or doctors are simply a mechanism to ensure that the players don't randomly die when they don't want to. Medical RP isn't supposed to be realistic, it's supposed to be a practice where the player feels that their medical needs have been seen to and that someone cares about their fate. It's an opportunity to pull someone in to have a moment of solid roleplay for a time. Ultimately, I have stuck to the mindset of "whatever the player wants to happen will happen".

 

I pull the player in to the RP, I speak to them whilst I tend to their wounds and I do the best that I can in a given situation. I've found it much more enjoyable this way. Medical RP is not meant to drag down a healer or a patient. It's not meant to force people to RP crazy long lasting crippling injury or to force people to throw away RP items. It's just roleplay, like the rest of the server is. Once I was more relaxed with my mindset, I found the roleplay far more rewarding.

 

 

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16 hours ago, BobBox said:

One way that I've always thought would make medical RP better would be destroying an item each time after it's used, whether that be making an actual crutch item to give someone or destroying herbs after use. Broad "fixing" emotes are generally low quality but often times the player being healed accepts them anyways. People doing field medicine should have to really think about if the player is worth the herbs they're using, and if it's worth using bandages on this soldier when they may run out before they can fix the next.

 

As it should be. Once you apply a herb (or anything along the lines), be it in a paste or powder, it's logical for the item to be either burned or taken away from your inventory by an ST. My main issue with this type of RP, as a medic RPer myself, is that on almost every occasion the medic has to singlehandedly 'carry' the roleplay with little to no description of the patient's wounds: an issue that is caused by 'x' amount of players who choose to just let the medic do the work themselves without putting much thought into their emotes (yes, I do understand that the interaction from a patient varies on their injuries) and giving a VERY superficial description of their current state. This leads to poor, boring RP and that is one of the very reasons I have been slowly drifting away from this type of RP after having practiced it for a year.


I can't add anything else besides that I wholeheartedly agree with the comments regarding that the quality and capability for this kind of RP to improve relays on both parties for the RP to be enjoyable and further endorsed by the community. 

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Cultural means to find a solution in a medical problem are always great. Perhaps you could be a Radagast the Brown type character and be frantically applying herbal salves and alchemical remedies whilst muttering spooky incantations. Or take a barbaric approach by using medieval medicine. I think it is important to keep things interesting, and remember the law of cause and consequence. Nothing should happen without repercussion... this may seem like an objective take, but there should be no perfect fix for any problem, even if the most holy of magicks is used.

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