{"id":1513,"date":"2019-08-16T11:00:44","date_gmt":"2019-08-16T15:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/?p=1513"},"modified":"2021-11-16T00:38:42","modified_gmt":"2021-11-16T05:38:42","slug":"five-or-so-questions-on-eldritch-care-unit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/2019\/08\/five-or-so-questions-on-eldritch-care-unit\/","title":{"rendered":"Five or So Questions on Eldritch Care Unit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hi all! Today I have an interview with Chris Falco on <\/strong>Eldritch Care Unit, which is currently on DriveThruRPG<\/strong><\/a> and itchio<\/a> from <\/strong>Falconian Productions<\/strong><\/a> and supported by the San Janero Co-Op! It sounds really cool! Check out Chris’s responses below.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

—<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Tell\nme a little about Eldritch Care Unit. What excites you about it?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The basic idea of Eldritch Care Unit is that you\u2019re playing\na doctor, nurse, or something more occult like a ritualist or alchemist, who\u2019s\nworking in the \u201cEldritch Care Unit\u201d of a hospital. The ECU is a hidden wing in\nmost modern hospitals, where mostly mundane folks like the player characters do\ntheir best to treat supernatural illnesses and ailments, whether the disease\nitself is magical or it\u2019s just infecting a magical creature; maybe Fae react\nstrangely to a certain strain of the flu, for instance. But, these hidden\nsections still rely on typical hospital funding and bureaucracy, so you need to\ntry and maneuver the already insufficient and bureaucratic American medical\nsystem to try and account for creatures that most of the world won\u2019t\nacknowledge even exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eldritch Care Unit is my first \u201cfull\u201d independently published game, which is itself exciting, and it\u2019s an idea I came up with kind of at a weird whim while listening to other people talking about something entirely different (if I recall, they were talking about clerics healing people on a battlefield after a fight). What excites me most is the unique concept combined with the unique but fairly simple system I came up with for it, called the Adversarial System, which relies more on rolling to withstand external pressures than to see if you\u2019re skilled enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This sounds fascinating! How do players mechanically interact with the game? What is gameplay like?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s\na fairly simple system. Essentially, characters have \u201ctraining\u201d in various\nfields, which has a simple numerical rating, and said numerical rating is\nalmost always higher than the difficulty of the task that\u2019s being done; for\nexample, your highest rating starts at 25 and the highest difficulty usually\nused is 15. You then roll dice not to see how well you use that rating, but to\nsee how well you withstand any external pressures; instead of flat penalties,\nthey provide dice to an \u201cAdversarial Dice Pool,\u201d which is rolled to see how\nmuch your rating gets penalized. For example, if you\u2019re pitting your rating of\n25 against a difficulty of 15, but are on a tight schedule and your patient\u2019s\nnoncooperative, that might provide 2-3 (d6) dice to roll, so you need to roll a\n10 or less on them to succeed. There\u2019s ways to negate or lower those penalties\ntoo, though, and other little permutations and optional rules, but for the most\npart it comes down to that core mechanic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As\nfor the core gameplay, it revolves around difficult patients. While your day to\nday might involve some checks to continue long term care or check up on normal\npatients, the interesting part that the game\u2019s meant to focus on are those that\nhave some difficulty; either the ailment is unique and difficult to deal with,\nthe patient\u2019s insurance is bad and you need to work around that, there\u2019s a time\ncrunch before the disease really sets in, the hospital lacks the right\ningredients for a curative, or anything similar. It\u2019s left largely to player\ncreativity at that point, to come up with ways to get around the problems, and\nusually involves a series of different things they\u2019ll need to get done, whether\nworking together or in parallel, depending on their time vs difficulty needs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To\nnote, there\u2019s no combat in the game. The system doesn\u2019t even work particularly\nwell for it, as we don\u2019t track health as anything more than maybe lingering\ndice penalties (3d6 on manual tasks while your hand\u2019s injured, etc). You COULD\nmake it work, but I don\u2019t see many doctors and ritualists being thrown into\nfights in a hospital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

What are the bounds of the fiction here? How weird does it get?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fiction is pretty open. There\u2019s some basic guidance on\nhow magic works, and how the supernatural exists within the world, but the\nbasic idea is that if there\u2019s some folk tale, movie, or other story about a\ngiven type of creature, it probably exists in some forms. Most of the time,\nthey integrate well into the modern world; think of how it happens in Men in\nBlack, but with supernatural creatures instead of aliens. They\u2019re everywhere,\nand most people don\u2019t realize it. It\u2019s less your typical \u201cthey stalk you in the\nshadows\u201d and more \u201cthey\u2019re trying to figure out how to do their thing in a\nmodern world.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ECU itself isn\u2019t the only \u201chuman\u201d organization that knows about magic and the paranormal, of course; the book mentions that there\u2019s government agencies, supernatural lawyers (never sign a demonic pact without one), and similar groups out there, but the ECU is the main focus of the game. Though, the nature of the Adversarial System would make it pretty easy to play some of those other sorts of groups too, with a bit of tweaking, if someone wanted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

How do you handle being respectful to potential human, real life people who might identify with the supernatural entities – allowing for safety tools, special guidance, or otherwise?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nbook makes it clear to avoid getting into too much detail unless you\u2019re sure\nyour players will appreciate it, and despite the general motif of \u201cLife isn\u2019t\nfair,\u201d the general goal is that when the Player Characters are involved, things\nwill usually get fixed up. It inherently gives a bit of hope for even a broken\nmedical system, and focuses on the good people in that system. It\u2019s something\nI\u2019ve found cathartic, as someone who\u2019s been given the runaround by insurance\ncompanies and hospitals<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With\nit being a small book, I didn\u2019t include a lot of full writeups for tools beyond\nthat vague advice to make it a cooperative, positive experience, but I\u2019m\npersonally a strong supporter of systems like X cards and other safety tools,\nand definitely recommend them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s awesome to have a game with no combat! What are a few exciting or compelling examples of experiences players have had with ECU?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the one shot I\u2019m running right now, the characters were\ngoing about their day to day when a Dragon more or less barged its way into the\nhospital, demanding treatment. Dragons are rare beings even in the open ended\nsort of world involved in this game, so there\u2019s a bit of excitement and stress\ninvolved in making such a large, none-too-cooperative creature comfortable so\nthey can diagnose its diseased wing, especially since experts on dragon anatomy\naren\u2019t really available. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And pity whomever ultimately has to ask them to pay the bill\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

—<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks so much to Chris for the interview! I hope you all enjoyed the interview and that you’ll <\/strong>check out Eldritch Care Unit on DriveThruRPG<\/strong><\/a> or <\/strong>itchio<\/strong><\/a> today!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi all! Today I have an interview with Chris Falco on Eldritch Care Unit, which is currently on DriveThruRPG and itchio from Falconian Productions and supported by the San Janero Co-Op! It sounds really cool! Check out Chris’s responses below. — Tell me a little about Eldritch Care Unit. What excites you about it? The … Continue reading “Five or So Questions on Eldritch Care Unit”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1515,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[390],"tags":[20,10,4,17,43,25,70,8,15,12,23,18],"class_list":["post-1513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive","tag-five-or-so","tag-game-design","tag-games","tag-gaming","tag-horror","tag-interviews","tag-monsters","tag-roleplaying-games","tag-rpg","tag-rpgs","tag-tabletop-games","tag-tabletop-rpgs"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/ChemistBW2.png?fit=1609%2C1050&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paHOcG-op","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":80,"url":"https:\/\/briebeau.com\/thoughty\/2018\/06\/five-or-so-questions-on-champions-now\/","url_meta":{"origin":1513,"position":0},"title":"Five or So Questions on Champions Now","author":"Beau J\u00e1gr Sheldon","date":"June 2, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Hi all!I did an interview with Ron Edwards on his Kickstarter project, Champions Now! 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