Secure Emergency Medical Rescue Services

[LordEntrails]

You have been employed by a high priced medical evacuation service. They service high value customers who wear medical transponders. When a signal goes out that their life signs indicate jeopardy your are dispatched via a high speed air cars to secure the customer, render first aid, and place them in a freeze field if needed, and return them to the nearest registered hospital. And you are licensed to use lethal force to secure your customer's body!

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So I can think of about a half dozen different scenarios for running a sci-fi setting as such a group. I'm hoping you can help me out with two things; what scenarios can you think of? And, how do you keep this from getting old?

The ideas I have so far;
Vehicle Accident - vehicle is in precarious position, secure vehicle then the customer.
Bank Robbery - Police onsite, can you negotiate your way in or are you going to have to blast your way in and keep the police from interefering?
Drug Deal Gone Bad - extract in the middle of a gang war
Mafia Wedding - poisoned customer, others poisoned as well and offer cash for services, some with known bounties.
Corporate Negotiation - Customer has a private service contract, corporate security has order to not let anyone disturb negotiations.
Kidnapping - customer has been kidnapped and has triggered device against contract because they don't have a kidnapping rescue contract. Do you rescue them?
Ritual Suicide - Syndicate member forgot to disable contract and is in ceremonial sacrifice willingly, do you rescue them or let them go through with it?

Hope you all help me out here

 

[ccs]

And you are licensed to use lethal force to secure your customer's body!

I can just picture this triggering additional response teams.... And teams responding to teams in need....
And teams from the same company in bizarre firefights with with, essentially, their co-workers....
Until it spirals into a complete "WT* is even going on here??" situation of just dueling medics. Each squad possibly more heavily armed than the last (how heavily armed being determined by individual policies)....

"All units, this is a general dispatch. Be advised that we have heavy fighting in and around Docking Bay 93. Extensive property damage, fire, and large caliber weapon use reported. We have no idea who or what started it, but there's presently at least 17 EMT squads all trying to kill each other. Maybe more.
Standard procedure. Cordon off the area, evac any civilians, keep the fire from spreading, wait for the smoke to clear, and then arrest anyone left standing. ID & track anything leaving the area, but DO NOT ENGAGE. We'll see 'em at the hospitals.
Billing code for this one is: MetroRosponse#12:SAT2am9520#DB93. Companies to be billed TBD, but likely the usual suspects."

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Ritual Suicide - Syndicate member forgot to disable contract and is in ceremonial sacrifice willingly, do you rescue them or let them go through with it?

The contract is the contract. As long as the alert goes out, you have a job to do, regardless of ANYONE’S intentions.

Scenarios:
Organleggers - someone has hacked the systems of some of the lesser companies- blocking the emergency signals- in order to get replacement parts for well-heeled clients with no scruples. Lots of potential suspects- black-hat hackers wanting extra cash, medi-doxxers, organized crime groups catering to their members who don’t want to be tracked by mainstream companies, organized crime groups keeping their costs artificially low, anti-medicine/anti-tech cranks, etc.

Malfunction - something is wrong in the system hardware or software, resulting in lots of false alarms.

Gauntlet - extraction of the client complicated by the fact that the client is extremely unpopular, and a lot of people are interested in seeng the client actuslly dies,,,and it’s a long way back to the clinic. (Think The Warriors or Judgement Night.)

 

[MarkB]

Anyone rich enough to pay for such a service may also have their own personal security, and may also hang out with others who have such security, so possible complications may include entanglements with those security forces due to miscommunication if you suddenly show up to a crisis situation.

A possible reverse of your Kidnapping scenario is one where you're the patsies. A third party spoofs or otherwise falsely triggers a high-value target's transponder, specifically to get you to bust in and extract them, battling through their own security team and systems, and then seeks to intercept your vehicles en route to the hospital in order to kidnap them.

 

[Jd Smith1]

Now, such a business would have to have thousands of clients (to be able to cover the overhead and show a profit). Say your station is covering an area with 5,000 clients. You have two teams on duty around the clock. But three clients go down at the same time. What is the protocol? Your description establishes this as a 'guaranteed delivery' service, but to field a team of EMT/shock troops and a top-end ambulance is expensive, so how do you allocate resources? Too many crews sitting idle will bankrupt you, too few and your clients will flee. Public-service ambos in RL get around this by the acceptance of a certain number of deaths being socially acceptable, but your service parameters removes that.

It is hard to imagine the full range legal liabilities with armed EMTs shooting their way into situations, to include attacking legitimate government and private agencies going about their legal duties. But it's an RPG, so the only suspension of belief bar is that of your players.

The 'getting old' challenge is the tough one, as your campaign is going to consist of a series of unconnected firefights. The problem being is that your group mission is so narrow and simplistic: get to client, remove client to ER. It's why there's never (TMK) been EMT: The RPG.

Sticking with that core premise, I would say it would work as a skirmish game.

You've got some problem-solving possibilities, and if your combat and medical system is challenging and dynamic that will help, as it will take a group geared to tactical challenges a while to be affected by the bare-bones campaign concept. If not, you have problems.

The best option I can see is to have the area engulfed in a long-term disaster, be it war, zombie outbreak, collapse of local economy, or something similar which will remove a lot of society's restraints and force your players into far most dynamic situations.

 

[Jd Smith1]

Scenarios:
Organleggers - someone has hacked the systems of some of the lesser companies- blocking the emergency signals- in order to get replacement parts for well-heeled clients with no scruples. Lots of potential suspects- black-hat hackers wanting extra cash, medi-doxxers, organized crime groups catering to their members who don’t want to be tracked by mainstream companies, organized crime groups keeping their costs artificially low, anti-medicine/anti-tech cranks, etc.

The second two are great ideas, but would people stealing organs target individuals wealthy enough to afford such top-end health care? Bad things happening to rich people gets a dynamic response, whereas the same things happening to poor people do not. To make that concept work would require a caveat that made wealthy targets the only candidates.

 

[MarkB]

Now, such a business would have to have thousands of clients (to be able to cover the overhead and show a profit). Say your station is covering an area with 5,000 clients. You have two teams on duty around the clock. But three clients go down at the same time. What is the protocol? Your description establishes this as a 'guaranteed delivery' service, but to field a team of EMT/shock troops and a top-end ambulance is expensive, so how do you allocate resources? Too many crews sitting idle will bankrupt you, too few and your clients will flee. Public-service ambos in RL get around this by the acceptance of a certain number of deaths being socially acceptable, but your service parameters removes that.

It is hard to imagine the full range legal liabilities with armed EMTs shooting their way into situations, to include attacking legitimate government and private agencies going about their legal duties. But it's an RPG, so the only suspension of belief bar is that of your players.

For a worse PR case: You shoot your way into a social gathering gone wrong in order to rescue one of your clients, only for another client to get caught in the crossfire - and there's no second team on-station that can get there in time to save that client.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The second two are great ideas, but would people stealing organs target individuals wealthy enough to afford such top-end health care? Bad things happening to rich people gets a dynamic response, whereas the same things happening to poor people do not. To make that concept work would require a caveat that made wealthy targets the only candidates.

I’m thinking that- like so many others- the service described operates in tiers. They’d range from fly-by-night operations where your money gets you a driver in a basic vehicle and a couple of thugs who barely passed a first-aid class to companies where even the entry-level plans are out of reach for 99% of the population and the extraction team operates out of a mobile ICU/SWAT command post.

 

[Ulfgeir]

Some suggestions:

• Someone attacks the hospital, to get to a patient there.
• Getting called out to a scene were people have died, very quiclkly in a new kind of disease (possibly after a the goverment had an accident in a bio-weapons lab). Track down all that were there, and put in quarantine measures, wihtout gettinginfected yourselves.

Sounds like you are running one the alternative campaign ideas for Shadowrun with DocWagon.

 

[Jd Smith1]

I’m thinking that- like so many others- the service described operates in tiers. They’d range from fly-by-night operations where your money gets you a driver in a basic vehicle and a couple of thugs who barely passed a first-aid class to companies where even the entry-level plans are out of reach for 99% of the population and the extraction team operates out of a mobile ICU/SWAT command post.

OK, but again: why would organ-grabbers target people who are clients of the company the PCs work for? THere's always going to be people too poor to afford health care. Grab one who has just matured (so no long-term bad habit effects yet), and is the correct DNA type, and whose departure would not be remarked upon.

Although in an air-car era, tank-grown organs would seem to be an option.