[Medbook] My new netbook project begins

After asking the board members at large, and after posting a poll regarding what project to work on, it's been determined that my first Star Trek netbook project will be a Star Trek Medical netbook.

I'm starting to work out an outline for the thing, and I want to post it here for some feedback and idea-generating.

I see this netbook as being a tool for narrators and players that will cover a lot of details regarding medicine, medical practices, and whatnot, without going into encyclopedic detail on every known disease, drug, syndrome, or situation seen over the course of 35 years of Trek history.

My hope is that a narrator thinking "Gee, I have a player playing a CMO...what the heck do I to keep him interested in the game?" or a player thinking "I want to play something other than a security officer; what's medical all about?" can pick up this netbook and get the answers they want.

Anyhow, here's a very rough outline of what I want to put into the netbook. Please take a look and let me know what you think. I'll take any constructive criticisms. Tell me what I'm missing, what's not needed, what you'd like to see, etc. I'll revise the outline following feedback.

Quick note - future threads on this topic will be tagged with [Medbook] to keep things clear. :)

Credits

Table of Contents

Introduction
Purpose of the Medbook
Brief overview of each chapter
Sidebar: Canon for the purposes of the Medbook

Section One: Star Trek Medicine

Chapter One: Overview
Subhead: Enterprise-era medicine (22nd century)
Subhead: TOS-era medicine (23rd century)
Subhead: TNG-era medicine (24th century)
Subhead: DS9-era medicine (24th century)
Subhead: VOY-era medicine (24th century)

Chapter Two: Medical Hazards
Subhead: Diseases
Subhead: Syndromes
Sidebar: Disease vs. Syndrome
Subhead: Other Maladies

Chapter Three: Healing the Sick
Subhead: Treatments
Subhead: Pharmaceuticals
Subhead: Sickbay
Subhead: Medical Procedures

Chapter Four: Species-Specific Medical Issues
Subhead: Terran
Subhead: Klingon
Subhead: Vulcan
Subhead: Romulan
Subhead: Borg
Subhead: etc. etc.

Section Two: Roleplaying Resources

Chapter Five: Player's Resources
Subhead: The Hippocratic Oath
Subhead: The Chief Medical Officer
Subhead: Other Medical Officers
Sidebar: Roleplaying the CMO
Subhead: Sample Medical Officers
Dr. Phlox
Dr. Leonard McCoy
Dr. Beverly Crusher
Dr. Pulaski
Dr. Julian Bashir

Chapter Six: Narrator’s Resources
Subhead: Engaging the Medical Officer
Subhead: Customizing Medical Hazards
Chart: Medical Technobabble charts

Section Three: Medical Technology

Chapter Seven: Medical Equipment (include RPG stats)
Subhead: The EMH
Subhead: The LMH
Chart: Medical Equipment

Chapter Eight: Starships (include RPG stats)

Appendix A: Glossary

Appendix B: Complied charts (all charts in book cut and pasted into one place)

Appendix C: Selected Viewing
Subhead: Enterprise
Subhead: Star Trek
Subhead: The Next Generation
Subhead: Deep Space Nine
Subhead: Voyager

Appendix D: Bibliography

Index

Could be interesting... Do you have access to a copy of the old Mandel/Drexler Star Fleet Reference Manual from the 1970's? While not perfect, it's quite useful. Some of the info has been rendered obsolete by now (f'rinstance, the Klingon data is quite firmly TOS), but there's a lot of meat to it. What's more, both the the authors went on to actually work on Trek, and Drexler actually used illuatrations from the book as classroom displays in Keiko's classroom in late season 1 DS9!

I don't know if it's really worth it from a game point of view to break TNG/DS9/VGR into separate eras. They overlap quite a bit, and in the "real" Trek universe would be seen as the same era. Now, this is not to say that some of the stuff from DS9 and VGR shouldn't merit their own subchapters, but they should probably be devoted to Gamma Quadrant medical discoveries (the disease the Jem'Hadar inflict on rebellious planets, Ketracel White antiaddiction treatments, etc...) and Delta Quadrant medical discoveries (lot's o' stuff - the Phage, as well as many of the discoveries made by the HoloDoc).

As well, perhaps a character treatment of the Holodoc (he's hardly a basic EMH) in with Bones, Phlox and Crusher; as well as a bit on him in the EMH section as a special case.

Each set of game stats should be available in both ICON and CODA versions.

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Originally posted by Owen E Oulton
Could be interesting... Do you have access to a copy of the old Mandel/Drexler Star Fleet Reference Manual from the 1970's?

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I don't have a copy of it, but I am looking for one. Have to hit some used bookstores this weekend.

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I don't know if it's really worth it from a game point of view to break TNG/DS9/VGR into separate eras. They overlap quite a bit, and in the "real" Trek universe would be seen as the same era.

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Makes sense. Maybe it would be better to break the 24th century into quadrants.

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As well, perhaps a character treatment of the Holodoc (he's hardly a basic EMH) in with Bones, Phlox and Crusher; as well as a bit on him in the EMH section as a special case.

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Makes sense. :) I'll need to work with someone more knowledgeable about VOY than I.

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Each set of game stats should be available in both ICON and CODA versions.

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I'm going to write the book in CODA. Before it goes final, I'll see if there's a volunteer who'd be willing to convert the details into ICON.

Thanks for the comments, Owen!

Well, considering that I am on record for wanting to do an ICON version...

And know Voyager...

And have done research into this already...

Feel free to consider this, the volunteering.

Well looks like you were faster than me ;). I have long planned to do a netbook about medical, especially due to my experience with milirtary and hispotal, which I tried to use to figure out the structure of the medical branch in Starfleet.
I am looking forward to your work :)

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Originally posted by Ineti
After asking the board members at large, and after posting a poll regarding what project to work on, it's been determined that my first Star Trek netbook project will be a Star Trek Medical netbook.

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My hope is that a narrator thinking "Gee, I have a player playing a CMO...what the heck do I to keep him interested in the game?"

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Cool, That's exactly the problem i have running the Medical Officers!


Karg

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Originally posted by Dan Gurden
Feel free to consider this, the volunteering.

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Thanks, Dan! I got your email, btw, and am going through the stuff you sent. :)

I'll definitely be in touch.

Will this book discuss only diseases? I didn't see a section about injuries. Now, mostly I'd guess people would suffer the same kinds of injury (damage to various parts of the body), but there might be some novel causes, such as plasma burns (from plasma fires), or exposure to any number of debilitating ailments, such as Berthold Rays.

This seems like a great netbook idea! If you have any questions about TOS era medicine, please feel free to ask me, as I'm pretty familiar with that series. (Figured I'd make the offer, but I don't know whether you need help, or what kind...)

You'd need something on the sorts of injuries/diseases that 24th Century medicine still can't treat, to be sure of occasionally stumping your CMO (and giving them something to work on). There's a huge list of medicines and medical equipment in the Trek Encyclopedia. Perhaps a brief list of medicines and a quick summary of what each is used for (sort of a Treknobabble chart, so the players can immediately say "Get me a hypo filled with......" and know that it should be filled with hyronalyn if the patient has suffered radiation exposure).

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Originally posted by Fesarius
Will this book discuss only diseases?

This seems like a great netbook idea! If you have any questions about TOS era medicine, please feel free to ask me, as I'm pretty familiar with that series.

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Now that you mention it, yes, it should cover some injuries as well as diseases. The hard part will be making sure it doesn't turn into a How to manual.

I'll probably need help with the TOS stuff. :) Thanks for the offer.

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Originally posted by Capt.Hunter
There's a huge list of medicines and medical equipment in the Trek Encyclopedia. Perhaps a brief list of medicines and a quick summary of what each is used for (sort of a Treknobabble chart, so the players can immediately say "Get me a hypo filled with......" and know that it should be filled with hyronalyn if the patient has suffered radiation exposure).

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That's sort of what I'm thinking. I don't want to include a comprehensive list of every Trek disease and every Trek drug and so on. The Encyclopedia has that. I thought I'd hit the highlights.

What do you think? Should the medbook contain as comprehensive a list as possible? Would that be more useful than flipping between the encyclopedia and the medbook?

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Could be interesting... Do you have access to a copy of the old Mandel/Drexler Star Fleet Reference Manual from the 1970's?

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Mmmm, old Star Fleet Medical Manual...

Much non-canon crunchy goodness :)

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Should the medbook contain as comprehensive a list as possible? Would that be more useful than flipping between the encyclopedia and the medbook?

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Not everything. Possibly just a "Blagger's Guide" quick-glance chart of the most common injuries and what you'd use to treat them. Leave in the uncertainty factor between improvaline and inaprovaline...

Anything ever come out of this? I would be very interested in see it completed.