I've talked a bit about the design of this at my blog in these posts. In this video Bill and I have him make a character and get into a brawl. I'll use this thread to toss the ideas out to you guys.

The idea of the rules is to encourage teamwork. This is because in actual military and police special action teams, what makes them effective is less the individual abilities of a particular soldier, and more how well they all work together. The wounding rules are part of this. In the real world, if you get bashed, stabbed, shot or blown up, you're going to need some help.

For a realistic feel, people only have 5 possible states, essentially those of triage - the categories people are put into when the number of patients exceeds the medical facilities available.

Basically:

• Morgue - dead, or nearly so. Sometimes called "Expectant" if they're on the edge.
  
• Immediate - (treat within minutes) severely injured and will die soon without treatment
  
• Delayed - (treat within hours) serious injuries which won't kill the person in the next hour or so
  
• Minor - (treat within days) they can walk themselves out
  
• Unharmed - go away, stop bothering me
  

Medical treatment in a mass casualty situation ignores the Unharmed and Minor, gives a huge dose of morphine to the Morgue category, looks after the Immediate and when they have time get to the Delayed. Eventually someone will look after the Minor ones.

Conflict has named Immediate as KIA, Delayed as INC (since any wound that serious you are usually incapacitated), and Minor as WIA.

I am wondering about these terms. The KIA may confuse since it's not actually instant death (2-15 minutes if untreated), and INC isn't always incapacitated (can roll dice to ignore it for a bit). But the triage terms may be a bit abstract for most.

Most of the time game terms focus on what the character feels. They're treating the character as a lone individual. Using terms focusing on what must be done may - may - encourage teamwork a bit more. KIA etc focus on what the character experiences, Immediate etc focus on what must be done.

But as I said it's also a bit abstract; medical types want it to be abstract so they don't get overwhelmed by all the drama, but as gamers using our imaginations it's all abstract for us, maybe we want more evocative.

Thoughts?

I've heard "Immediate" level triage also called CTD, for Circling the Drain. KIA should be reserved for the "morgue" level.

Some thoughts here on environment, specifically in the context of Conflict but I think it'll apply to all rpgs - no rules in the post. Too often combats in rpgs happen on what are essentially featureless plains in broad daylight. Bringing in weather, terrain and - probably most importantly - noncombatants can make things more interesting and reward the more thoughtful players.

https://www.thevikinghatgm.com/2021/04/conflict-environment.html

Done. For now, at least.