Caduceus Station

Some time back I bored the Plainly Unusual People of A&E with the idea of a game set in a hospital station - specifically one in the Sol asteroid belt dealing with the problems of the various belt and trans-Martian moon colonies as those colonies are either beginning to push for independence from Earth or are dealing with an Earth that cut them off for some reason. Such a station would become a natural focal point for diplomacy, resource consolidation and by extension a target for raiders as the colonies struggled to work out their new non-earth paradigm. Originally intended for the Trek Universe just after Earth had fallen to WWIII (in my own Trek Universe that as belter colonies) this setting would be a blend of Larry Niven's early Known Space stories, Babylon 5, M.A.S.H. and ER.

I received several helpful pointers to James White's masterful Sector General series, but without aliens to be the source of the mysteries there's only so much I can draw from them. In this I may be hosing myself with alien life forms White can base his plots around mysteries where the readers know as much as the protagonists to solve them. Without aliens we have to rely on semi-actual science and medicine, making them areas where the PCs are going to know a lot more than the players and potentially reducing the medical problems to pure dice rolls

I'm not sure how well such a setting would fly in play, but I want to use it to take up the idea of running a game that is medically centered rather than combat focused, and stationary rather than exploratory. When running Trek I remain surprised by how much the Doctor has to do and how easily plots form around medical issues. The design of the setting means that if we don't get the medicine to work as a point of tension I can fall back on station defense, politics and resource management to keep the PCs occupied.

In any even, despite it's trek origins I'm thinking of using PDQ for the game engine, trusting that the abstract structure will work for the conflicts I have in mind against injury and disease. Much of the 'combat' will be the doctors skill against the medical malady, with a third indicator of the patient's health. I'm not sure if there are good examples of this sort of three way conflict in any existing dice mechanics, so I look forward to the challenge. Any advice or suggestions would be appreciated.