Solitaire: A Set of Scrubs

Roleplaying games can have you portraying some strange characters. Not just elves or aliens inhibited by their emotions, but really strange characters. For example, in Marquee Press’ Khaotic, the characters’ minds are projected into the bodies of aliens on another world to fight a would-be invader, but end up all controlling the same alien body. In both Asmodee’s Bloodlust and John Wick’s WIELD: Chronicles of the Vatcha, the players portray the magical items and weapons being wielded, not the wielder. In the transhuman roleplaying game Eclipse Phase, the character is split between Ego and form, able to resleeve the Ego into a myriad of different body types, from cheap labour morphs and Olympian biomorphs to Uplifted species such as Chimpanzees and Octopuses and robotic flexbots and swarmoids. In the eponymously named A Set of Scrubs, you get to roleplay something that is perhaps the strangest, yet most ordinary item of all.

A Set of Scrubs is a journaling game which tells the story of a single set of scrubs at a hospital. Due to budget cuts, scrubs need to be worn multiple times, being deep cleaned between use, and handed back out as necessary. From the moment the scrubs are handed out for the first time, fresh and with a newness you just wish would never fade, to the time they have worn through and been stained with marks—both emotional and physical—that never truly shift, via being worn into something unremarkable, then perhaps a little scratchy, the scrubs will have been multiple times by numerous different people. Doctors, nurses, patients, porters, never management, visitors (yes, even them), security guards. Told over the course of three acts, A Set of Scrubs uses the Lost & Found system which is designed to produce solo games telling the story of an Object over a long stretch of time, typically from its creation to destruction. So it is with A Set of Scrubs.

A Set of Scrubs is published by Beyond Cataclysm Books and written by a medical doctor. To play—or rather to tell the story—of the single set of scrubs takes about an hour and requires pens, paper, a clock (or other means of tracking time), and a candle. The use of the latter and the subject matter of A Set of Scrubs, with dark and difficult themes since hospitals are places where life and death are decided, means that it is for mature audiences only.

A Set of Scrubs begins with the player establishing and describing the hospital, its age, management, and progress. Then it does the same for its staff and its patients. Is the hospital old or new, underfinanced or getting by, dirty or clean, the management honest or dishonest, and does the hospital have a motto? Do the staff want to do a good job or are they overworked and undermanned, professional or not, what are their opinions of the motto? Are the patients wealthy or poor, from all corners of society or one, what do they think of the hospital and does it have a good reputation, and how do they treat the staff? Is there a change in patient numbers, and if so, why? Penultimately, what does the set of scrubs look like? Cheap or well made, colourful or one tone, comfortable or uncomfortable, and so on? Lastly, the player draws the set of scrubs. There is even space in the book for this.

A Set of Scrubs is played in three acts. In each act, the scrubs will be worn by two or three Wearers. These change from act to act, each accompanied by a set of prompts which the player uses to tell the story going on around the scrubs. The prompts may also ask the player to roll on or choose from the ‘Illness’ Table or the ‘Clinical Procedure’ as appropriate. Doctor, Nurse, and Patient are consistent across all three acts, but the Porter appears in Act One, the Visitor in Act Two, and the Security Guard in Act Three.

The prompts for the Doctor, the Nurse, and the Patient vary slightly from act to act. For example, the prompts for the Patient in Act One ask the player to explain why the patient is in hospital, to choose and answer a question from the ‘Illness’ table, give an event that happens on the day which sticks with them for a long time, and lastly, how the patient Marks the scrubs. For a Patient in Act Two, the player must explain how the patient got to the hospital, choose and answer a question from the ‘Illness’ table, and both how the patient Marks the scrubs and whether or not the patient is marked in a similar way. A Mark is the effect that the encounter had on the scrubs. It can be as simple as a pulled thread or a spilled cup of coffee, as visceral as a string of bullet holes, swathes of blood and gore—or worse, or even a sleeve torn lose in an encounter with frightened Patient, or as ephemeral as an odour or a sound, a lingering presence, and so on. These are literally made on the scrubs, the player drawing them on the picture he drew of the set at the start of play.

In between wearers, the player rests, from a few seconds to a few minutes, before the scrubs are pulled on by the next wearer and both player and scrubs thrown back into the action—physical, emotional, or both—of hospital life. Longer rests means that when the scrubs return to duty, the hospital will also have changed somehow and that will have an effect on the wearer and the scrubs. For the player, the moments of rest take place with his eyes closed (or in the dark). The shorter the period, the less time the player has to contemplate what happened in that day’s encounter, to wonder how the scrubs were affected and the nature of the Mark. The ultimate period of reflection comes at the end after Act Three, when the scrubs have worn out and been incinerated. This is when the candle is lit and the player takes one last moment to consider the events and encounters that the scrubs have been witness to.

Physically, A Set of Scrubs is very well produced, a sturdy digest-size booklet with intentionally rough illustrations.

A Set of Scrubs is very much a contemplative writing experience rather than a roleplaying game. It prompts the player to consider events and encounters in a place dedicated to life and healing, but where death and even danger are a constant presence. The stories that result are peripatetic, flitting from wearer to wearer like a shared world, mostly ordinary, but influenced by the building around them and the care that the staff provide. Doubtlessly influenced by the numerous medical dramas we have seen, A Set of Scrubs nevertheless pushes us to explore something we know is there and something that we know at some point we will encounter, but from an unexpected emotional quarter.