Operation Realism Expansion

(All rules and gameplay changes additionally found in document)

Overview of Original Game:

The original Operation is a game of skill and to gauge how well someone can perform under pressure. Of course, the pressure isn’t real, nor is it fully implied as its meant to just be a fun kids game. The game takes the very serious scenario of a surgical operation and turns it into a silly game where mistakes aren’t just part of the game, they are sometimes even rewarded. It tasks players with removing silly parts like “bird brained” and “dog tired” out of a man and giving players money based on the card they draw. Failing allows the other player to then take a chance, however, on special occasions, they may be able to fail on purpose to make even more money. The aim of the game is to have as much money as possible by the end, and the way to do that is to successfully remove all the pieces from “Cavity Sam”. For such a serious topic and procedure, the game has no ethical reflection. In real life, this is a real human being you're operating on, and their life is quite literally in your hands. We found this to be the perfect game to apply ethical reflection by making the character more life-like and having more agency put on the player in terms of the character's life, not just on the operating table, but outside of the hospital.

Expansion Overview:

Our expansion adds several key items to the game. The first is difficulty cards. Each piece is tied to a card based on how difficult it is to remove and each is given a cash amount tied to it depending on difficulty. Easy, known as “Walk-In”, has 6 green cards, Medium, known as “Special Case”, has all green cards and 4 yellow cards, and finally, hard, known as “High Priority”, has all green and yellow cards plus 3 red cards. These cards are meant to represent how a surgeon doesn't just get to pick and choose their jobs and must always save as many lives as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Listed on the cards are:

• Piece name
• Operation cost
• Piece picture
• Success scenario
• Failure scenario
• Colour of card

Next, we added character sheets to go along with the difficulties. Players print these pages and place them over the original Cavity Sam character. Matthew Langro for easy, Sarah Quent for medium, and Oliver Su for hard. Each sheet only contains the cavities of that difficulty. These sheets are meant to stray away from the whimsical and silly scenario of the original game by making the operation patient more realistic to encourage more empathy towards them from the player.

Finally, we added a patient budget and player budget. After each operation, players deduct cash from the patients budget and add it to their own funds. Players must use these funds to pay the hospital's bills and may use any additional funds they believe they have to increase the time limit on their next surgery attempt. Players may also choose to reduce the cost of their patient's next surgery by 25% or 50%. We also gave the patient a salary, but their pay alone cant sustain an infinite number of operation attempts. This, in turn, makes the game revolve around caring for the patient's budget, but also realizing that you can't sustain your medical practice without necessary funds. This creates more stress on the player, as they want to make the operations as cheap as possible for the patient to continue on with their life outside of the hospital, but they also must continue to charge prices to continue operating. In a perfect world, all health care would be free, however, we have to see the reality of the situation. We want to show players the actual high levels of stress and precision required to handle someone's life in their hands.

These changes are meant to address the ethical shortcomings of the original game by adding more urgency to the situation at hand. In the original, you're essentially playing around with someone's disease ridden body as they suffer on the operating table. We hope that these changes bring about empathy in the player towards the patient, as well as reflect on the harsh realities of the current medical systems in place all over the world. We want our players to realize that this is a living human being with a life outside of this hospital, but to also realize that despite trying your best to help someone, you can't just give away such expensive procedures for free as you also have bills to pay.

Game Rules: 

1. Choose a difficulty (walk-in for easy, special case for medium, high priority for hard), place that difficulties character sheet upon the game board, and pick up that patient's clipboard sheet. Patients starting cash and salary are listed on their respective clipboard sheet.
2. Shuffle each difficulty deck you're using separately.
3. Draw 1 card from 1 pile that you can choose.
4. When the player is ready, start a 10-second timer.
5. Perform surgery on that part.
6. If successful within the time limit, reduce the patient’s cash by the amount on the card and add to the player's cash, then perform the success scenario (if any), then, add the card to the discard pile and draw a new card.
7. If failed, reduce the patient’s cash by the amount on the card and add to the player's cash, then perform the failure scenario. Continue to use the failed card until successful or the patient or player runs out of cash.
8. Unless specified otherwise, add the patient's salary (determined by difficulty) to the patient's cash right before the next attempt (not including the very first).
9. After a surgery (whether succeeded or failed), players must pay $50x (x is turn number, so $50 on turn 1, $100 on turn 2, and so on) for hospital bills. Failure to pay the turns bill results in a game loss.
10. Before a surgery attempt, players may choose to lower the patient's cost (amount of money on card) by 0%, 25%, or 50% of the original cost for that attempt.
11. Players may also choose to spend $300 to add 5 seconds to any surgery attempt as many times as they want ($300 for 5, $600 for 10, so on), but only before they begin the timer, and ONLY for that attempt, NOT until the card is completed.
12. Success scenarios only apply to completing surgery on the first attempt, and failure scenarios can only happen once per card. 

Continue playing the game until either the patient's cash reaches 0, the player is unable to pay the turns hospital bill, or all surgeries have been completed. Players still lose even if they complete all surgeries but the patient has no money left.