Did you ever wonder how some games came to be? Well here’s how M*A*S*H got its start. 

Submitted by Gerry Brinkman

It all started on Sunday afternoon at my place...

A few SM’s for ST: ACTD who happen to be really big fans of the former TV Sitcom M*A*S*H were having a Barbecue.  We were actually watching some of the episodes on DVD I think, and I said, hey, wouldn't you like to do this as a mission arc on one of our ships?

After a few seconds of silence, the concept of the IRC M*A*S*H Role-playing Game was born.  We approached James young with the idea at a later time, and he got a chuckle out of the idea, and told us to go ahead with it.  We developed the concept.

It's 1950, and you're in the US Army, with all its flaws, history, and leadership or lack thereof.  Women Doctors are ridiculed, male nurses are viewed with distaste.  There is segregation in many places in North
America.  Impose that on a place where people are dedicated to healing, compassion, kindness...in the midst of cruelty, violence, intolerance, and man's inhumanity to man.  And you have M*A*S*H:  A Call to Duty.

The characters are staff at a variety of medical units, and the Base Commander is the Unit Manager.  He leads his zany crew through the situations that working three miles or so from the front can cause, and responds to the craziness of the events and the reactions they cause to
people.  M*A*S*H: A Call to Duty concentrates on the relationships of the people at the unit, the witty and sometimes ascorbic banter that can come from people of vastly different backgrounds faced with the horrors of war.

For now, we have a chat game that runs every night at 9PM Eastern on Wednesdays, but there are plans for expansion into a Euro-friendly time slot, perhaps on Saturday or Sunday, and we are also developing an email version of the game.  In fact, we're planning a hospital ship for that division's first vessel, but we're at the initial stages of development for that.

We invite anyone that wishes to drop by and check out the chat game on Wednesdays, or to check out the website at http://mash.acalltoduty.com or the bulletin board at http://mash.acalltoduty.com/phpBB2/.  Anyone joining from any of the other ACTDR games is already familiar with most of our protocols for chat, and can skip right past training to active player.  New players to ACTDR will be trained live, learning as mission is played
after an initial session to familiarize them with chat game protocols.