A few monsters from the classic series that made it into the last Doctor Who RPG but haven't reached the revived series, Classic Who action figures or the hearts of the nation.
Tuesday, 24 August 2010
The Medium Bads
A step down from the Big Four, some monsters have returned often enough to have their own recurring tropes and foibles. They might never get a series finale but they'd get an opening episode or a mid-run two-parter and a couple of action figures...
Sunday, 22 August 2010
The Big Bads
I was discussing this last night, so...
Russell T Davies ran Doctor Who for four series. In the first, he brought back the Daleks as the seasonal Big Bad. In the second, the Cybermen. By this point, I had guessed that the next would be either the Master or Davros, probably the Master, and the one after would be the other one. And I was not wrong. These are the big four Big Bads of the classic Whoniverse, the ones people on the street could name even before the show came back. (The Time Lords get an honourable mention for causing as much trouble without generally being villains as a whole, so their role as the Specials Big Bads seems entirely apt.)
So while I encourage new monsters, I always planned to have a Dalek episode in the initial thirteen-week run of the game this blog shares a name with, and you'll notice the second-last shot of the trailer for my PBP game as well. Likewise, I have Cybermen ideas, something to do with the Master... nothing in mind for Davros yet, but he's a subset of Dalek ideas so one never knows.
So if you're running Doctor Who and looking for a storyline featuring the old favourites, what are they particularly good for?
Russell T Davies ran Doctor Who for four series. In the first, he brought back the Daleks as the seasonal Big Bad. In the second, the Cybermen. By this point, I had guessed that the next would be either the Master or Davros, probably the Master, and the one after would be the other one. And I was not wrong. These are the big four Big Bads of the classic Whoniverse, the ones people on the street could name even before the show came back. (The Time Lords get an honourable mention for causing as much trouble without generally being villains as a whole, so their role as the Specials Big Bads seems entirely apt.)
So while I encourage new monsters, I always planned to have a Dalek episode in the initial thirteen-week run of the game this blog shares a name with, and you'll notice the second-last shot of the trailer for my PBP game as well. Likewise, I have Cybermen ideas, something to do with the Master... nothing in mind for Davros yet, but he's a subset of Dalek ideas so one never knows.
So if you're running Doctor Who and looking for a storyline featuring the old favourites, what are they particularly good for?
Sunday, 15 August 2010
What to do with a Doctor Who game
This seems like a sensible place to start...
You've picked up the Doctor Who RPG and have a chance at gathering a few interested players. What do you do with it? There are some suggestions in the box, of course, but it doesn't hurt to have a few spare ones.
The Doctor And Companions
It's sustained the show for thirty-one series on and off (not to mention as many years' comics, shedloads of books, audio plays...) so let's start here.
The Doctor, a mad man in a box, picks people (for various values of "people") up and they go on adventures in time and space, battling threats to time and general villainy. "Planets to save, civilisations to rescue, creatures to defeat and an awful lot of running to do." This gives you the entire setting to play with, of course, and you shouldn't have much trouble coming up with adventure ideas.
There are problems, of course. The Doctor is madly powerful compared to the average Companion, of course, so you need a player who wouldn't abuse that. And do you use a canonical Doctor and Companions or not? They vary in style, ability and even power level - and of course, as the new producer, there's always the temptation to have a new Doctor...
Someone Else And Companions
Another Time Lord or equally strange and powerful being. This means you can play fast and loose with canon (like this has ever troubled the series) and skip the need to keep the Doctor consistent so your new Time Lord could, say, settle down and raise a family. The trick here is to make the new "title character" different enough that it couldn't just as easily be another incarnation of the Doctor.
Lost In Time
Of course, while you might need a Time Lord to control a TARDIS, there are other forms of time travel out there as well as the uncontrollable TARDIS option, and a group of ordinary-ish sentient beings could end up inside one, bouncing around time randomly and getting in trouble without a handy guide. Good for the feel of the early black-and-white series where the Doctor wasn't so ruddy amazing and it was his first time meeting Daleks, Cybermen, and so on.
Time Patrol
A group of Time Lords, Time Agents, or other heroic-type problem-solvers going through time with a defined purpose, being sent on missions rather than fated to stumble into adventures. Nice and straightforward, so that's about all I need to say on the matter, so I'll just add that GURPS Time Travel is pretty good on the subject, particularly the example setting where two rival time agencies are both trying to alter time to make their future the real one.
The Sarah Jane Adventures
The Whoniverse is wild and woolly enough that you can save the world from your attic in Ealing. You'd be skipping the time travel rules and the like (apart from the odd time warp episode here and there) but consider the kind of things a group of normal-ish Earthlings could easily get mixed up in. Imagine a Sparrow And Nightingale series, fighting alien threats with book learning, a laptop computer and maybe a set of night vision goggles if they go and buy them.
Torchwood
As above but with guns and swears. The Doctor Who game isn't a good fit for it - drop the initiative system for starters. And would many players be keen on being quite as useless as that shower? It's a prominent has-its-own-show example of an idea that fits in the Whoniverse but not in the spirit of the main show or the game as written. I wouldn't want to play Abslom Daak, Dalek Killer under this ruleset either.
UNIT
As above but without swears. More capable than Torchwood, although still prone to grumbling about bullet-proof monsters. Also brings in chains of command and things like that, although it always has civilian specialists and room for Companion-style hangers-on with no official rank or jurisdiction.
Whoniverse? Whatniverse?
What else could you do with this game? Well, it's pretty geared towards reflecting Doctor Who, starting at talking-beats-fighting built into initiative. There aren't many settings that are anywhere close to as let's-talk-about-this. It would be a great initiative system for some specific characters, but few of them define their settings. Still, it could work for a group of disparate characters prone to talking and running in a Who-like style.
By way of example: The Flying Dutchman. People who have taken a wrong turn, literally, and are now adrift in the Seas of Time, pitching up seemingly at random in different times and places where Time has gone astray. A bit like Sapphire And Steel but without the PCs themselves being mysterious and otherworldly.
You've picked up the Doctor Who RPG and have a chance at gathering a few interested players. What do you do with it? There are some suggestions in the box, of course, but it doesn't hurt to have a few spare ones.
The Doctor And Companions
It's sustained the show for thirty-one series on and off (not to mention as many years' comics, shedloads of books, audio plays...) so let's start here.
The Doctor, a mad man in a box, picks people (for various values of "people") up and they go on adventures in time and space, battling threats to time and general villainy. "Planets to save, civilisations to rescue, creatures to defeat and an awful lot of running to do." This gives you the entire setting to play with, of course, and you shouldn't have much trouble coming up with adventure ideas.
There are problems, of course. The Doctor is madly powerful compared to the average Companion, of course, so you need a player who wouldn't abuse that. And do you use a canonical Doctor and Companions or not? They vary in style, ability and even power level - and of course, as the new producer, there's always the temptation to have a new Doctor...
Someone Else And Companions
Another Time Lord or equally strange and powerful being. This means you can play fast and loose with canon (like this has ever troubled the series) and skip the need to keep the Doctor consistent so your new Time Lord could, say, settle down and raise a family. The trick here is to make the new "title character" different enough that it couldn't just as easily be another incarnation of the Doctor.
Lost In Time
Of course, while you might need a Time Lord to control a TARDIS, there are other forms of time travel out there as well as the uncontrollable TARDIS option, and a group of ordinary-ish sentient beings could end up inside one, bouncing around time randomly and getting in trouble without a handy guide. Good for the feel of the early black-and-white series where the Doctor wasn't so ruddy amazing and it was his first time meeting Daleks, Cybermen, and so on.
Time Patrol
A group of Time Lords, Time Agents, or other heroic-type problem-solvers going through time with a defined purpose, being sent on missions rather than fated to stumble into adventures. Nice and straightforward, so that's about all I need to say on the matter, so I'll just add that GURPS Time Travel is pretty good on the subject, particularly the example setting where two rival time agencies are both trying to alter time to make their future the real one.
The Sarah Jane Adventures
The Whoniverse is wild and woolly enough that you can save the world from your attic in Ealing. You'd be skipping the time travel rules and the like (apart from the odd time warp episode here and there) but consider the kind of things a group of normal-ish Earthlings could easily get mixed up in. Imagine a Sparrow And Nightingale series, fighting alien threats with book learning, a laptop computer and maybe a set of night vision goggles if they go and buy them.
Torchwood
As above but with guns and swears. The Doctor Who game isn't a good fit for it - drop the initiative system for starters. And would many players be keen on being quite as useless as that shower? It's a prominent has-its-own-show example of an idea that fits in the Whoniverse but not in the spirit of the main show or the game as written. I wouldn't want to play Abslom Daak, Dalek Killer under this ruleset either.
UNIT
As above but without swears. More capable than Torchwood, although still prone to grumbling about bullet-proof monsters. Also brings in chains of command and things like that, although it always has civilian specialists and room for Companion-style hangers-on with no official rank or jurisdiction.
Whoniverse? Whatniverse?
What else could you do with this game? Well, it's pretty geared towards reflecting Doctor Who, starting at talking-beats-fighting built into initiative. There aren't many settings that are anywhere close to as let's-talk-about-this. It would be a great initiative system for some specific characters, but few of them define their settings. Still, it could work for a group of disparate characters prone to talking and running in a Who-like style.
By way of example: The Flying Dutchman. People who have taken a wrong turn, literally, and are now adrift in the Seas of Time, pitching up seemingly at random in different times and places where Time has gone astray. A bit like Sapphire And Steel but without the PCs themselves being mysterious and otherworldly.
Monday, 9 August 2010
Doctor Who, Adventures In Time And Space, and more
I figured I might as well have a dedicated Who blog.
Let's see if I think of anything to say in it.
To begin, then - this blog shares a title with the Doctor Who game I ran at my local university RPG society earlier this year, and nearly with a children's book I've never read which is annoying as I could totally write a novel with this title as well.
Actual Play transcripts of the adventures are on RPGnet and DWAITAS and should hopefully give readers some ideas, or at least some laughs due to the players bringing the awesome. I included OOC notes at the end of each episode discussing my findings.
Let's see if I think of anything to say in it.
To begin, then - this blog shares a title with the Doctor Who game I ran at my local university RPG society earlier this year, and nearly with a children's book I've never read which is annoying as I could totally write a novel with this title as well.
Actual Play transcripts of the adventures are on RPGnet and DWAITAS and should hopefully give readers some ideas, or at least some laughs due to the players bringing the awesome. I included OOC notes at the end of each episode discussing my findings.
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