Title not a strong on-message one. The Moon doesn’t win anything. And today is Saturn’s day anyway.
Spoilers!
Saturday, 30 April 2011
Friday, 29 April 2011
Adventure Hook: With This Ring
As someone inevitably said, "if today's so special how come there isn't a Doctor Who episode about it?" (No, this doesn't count.)
Which naturally lead to...
The Wedding Of The Seventy-Seventh Century
Somewhat inspired by this, steal more if you can. And by all the creepy political marriages in Game Of Thrones.
A wedding! And not just any wedding, the wedding of two of the great houses of the Third Great And Bountiful Human Empire, the sort of event that will alter the line of succession and, if it goes wrong, could plunge whole star systems into war.
So, naturally, someone wants it to go wrong.
Which naturally lead to...
The Wedding Of The Seventy-Seventh Century
Somewhat inspired by this, steal more if you can. And by all the creepy political marriages in Game Of Thrones.
A wedding! And not just any wedding, the wedding of two of the great houses of the Third Great And Bountiful Human Empire, the sort of event that will alter the line of succession and, if it goes wrong, could plunge whole star systems into war.
So, naturally, someone wants it to go wrong.
Thursday, 28 April 2011
Help this man!
Kit on "recovered TARDIS" game setups.
I've been helping already. It's one of the classics - unreliable time machine, no (also unreliable) pilot attached. Go anywhere and anywhen at the whim of the players and GM and maybe the player characters if they ever figure out what they're doing, poke things with sticks that mortal man was not meant to poke with sticks, and run from Daleks.
It was the form our playtest game took. As nobody stuck their hand up to play a Time Lord we had a psychic who "inherited" the knowledge to pilot it (sort of) by mindlink. We were all adventurous sorts (my PCs was expressly what I'd make a companion like) which you kind of have to be when the basic format is "you leave the TARDIS and..." - and yes, I know of players who go "I stay in the TARDIS!"
Beyond that, it allowed us to stumble onto alien invasions, space operas, historical epochs, old FASA adventures with at most slight rewriting of the reason the PCs take interest after arriving, different GMs taking shots, a mild case of meeting the same characters out of sequence and things of that sort. As a lot of the adventures were pre-written and adapted to test the system, and the series didn't come to a real conclusion, and I don't fancy belatedly typing up two years' worth of gaming, no AP exists, so you'll have to take my word for some of this.
But yeah, it's a way to go.
I've been helping already. It's one of the classics - unreliable time machine, no (also unreliable) pilot attached. Go anywhere and anywhen at the whim of the players and GM and maybe the player characters if they ever figure out what they're doing, poke things with sticks that mortal man was not meant to poke with sticks, and run from Daleks.
It was the form our playtest game took. As nobody stuck their hand up to play a Time Lord we had a psychic who "inherited" the knowledge to pilot it (sort of) by mindlink. We were all adventurous sorts (my PCs was expressly what I'd make a companion like) which you kind of have to be when the basic format is "you leave the TARDIS and..." - and yes, I know of players who go "I stay in the TARDIS!"
Beyond that, it allowed us to stumble onto alien invasions, space operas, historical epochs, old FASA adventures with at most slight rewriting of the reason the PCs take interest after arriving, different GMs taking shots, a mild case of meeting the same characters out of sequence and things of that sort. As a lot of the adventures were pre-written and adapted to test the system, and the series didn't come to a real conclusion, and I don't fancy belatedly typing up two years' worth of gaming, no AP exists, so you'll have to take my word for some of this.
But yeah, it's a way to go.
Footnote
If you do want actual play of one of the FASA adventures we played through from another group, The Buccaneer Chronicles has that. Seems our GM read it, as he borrowed their different introduction.
Saturday, 23 April 2011
Wednesday, 20 April 2011
Elisabeth Sladen
I'm shocked and saddened to report that Lis Sladen has died, age 63. My sympathies to family and friends, and my fellow fans.
"I saw amazing things, out there in space. But there is strangeness to be found wherever you turn. Life on Earth can be an adventure too... you just need to know where to look!"
"I saw amazing things, out there in space. But there is strangeness to be found wherever you turn. Life on Earth can be an adventure too... you just need to know where to look!"
Friday, 15 April 2011
IDW have regenerated their Doctor Who comic to issue 1, and I had to check that Tony Lee is still writing, because they’ve apparently told him to cut down the obscure continuity references, so this issue we have a brief visit to the planet of hard light holograms, and all the references are about spam email, Windows Assistant, Red Dwarf and Danny Trejo. It works rather better as a result. I could imagine it as a rather more costly Comic Relief eight-minuter.
Next issue, Jack the Ripper, which could easily be mired in Victorian adventure references unless this is kept up, perhaps as a deliberate editorial policy of “interest the people watching the big BBC America push and avoid confusing them with obscure references”.
Next issue, Jack the Ripper, which could easily be mired in Victorian adventure references unless this is kept up, perhaps as a deliberate editorial policy of “interest the people watching the big BBC America push and avoid confusing them with obscure references”.
Tuesday, 12 April 2011
NEXT TIME...
Series A, Episode 3: Deluge
Yeah, this is what happens when I have months to think of the next adventure rather than a week or so.
Yeah, this is what happens when I have months to think of the next adventure rather than a week or so.
"The Motherland hears, the Motherland knows, Where her son flies in the sky"
Fifty years ago, Yuri Gagarin flew into space.
The Cold War space race is one of the turning points of human history. The moment when some of the classic ideas of SF started to become real. The moment when we knew leaving the Earth was really possible.
It was motivated more by politics, oneupmanship and a desire to be able to spy on and possibly bomb the other guy than by the idealism of exploration for the sake of knowledge and leaving the cradle of humanity, but it still lead to great things, to a sense of the world as a whole despite the superpowers' motives for the flights.
"Orbiting Earth in the spaceship, I saw how beautiful our planet is. People, let us preserve and increase this beauty, not destroy it!"
To make this more Who relevant, within four years we had the first story set in a near future of collaborative space exploration.
More directly, a Yuri Gagarin Celebrity Historical. Aliens or time travellers trying to sabotage things and trash history would be the obvious plot. (Of course, I'd wait until seeing the Apollo-11-based The Impossible Astronaut in a week and a half before prepping that, just in case.) Maybe in a 50s to early 60s SF style, with a Quatermass II style secret invasion, and Gagarin as a Russian space opera hero helping to put things right.
The Cold War space race is one of the turning points of human history. The moment when some of the classic ideas of SF started to become real. The moment when we knew leaving the Earth was really possible.
It was motivated more by politics, oneupmanship and a desire to be able to spy on and possibly bomb the other guy than by the idealism of exploration for the sake of knowledge and leaving the cradle of humanity, but it still lead to great things, to a sense of the world as a whole despite the superpowers' motives for the flights.
"Orbiting Earth in the spaceship, I saw how beautiful our planet is. People, let us preserve and increase this beauty, not destroy it!"
To make this more Who relevant, within four years we had the first story set in a near future of collaborative space exploration.
More directly, a Yuri Gagarin Celebrity Historical. Aliens or time travellers trying to sabotage things and trash history would be the obvious plot. (Of course, I'd wait until seeing the Apollo-11-based The Impossible Astronaut in a week and a half before prepping that, just in case.) Maybe in a 50s to early 60s SF style, with a Quatermass II style secret invasion, and Gagarin as a Russian space opera hero helping to put things right.
Thursday, 7 April 2011
More brainstorms
I'm busy (see The Watch House for details) and counting down to a big hit of new Who, so in the meantime, here's what some other people on RPGnet are doing.
101 Aliens currently actually has about eight, but it's a good eight.
Invasion by who or what for one-line descriptions of forces that might invade our world.
101 Aliens currently actually has about eight, but it's a good eight.
Invasion by who or what for one-line descriptions of forces that might invade our world.
Saturday, 2 April 2011
Trailer, again
New and different trailer, from BBC America.
That shot seven seconds in of a veiny albino, possibly one of the ones in Guantanamo/Misfits boiler suits in other shots, turns slowly to look at the screen really rather like Amy and the Doctor did in the Eleventh Hour shots shown in last year's trailer. I have no idea if this matters. Or why the TARDIS appears Shimmer-style. Or what almost any of this is. I look forward to finding out.
That shot seven seconds in of a veiny albino, possibly one of the ones in Guantanamo/Misfits boiler suits in other shots, turns slowly to look at the screen really rather like Amy and the Doctor did in the Eleventh Hour shots shown in last year's trailer. I have no idea if this matters. Or why the TARDIS appears Shimmer-style. Or what almost any of this is. I look forward to finding out.
Friday, 1 April 2011
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