Blatant trawling for comments

Would folks be interested in a one-shot adventure for a group of Normal People type PCs? Pregens all ready to go, suitable for conventions and the like? Perhaps with the option to NPC them as a bunch of PC time travellers crash the party?

I'm thinking about it after chiguayante on RPGnet put up a thread fishing for one-shot ideas without a definite decision as to the power level of the characters beyond modern humans.

Regeneration

eryx raised this over on DWAITAS. When you regenerate, are you as Steven Moffat puts it "the same man with a different face" or as Russell T Davies puts it "a different man goes sauntering away"?

Now, I'm tiptoeing around things covered by the NDA for The Time Traveller's Companion here, as regeneration gets a big new writeup, but I can safely say that it addresses some of the different ways of looking at it.

Because the answer to both options above is "yes... kinda".

The Doctor is notably worse at regenerating than other recurring Time Lords, because they can be played by similar-looking people for ease of recognition much more easily than he could. But I must admit I've never been able to get past the out-of-character reasoning and suspend my disbelief on this.

So when Kai regenerated in the finale of The Door In Time he came out looking like himself after losing a bit of weight and getting a haircut. (And Effie, who was standing a bit too close, lost forty-three years of age, but that's just one of those things...) So I suppose that's how I'd play it, unless I had a hefty reason not to. Watch as I deviate from canon because I don't have to worry about finding a replacement actor!

The robes are just a formal thing, really.

Kit over on the DWAITAS board mentioned the possibility of a game set around Gallifrey. I think too much time spent there takes away its sense of mystery and wonder, making it too much like a hybrid of Westminster and Cambridge. (And if I want to run that, I had a Buffy game set in Cambridge already.)

Quoting myself:

There is a lot of Douglas Adams's Cambridge experience in the makeup of Time Lord society, but it also gave us the Doctor and the Master, much like Cambridge gave us the Cambridge Four as well as its more "normal" graduates. It's a hotbed of great thinking as well as an institution of arcane tradition, as much a home to those determined and brilliant enough to get in as those privileged enough to make the cut through family and school connections. And there's the town as well as the gown - even in the citadel, there are still normal Gallifreyans (and quite possibly other species) working in the guard towers and the kitchens. An "Upstairs, Downstairs" game with them could be interesting too.

And for a game focusing on the wildly inventive side of the Time Lords, world-saving craziness mixed with intellectual snobbery, check out SHIELD from Marvel Comics, which reveals the mad science secret history of the Marvel Universe and sets Galileo against Galactus. The portrayal of Newton could certainly make a suitable basis for a scheming Time Lord politician.

Dragonmeet 2010

Despite the best efforts of the snow, I managed to get back last night after attending Dragonmeet in London. Among other people, I got to geek out at C7's Angus and Dom and Andrew Peregrine, went "ooh" when they announced that Gar Hanrahan is in the process of finishing a Primeval RPG adapting the Who system (I imagine Talking won't be the most favoured action in the initiative order in this version, and Gar also mentioned a system for building up paradoxes until time changes) and got to talk a bit about the Doctor box sets.

While I was away, Siskoid's Blog Roundup linked to a very kind review of A Series-ful Of Plots.

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And since you come here for ideas rather than bloggery, the sudden massive snowfall makes me think...

Winter World

The travellers return to present-day Earth after adventures in the past and future, to find Britain (and much of northern Europe) buried under two feet of snow. Services are grinding to a halt, UNIT doesn't have enough snow tyres... And there is talk of strange figures in the snow. Footprints are soon filled in by more snow and lose their shape, but they're large and deep, suggesting something big and heavy is abroad in the frozen land. Could this connect to the Pharos Institute reading strange energy fluctuations from a series of weather monitoring stations around the country?

Possibilities:

Ice Warriors of course (see Midwinter in "A Series!") or maybe Abominable Snowmen, or anything that wants to disrupt things and doesn't mind the weather. And the wider madder Whoniverse being what it is, undead Vikings bringing about Fimbulwinter are just as likely.

Right then, off to Dragonmeet on the morrow, there to possibly meet people involved in the game.

I leave you with this: Count the shadows! And here Steven Moffat always thought Blink was the idea they could have made into a horror movie.

Since I've managed not to post it here somehow...

My Doctor Who PBP trailer

Happy Doctor Who Day!

So there's this girl at Coal Hill School, an ordinary comprehensive, who seems a bit strange. Apparently she lives with her grandfather, who is a doctor... in a scrapyard on Totter's Lane. When her teachers go to visit, they find them lurking around a police box, of all things...

So this man steps out of a police box, of all things, hunting something only he can see...

So there's this girl working late at a department store, when she hears something, and then sees something move...

So there's this girl with a crack in her bedroom wall...

So there's... what next?

Digging back

Last night I remembered a pre-DWAITAS Doctor Who plot hooks thread over on RPGnet from 2007 (here) so here are my contributions, including an opening scene I'd completely forgotten about.

The Eighth Doctor: A time that never was

Due to the new fancy edition box set, I now own Doctor Who: The Movie (aka Enemy Within, for those wanting a less silly name) on DVD. As the pilot for an unmade revival, it makes for interesting viewing.

A quick thought on the Children In Need trailer

It's obviously echoing A Christmas Carol... which as I recall doesn't have sharks in it...

Another in that occasional series of historical oddities

Where Cracked.com points out hinges in history. This time, 5 Minor Screw-ups That Created The Modern World.

"For want of a nail" and all that. With, it being posted on Cracked, added swears.

This week's Sarah Jane Adventures

Goodbye, Sarah Jane Smith

Julie Graham was perfect casting as "the new Sarah Jane" because after Bonekickers and Survivors she'd seem like the BBC's go-to casting for "attractive middle-aged woman in modern-day genre series about investigating strange mysteries" which SJA is, if they were making it primetime and not basing it on an existing already-cast character.

What was being done rather bothered me - Sarah Jane affected with symptoms like Alzheimer's. And who wouldn't want to have a monster to stop if someone was suffering from that?

Gamewise, new monster(s).

So now, no new Who for... well, three days counting the Children In Need special, but then a whole five weeks, egad.

Craig Ferguson attempts to explain Daleks to America

A noble effort, hampered by the Dalek's inert state.

Update - the further attempt to explain the show itself.

And because he's earned it after all that, Matt Smith!

Monument Valley? Hmm.

And Finally, Thirty Adventure Hooks

Yes, thirty.

Admittedly some (like The Hidden Door / The World Next Door) are recycled and expanded on elsewhere in this collection, but hey.

Actual Play: The Hammer Of Time character stats

Since I had to make them for a convention, I have all the numbers for everyone. So...