Well, I’m not sure I should be engaging in “spoilers”. I usually end up wrong when I guess stuff. So, that first episode of the festive special proved thoroughly enjoyable. I have to admit to a fan-fueled tear at the final shot…
Anyway, I happy for the ‘enemy’ to be defeated provided that doesn’t mean the end of the them. I’m hoping their return presents a permanent fixture and The Doctor has to gone on the run again. I like them and the prospect of their return seems like a good move to add a new dimension to the storyline. I daresay Russell only removed them to simplify the back story for newcomers when the series returned.
We’ll see…
And, finally, what’s the connection between The Doctor and Wilfred Mott? Could it be a sneaky anagram?
Time Lord WTF?
I noted on Twitter that Cubicle 7 had announced the release of Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space as a PDF, through DriveThruRPG and RPGNow. I haven’t got my own copy at the moment, which irks a little… I’d love to have my hands on it right now. Others have been opening the box with reverance, inspecting the glossy booklets with curious and fannish eyes.
I have to admit I am happy to wait – because I’m not at a major disadvantage for waiting an extra week or two. In the meantime, I’m saving £13 on the recommended price.
Now, I have to wonder the advantages of getting the PDF copy. You get no box, no dice – and you need to print them out if you want to use the tokens. If the PDF pricing considered this in light of market pricing as well, I might be tempted (and I have other games in PDF format, while also possessing the hardcopy)… However, the PDF copy is £21.53, just £5.46 cheaper than the boxset I’m getting from Play.com. What would possess me to do without the physical books for such a discount? Yes the PDF can go anywhere with me, stored away on a laptop or iPhone; but do I, as a Doctor Who GM, really need to be that flexible?
Just noted that there’s a favourable review of the new Doctor Who RPG in the latest issue of SFX.
The production value seems to have impressed – with the reviewer noting that many RPGs didn’t come up to the mark in terms of presentation. The reviewer noted the game used a point system for character creation and supported creation of characters suited to the atmosphere of the game (i.e. no gungho alien killing machines coming out of this game!)
The only downside the reviewer noted related to player fights over who got to play The Doctor/the resident Time Lord. I doubt that fight will really last long – because the weight on the shoulders of the average Time Lord will likely detract from the entertainment of playing one. Too much depends on you being right and you spend your time concerned for your companions – so very little time to consider yourself. If you do struggle to get players to agree, rotate character roles – random selection each session. Players who don’t like that kind of random factor and prefer to develop their own characters will rapidly get the idea and settle on a more agreeable arrangement for who plays what character. Those less bothered can play Time Lord ping-pong.
Anyway, I still await arrival of my copy. The price of getting the game £13 cheaper than advertised seems to be existing for the whims of the distributor. The game will come when it comes… Not like I don’t have anything else to do in the meantime!
While somewhat remiss in keeping deadlines and with a frustratingly uninformative web site of late, Cubicle 7 remain on target to publish the Doctor Who RPG. In an announcement on licensing from Chaosium, right at the bottom it confirms that the Who RPG will be coming this way in October – http://bit.ly/k4Fd7
On top of that I’m thoroughly intrigued by the game they plan to use the Basic Roleplaying system for… Sounds intriguing.
It may well be a quiet year for Doctor Who on the TV, but not totally devoid of content. We have four specials, a week long Torchwood epic, and the Sarah Jane Adventures – Series 3 to look forward to. On top of that, we should finally see the publication of Cubicle 7‘s Doctor Who role playing game.
Resolutions for the New Year:
- Get episode reviews up-to-date for all series on this blog
- Complete FASA RPG version analysis piece on this blog
- Read at least three pieces of Doctor Who fiction – to quench the thirst
- Buy the RPG – and write at least one adventure for publication, either here or through some official channel
Well, that last one is worth a shot, right?
The new series of Doctor Who has been on for six weeks now. Torchwood ended a little before that. A lot to review – and nothing to show for it. Anyone would think I’d been ill or something.
A warning… I fear that in this post I sound like I’m just thinking outloud. As a result, it may come across like senseless babble!
I have been mulling over the essential elements of a Doctor Who plot while reading through an old FASA role playing scenario, ‘The Iytean Menace‘. As common in the game, the players take up the adventure on the urgings of the Celestial Intervention Agency, however, I wanted to see how you could introduce the players to the events involved without outside pressures. Take ‘The Empty Child‘ for example.
- Doctor and Rose discover alien capsule heading to Earth; Doctor investigates capsule landing, while Rose splits off looking for lost child.
- Rose finds child, faces death and Jack rescues her; while Doctor meets someone who knows about the lost child and follows her.
- Doctor discovers the location of the alien capsule; at the same time Jack and Rose discover the girl and the lost child.
- Rose and Jack find out where the Doctor is from the girl; Doctor finds out about the lost child ‘plague’ – and all three face cliff-hanger peril.
It isn’t so much investigation, as happenstance and luck that leads the Doctor through his adventure, while the companion must, quite vitally, get split up and discover something threatening or complicated to add to the Doctor’s worries when they get back together again. Wartime orphans and Captain Jack form subplots that link into the girl, the lost child and the Chula ambulance filled with confused alien nanites. The advancement of the story involves layers – like an onion – but one character may discover layers in different ways or completely on their own than another who might skip ahead a layer and realise the significance when the whole story starts to come together.
‘The Iytean Menace’ has layers, but they happen in a linear fashion that somehow smacks less of Doctor Who than it should.
- The CIA identify alien weapons in Victorian England and send the time travellers to investigate
- The travellers meet the owner of one such weapon and get rebuffed
- The owner’s daughter meets the travellers and tells them her father is paranoid and has been accused of stealing from another collector
- The travellers meet the other collector who explains about the burglary and the events that led to his accusation of guilt
- The travellers, potentially, investigate a doctor present at the house on the night of the theft and find he doesn’t care to talk to anyone and seems to spend a lot of time in his personal lab
And so on. It feels like a straightline, whereas ‘The Empty Child’ has more of a branch-like structure to it. While the ‘trunk’ of the story leads from beginning to end, the branches fork off, cross paths and generally create a more complex adventure. It seems to me a good Doctor Who adventure must involve:
- An unexpected introduction to the problem, probably at odds with the character’s original intent
- The Doctor and companions split apart, come back together, split and repeat!
- A subplot or two that feel like red herrings, but in fact tie neatly, but obscurely, into the primary story
- Exitless traps that prove to have at least one way out you didn’t expect
- One or more cases of mistaken or false identities that prove either useful or troublesome as the story progresses
Maybe I need to set the elements of the role playing story down and determine the whether the structure does overlap with the hidden depths of the onion skin principle…
When, as a Doctor Who fan, you read articles like this, you can only sit and weep a silent tear of joy, knowing that you have got a step closer to some unrecorded list of ‘Perfect Moments to See Before You Next Regenerate’. Worth it for the desktop wallpaper alone!
Marvelous to see the devious minds at work behind the scenes of The Sarah Jane Adventures, when making side references to Doctor Who mythology in yesterday’s episode. When Sarah Jane spoke to Bea (played by Phyllida Law), they discussed how Sontarans looked like potatoes – which neatly ties into this story about a forthcoming fourth Season Doctor Who story. Mind, I always thought the Rutans were the potato-a-likes – while the Sontarans looked like militaristic Weebles.
Should be a snip to realise the Sontarans – just recycling the Judoon armoured suits and stick different heads on top…
Oh, and I’ll review the Gorgon adventure soon!
Suddenly I want to be a child all over again, to really appreciate the fact that someone up at the BBC thinks kindly enough of me to create and broadcast ‘The Sarah Jane Adventures‘. I can’t help but applaud the effort of cast and crew on the first episode – ‘Revenge of the Slitheen’. I actually appreciated the Slitheen even more by the very fact we only had one splott of CGI – on the first reveal – and then nothing but rubbery suits. Personally, I feel it worked. Yes, CGI created a far more fluid hunting machine, but running around in costumes fitted the feel of a kids show.
The superb camp of the Slitheen in disguise made them delightful to watch and the kids were hardly irritating at all – and provide a nice spread from hyper-intelligent geek Luke to potato-for-a-brain Clyde. As a fan of ‘Doctor Who‘, the continuity of the Slitheen family continuing to seek revenge made for satisfying justification.
And… Sarah. I hope I’m not alone in feeling a special yearning whenever I see the lithe form of dear Miss Smith. I would dare to go so far as to describe Sarah Jane as a bit of a MILF… but must immediately apologise for descending to such grubby depths. She’s marvellous… absolutely wondrous. I can’t believe we’ve had to wait so long for this – and look forward to much more. I’m sure the tie-in with ‘Doctor Who’ and the essential quality of the show in its own right with make all the difference in giving it a long life. And I hope Sarah gets her wish to meet up with the Doctor again in the very near future…
