Monday, May 15, 2023

#Dungeon23 Tomb of the Vampire Queen, Level 5, Room 15

 Going back to Room #10 and going straight. This hallway opens into a large open chamber with hallways leading away from the corridor. There are also several doors (8) in this room. 

Room 15

There are skeletons of same snake-like creatures here.

The rooms are all nearly identical. These rooms appear to be living quarters of some sort.  Each one is about 20' by 20. In each one is a bed, a closest and table. Some still have their inhabitants, though long since dead.  Scouring the rooms will reveal about 1d8 x 10 gp worth of various bits of good metal.

--

These are the crew quarters for the junior officers. Not all of them made it out. 

Sunday, May 14, 2023

#Dungeon23 Tomb of the Vampire Queen, Level 5, Room 14

 Going back to Room #10, going left takes them down a long, poorly lit hallway (lights are flickering) it turns to the left and continues into a long room.

Room 14

This room looks like Room #13, but it is not damaged. The far wall glows and gives off a slight hum.

Touching anything in this room will give off a strange trilling sound. A light will come on, and then go right out.  

There is no treasure here.

--

This the Port (left) side engine and it is intact. The engine itself is in standby mode and will not reactivate. Thankfully. Reactivating the engine will likely blow up the entire island.




Saturday, May 13, 2023

Larina Nichols for FASA Doctor Who RPG

You didn't think I would go through all this effort and not at least see how my own Drosophila melanogaster would work. I least wanted to try out a witch. 

In truth, my little witch Larina has a lot to do with Doctor Who, especially the Doctor Who I was watching in the 80s.  My original version of her had bits of Sarah Jane Smith and Jo Grant, but not as "screamy" as they were. And more than a little of Romana II. And many of my favorite episodes had a more horror feel, especially "The Brain of Morbius" and The Sisterhood of Karn.

SO...how does a witch fit into Doctor Who? We have the Sisterhood of Karn in the classic episodes and even the Carrionites in the later "The Shakespeare Code" (2007).  The episode "The Daemons" gave us a White Witch, and "The Stones of Blood" gave us druids. So there is at least some fertile ground here. Humans in rare cases have been shown to develop mental powers like telepathy and tk ("Planet of the Spiders") 

Given my love for the occult 70s revival and British folk horror, I am tempted to set her as a companion to the Doctor (or one of the other PC Time Lords) in 1974 (Tom Baker era). Have her a "white witch" from Wales (because why not) who is trying to figure out what to do with her parents' old spice shop. That is when a Time Lord comes into her life.

Larina Nichols, 70s style

Larina Nichols
aka, "Nix"

Human Female
Profession: Spice shop owner, neo-pagan
Approximate Space/Time Coordinates: TNP Earth, 1974

Apparent Age: 20s
Actual Age: 25
Regog. Handle: Bright red hair, blue eyes, thick Welsh accent
Height: 5'4"
Build: Slim/Average
Looks: Striking 

STR: III
END: IV
DEX: IV
CHA: V
MNT: VI
INT: V

Max Op END: 20    Wound Heal: 4
Curr Op END: 10    Fatigue Heal: 4
Inact Save Lvl III: 12
Unc Thresh Lvl II: 6

Special Abilities:  Telekinesis (11), Telepathy (11)

AP: 7

Skills:
Artistic Expression II
Gaming II
Life Sciences II
General Medicine II
General Medicine, Herbal Cures III
Physical Sciences II
Public Performance I
Social Sciences II
Streetwise I
Trivia, Occultism III
Unarmed Combat, Brawling II
Verbal Interaction III

I can see her traveling with her Time Lord roughly parallel to Sarah Jane Smith and the Fourth Doctor's adventures. Maybe in this alternate reality, she got her mental powers from one of the blue crystals from Metebelis 3, turning her eyes from brown to blue, somewhat like they did with Leela.

Travel with her Time Lord until she decides to stay on Karn and join the Sisterhood? No idea, really yet.

As it turns out, I did, in fact, have a character sheet for her. It wasn't complete, but enough to get me going. 

#Dungeon23 Tomb of the Vampire Queen, Level 5, Room 13

 The doorway from Room #10 opens to a hallway. PCs can go right, left or straight ahead.

Going right takes them down a long, poorly lit hallway (lights are flickering) it turns to the right and continues into a long room.

Room 13

This room looks like it had been in an intense fire with melted metal bits everywhere.

Spending longer than 1 hour here will cause the PCs to feel sick unless a Saving Throw vs. Death is passed.  Affected PCs will then begin to die of a wasting disease. The healing tools from earlier will revive them as will a Cure Disease spell.

There are several decayed corpses here. They look like the humanoid from the previous rooms. All that remain are bones.

There is no treasure or creatures here.

--

This is the remains of the Starboard (right) Engine. The sickness is radiation sickness.

Friday, May 12, 2023

FASA Doctor Who RPG: Part 5 Jenny Everywhere

Jenny Everywhere
Jenny Everywhere by Diana Nock
To wrap up my exploration of the FASA Doctor Who RPG I wanted to create a character for it. I wanted a Time Lord or something like that. So I could really test the system out. But in truth, nothing was coming to mind. I wanted a fun character, not a Doctor clone, and someone that fit with the spirit of not just this game but my blog.

After a lot of going back and forth on various ideas and going back to an old idea. I felt it was time to revisit my old friend Jenny Everywhere!

We last saw Jenny on these pages back in Victorian England for the Ghosts of Albion RPG, where, among other things, she was lamenting that there would be no decent cell phone reception here for another 170 years.  But honestly, Jenny is a great character, and according to many of the articles I have read on her she owes at least a little bit of her existence to Doctor Who.  She is perfect for this since I can stat her up for all versions of the Doctor Who RPGs out there and compare them.  

A bit of background from my original post 13 years ago! (ACK!)

Jenny Everywhere is a shifter; that is she can shift between the realities and interact with who knows who.  Whether there is one Jenny Everywhere that is very mobile or multiple Jenny's that have a vague awareness of each other is left to the individual authors.  I personally am fond of the Multiple Jennys idea.

Jenny Everywhere is also a public domain character.  Meaning anyone can use her in whatever project they have. You just need to include her license as below:

"The character of Jenny Everywhere is available for use by anyone, with only one condition. This paragraph must be included in any publication involving Jenny Everywhere, in order that others may use this property as they wish. All rights reversed."
It is such a cool concept, not just the open-source of it (that is cool also) but a character that exists in every single reality and can shift between them.

Regular readers should by now know of my love for the multi-verse.  It is a very cool concept I enjoy on principle and how it has been employed in various sci-fi and fantasy publications.  My favorite might be the great Micheal Moorcock stories of Elric, Corum, and the other Incarnations of the Eternal Champion.  Jenny would be different.  While the Eternal Champion feels the combined weight of all his incarnations as it were, Jenny is freed by hers.  Reality is hers to roam because that is what it is there for.  In one of the comics I saw, she fights against a force known as Chaos, but that doesn't make her an agent of Law as we would have seen in the Corum books. 

Of course, the openness of Jenny is very appealing.  Something everyone can use and share and just a promise not to break her.

In the various Doctor RPGs I am going to say she is Galifreyian, or half-Galifreyian, human on her mother's side.  This gives her some temporal sense and makes her long-lived. She also has the ability to shift in Time and Space. 

Jenny Everywhere
Jenny Everywhere
aka, The Shifter

STR: IV
END: V
DEX: V
CHA: VI
MNT: V
INT: IV

Max Op END: 30    Wound Heal: 5
Curr Op END: 15    Fatigue Heal: 5
Inact Save Lvl III: 12
Unc Thresh Lvl II: 6

Special Abilities: Luck, Shifting

AP: 7

Skills:
Armed Combat, Contact Weapons II
Armed Combat, Ranged Weapons II
Artistic Expression III
Carousing III
Engineering III
Engineering, Temporal IV
Gaming II
Leadership III
Life Sciences II
General Medicine III
Physical Sciences VI
Public Performance I
Social Sciences II
Space Sciences II
Streetwise IV
TARDIS Systems III
Trivia, Time Shifting V
Unarmed Combat, Brawling III
Unarmed Combat, Grappling III
Temporal Vehicle III
Verbal Interaction III
Verbal Interaction, Fast Talking IV

In my mind, Jenny Shifts about time and space more or less at will. She can also move between universes. A bit like Jobu Tupaki (Everything Everywhere All at Once) and America Chavez (Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness). Likely she has met both of those 'verse jumpers as well.

She has run into the Doctor and even hung out with Clara and Ashildr on The American Roadside Diner in Space

I have to admit I also want to stat up her companion. Her older, but very normal if a lot sexier, half-sister Donna Everywhere


Links


#Dungeon23 Tomb of the Vampire Queen, Level 5, Room 12

This room is on the other side of Room #10, also behind a hidden door.  The room is the same shape and dimensions as Room #11.

Room 12

This room has more of those animated statues, but many are in pieces. It almost looks like many have been opened and metal from the inside have been taken out. They look more like some sort of advanced clockwork creature.

There are some tools here and gold in the form of wire (78 gp total).

There is one tool that fits into a human's hand easily with a small depression near the middle. Pressing the depression causes a jet of flame 12" long to come out.

--

The tool is a plasma knife, and it is used to cut open damaged robots that can't be opened by regular means. It has 1d4+6 "charges" remaining.  It can be used as a dagger, but the damage is 1d6 burning only, not piercing or slashing. It can also be used to start fires. 


Thursday, May 11, 2023

FASA Doctor Who RPG: Part 4 The Adventures

No RPG is complete without some adventures to have. Here are all the official FASA Doctor Who RPG adventures published. All are out of print and hard to find these days.

Doctor Who Adventures

It has taken me a few years, but I have managed to get all the adventures.  Some of these are so musty I am going to need to double up on my antihistamines just to get through them all!


The Iytean Menace

The Iytean Menace

48 pages. 1985. Design and writing by J. Andrew Keith.

Now here is a fun one. The characters travel back to London in 1885 (I am already on board) to discover a retired Army Officer with a cache of futuristic weapons, a crashed spaceship, and a rogue body-snatching alien. It actually has quite a lot to offer. 

There are plenty of interesting NPCs and even a full set of PCs for the players to use. We are introduced to Time Lord Rollonovaradanavashir, or Rolo for short, and his collection of eight companions. We get coverage of the Type 51 TARDIS with its advanced computer systems and even some new skills.

Yes. That cover is Paris Street; Rainy Day by Gustave Caillebotte. Though the adventure takes place in London in 1885 not Paris in 1877. Minor detail I guess. 

This one might be fun to try out with the Paternoster Investigations gang with the Cubicle 7 system. 

The Iytean Menace and Paternoster Investigations

The Lords of Destiny

The Lords of Destiny

48 pages. 1985. Design and writing by William H. Keith, Jr.

This one has a rather interesting premise. The characters materialize onto a 10,000km long starship built around a planet. As it has been traveling through space and gathering material, it has grown larger and larger. Now its computer is sentient and, of course, insane, so it is targeting mineral-rich planets to gobble up. To top it all off the characters are arrested right away and there is a rebellion happening on the ship of some 100 Billion people. 

This is another adventure, like most of the Doctor Who adventures and stories, that require more thought than beating people up. It is mentioned that while yes, blowing up the ship would solve the problem, it would also kill all 100 billion on board. 

This one introduces us to the Time Lord, "The Professor," which seems like an inventible name.  I would be lying if I didn't say I totally tried to square this guy with the Peter Cushing Dr. Who movies. His companions include Joan of Arc (yes. that one), a tabloid reporter from Peria, IL, and a test pilot from 9880 AD. 

Countdown

Countdown

48 pages. 1985. Design and writing by Ray Winninger

The first adventures were published right on the heels of RPG Boxed set. This one came later. In this adventure the character's TARDIS gets caught in a gravity bubble and they land on the courier Leander in the 26th Century. The Leander is delivering medical supplies that only last for 48 hours and the flight in 30 hours long. There is some meddling with some Vegan pirates (not those Vegans, ones from Vega XII) and a Cyberman plot. 

This adventure is set up for first time Gamemasters with notes on how to run this adventure and adventures in general. Several options for resolving this adventure are given. And we even have a nice map of the starships.

For the Players, we have a new Time Lord, Kelaphaludner, aka Kelly, and some of his companions. Kelly will make more appearances.  Additionally, we also get the Fourth Doctor with Leela and Romana II as choices.  I think there must have been a push to include the Doctor and his companions. 

This one gives a special thanks to the Northwestern University Doctor Who club. This one is also slightly taller than the other books. 

The  Hartlewick Horror

The  Hartlewick Horror

40 pages. 1985. Design and writing by Ray Winninger

This one takes us back to some of the more horror-influenced stories of the Third and Fourth Doctor. The Fourth Doctor even appears on the cover. This one takes place on Earth 1923.  Here the CIA has detected energy waves on the same wavelength as the human brain. There are some disappearances, a strange seance, a trapped alien threat, and a group of angry villagers.

It feels very Hammer Horror to be honest and I think that was the point. There are supernatural overtones, but of course as typical with Doctor Who, it is an alien. It might a bit clichéd, but still, it is fun and there are some nice maps. 

For the characters, Kelly and his companions Phillip and Gwendolyn are back. They even show so updates from the last adventure. Also back as alternate player characters are the Fourth Doctor, Leela, Sarah Jane, and Harry Sullivan (not sure who the art for Harry is...).  There are even suggestions for a sequel the Game Master can do on their own.

The Legions of Death

The Legions of Death

52 pages. 1985. Design and writing by J. Andrew Keith.

This one features the newer FASA logo on the cover and the Third Doctor. This one starts with a temporal anomaly in Britain in 43 AD. Apparently, something (or someone) is helping the local Britions win battles against the Romans they were never supposed to have won. That someone turns out to be the renegade Time Lord the War Chief. 

This one is certainly for the history buffs out there. 

For PCs we get the Time Lord "The Colonel" and Time Lady Leoradrusendalular, aka Leora.  For alternates, we have the Third Doctor, Jo Grant, and Sarah Jane Smith. Additionally we have the Bigadier, and some others. Including the first companion from Chicago! There are good collection of NPCs as well. 

There are player's handouts and lots of background information. We even get coverage of the War Chief's Type 43 TARDIS. 

The adventure reminds a bit of some of things we would also see in the Tweleth Doctor episode "The Eaters of Light."

The City of Gold

The City of Gold

52 pages. 1986. Design and writing by J. Andrew Keith.

While the TARDIS and her crew are supposed to be headed to Venezuela in the 21st Century to deal with some revolutionaries, they get sidetracked and land instead in 1543.  Instead of revolutionaries though they run into dinosaurs and rumors of El Dorado, the lost City of Gold.

There is a lot of background here, some player handouts, and some great maps. It also has the involvement of the Silurians, which is always a plus. This is also our first adventure with a 1986 date on it. 

For our PCs we get a Time Lord . "The Don" (ok...), the time Lady Maranodulandur, aka "Mara", a gunslinger named Jack Ransome, a human doctor Cassandra Maitland, and human cavalry officer Jacques D'Aubanville. For our alternate cast, we have the Fifth Doctor, Adric, Nyssa, Teagan, and Turlogh. And a lot of NPCs.

The Warriors Code

The Warriors Code

56 pages. 1986. Design and writing by J. Andrew Keith.

It's 1986 and America is fascinated with all things Japanese. This adventure is larger and we get Jim Holloway doing the cover art. This adventure takes place in Japan during the Tokugawa shogunate (1600 AD), just before the Battle of Sekigahara. Here the TARDIS crashes into another Time Ship from 5184 AD.  While both crews rush to make repairs to their respective ships they have Fuedal Japan to deal with.

I won't lie, you REALLY have to like Japanese history to get into this one. I am not saying it is bad, but it is a set piece. The Time Ship is just a MacGuffin to get you here. 

This one also focuses on the Doctor and his companions in the forefront. The Second Doctor is joined by Jamie, Ben, Poly, Victoria, and Zoe. For the original characters, we get the Time Lord "Noman" and the Time Lady Marinarratalasanavor, aka Marina, and some companions. 

There are maps, hints for play, and even some flowcharts. All of which are nice touches.  This is also the only perfect bound adventure. 

--

I think all of these adventures could be played, with a little massaging, under the Cubicle 7 Doctor Who RPG rules. Many of the Doctors and the Companions have stats in their respective books as do counterparts for all the NPCs. 

The best thing about these adventures are the tidbits that add to or clarify the various rules. They are all geared toward a starting Game Master and naturally assume that anyone will grab any of these as their first adventure.  The only minor, tiny exception here is the Time Lord Kelly and his companions that do get better across their respective adventures, but that is it really. 

None of them will go down in history as classic adventures in the way that say some of the D&D ones have, but they are fun.