Review: Time Lord the Doctor Who RPG

The year is 1991, and the FASA Doctor Who game is out of print. Equally less likely to see a resurgence is the Doctor Who series. In 1989 Sylvester McCoy, who had signed on as the 7th Doctor in 1987, was featured in the last "Classic" Doctor Who episode, "Survival."  The Doctor's future on BBC Television was in serious doubt.  

The Doctor had seen something of a resurgence in the Sylvester McCoy years leading to Virgin Books (founded by Richard Branson) to continue the story of the Doctor and Ace in the "New Adventures" series. The novels were very popular among Doctor Who fans, even if they took some liberties with the established lore of the show. Though some ideas (like the Time War and Other) would find new life in the 2005 reboot of the series.  But that is for another discussion.

While Virgin saw success with the novels, they found getting into the RPG market a little more difficult. They released Doctor Who Time Lord with the subtitle Create your own adventures in time and space in 1991. The book was in an A5 (148.5 x 210 mm or 5.8 x 8.3 inches) format as a novel. The authors were Ian Marsh and Peter Darvill-Evans. Both of whom had solid RPG and Doctor Who credentials.  The game has been out of print for a while, but the authors had released a copy of it online. You can still find it if you know where to look. I compared it to my print copy, and they were identical save for some updates to include the then-new Eighth Doctor. 

Time Lord

1991. 288 pages, A5. Color covers, black & white interior art and photos.

The presentation for this game is an odd one, since it came from a novel publisher rather than an RPG one. 

PART ONE: DOCTOR WHO: A Legend In Its Own Primetime

This covers the history of the Doctor Who programme from 1963 to 1989. It gives us details on the seven actors to play the Doctor. We are introduced to some concepts in Doctor Who like the TARDIS and the Companions as well. There is also a short story, The Necromancers, that is referred too later in examples. 

PART TWO: Role-Playing: What It Is And How To Do It

This covers the basics of RPGS including a history lesson complete with nods to Dungeons & Dragons. It is not a bad overview really. Designed mostly I think for Doctor Who fans that are not roleplayers already. There is a solitare adventure you can play, Switchback, with the characters Jamie and Tegan as your examples. I am just trying to imagine a situation where these two would be working together. It is more or less like a "Choose your own Adventure" sort of deal. Similar to the one found in the D&D BECMI Basic book, but you won't be carrying Tegan's lifeless body back when you are done.

PART THREE: How To Role-Play A DOCTOR WHO Adventure

This covers the basic rules of Time Lord. The system uses two six-sided dice (like the other DW RPGs) but in this one you take the difference to get your number.  So the results will be 0 to 5, with 5 (6-1) being the best role. You compare an ability to a difficulty set by the Referee. If your Ability score is lower than the difficulty score then you must roll and score higher than the difference.  So if your ability is Strength 3 (average) and the difficulty for a test of strength is a 5 then you need to roll a 2 or better. Difficulty can be adjusted as the Referee needs. There are some examples given in the book and appendix.

The Abilities include Strength, Control, Size, Weight, Move, Knowledge, Determination, and Awareness.  All (save Weight) have special abilities attached to them. The special abilities are all detailed and work like a combination of skills and advantages. 

Combat is covered, though Doctor Who is not a combat-focused game in any iteration, there is some here. It should be noted that in Time Lord, unless you are the Doctor, death is permanent. 

PART FOUR: The Cast of Thousands

This section might be where Time Lord shines above FASA's Doctor Who game. Here we have stats for all Seven of the Doctor's incarnations and all 29 of his companions, from Ace to Zoe. We also get a lot of aliens andvillains (though not sure why Sabalom Glitz is here, he is more of a comic-relief character). The Master and the Monk are two separate figures in this game.

There is some coverage on various vehicles including space and time travel ones. Special attention is given over to the TARDIS as expected. 

There is even a section called "500 Year Diary" (something that just popped up in a recent Doctor Who episode I was watching too!) that briefly covers a few topics.

PART FIVE: The Never-Ending Script

This covers running a game. It also gives good examples of what the various levels of Abilities are. While humans range from 1 to 5, with 3 being average, the scale does go to 10. So for example a "comic book superhero" has Control 7 and a Time Lord like Rassilon has Knowledge 9.

There are plenty of examples of Difficulty modifiers and relative percents. So really there are some really great details here.  There are details and tips on creating your own adventures and a sample adventure The Templar Throne (or Curse of the Cyclops in the PDF) is provided.

APPENDIX 1: CREATING COMPANIONS

There are no character creation rules really in this game. The rule expects you will be playing the parts of one of the Doctors and his various companions. This Appendix though does give you guidelines on how to create your own companions. A sample companion, Alison, is given.

APPENDIX 2: SAFE COMBAT

This covers how to tone down the lethal-ness of combat.

APPENDIX 3: DESIGNER’S NOTES

Now this is pretty interesting. The designers talk about why the made the game the way they did and how to want to appeal to both sorts of fans, Doctor Who and RPG players. 

APPENDIX 4: ADVANCED CHARACTER CREATION

Now this is from the PDF version only. The print version does not have this. This addresses the original criticism that the game did not feature character generation rules. This takes the guidelines found in Appendix 1 and expands them to includes combined a point spread generation and a random number generation. This produces characters that are all roughly of the same sort of spread with some exceptional abilities thrown in. Much like the companions themselves.

Note: There are still no rules here for generating a Time Lord character. Unless that character is a Gallifreyian and a companion of the Doctor, like Susan or Romana. 

Both end with blank character sheets. The book also includes blank sheets for Aliens and Villian NPCs. 

I had grabbed this PDF back in the dawn of the Internet and held on to it for years, not really knowing what I had had. It wasn't until I saw the Virgin book on sale that I finally put it all together.

The Time Lord game is very much a product of the 90s and the Virgin New Adventures here really shine through. Granted that could just be me reading into it all. I had a rather nice collection of those books, and it colored my view of the Seventh Doctor (for the better really). 

The game is not groundbreaking by any stretch, but it is much better than I originally gave it credit for and would have been great fun in the dry years following the Fox Doctor Who movie. 

Given the use of two d6s instead of grabbing them from your "Monopoly or Risk" games as the book suggests you can borrow some from it's sibling games that also use d6s.

#Dungeon23 Tomb of the Vampire Queen, Level 5, Room 16

Taking the far hallway on the right leads to another corridor with four doors. Each door opens to similar rooms.

Each room is dark with a large vat full of green liquid as the centerpiece.  In two of these, the vats are empty of liquid and there are skeletons at the bottom.  The glass is broken.

In room 16a there is a vat with a Saurian floating inside. If the glass is broken and the liquid drained the saurian will revive in 1d4+1 turns. The saurian (a Warrior) will be enraged and quite insane. It will attack the party right away.

In room 16c the vat has a human male. If this vat is drained the human will revive in 1d6+1 turns, scream incoherently at the party and then promptly die.

--

These are abductees of the Ophidians. They have been here for centuries kept alive and awake for all this time. The Necromancers kept these two to come back to later but never did.  The controls for the life support are damaged, so there is no way to put the victims back.

Monstrous Monday: Saurians and Other Reptile Humanoids

Another sci-fi staple today and one that also fits in well with Doctor Who, Star Trek, and yes D&D.  Today I want to discuss the Saurians. 

Now these guys go by a variety of names, saurians, saurials, reptoids, reptilians, and more. But for the sake of argument I am making a distinction between these guys and the Ophidians of last week. While I typically cast the ophidians as typically all evil and descended from human snake cultists, the saurians (just to use one name) are mostly neutral, cold and calculating, and largely descended from the same era that gave us dinosaurs.

I do admit that I took a lot of notes from Professor Dale A. Russell's idea of a "Dinosauriod" creature.  IT hit me at a very fertile time in my imagination; my growing love of all things science, my curiosity about UFOs and alien abduction theories, and of course, my love for D&D which was at an all-time high then. Throw in healthy amounts of Doctor Who (Silurians, Sea Devils, Draconians), Land of the Lost (Sleestaks), and Star Trek (Gorn, Saurians), and it makes a heady brew.  I also discuss them, or their near-kin, in my various posts last year on Conspiracy Theories (Ancient Aliens, Cryptoterrestrial Hypothesis, Extraterrestrials on Earth).

D&D already had Lizard Men and, to a degree, other reptilians. They would later move Kobolds over to be more reptile-like (something I have worked around) and introduce more reptilian races that are even closer to this idea (Saurian, Saurial).  We also get one of the "Big Bads" of the BECMI D&D line, the Carnifex, who works with this idea.

I used these guys for years but mostly just used Lizard Man stats. Over time I adapted them and changed them to what I mostly use today.

Saurian

Saurians are a reptilian race that came about around the time dinosaurs walked the world. They appear to be humanoid, but this is a case of convergent evolution; they have no biological relationship to the other humanoid species found in the world. 

Saurians are divided into castes based on their roles in society. These castes are purely functional in nature, and while each caste feels they contribute more to their society than the others, all are required to make their society function.

• Workers - These are the vast bulk of the Saurian society. They perform the labor and all the tasks needed. They average 5' to 5½' in height and weigh 80lbs to 100lbs.
• Warrior - These Saurians are dedicated to battle and defending the Saurian tribes. They are prone to battle frenzy and blood lust. They average 7' to 8' in height and 250lbs to 325lbs.
• Noble - The ruling class of Saurians. Stand around 6' high and weigh 150lbs.
• Scientist - nearly indistinguishable from the Noble caste. Noted for the high intelligence.
• Psionicists - on the surface, they look like a Worker or Noble but are characterized by advanced psionic powers.

All saurians are reptilian with large forward-facing eyes. They have three fingers and a thumb on each hand. They also have broad, three-toed feet. Their skin tones can vary from green to pale to even near-pink. There is no color combination between castes; any color saurian can be born to any caste. 

Females are slightly larger than males. There are no mammalian sexual characteristics, Saurians do not nurse their young, and males do tend to be more brightly colored. In the vision range of the Saurian eye these color differences are far more pronounced. Creatures with infravision can see these differences.

While many perceive the Saurians as evil, they are, in truth just very amoral when it comes to other life. They see all mammals as potential enemies and/or food.

Saurians are ancient enemies of the Ophidians and the Dragonborn. 

Saurian Minds

Saurian reptilian brains work differently from that of mammals. This has a few effects when in regards to other creatures. 

This makes giving them an alignment trickier. Slaughtering a group of humanoids, including the very young and very old, would be seen as an evil act by most creatures, but for the Saurians, it would be a necessary part of remaining alive and providing for their own tribe; an act they would view as good, even lawful.  Many humanoids would chafe under their rigid caste system, but to a Saurian, it ensures that individuals are living up to their greatest potential. No Saurian would want a Scientist as a Warrior or a Noble as a Worker since they would all be very ill-suited for the jobs. 

The other effect is one of magic.  All saurians, regardless of caste, have a +2 bonus to saving throws on all mind-affecting magics. This includes Charm, Hold, Illusions, and Sleep spells. It also means they have a +1 on all saves on other magic except for those that deal direct damage. Even a healing spell cast on a Saurian must first be subject to a saving throw. If they make the save they are not healed.

Consequently, Saurians are not able to take levels in any magic using classes like Cleric, Magic-user, or Witch.

Saurian (Worker, Scientist, Noble)

Armor Class: 7
Hit Dice: 2+2 (11 hp), 3+3 (17 hp), 4+4 (22 hp)
Move: 120 (40)
Attacks: 1 by weapon
Damage: 1d6
No. Appearing: 2d10, 1d8, 1d6
Morale: 8, 10, 10
Treasure Type: None
Alignment: Neutral (True Neutral/Unaligned) 

Saurians are a reptilian race of humanoids. They are born into a rigid caste system based on their biology. Each caste feels they contribute the most to their society, so inter-caste conflict is much rarer than intra-caste conflict. 

The Worker, Scientist, and Noble castes are largely indistinguishable from each other to outsiders. The worker caste is the most numerous, and the nobles are a little taller. 

Workers: These laborers handle all the labor in a Saurian tribe. This includes everyone from the ones that build homes to healers to those that care for eggs and hatchlings.

Scientists: Generalized by their higher intelligence and pursuit of ways to improve the Saurian people.

Nobles: The ruling caste of Saurians.

Since all saurian eggs are kept in hatcheries, there are no parent-child bonds but hatchmate bonds. So in this manner, a worker can claim kinship to a noble and visa-versa. These bonds are just as strong as any mammalian parent or sibling bond.

Saurian, Warrior

Armor Class: 7
Hit Dice: 8+2 (56 hp)
Move: 120 (40)
Attacks: 2 by weapon
Damage: 1d8+3 x2
No. Appearing: 1d8 (3d6)
Morale: 12
Treasure Type: None
Alignment: Neutral (True Neutral/Unaligned) 

Saurian warriors are a caste unto themselves. The largest and healthiest hatchlings are trained from birth to be warriors whose only purpose in life is to defend the Saurian tribes. Warriors will fight among themselves to establish dominance and access to resources, but they will never attack anyone of the other castes. They find such ideas repugnant.  

However, a Saurian warrior will have no qualms attacking a group of humanoids; young or old, as they only see mammals as potential food. 

Hatchmate bonding is the strongest among the Warrior caste, with warrior Saurians dedicating their lives to protect their hatchmates.

Saurian, Psionist

Armor Class: 7
Hit Dice: 4 (18 hp)
Move: 120 (40)
Attacks: 1 by psychic attack
Damage: see below
Special: Psychic powers
No. Appearing: 1 (1d4)
Morale: 12
Treasure Type: None
Alignment: Neutral (True Neutral/Unaligned) 

Psionic Saurians are the rarest and sit somewhat outside the Saurian caste system. They look like Noble or Scientist Saurians, if somewhat smaller. They are identified early, taken from their hatcheries, and raised only with other Psionic Saurians. Thus they have the weakest hatchmate bonds of all Saurians, and intra-caste violence between psionics is the highest of all castes. 

Saurian Psionists have the following powers. These are not magic powers but instead are psychic in nature.  

• At will: Detect thoughts & emotions
• 3 times/day: Detect Invisible, Detect Magic
• 1 time/day: Charm Person, Clairvoyance, ESP, Telekinesis (up to 100 cn weight)

There are stronger psionists with more powers.

Note: The powers are not magical and cannot be detected or countered by magical means.

#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. 

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. 

#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.

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.

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
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.

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.