Review: Doctor Who Second Edition Starter Set

Running a little behind schedule this week. I took yesterday off of work and here. But back it!

Another new decade (2020s), another new actress to play the Doctor (Jodie Whittaker in 2018) and yes, a new edition of the Doctor Who role-playing game from Cubicle 7.  Now this time, it is a proper Second Edition. I teased this the other day with the 13th Doctor Sourcebook, but now time to get into the game proper. 

Doctor Who Second Edition Starter Set

For this review I am considering both the PDFs from DriveThruRPG and the physical boxed set from my FLGS.

The PDF contains the following files: 

• 2-page Read This First file which covers the really basic basics of an RPG.
• The Timeless Library Adventure Book. This 48-page Adventure as an Introduction covers a bunch of human characters looking for the Doctor. IT's not a bad introductory adventure and covers all sorts of different aspects of the game. I'll get into details in a moment.
• The Echo Chamber is set up as a campaign guide building off of the adventure in the Timeless Library.  This 65-page book expands on the game-play ideas and shows how the game can be expanded. This one is of more use to new Gamemasters.
• Character sheets 10 pages of 5 new characters to use for this set. No black sheets or companions from the show just yet.
• There is a 4-page Reference sheet.
• A file of Story Point tokens.
• Box lid with some references.

The physical boxed set has all of these as well, with the addition of a set of d6s. I am now in the market for a new Doctor Who-themed dice bag.

The box for this is extremely sturdy. It will last a long time.

This set is great for someone, or a group, that has never played an RPG before or has minimal exposure to them. Fans of the show would also enjoy this.

If you have the First Edition, this is a good introduction to the minor changes (and some major ones) to the Doctor Who RPG. Though players of the First Edition and gamers, in general, can skip right to the hardcover rules.

This set, though, is quite attractive and the same level of design I have come to associate with C7 is still here. 

If I were starting a new group with the Doctor Who RPG I would go to this first likely. It is very much the "Basic Set" the hardcover's "Advanced" rules. 

#Dungeon23 Tomb of the Vampire Queen, Level 5, Room 30

 With the Mummy/Captain dead, the dias rises up into a large opening in the ceiling of this vast metal structure.  The party can now see how long it is and how much of it must be buried under more stone and earth.

The structure they are on is made of smooth metal and it has a curve to it. So a successful DEX check is needed or the players will slide off and hit the rocks below for 4d6 hp of damage.

A rope (50') is needed to descend to the cave floor.

The cave is completely filled by the metal structure.   Ahead is an open cave mouth.

There are the bones of several animals here. It the party stays longer than 1 hour they will feel the effects of the necromantic magics that are concentrated here. They will begin to loose 1 hp every hour they remain. These hp only can be regained by magical healing. The healing "wands" will not be effective.

--

The ship is not an impediment when the Vampire Queen was active. There are a series of small tubes and tunnels she could use in gaseous form or as a bat to ascend to the surface.

#Dungeon23 Tomb of the Vampire Queen, Level 5, Room 29

 This is the command center of the whole level (ship) this is obvious to anyone.  There are "windows" on the walls and they show scenes of rooms that the players have already been too and they should easily recognize them.

Sitting in a throne-like chair is a dedicated mummy of an Ophidian. 

The mummy gets up and approached the party. It tells the party, in a language they know, that it has been watching them and now needs them to leave its prison.  Though, it adds, it really only needs one of them.

At this point, a ray fires out from a spot on the ceiling at the party.  Everyone must save vs Death Ray. Any that fail will be held fast. They will lose 1 point of WIS per round. When they hit zero the Mummy will possess them.

The beam emitter is AC 0 (19) and can be hit with a missile weapon or spell-like magic-missile. The emitter has 20 hp. 

Attacking the mummy will keep it from possessing the characters, as will killing it. The mummy has no minions since pretty much everyone else is dead.  The mummy is so old it has 7 HD but no disease attack.

What If No One Saves? 

This is possible. But I have another six months of the dungeon to write and do. So allow at least one character to save. 

--

This mummy is the former captain, but that was so long ago that they don't remember much of their time before the accident. 

#Dungeon23 Tomb of the Vampire Queen, Level 5, Room 28

This room opens up to a large chamber. There are 

There are lots of chairs here arranged at long metal "desks" with some blinking lights. There are occasional blips of light, some sounds, but nothing living is seen. Part of this room is embedded in the rock of the cavern. It does not look like it crashed here but rather "phased" into it. Metal and even skeletons of the snake people are stuck in it. Some of the skeletons are even stuck in the metal floor. 

Above the center of the room is a floating dias if the characters approach it then find themselves floating up.

Treasure: These skeletons wear a uniform of some sort. There are badges and what looks like medals on some of the tattered remains. These are worth about 50 gp each. The party can find 1d8+8 of these.

--

This is the commander center. The floating dias is the bridge.

#Dungeon23 Tomb of the Vampire Queen, Level 5, Room 27

Just outside this corridor to the left there is a deformed area where the metal and rock merge. Outside of the metal area, there is a spiral staircase going up.

These stairs look like they are the manufacture of the Necromancers (or more to the point, their slaves) that had lived here.

These stairs ascend to Room 15 on Level 4. 

If the players did not defeat the ghouls in that room they will try to meet the characters half-way. The Ghouls however will not enter level 5, bot even to avoid being killed by the party. They react in fear to anything on level 5.

If the characters use one of the "heat wands" the ghouls will try to run away as fast as they can as if "Turned" by a Cleric. 

--

The strange necrotic energies here are enough to scare away other undead. 

Jenny, Larina and Valerie for Doctor Who Adventures in Time and Space

Time to put it all together now.  Over the course of my reviews of the various Doctor Who RPGs I have looked at some characters with the express purpose of comparing them across different versions. 

Today I want to take three characters and have a go at building them in the 1st Edition of the Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space RPG. The three are: 

• Jenny Everywhere, who I have been using as my stand-in for a Time Lord
• Larina Nichols, my Drosophila melanogaster of every RPG experiment and to see if I can build a witch in every game.
• Valerie Beaumont, a Ghosts of Albion character who became one of my playtest characters for the original Doctor Who playtests.

For this group, let's say they are all traveling together. The game gives us a lot of options on "Games without Time Lords," so this would be a good place to test it all out. Either Jenny or Val have a vortex manipulator, but I also like the idea that Jenny can travel in time and space (to a limited degree) all on her own without needing gadgets. 

In all three cases I stuck as close as I could to the point-buy budgets for character creation. Though in all three I did go over. That is not a big deal in my mind since Val has already had some adventures (The Ghost Tower of Inverness, Illinois), and Jenny, well I can use nearly anything to justify her stats. But in all cases I tried to stay close to what I had done in other games.

Jenny Everywhere

Jenny, as I have mentioned in previous posts, is a "shifter" she can shift between realities and times and even interact with her own alternates. She is expressly a public domain character that everyone can use, so for my tests, she is the perfect stand-in for a Time Lord. In previous versions of the Doctor Who RPG, this was a conceit since there were other Time Lords, but in the "new" game, there is only the Doctor.

Here she has some of the qualities/traits of a Time Lord, but not the ability to regenerate as River Song did.

As always, I must include her license:

"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."

Jenny Everywhere

"The Shifter"
Story Points: 12

Attributes
Awareness 4
Coordination 3
Ingenuity 4
Presence 3
Resolve 4
Strength 3

Skills
Athletics 1
Convince 2
Craft 
Fighting 1
Knowledge 4
Marksman 1
Medicine 
Science 3
Subterfuge 2
Survival 1
Technology 3
Transport 1

Traits
Brave, Charming, Lucky, Time Traveller (Minor), Eccentric (-1)

Special Traits

Shifter, Feel the Turn of the Universe

Equipment
Various gadgets

Home Tech Level: 6 (Jenny has some solid tech)

Larina Nichols

Larina of course is my witch that I use everywhere. She is my experiment to see if I can do a witch in any game, Rule as Writen. So far I have come up with some very interesting versions of her. Unlike Jenny she is only vaguely aware of her other selves in different realities, usually images that appear to her in dreams. She knows what they are but she has no control over them.  

In the Doctor Who universe her "magick" appears as advanced psychic powers. Humans in this game have a bit more psychic abilities than assumed in previous games. Indeed in the new series of Doctor Who we have seen actual witches.  Larina though is human and not a Carrionite. Though I am not ruling out that human witches might not have Carrionite blood/DNA in them.

Larina Nichols

"The Witch"
Story Points: 12

Attributes
Awareness 4
Coordination 3
Ingenuity 4
Presence 4
Resolve 6
Strength 3

Skills
Athletics 
Convince 1
Craft 2
Fighting 1
Knowledge 4
Marksman 1
Medicine 2
Science 1
Subterfuge 1
Survival 2
Technology 2
Transport 1

Traits
Attractive, Empathic, Psychic Training, Insatiable Curiosity, Obsession (learn more about magic)

Special Traits
Psychic (Package)

 - Clairvoyant 1

 - Precognition 1

 - Telekinesis 1

 - Telepath 1

Equipment
Book of Shadows (on her phone), Tarot Cards.

Home Tech Level: 5

I have this funny notion that Jenny goes to Larina for a Tarot reading about her and despite all the shuffling all the cards when flipped over are blank. The same thing happens again with Valerie. 

That seems like a fun hook.

Valerie Beaumont

Val is an immortal who was born in England in 1569. She came with a family to the new colonies (America) to be the nanny of Virginia Dare, the first child to be born of European parents in an American colony. Both she and Virginia are immortals and have a Doctor/Master style relationship.

She is not my character per se, she is the character of one of my good friends Greg, though she does appear as an NPC in many of my games.

Valerie Beaumont

"The Immortal"
Story Points: 12

Attributes
Awareness 4
Coordination 5
Ingenuity 5
Presence 5
Resolve 4
Strength 3

Skills
Athletics 2
Convince 1
Craft 
Fighting 3
Knowledge 5
Marksman 2
Medicine 1
Science 1
Subterfuge 2
Survival 3
Technology 1
Transport 

Traits
Attractive, Brave, Quick Reflexes, Tough, Adversary (Virginia Dare), Dark Secret (is Immortal)

Special Traits
Immortal (2), Fast Healing (2)

Equipment
Sword cane

Home Tech Level: 4 (she was born in 1569)

--

In truth I am rather happy with these. I altered some of Valerie's skills from her play test file. 

I can easily see a series of adventures with these three. Likely running into Madam Vastra and Jenny in Victorian times (and whom Valerie has dealt with before), Sherlock Holmes and John Watson in a modern London (gotta figure out how that works!), and of course fellow witches Willow and Tara. 

It's a weird and wonderful universe out there, and this is the game to explore it!

#Dungeon23 Tomb of the Vampire Queen, Level 5, Room 26

 The hallway/corridor opens to a larger corridor.  A large room can be seen at that very end. 

The necromantic forces feel stronger here, like they did on previous levels.

As the characters move down the hall, they are attacked by Zombie Ophidians.

There are 1d8+4 zombies of the snake men. They have no weapons and attack with claws and bites. Their poison bite is all used up so they only do 1d4 hp damage per bite.

Reviews: Doctor Who RPG supplements

 A few quick ones now. I grabbed these to review because I wanted some of the Cubicle 7 books I knew would be good in emulating a FASA Doctor Who like game. So more UNIT, more CIA (Celestial Intervention Agency), and more aliens.

In all cases here I am reviewing the PDFs

Doctor Who: Aliens and Creatures

Six PDFs in one ZIP file. 220+ pages total.

From the 10th Doctor era. What grabbed me first about this book was how well it looks with other Doctor Who books from other sources. This is due to the BBC mandated trade dress. While it means every era of Doctor Who will give us a different look (and core book) it also means that the books my kids were buying at school book fairs (wow, that was a long time ago!) will look great on the shelves next the RPG books. 

This package includes:

• 138 page rulebook detailing many of the creatures faced in the Doctor's adventures, including the Cybermen, Cult of Skaro, Davros, the Weeping Angels and the Hath, additional rules for creating your own creatures both as enemies or as playable characters, and a system for creating new worlds for your adventures to take place on
• 32 page Adventure book, featuring a whole new ready-to-play adventure and many ideas for additional stories
• New gadget cards
• Additional Story Point Counters
• Detailed Creature Cards for easy reference

All to work with your 10th Doctor boxed set. The same level of art, design and layout given to the core game is here, making it one of the more attractive games out these days. Perfect for the Doctor Who gamer and the Doctor Who fan alike. And an excellent source of new things to run away from! 

This is a great product, full of all sorts of monsters, aliens, and other creatures primarily from the new version of Doctor Who (but some old favorites are still there). It was nice to have writeups for various Daleks, Cybermen, Catkind, Sontarans, and more. There are even more Traits and pre-built Trait packages given to aliens.  Along with aliens come their worlds, we have more detail on these as well. So you don't have to stick to Earth!

The adventure book (32 pages) has two ready-to-go adventures using these new creatures; and plenty of ideas on how to use the others. 

Some printing will be required for the cards and story point counters, but that is minimal. 

Despite the "trade dress" this can be used with any version of the Doctor Who RPG from Cubicle 7.

Defending the Earth: The UNIT Sourcebook

PDF. 160 pages.

This book comes to us from the Matt Smith/11th Doctor era but it has call back to the 3rd, 4th, 7th, 10th, and more Doctors. Even the cover features UNIT officers from those periods.

Like all the Who books, this one is full color. While it skews more to the new Who series, there is a lot of Classic Who material here including stats for the 3rd Doctor (Jon Pertwee).

The UNIT (United Intelligence Taskforce) is tasked by the UN with protecting the Earth from Alien threats. This book allows you to create UNIT bases, and personal and comes with two sample adventures.

In many ways, a UNIT-based game can be more interesting than a Doctor-based one. In this, everyone can have a nicely defined role. You have field scientists, soldiers of all sorts, and even civilians.

Among the features of this book are the expanded firearms and mass combat rules. The History of UNIT. Personnel includes plenty of new traits for the military, science, and civilians. And two UNIT-based adventures.

This is one of my favorite sourcebooks for DW so far. Not just because of the limitless possibilities, but also because there is more attention paid to the older series than other books (note I am not saying this is a flaw of the other books, but it is a nice feature of this one).

I also see this as one of the more flexible books. You can set up a small UNIT command base and let the wackiness ensue. In fact, my own playtest adventures with DW could easily be converted into a UNIT game. Think back to the 3rd Doctor's adventures; these were mostly Earth based with UNIT. All of those are great ideas for a game. Or even the Sarah Jane Adventures.

As with all books in this line, it is full color, well laid out, and full of stills from the show.

Doctor Who - The Time Traveller's Companion

PDF 242 pages.

Again from the Matt Smtih/11th Doctor Era.

Now here is a book we would have LOVED to have had back in the FASA Doctor Who era. Everything we know about Gallifrey to date (well...to the date of this publication).

This product, like other supplements, is a bit freer with its use of material and image from the Classic series. So while the "trade dress" is the 11th Doctor, all the Doctors are featured here.

This book covers Gallifrey. It's history, it's culture, and of course, the Time Lords. This history by the way is great. We get deep cuts like "The Dark Times" and Morbius. Though only brief mentions of the Racnoss, the Great Vampires and the Carrionites in the Time Lord history. Interesting aside. All these early enemies of the Time Lords; spiders, vampires and witches respectively, all feature into the fears and horror tales of humans. Coincidence? 

There is even a little bit on the Time War here. 

Essentially if there is a Doctor Episode that featured Gallifrey or Time Lords it has representation here.  

We get updates/expansions on Time Lord Character creation. This includes character creation based on which of the great academies the Time Lord comes from. Nice touch. There are even expanded regeneration rules here that predict how the War Doctor would be. 

A brief overview of Time Travel is next. We get a good (ok better) explanations of the Blinovich Limitation Effect, or, "Why You Can't Cross Your Own Time Stream" and the Time Differential. Though the time differential is a good way to help explain how the Doctor never really knows how old he is. 

There is coverage on Vortex Manipulators, Time Corridors, Time Scoops, Time Dams, even "primitive" time travel machines. 

Updated information on TARDISes, including how to build your own in the game. Here things like the "Symbiotic Nuclei " of the Two Doctors episode is explained in 11th-Doctor-era terms and ideas. 

Several TARDIS templates are given from Ancient (Type 1 to 29) to Decommissioned (Type 30 to 59, The Doctor's TARDIS is Type 40), Modern (Type 60 - 89, used by The Rani and the main TARDISes of the Time War), and Advanced (Type 90+).  Like Characters, TARDISes have attributes and traits. 

Lastly, there is a Gamemaster section, divided into four chapters.

This covers not only running a game, but things the GM needs to know that the players should not. These are details like what tyrant the Great Rassilon was, how Omega survived, how Morbius escaped Time Lord justice, the War Chief, and the workings of the CIA. 

There are the hidden files about the weapons of the Time War (the Moment had not been created in the show just yet) and other monstrosities. 

We get some other Time Lord Renegades from the show, Drax, The Monk (separate now), the Rani, Romana, and even the new regeneration cycle of the Master.

More details on travelling in time and how to deal with players being...well, players in this. 

There is even a TARDIS controls diagram that reminds me of the 1980s Doctor Who Technical Manual which also works as a TARDIS character sheet.

--

These books are not required but certainly ad a LOT to your Doctor Who games. If your goal is to build a game that is more akin to what we used to do with the old FASA Doctor Who games, then these are the best places to start.

#Dungeon23 Tomb of the Vampire Queen, Level 5, Room 25

 Moving down the corridor, there is one last room on the left. Lawful (Good) Clerics (and Paladins if they are being used) can feel a growing aura of evil. Magic-users and witches can sense a growing aura of necromantic magics.

This room is different than the previous ones. There is no furniture, only metal panels with many flickering lights. Moving between these lights, going from panel to panel, is the ghost of an Ophidian.

This creature is a Greater Spectre. It has 8HD and attacks as soon as the characters enter.  

It can be turned as a Vampire.

--

This room is the computer core. The spectre is a high-ranking officer that died in this room. 

#Dungeon23 Tomb of the Vampire Queen, Level 5, Room 24

Continuing on, there is another room on the left. This room appears to be another set of crew quarters.

Inside are two Spectres, former officers.

They cannot move more than 100 feet away from their bodies embedded in the bulkhead on the other side of the room's wall. 

The specters will not speak to the PCs and will attack as soon as they enter the room.  There is a closet with the bones of former victims. 

Due to their age and inability to leave this room, they have double the regular treasure (E x4 for two specters).

#Dungeon23 Tomb of the Vampire Queen, Level 5, Room 23

 Edited to add: Post did not auto-post this morning. 

The next door to the right appears to be some sort of small room. Prying the doors open is no easy feat and requires a combined strength of 30 to open. (A Knock spell will also work). 

Looking inside there is floor some 5 feet down. The top of this shaft/room extends many feet above. The tunnel appears to be partially embedded into the rock of the cave system here. 

Going down is not difficult, there is a very thin ladder on the side that appears to run up and down the sides of the shaft. There is a trap door on the floor. Inside is a very small circular room, about 12' diameter. The floor is made of stone and there is a skeleton stuck in it about waist deep. Given how low the top of this room is from the stone "floor" the skeleton must have been standing on the true floor when the stone came into this room.

If the party climbs up, they will find that the metal material of this level is fused with the rock of the cave system. There are even partially fused bodies (skeletons) in the rock.  Some look like they were frozen where they stood.

In this area the party will encounter a Xorn (a type of Earth Elemental). It is intelligent and does not attack. It gestures to a pile of "Heat Wands" it has collected and points one of it's three arms to them and then to the party.  It then backs off. All the while saying "take" in Dwarvish.

The xorn is not interested in the party and only wants to continue gorging itself on the rare minerals of the this ship. 

If the party chooses to talk to the Xorn to find out more please offer them 1,000 XP for the idea and another 2,000 afterwards. 

The Xorn knows the following.

• This strange structure seems to be fused into the rock. Phased though, like how it travles through rock.
• There are areas of the fused rock/metal that even it can't move through.
• There are all sorts of (dead) creatures trapped in the rock and have been there for centuries.
• Some of the rocks taste really good.
• There are strange magics all over this area and most fleshy things avoid it.

If the party instead (or later) tries to attack the xorn they get no XP bonus and the xorn just phases through a wall. 

--

The small room is a lift.  The lower levels of the starship are phased into the rock. Most of the upper level is as well. 

#Dungeon23 Tomb of the Vampire Queen, Level 5, Room 22

 The next room on the left also appears to be some sort of quarters.

In this room is its former and current inhabitant.  An Ancient Ophidian Mummy.

This mummy is ancient, really ancient. The necromantic forces that are natural to this area affected this ophidian officer. He is powerful but quite insane. In this room, he is powerful (8 HD) but once he leaves he drops to 5 HD, if he leaves the ship he drops to 3 HD. So for the last few centuries he has been sulking here.

As an Ophidian Mummy, he does not have the Mummy disease as do standard mummies, but he does have a poisonous bite. It causes 1d4 hp damage, but victims have to save vs. Death or take 4d8 hp damage (save for half).

#Dungeon23 Tomb of the Vampire Queen, Level 5, Room 21

 Going back to the corridor, taking the last remaining hallway, this one is wider and longer. 

There are doors on the left-hand side and a door at the end of the hall. 

The first door on the left is room 21. These appear to be more sleeping quarters, but only one bed per and they seem to have more amenities. 

Within this room is another "heat wand" with 1d6+1 charges.  If one of the lighted "tables" (panels) is touched a voice speaking in ophidian will come over speakers. The recording is just an officer's log, but it sounds sinister to the character's ears; like some sort of spell or incantation. They will not be able to translate it, magic won't work on this.

#Dungeon23 Tomb of the Vampire Queen, Level 5, Room 20

 This series of rooms follow after the previous 8. They are modified, but still appear to be barracks or sleeping quarters of some sort.

There are 8 (a to h) rooms here. These rooms each have 4 beds. 

20a-d: Empty. Various nicknacks of silver to amount to 6 gp value in each room.
20e: Dead (skeleton) Ophidian
20f: Dead (mummified) Ophidian
20g: Empty, no tresure
20h: Empty, but there is a curious device here. It looks like a metal wand about 10" long. One end is open and a red crystal can be seen inside. There is a small depression near the middle. If press a ray of heat will shoot out causing 1d6+1 damage (Death Ray save for half) to a distance of 50'.

The wand has 1d6+4 charges remaining.

--

The wand is a heat ray, but a weak one. Damage to an Ophidian would only be 1d4+1. 

#Dungeon23 Tomb of the Vampire Queen, Level 5, Room 19

 Going back to the central corridor and now taking the middle passageway on the right it leads to a series of rooms.

There are 8 (a to h) rooms here. These rooms each have 4 beds. 

Room 19a: Four dead bodies. These bodies are more mummified and can be seen for what they are, snake people.
Room 19b, 19c: Empty
Room 19d: This room is home to an Ophidian Spectre. The Spectre attacks anyone who comes in.
Room 19e, 19f: Empty
Room 19g: Two mummified bodies
Room 19h: Two mummified bodies and 1 Ophidian Zombie. The Zombie attacks.

--

There are no treasures in these rooms. All the items are made of plastic or other synthetic materials.

Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space from Cubicle 7

 I am now coming up on the next wave of Doctor Who RPGs. All from Cubicle 7. 

While there are technically three RPGs, they are all related.

First is the Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space. This is the one I have talked about here a lot already.

Second is the new Second Edition of the RPG, now just The Doctor Who Roleplaying Game.

And finally, we have Doctors & Daleks, a game based on the previous two, but using the 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons OGC rules.

One thing that strikes me is despite all I have said about this game line over the years I have never really given it a proper full review.  Well I will change that next week.

In the meantime, here are some characters I have stated up for the Doctor Who RPG (1st Edition so far).

• Sherlock Holmes and John Watson (from Sherlock)
• Madam Vastra and Jenny Flint (before we had official stats)
• Mary Poppins
• Willow and Tara

I'll spend the rest of May with this system.

#Dungeon23 Tomb of the Vampire Queen, Level 5, Room 18

 One of the "bed rooms" (Room #17) has a larger open corridor that leads to another similar room. This room however only has one bed in the very center.  

Pressing any buttons will cause different colored lights to shine with an accompanying tone. If the characters are within the 10' area (with the central bed in the center) then the following happens:

White - Sanitizing, everything becomes clean, dirt falls to the ground.
Green - Healing, minor wounds are healed for 1d6+1 hp of damage
Red - Warming, gets uncomfortably hot. 
Orange/Yellow - very bright, blinds as per the Light spell.

There are no creatures or treasures here.

--

This a surgery center. The lights are great if you are an Ophidian, not so much for humans.

Time Lord: Larina & Jenny

The rules for the Time Lord game are lite on character creation, but that doesn't mean it can't be done. The Appendices in the Print and PDF versions give some guidelines but with 7 Doctors, 29 companions and more NPCs, putting together a new character is not very difficult.  Let's see how this game fares in recreating two characters we have already seen; Jenny Everywhere and my witch Larina.

Jenny Everywhere

Again, I am having Jenny stand in for our Time Lord character. The Time Lord RPG is thin on character creation and even thinner on creating new Time Lords and Gallifreyians.  Jenny makes a good stand-in. Again I am making the claim here that this Jenny is Gallifreyian/Human, raised mostly as a human. I am also going to speculate that there are other Gallifreyian/Humans out there, this may explain Henry DeTamble of "The Time Traveler's Wife" (It can't be a coincidence that Henry was born in 1963.)

As always, I must include her license:

"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."

Jenny Everywhere

JENNY EVERYWHERE

Apparent age: Mid-20s
Species: Gallifreyan/Human
Equipment: Scarf, Cool Goggles, bike messenger bag

Strength: 3, Cheat Death 2, Iron Constitution 2, Regenerative Powers 3
Control: 4, Escapology 1,  Blunt Weapons 2, Brawling 2, Edged Weapons 2, Marksmanship 2, Sleight of Hand 2, Stealth 1
Size: 3
Weight: 3
Move: 3, Running 1
Knowledge: 5, Computing 1, First Aid 1, MacGuffin 2, Pseudoscience 3, Science  3, TARDIS 1,  Temporal Science 2
Determination: 5
Awareness: 4, Bureaucracy 1, Resourceful Pockets 2, Serendipity 1, Striking Appearance 1

Attack: 4, 6, 6, 6, 6
Basic Defense: 3

I am unsure if this is the same Jenny from the FASA game. This one feels a little different, but I can't explain why. I mean they could be different and yet aware of each other all the same. 

Larina "Nix" Nichols

As with the FASA game (and every game I try her out in), I go outside the strict rules for character creation. Based on what I did for the FASA game, this is Larina after she had been in contact with one of the blue crystals from Metebelis 3. This was the start of her adventures. The Larina for the FASA Who game was a Welsh girl. Since this game takes place in 1991, I will use a version of her that I was using in back in the 1990s, an American foreign exchange student living in Scotland at the time. 

Edited to add: OR if this takes place in 1996 this is an older (25 years old) Larina back in the US. In my timeline for her, this would be right after her divorce. 

Larina "Nix" Nichols

LARINA NICHOLS

Apparent age: Early/Mid-20s
Species: Human
Equipment: Small knife, tarot cards,

Strength: 3, Cheat Death 1, 
Control: 3, Edged Weapons 1, Stealth 2
Size: 3
Weight: 3
Move: 3, Running 1
Knowledge: 4, First Aid 2, History 2, Occultism 4, Science 1
Determination: 5, Independent Spirit 1, Psychic Shield 2, Telekinesis 1, Telepathy 1
Awareness: 4, Striking Appearance 2

Attack: 3, 4
Basic Defense: 3

Ok. I do like these builds much more than I thought I would when I picked this one back up. Jenny is a very flexible character and any differences between this version of her and others is honestly part of her character design. That is, there are supposed to be differences. 

For Larina, well, her job is to stick as close to the Rules-As-Written as I can and yet still get the character I want. My concept of her is a "witch", writ large, and maybe even stereotypically. How can I make that work in a game where so far everything has a scientific explanation.  Though I will point out that this game has an "Occultism" ability and it says this:

Occultism [Knowledge]

A character with Occultism knows about the white and black magic practices of witches, druids and the like. The ability also implies a familiarity with superstitions and old sayings.

So there is a solid hook here, AND I will point out that no other characters (companions, NPCs, or monsters) have this skill on their sheets. 

The real question now becomes, are these two traveling together? I like the idea of the Doctor being involved, particularly Sylvester McCoy's Seventh Doctor.  That is if I go with 1991, when the rules were in print. I could very easily go with 1996, the year that the game was released on the Internet, AND when the Paul McGann Doctor Who movie came out. That is also the same year that "The Craft" came out so using the logic of the TV series, the Eight Doctor is traveling with a young American witch. I don't hate the idea, certainly. 

Yeah...I don't hate this idea at all really. Maybe the bike messenger bag that Jenny has in my build above she gives to the Eighth Doctor for his Big Finish audio dramas. The Eighth Doctor's time is ripe for all sorts of shenanigans to be honest.

I'll have to consider this one more, but I like these builds and would use them to give the Time Lord rules a go. 

#Dungeon23 Tomb of the Vampire Queen, Level 5, Room 17

 Going back and this time taking the far left hallway leads to another corridor and collection of connected rooms.

These four rooms are larger than the ones on the far right. There are plenty of flickering lights with writing that doesn't not translate. There are plenty of beds in these rooms. One has a skeleton of the snake people on it.

There are no creatures, but there are more (1d10+10) more of those "healing wands" here but only 1d6+3 still work.

--

This is the ship's sick bay. It is designed for Ophidian life, so even if anything was working it would not be good for humans.

#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.