Chief Technical Officer
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The buzz we have is that the first printing of these, with David Tennant on the cover, is pretty small, and when they order a second printing, it'll have Matt Smith on the cover. Being the big Doctor Who fans that we are, we've preordered a bunch of this print run, but I'd suggest that if you'd like a copy of the first printing, don't think too long!
Gah! Looks like there goes all of my Birthday money. The Set price is all good but the Shipping is gonna kill me. :(
So I suppose you picking up an extra box for me is out of the question.
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
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Gah! Looks like there goes all of my Birthday money. The Set price is all good but the Shipping is gonna kill me. :(So I suppose you picking up an extra box for me is out of the question.
ummm... as much as I like you Rone I can't see that happening. The only way I can even afford it is that it's my Birthday today and I asked for money. :)
EDIT: But it's Doctor Who right, so I have to have it to go with the other 2 Doctor Who RPGs I have from back in the day. :D
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
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Gah! Looks like there goes all of my Birthday money. The Set price is all good but the Shipping is gonna kill me. :(I've just put a more accurate weight into our system, so check the shipping cost again—it probably just got a lot lower.
Thanks Vic, that shiping is waaaaay lower than I expected. Looking good for me to pre-order this next week with my Birthday Cash influx. :D
[ it's my Birthday today
Happy birthday!
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Chief Technical Officer
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Gah! Looks like there goes all of my Birthday money. The Set price is all good but the Shipping is gonna kill me. :(I've just put a more accurate weight into our system, so check the shipping cost again—it probably just got a lot lower.
Hmm. It may have just gone back up a tad—I realized that the presence of dice means it can't ship as Bound Printed Matter. Still, it's well under 4 pounds, so shipping should be fairly inexpensive, even internationally. (Just not quite as cheap as if it were all books.)
Oh my goodness... I still have my original run Doctor Who box from FASA...
Do we know what sort of number-crunchy system-y goodness lurks within these pages?
I'm... all aflutter!
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RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
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Oh my goodness... I still have my original run Doctor Who box from FASA...
Me too & a 5th Doctor Adventure to go with it! :)
(Although I am buggered if I can find it which is very annoying)And another single large novel sized book one that was sold in regular Book Stores (as opposed to Gaming Stores). It was a very simple system but fun.
Gah! Looks like there goes all of my Birthday money. The Set price is all good but the Shipping is gonna kill me. :(So I suppose you picking up an extra box for me is out of the question.ummm... as much as I like you Rone I can't see that happening. The only way I can even afford it is that it's my Birthday today and I asked for money. :)
EDIT: But it's Doctor Who right, so I have to have it to go with the other 2 Doctor Who RPGs I have from back in the day. :D
Today? HAPPY BIRTHDAY. FLASH!!!!
Lemme go drop an HB bomb on your FB page so you'll see it.
Must....resist....call....of....TARDIS.
Must....not....purchase....9....days....before....Christmas.
There is no resisting the call. I am the Master, and YOU will obey me!
[insane maniacal laughter]
DO NOT RESIST.
RESIST THE DALEKS AND BE EX-TER-MIN-AT-ED!
RE-SIST AND BE EX-TER-MIN-AT-ED!
EX-TER-MIN-ATE!
*vweeeeeeeeen warb warb warb*
I remember the old FASA game system, and how they more or less threw up their hands and explained that there really wasn't any way to balance the Time Lord and companion PCs. Does anybody have any insight on how this system handles that issue?
Not a whit of a clue, but if I was doing it, I would arrange it so that there either weren't any other Time Lords (as The Doctor is the last of his kind), or arrange the rules so that non-Timelords had other advantages to balance them out. Things like "Common sense" and "local knowledge" - The Doctor is frequently shown, throughout the length and breadth of the series, as having a lot of facts but not a lot of knowledge about his environs. He knows a little about everything, but his practical experience with some things is sorely lacking. His companions make up for that lack with their own talents.
In OGL terms, I'd probably give the Companions skill bonuses for things that had to do with their time frame or their own frame of reference, while the Timelord would get Regeneration (natch) and an overall skill point surplus.
Dunno how they'd do it in this one, though.
Well I just bought this today..at first glance the Doctor has fewer story points (which you use to bend the laws of reality) than any companion...they average 15(new characters start with 12) and he only has 8...also he has a -2 to all non combat actions when travelling alone and the GM has the right to impose that penalty even if he is with a companion.
It's a nicely produced game...you get Players and GMs books, a couple of short adventures and some seeds for half a dozen more... 6, rather light, D6...and character sheets for The 10th Doctor, Roz, Martha, Donna,Captain Jack,Micky, Sarah Jane and K9(plus blanks). The rules are fully compatible with the Buffy and Angel RPGs so you could send the Doctor to Sunnydale...hmmm Willow as a companion..now there's a thought....
Oh one other thing this rule set actively discourages the use of guns by players.....
more later when I've had a chance to read the rules
So how does Dr. Who work? I've been watching Dr. Who for longer than many who will read this have been alive. It seems obvious for RPG, but you have Dr. Who and his companion (who is expendable) and all those extraneous individuals.
Does one of the characters play The Doctor, etc.?
Well you can do it that way...but eventually you will be able to play solely UNIT or Torchwood based games...at least that's the impression I get from reading the fluff..the UNIT boxed set will be out next year
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Well you can do it that way...but eventually you will be able to play solely UNIT or Torchwood based games...at least that's the impression I get from reading the fluff..the UNIT boxed set will be out next year
Damnation... I was able to resist until you mentioned this. If there's a good 'bible' (like Stargate has/had) it's going to get so yoinked.
Well you can do it that way...but eventually you will be able to play solely UNIT or Torchwood based games...at least that's the impression I get from reading the fluff..the UNIT boxed set will be out next yearDamnation... I was able to resist until you mentioned this. If there's a good 'bible' (like Stargate has/had) it's going to get so yoinked.
The best Doctor Who "bible" for old Who is the DisContinuity Guide, much of which is reprinted at the BBC Classic Doctor Who web site.
A number of Encyclopedias have been published for NuWho, but I'm not sure which if any are the best. I am curious to see how much they will include in the rulebook, but from what I read of reviews, it looks like this (edition) will focus very much on just the Tennant era.
From a review I read, the core rules are for Doctor and Companions as a team, but I imagine it will be easy enough to set it up however you like, especially if you feel the Time Lord character would be too powerful to have as a PC.
I'd love to run a story of just companions who have to go rescue the Doctor. :)
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Chief Technical Officer
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The best Doctor Who "bible" for old Who is the DisContinuity Guide, much of which is reprinted at the BBC Classic Doctor Who web site.
If you liked the Discontinuity Guide, you should check out Mad Norwegian's About Time series, which is kind of like the Discontinuity Guide on steroids—where a story will get a page or two in the Discontinuity Guide, it'll get six or eight pages, or more, in About Time.
I'd also recommend the website A Brief History of Time (Travel).
However, I wouldn't consider any of those things a proper "bible," as they all pretty much expect you to already have reasonable familiarity with what happens on screen.
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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And this was a problem how? This is one game where balance simply should be thrown out the window. Companions are easy to balance against each other. Time Lords are simply a different order of being.
Well, that's one way to address the issue.
Another, as someone else mentioned, was to play a UNIT, Torchwood, or all-Companion campaign, but I imagine that players would be dissatisfied by that: either the Doctor would keep showing up and solving the problems for the party, or else the Doctor wouldn't be showing up, in which case you might as well remove all the time-traveling elements from the game and call it "Bug Hunters".
As some other people have noted, you could try to balance all the benefits of being a Time Lord against, um, whatever benefits a normal human might enjoy. (It's really worse than the Jedi in Star Wars games. The Time Lord not only has tremendous equipment advantages, deep expertise in just about every field of knowledge, and regeneration capabilities; he's also luckier, better-connected, and better-liked than the companions....)
It's only a problem if the game is set up with one superhuman immortal Time Lord and his cool magical equipment and every other PC being a normal person, and this set-up is a surprise to the players.
If you play it like Ars Magica, where all the non-Gallifreyans are trogs, it should work fine.
The best Doctor Who "bible" for old Who is the DisContinuity Guide, much of which is reprinted at the BBC Classic Doctor Who web site.If you liked the Discontinuity Guide, you should check out Mad Norwegian's About Time series, which is kind of like the Discontinuity Guide on steroids—where a story will get a page or two in the Discontinuity Guide, it'll get six or eight pages, or more, in About Time.
I'd also recommend the website A Brief History of Time (Travel).
However, I wouldn't consider any of those things a proper "bible," as they all pretty much expect you to already have reasonable familiarity with what happens on screen.
Ooh, thanks for the reqs! I know I've looked at Shannon Sullivan's site before but somehow I missed the About Time series. Good to know!
As for the concern about too-powerful Doctor being discussed by Chris Mortika, et al... IMO, when the Doctor is omnipotent, you're "doing it wrong." Whether it happens in the TV show itself, or a portrayal in a fan-work or, indeed, an RPG.
The Doctor is very old, very intelligent, very resourceful. He's also very arrogant, very unpredictable, even very childish at times, and the tricks up his sleeve don't always work. There are countless times he has relied on others to save him or do work that he couldn't, and a well-designed team with a PC playing the Doctor would take that into account. Someone mentioned the Doctor and Ace and that's a great example--Ace contributed her chemistry knowledge, her explosives, her general physical action hero traits, etc. where the Doctor really couldn't--at least, not the way she could.
Or go back decades ago--where the Doctor was brilliant, but a feeble old man. He needed Ian, Susan, and Barbara's help to find the Keys of Marinus, fight the Daleks, and so on.
Even in the new series, some of the Doctor's more "omnipotent" moments were through the machinations of "ordinary" people; Tinkerbell Jesus Doctor never would have appeared at the end of "Last of the Time Lords" were it not for Martha's hard work, let alone the willing participation of millions of human beings.
Ultimately, I think party design will work exactly like it does in most RPGs--you have to make sure everybody can contribute. I imagine the Doctor/Time Lords are sort of like Wizards--it seems like they can do anything, but they still actually do have frailties and work best--just like everyone else--with party support.
I'll add that I did play in a Whoniverse based RPG using D20 Modern, which overall was very fun, but I think there was a problem in the fact that the Doctor was being NPCed by the GM. He did tend to show up and toss the PCs around whereever they needed to go and became more of a force of nature than a character. And the best, most interesting moments of the game when he was not present, because of these "force of nature" issues. The temptation of being too powerful may actually be worse if he IS an active, ever-present NPC rather than a PC, where the GM instead can be the one there to say, "No, reversing the polarity of the neutron flow will NOT actually solve the problem this time around. You'll have to think of something else."
And then, besides, Torchwood and UNIT teams, as mentioned, if all else fails.
Finally, I've read the game includes templates for all the major Tennant-era characters EXCEPT Donna. This is entirely unfair. That is all.
Deathquaker,
Donna is included, I promise.
Character sheets and write-ups included are:
The Doctor
Rose
Capt. Jack
Donna Noble
Martha Jones
Sara Jane Smith
Micky Smith
K-9
Blank character Templates include:
Student
Unit Soldier
Torchwood Operative
Scientist/Inventor
Medical Doctor
Musician
Journalist
Deathquaker,
Donna is included, I promise.
Sweet! The review I read didn't have her listed. That's good to know. I like the sound of the general archetypes as well.
Donna is included, I promise.
Hooray! I heart Donna.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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I begin and end this post with an attempt to make a point clear: I am not arguing that there's a problem. I'm asking how this game addresses a facet of the genre.
As for the concern about too-powerful Doctor being discussed by Chris Mortika, et al... IMO, when the Doctor is omnipotent, you're "doing it wrong." Whether it happens in the TV show itself, or a portrayal in a fan-work or, indeed, an RPG.
The Doctor is very old, very intelligent, very resourceful. He's also very arrogant, very unpredictable, even very childish at times, and the tricks up his sleeve don't always work. There are countless times he has relied on others to save him or do work that he couldn't, and a well-designed team with a PC playing the Doctor would take that into account. Someone mentioned the Doctor and Ace and that's a great example--Ace contributed her chemistry knowledge, her explosives, her general physical action hero traits, etc. where the Doctor really couldn't--at least, not the way she could.
Or go back decades ago--where the Doctor was brilliant, but a feeble old man. He needed Ian, Susan, and Barbara's help to find the Keys of Marinus, fight the Daleks, and so on.
Even in the new series, some of the Doctor's more "omnipotent" moments were through the machinations of "ordinary" people; Tinkerbell Jesus Doctor never would have appeared at the end of "Last of the Time Lords" were it not for Martha's hard work, let alone the willing participation of millions of human beings.
Ultimately, I think party design will work exactly like it does in most RPGs--you have to make sure everybody can contribute. I imagine the Doctor/Time Lords are sort of like Wizards--it seems like they can do anything, but they still actually do have frailties and work best--just like everyone else--with party support.
Hi, DeathQuaker.
I feel silly saying something this obvious, but you're highlighting the differences between an RPG and other storytelling media.
The folks who write the TV series, or fan fiction, can assign Doctor whatever personality quirks and limitations they plese. They can write him as arrogant, forgetful, lethally whimsical, disastrously curious, over-clever, under-clever, what-you-please, all in service to the plot.
But the fellow at the table who's playing a Time Lord is trying his or her level best to solve the mystery, resolve the conflicts, and win the day for the good guys, all the while getting along well with the rest of the party.
I still think the comparison to Ars Magica works, except that here the same player is running the magus every week. In other literature, we have ...
Maybe this game system attempts to equal the playing field by saddling the Time Lord with, in Hero Games terminology, significant Psychological Limitations. Maybe the game moves against the source material by making giving the companions more skill points, or better abilities to deal well with the natives, or something like Karma or a Luck mechanic. (I say "against the source material" because the Doctor is routinely more skillful except in fields that are a companion's dedicated baliwick, much better at dealing well with the natives, and luckier.) But maybe there aren't any of these "compensations".
And I don't think party unbalance is a problem, as long as everybody at the table buys into the concept. The story is a collabortive effort, and every PC contributes as he or she can. But in the materials the game is trying to emulate, one character can contribute a great deal more than the others.
Sorry for snipping your thoughtful post, Chris. We were both getting a bit long.
My disagreement with you is that the Doctor is NOT like a Mage (nor the Companions like mundanes) in Ars Magica. I think he's actually--or can be--an equal to his companions in a lot of ways, and I disagree that the Time Lord character would "contribute a great deal more than the others."
I think this is a perception issue/disagreement regarding the show itself rather than a disagreement of how it can work in an RPG. My favorite stories from DW tend to be where it's more of an ensemble piece than a single-hero story, so that's how I tend to think of how it should work. But I certainly can see how you would see the Doctor as the overshadowing character; the show is of course called Doctor Who. You may very well have a stronger point than I, in fact.
I'll stop spamming the product thread with further Whovian nerdness until I actually have read the rules myself and can comment on the specific product in question.
I know the modern era Who doesn't include other timelords, but I think for the rpg it would be good to have rules that allow you to make your own timelord character, as an alternative to playing The Doctor.
I read a strong hint that such rules are in there, but nothing explicitly saying so.
I know the modern era Who doesn't include other timelords, but I think for the rpg it would be good to have rules that allow you to make your own timelord character, as an alternative to playing The Doctor.I read a strong hint that such rules are in there, but nothing explicitly saying so.
Explicitedly saying..
There are traits that a character can take that specifically apply to a timelord character, that are fully fleshed out... both for an inexperienced timelord and an experienced timelord, as well as suggestions on what would be the other prerequisites of such a character. Chapter 4 of the GM's guide also has guidelines for timelord characters in a general context, and TARDIS's likewise in a general context. Going so far as explain that the old TARDIS ran off the Eye of Harmony, but with Gallifrey's destruction it know needs to be refueled (and the internal architecture, chameleon circuit, and so on.. everything you need to know to run a different TARDIS that the Doctor's).
The GM's guide has general rules for Regeneration, and Stats for a Tardis (as they are sentient beings).
The game seems oriented towards playing THE Doctor, but hopefully to everyone's delight and relief.. they have not painted themselves in a corner at all. I see enough material for any one to make their own unqiue timelord character.
General comments:
It's not a "crunchy game". I'm not familiar with the Buffy or Angel RPGs.. which someone mentioned are related in how the game is designed.. But these seem to be simple elegant rules with a cinematic emphasis rather than simulationism. It's a gorgeous game with high production value.. Totally in color and filled with photos from the series.
Including Donna. ;-)
If it hadn't been for the whole limited print run with David Tenant on the cover, I would've waited until after Christmas. I've been told you never forget your first Doctor, and I think that's going to hold true for me (obviously, I just shelled out 60 bucks to get Tenant on the cover instead of Smith).
The annoying think is I'll probably want the Matt Smith version as well if only because it will probably have the Karen Gillan companion pics in it and she's from my hometown.
But yes the limited edition is going in the games cupboard and staying there.
If it wasn't obvious.. I d have the system in front of me and I'm skimming it. In another thread Chris has asked about the issue of the Doctor being superior to the Companions.
There seems to be a mechanic in place to address that.
The game has an action point system, where "Story Points" can be used to ensure successes and survival, and in general sway the game. Not unlike Bennies in Savage Worlds, or other games where an action point system is used.
Comparing the number of Story Points that the Doctor and Captain Jack recieve, compared to the Companions.. is striking.
Rose and Donna recieve 15 each
Sarah Jane, K-9, Martha, and Mickey Smith all get 12, which is something of an average baseline.
The Doctor gets 8...
And Captain Jack gets 4..
This seems in proportion to the number of skills and special traits that each character recieves. Whereas Donna and Rose has less special traits and attributes than all the other characters, they get more Story Points to influence the flow of events with..