Author Archives: Paul B

About Paul B

Gamer, reviewer, history buff and business analyst. Living in Manchester, in the UK. I work as a senior business analyst and manager. When I'm not at work, I: * Write tabletop game and book reviews, * Develop and market All Rolled Up dice bags with my wife, * Wallow in a library of Tudor history books, and (occasionally) * Write freelance RPG projects - like Paranoia, Maelstrom & Outlive Outdead

Call to Adventure

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winter_for_the_adept_wallpaper_by_hisi79-d5zdo7xI recently played the first session of the Ice adventure from the Eighth Doctor Sourcebook.

I’m not running this as a campaign, per the intentions of the supplement, but as a standalone. I felt that the adventure would work quite nicely that way.

I also used the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa as the characters at the centre of the adventure. The adventure slots into the continuity between Time-Flight and Arc of Infinity in the series (between Season 19 and 20), where several New Adventure novels and Big Finish audio dramas probably all dwell.

As it happens, this choice came down to the players. One loved the Nyssa character and wanted to play her, so it seemed to be just right. Ice involves rooting around in caves beneath a frozen planet and somehow that seemed perfectly Fifth Doctor as well.

All this isn’t really the point of this post. What I wanted to mention was the fact that I punctuated the session with music.

At the start of the adventure the TARDIS arrivals unexpectedly on a cold planet. Unexpectedly arrivals are not unusual in Who. In this case, the cold is the unusual part. The TARDIS feels cold. So, the Doctor’s curiosity gets the better of him, as how could a planet penetrate the TARDIS like that?

After finding suitable clothes in the Wardrobe, the two character ventured out and I described the desolate, glacial scenery. And the cold. They trudged a bit and casting around they realised that something lay beneath the ice, some relic of an alien city.

At that point, a snowmobile appeared in the distance. Nyssa hid while The Doctor bid a cheery hello to the newcomer. While conversation ensued, Nyssa became aware of an odd vibration in the ice. Or was it more of a tremor?

A moment later, mid-conversation, the guy on the snowmobile wheeled it around as the ice creaked, shuddered and then cracked. Sheets of grey-blue ice jabbed skyward while others dropped into the abyss. Both characters made a leap for safety, The Doctor fell, only for his fingers to catch an edge.

As The Doctor struggled to get up, aided by the stranger, Nyssa looked across the ice field. Jagged streaks patterned the surface, now covered with pits and holes. In the distance the TARDIS…

And then it dropped out of sight.

Queue the stab of the Who theme. POW.

If they hadn’t got in the mood up to that point, the theme made all the difference. We’re all suddenly bobbing about and squeal wee-woo.

It set the mood and also served as a way to cut to the next scene, as the snowmobile ground into the waiting camp beyond the mountains. No need to worry about the journey between or the uneasy silence from the stranger. The Doctor and Nyssa could worry about the TARDIS later – they had new people to meet and a mysterious city to uncover.

The theme worked really well. I can’t say that music works for everyone, and as a background noise it will be Marmite for some groups. But in that moment, the stab of the Theme worked wonderfully well, just as the outro version of the theme worked well at the end of the session, just as I revealed the cliffhanger revelation.

I recommend giving it a try, whatever the game. If you can find a theme tune, go for it. I can see it providing a valuable and rather entertaining framing motif. If you follow the TV serial approach to games, it doesn’t always have to happen at the same time. Some shows you can go five, ten, even fifteen minutes before they kick in the theme tune and the opening credits. In a longer drama or serial, they have a degree of leeway – as do you in running a gaming session.

Find a tune. Set the tone of the session. Hit the danger or reveal the cliffhanger from last session – and then play the theme.

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Original art (cropped for this post) by deviantart contributor hisi79

Saving Santa

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OK – I can see Christmas Who remaining as divisive as ever. Since the Sycarax, murderous Christmas trees and oompah Santa-masked mercenaries took to the screen in the Tennent-period, has anything divided Who fans more? OK – Catherine Tate, perhaps. And Clara.

Indeed, I sense Clara will have much to do with the division this time. Some, like my wife, expected something of this Christmas episode that Moffat didn’t deliver. They expected Clara to leave, to walk away from the TARDIS once and for all. She had, at the end of the final episode of the series, spun a tale to the Doctor that she was happy with Danny Pink and he had nothing to worry about. He did the same in the respect of finding the location of Gallifrey. Christmas could have been the final final farewell.

That didn’t happen.

You should have heard my wife’s words of exasperation, like she had taken Moffat’s solemn promise and he had broken his vow. I don’t recall said words exchanged. I remember Canada acting all coy when he appeared on The One Show.

Perhaps Moffat also didn’t help his cause when he named this episode Last Christmas and provided the Act 3 twist that he did. Naughty man.

For my part, I would have missed Clara and I’m happy she will continue the journey. For all we know, she might pull a Bonnie Langford and only linger for a short while before handing over to someone else. It doesn’t make sense to spoil Christmas with something as wrenching as a departure. Christmas almost needs to be the episode you could miss altogether and not spoil the continuity of the show. Almost. Indeed, after the Tennent-period that pretty much has become the case.

I liked the episode. I liked Nick Frost as Santa, and those cheeky elves. I enjoyed the plot and the threat. A lot of the knowing humour hit spot on for me, making me chuckle – like Santa explaining he can carry all the presents for the children of the world because his sleigh is bigger on the inside.

In all likelihood I will give the episode further consideration and come back to it. For me, I found a lot to enjoy here and felt far more satisfied than I have with some Christmas episodes. It felt like a good episode with a dose of Christmas, rather than a dose of Christmas with a hint of Who.

Kill The Moon – with Spiders

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Kill_the_moonTo my mind, ‘Kill The Moon’ turned out to be another good episode. If I could compare it to a past Doctor – and it feels like the series currently demands that of you – it would probably be the Fourth Doctor, dear old Tom Baker. When the Doctor disappears into the crack in the Moon seeking out the source of the spiders, that reminded me of Tom for some reason. Not quite sure why. I’m happy to go with the gut instinct on this one.

So, in ‘Kill The Moon’ we have a humanity-changing situation at hand in a point of temporal flux of which The Doctor has no notion of the outcome. What happens now hasn’t happened yet – despite the fact that what has come after apparently already has. Clara has seen the Moon in the future, so how could it possibly be destroyed in the past?

Flux.

Anyway – we have had these temporal nexus points before. Going back to Tom, ‘Genesis of the Daleks‘ was a nexus in some measure. The Time Lords sent him to destroy the Daleks – and the point of their creation by Davros represented a malleable event open to change.

We seem to have two phenomenon that have cropped up many times like this – the nexus, where events could be changed despite the certainty they can’t be open to alteration; and, the forgotten past, where something happens – like a Tyrannosaurus Rex or a gigantic Cyberman – and people somehow paper over the incident like it never did happen. Who remembers it – um… no one, because it would hurt to give it credance, and it was probably just the fog or a minor outbreak of hysteria.

Here, The Doctor takes the stance he has worked against for so very long. The Time Lords claimed they held to values about non-intervention, and only the Doctor and a few others – like the Celestial Intervention Agency – worked against the grain. Here, The Doctor steps back and states he can have nothing to do with the decision. The only people able to make this decision has to be those affected by the outcome, the people of Earth.

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