Category Archives: Games

Dimensions in Lego Time

With Christmas less than a week away and the prospect of a festive episode, I’m quite excited already. Knowing that River Song will be centre stage makes it even better, in my personal opinions. However, better yet – Lego has gifted us, in 2015, with Doctor Who sets; I got a chance to open a Christmas present early today – the Lego Dimensions Doctor Who expansion pack.

I’m not overly bothered by the game (I rarely get the chance to sit down in front of a console and give any game the attention it deserves), but I really wanted to pick up whatever Doctor Who Lego materializes.

I have the main TARDIS set to open and construct come Christmas week (and a period of well-earned holiday), so this serves as a taster. It also helps ‘complete’ that set, as the Peter Capaldi version of the Doctor in the TARDIS set only comes in post-regeneration outfit… effectively wearing Matt Smith’s old clothes. The Dimensions set includes the dark blue frock coat with red lining (which he’s even now moved on from in the series!). I like the look – though the coat bottom only appears on the front, not on the side or back.

The set includes the Doctor with the old incarnation of the sonic screwdriver (and, as a small component, you get a spare screwdriver, which I thought was nice). You also get K-9 – possibly a little over scale – and the TARDIS – somewhat under scale. Perhaps with this TARDIS you can recreate Logopolis and the shrinking time machine?

The K-9 model has sloped side panels, a movable head and tail, plus a smooth tile with his name. The build includes a silvery circular tile on the front that looks like K-9’s collar tag. Oddly, the same spot on the back is left uncovered and, as a result, appears to my warped mind like the robot’s arse. I’ve covered it with one of the spare light grey bricks. It seems only decent.

As mentioned, this set connects to the Lego Dimensions game, so they all come on bases with near field tags embedded inside. However, they also serve as perfect good and solid bases for the minis.

Awkwardly, the instructions with the set only instruct you how to build the Doctor – which, in all truth, isn’t something that really needed any sort of guidance. It isn’t as if you might make a mistake putting his body on the wrong way around and then spending hours puzzling how to sort it out.

You have two options:

— You can go to the Lego website and access individual instructions for the standard and alternate builds. Go to the Building Instructions for 71204 and select the book icon that matches the item you want to build – like TARDIS or K-9. Once you’ve selected the desired item, scroll down and click the black Download PDF button to get the instructions.

— Build the items by staring really hard at the pictures on the box – which was my preferred option. You can figure out K-9 pretty easily with this option. The various angles and alternate builds shown provide enough of an idea for you to work out what pieces you need and how to sling them together.

The TARDIS needs a little more thought. Once you built K-9, you have a pile of pieces left and most of those go into the build with a spare of every small, single-spot piece. The “inside” of the TARDIS involves layering the angled black brackets with small piles of the other various small components and cones. I won’t say any more than that – to retain the challenge – but, it did take me a little while to work it out!

Neat, fun and massively over-expensive due to the tie-in and components related to the console game. However, completists will want it for the K-9 and Doctor minifigs.

Quick Doctor Who Characters – Part 2

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doctor-who-vortex-quick-charactersI ran The Blood of the Zygons this last weekend for Doctor Who (Vortex system) and I declare Quick Characters a workable option. Not flawless, but workable.

I introduced the base game mechanic (2d6 + two character scores) and got going with the adventure.

When the time came for some action, I laid out the college cards – which show the Attirbutes and a Trait or two – and asked the players who wanted to meet a challenge which card they wanted. At that point, most of the players committed to taking a card. I had the roll based on two Attributes at that point.

Next challenge, I revealed the bottom row of cards, which display Skills and an Attribute adjustment, with a Gadget thrown in for good measure. The players all opted to take something straight away this time – probably because the unfolding adventure put them in immediate peril.

The final card followed before the scene closed and the theme music cut in.

I Don’t Have That…
Over the course of the game, I did find once the characters split up some found having the right skill an issue. When I declared a combination of Attribute and Skill, the response was they’d have one and not the other. With a full character, this would simply be a Skill with a low or zero value.

I think I’ll plug that gap with Story Points. In a short convention game, Story Points don’t actually get spent as quickly as you might like as a GM. At a push, characters in a bind can get a Skill in something – as a one off – by spending a Story Point like the “Like This, Doctor” ability. A straight +3 modifier for a single Point should suffice and make the difference where there’s a shortfall.

That should keep the story moving and the Story Points flowing, so by the end of the adventure the players might get the sense of impending doom that comes with a Story Point overdraft…

Link to card sheets:
Doctor Who RPG Vortex Quick Characters

Quick Doctor Who Characters

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IMG_20151011_160018-2I’m running one or more convention games of Doctor Who (from Cubicle 7) over the next few months, starting with this coming weekend.

This past weekend, I finished creating a set of “pre-generated” character cards for the game.

Essentially, they’re not complete characters by any measure – just enough to get through a session. While I could easily have done six or seven fixed character sheets, I have been pleased with card-based characters when running The Dee Sanction and Night’s Black Laundry. My thinking, why not!

I plan to lay the cards down on the table and players get to choose one (or more) from each row as the game progresses. In practice, when someone pushes a challenge, then would be a good time to choose a card.

Alternatively, they could take one from each row at the start of the session. Or I could hand them out at random. That’s the approach with the other games I’ve used character cards. Indeed, my last game of The Dee Sanction generated some fantastic characters right off the bat based on the cards alone.

I think these cards might warrant some tweaking to achieve something like that. I’d quite like to add a random naming suggestion and maybe a motivation or two.

In use, characters will possess any Skills not listed, but they’d have a value of 1. Or zero. I don’t want to go down that route. I’d rather people stick with what they’re good at. Otherwise, players can make rolls based on Attribute alone if no one has the right Skill at the given location or a specific scene.

I tweaked the character generation process of my Call of Cthulhu game on the same basis around skills. I dislike the standard method that creates characters with tiny percentile chances of success on skills.

All characters start with 12 Story Points. Because I’ve created the cards without the full spread of abilities, I don’t want to penalise them further! While I have given everyone a gadget worth a Story Point, it still doesn’t quite compensate.

The three cards align in a column. I noticed that you could actually boil the standard character sheet down into a half an A4 column – so, why not do it with cards.

sample-vortex

The top row of cards has each of the six classes from the Time Lord Academy, plus a Gallifreyan who opted to ‘go wild’. The Shobogan made their appearance in Classic episode The Deadly Assassin. I wanted a non-Time Lord as an option, but with the potential to be involved and of value. Herein, the Shobogan fills the base roll of a more physical Gallifreyan.

The middle row has aspects of personality, which serve up good and bad Traits.

The bottom row fits a sort of career path, offering an extra Attribute point and key Skills. Also, extra Traits and a Gadget.

My adventure concerns students escaping Gallifrey at the start of the Time War, which (from a plot perspective) excuses the shortfall in points here and there. They are, however, the best and brightest the Academy has to offer.

Link to card sheets:
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B2zIvdT-XhJieFlRMkQtZks0NXc&usp=sharing