Tag Archives: Gallifrey

Gallifreyan Games

 

The Doctor Who RPG needs to be played.

I need to run it more often – and take the time to get into the nuances of Cubicle 7‘s Vortex system.

Simple post really.

While the reception to the last series might be mixed – and I can’t think of a single creative realisation in any media that won’t raise an argument amongst fans – I enjoyed it a great deal.

Indeed, I think I’m enjoying thinking back on it now than when I watched it the first time.

For example, the Degradations of Skaro – I so want to investigate that concept more and the horrific experiements actualised by the Dalek Command upon their own forces in the battle against the Time Lords.

I want to delve more into Gallifrey as well.

When I ran a couple of games at conventions this year, I offered a Shobogan as an option amongst the characters. I don’t consider these Outsiders in Gallifreyan society so distanced from the common citizenry that they can’t interact.

In the New Adventure All Consuming Fire, the Seventh Doctor refers to the Shobogan as New Age Time Lord dropouts. In the recent Hell Bent, the Doctor starts the episode living amongst the simple and peaceful Shobogan in the outback of the Gallifreyan wilds. They seem interesting enough to make more of, to understand how they have taken to a simpler lifestyle and cast aside all the pomp of “High Gallifrey”.

When Cubicle 7 originally released the boxed set of the Doctor Who game I attacked it with gusto and set about creating stats for all the various characters of the new series. I think my first attempt was in statting up Charles Dickens from The Unquiet Dead. I could do with recapturing some of that vigour for invention while I have the recent series fresh in my mind.

While I’m at it I could do with reviewing a few of the more recent books also, as I’ve really enjoyed reading them and scribbling notes about what I’d like to use out of them. It seems a long while since I last wrote something – and All Time and Space is the answer to all my calls for morer adventures that I might have mentioned in the reviews for one-shots like Cat’s Eye, Medicine Man and The Ravens of Despair.

Hell Yes

Hell-Bent-12th-Twelfth-Peter-CapaldiIf anyone cares about my opinion, I enjoyed Hell Bent.

I liked the stand-off at the beginning, with connections back to earlier episodes in the ‘barn’ – and the sense that the Doctor had the people behind him as a hero. The line in the sand and the escalating interest from the Time Lords… that worked for me, and I found it amusing.

The resolution of the Hybrid might not have necessarily been quite as expected, but I guess that was the point. It shouldn’t have been as expected, as then we would have been complaining it was all obvious. I think this sort of harkened back to the unofficial history of Gallifrey and The Other. The Doctor is a figure of significance in the history of Gallifrey, but not one who stands front-and-centre such as Rassilon or Omega.

I liked the Cloister Wraiths. I look forward to seeing more of The General – if for no reason other than the increasing possibility that The Doctor really might one day regenerate into a female form (Missy, The General and Romana show you just how brassy and ballsy a female Time Lord can be, so I say, why not?!).

I really liked the end because it turned the tables and left us knowing something The Doctor doesn’t. Personally, I’m all for the notion of what happens and the possible adventures ahead for The Diner.

For me, this was Maisie William’s strongest performance. Me felt self-assured and Maisie came across really well. It might have been the intention all along, but her turn as Ashildr has never really convinced me. Even in ‘Face the Raven‘, Me didn’t quite have the solid sense of the actor in control. I’m not quite certain what it was. ‘Hell Bent‘ finally served up the character played right and Maisie acting with the confidence you feel in Thrones. Heck, maybe I’m misplacing the blame and should aim my finger toward the director or the script? Who knows…

I hope that we can now have an accessible Gallifrey and a prospect of Time Lord intervention now and then. I sort of liked the arrogant and mildly incompetent touch of old. With Rassilon gone, why can’t we have a Gallifrey once more without the sense of being the greater evil?

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