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Also, since there is a lot of stuff to cover here and I am a pretty verbose and slightly over-obsessive fellow when it comes to game systems, I prefer to warn you that this review is going to be quite long. So step into the TARDIS and join me into my journey through the new Doctor Who : Adventures in Time and Space roleplaying game.
Expectations & Anticipations
Although I rarely describe myself as a « rabid fan » of anything, I guess I could actually be described as a rabid fan of the new Doctor Who BBC series (as well as an enthusiastic student of the old, ‘classic’ series). And like so many enthusiastic Doctor Who fans / gamers out there, I was REALLY awaiting the release of this game – in fact, I don’t recall having been as much excited by the imminent release of a RPG for years. I had even begun working on my own homebrew system when I learned that Cubicle Seven had acquired the license to publish a fully official RPG adaptation of the new TV series. All this to say I had very high expectations for this game, especially as far as game mechanics were concerned ; I wanted a simple, easy-to-learn, fast-paced, elegant and flexible game system, a system which would really make the game feel like the TV show itself – and this was certainly not an easy task to accomplish, considering the amazing diversity of the source material and the well-known difficulty of handling time travel and other related topics in a roleplaying game.
A Quick Jump in the Past
Like a few other sci-fi TV series, Doctor Who seemed to be litterally crying for its own licensed RPG – and indeed, back in the 1980s, when licensed RPGs were quite rare and TV-based RPGs even rarer, the American publisher FASA had realized the incredible RPG potential of the Whoniverse but the game never caught on (even if it still has some staunch supporters) and back in the early 90s, Virgin publishing also published a Doctor Who RPG named Timelord. These two games had very different approaches to the idea of gaming in the Whoniverse : while the FASA version used a « Celestial Intervention Agency » (yes, that’s CIA – incidentally, this concept does come from the TV show itself) as an easy alibi to send player-characters on various missions on behalf of the Time Lords, the Timelord game was based on the idea that you would want to play the Doctor and his companions from the series – much like the old TSR Indiana Jones RPG.
Return to the Present
All this to say that Cubicle Seven’s game is the third official RPG based on the Doctor Who franchise – but the purpose of this review is not to compare the new game to its predecessors, which would be a bit pointless since Cubicle Seven’s version explicitly focuses on the relaunched series. If you really wanted to compare, you could say that the new game is to its predecessors what the reborn TV show is to the classic series : just like TV special FX, RPG systems have come a long way since the eighties, especially when dealing with concepts like dramatic tension and genre emulation. Doctor Who : Adventures in Time and Space is a game for today’s gamers but its game mechanics are based on fairly classic and familiar concepts – and here again, we see the similarity with the new TV show, which was deliberately geared to appeal to a whole new audience as well as to the aficionados of the classic series. This game has the same potential ; it could attract a new audience to gaming and could be a great way for older gamers to introduce their kids to the hobby – when you come to think of it, there are not that many RPGs which can really appeal to teen-agers as well as to gaming veterans in their 40s (or even beyond) and Doctor Who : Adventures in Time and Space could just fill that inter-generational bill perfectly.
Next Stop, Everywhere !
Another great, gamer-friendly aspect of the Whoniverse is the simply enormous amount of fiction and source material available – an amount which puts Doctor Who in the same league as the Star Wars and Star Trek universes. Just because Cubicle Seven sensibly focuses on the new series does not mean you cannot draw information, ideas or inspiration from these myriads of books, audioplays and websites… especially since the Whoniverse offers you more possibilities than restrictions : pretty much anything is possible here – including stories which, in most other fictional universes, would be viewed as completely unorthodox deviations from official continuity. To quote Doctor Who writer and executive producer Steven Moffat : « a television series which embraces both the ideas of parallel universes and the concept of changing time can't have a continuity error ». Nuff said.
That being said, on to the game itself !
Bigger on the Inside
First, a few words about appearance and presentation. The game is simply gorgeous. It comes in a glorious bookcase style box, which is simply crammed with books, sheets and stuff - like the Doctor’s TARDIS, it does seem bigger on the inside. The game even comes with its own set of dice (6d6), something which does give older gamers like myself the feeling of travelling back in time…
Here is a quick inventory of all the material included in the box :
A 86-page Player’s Guide
A 140-page Gamemaster’s Guide
A 32-pages Adventures Book
A 4-page quick start guide
A dozen character sheets, including those of the Tenth Doctor, Captain Jack, Rose, Mickey, Martha, Donna, Sarah Jane and (wait for it) K-9 the robot dog, as well as several pre-generated typical templates (UNIT soldier, student, doctor etc) for novice characters.
Six six-sided dice and a whole sheet of nifty hex-shaped tokens for Story Points
Gadget cards – including some blank ones to create your own gizmos.
The physical production of the Player’s and Gamemaster’s Guides is really impressive ; the two books are lavishly illustrated with full-color pictures from the TV show and the layout is both elegant and practical – stylish enough to convey the aesthetic feel of the source material but never losing track of the fact that this is a roleplaying game rulebook and not an exercise in graphic design.
My only (small) complaint about the presentation is the glaring absence of any picture featuring Christopher Eccleston a.k.a the Ninth Doctor – the only Doctor shown on these photographs is David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor. Perhaps this has something to do with licensing issues or perhaps Cubicle Seven wished to establish the image of David Tennant (who, incidentally, will very soon be replaced by another actor as the Eleventh Doctor) as that of the « iconic Doctor » ? as opposed to the « old » Ninth Doctor… whatever the reason, the absence of the Ninth Doctor on the pictures feels a bit weird, especially since the fantastic Mr Eccleston was the actor who managed to resurrect the character for the new series. Eccleston and Tennant are both outstanding actors, who have given us two unforgettable Doctors… so both should have found their rightful place in this book. Perhaps Cubicle Seven will correct this in future supplements ?
But enough about illustrations – what about the writing ? A great degree of attention has been given here to recreate the tone and feel of the source material. The rules are explained in a casual, relaxed voice which aims to imitate that of the TV show and, perhaps, to appear more « user-friendly » to novice gamers and each chapter in the Player’s and GM’s Guides is aptly named after an episode or quote from the series – such as « The Stuff of Legend » for character creation, « A big ball of timey-wimey stuff » for time travel or « Allons-y ! » for action resolution – a small touch, but one that contributes to immerse you in what we might call the Doctor Who paradigm right from the start.
On the minus side, I spotted a few minor editing errors here and there : several times, we are directed to a mysterious « p ( ?) », which is the local variant of the dreaded « pXX ». No doubt this will be corrected in a forthcoming errata sheet (and perhaps in a second printing of the game).
So what do these books actually contain ?
The 4-page How to Play quickstart guide does a fine job of summarizing the important rules and the 32-page Adventures Book contains two complete scenarios (« Arrowdown » and « Judoom »)… as well as more than twenty adventure ideas / synopses – a nice and welcome departure from so many games which actually require you to buy at least one supplement to get a campaign started. The two scenarios and the various adventure ideas do a fine job of conveying the feel and spirit of the source material – although the strictly « time travel » element of the game could have been emphasized a bit more for my personal tastes.
Before we proceed any further, it should be noted that the titles of the two rulebooks (the Player’s Guide and the Gamemaster’s Guide) are, for once, completely true to their actual contents : as far as rules are concerned, the 140-page Gamemaster’s Guide contains the entirety of the game system (including rules for character creation) and the 86-page Player’s Guide simply repeats most of this information from a player’s perspective. So, yes, gamemasters who buy this game will be able to let their players borrow the Player’s Guide between game sessions without losing access to any information, since the Gamemaster’s Guide contains the full version of the game, including an essential chapter on time travel (« A big ball of timey-wimey stuff »), the usual ‘how to be a GM’ stuff, a very decent 15-page bestiary (« All the strange, strange creatures »), including Cybermen, Daleks, Sontarans and other alien regulars, as well as things like Clockwork Robots, animated store mannequins and Toclafanes.
The Scope of the Game
What do I mean by « scope » here ? As suggested by its complete title (Doctor Who : Adventures In Time And Space), the theme of the game offers an almost infinite array of possibilities in terms of characters, campaigns, settings or individual scenarios… but such a limitless scope is also a daunting challenge for game designers – which is probably why there are not that many RPGs dealing with « adventures in time and space ». The problem is as simple to understand as it is difficult to solve : if you cast your net too wide, you run the risk of catching nothing… and if you try to narrow down your target, you run the risk of letting some very important things out of the net. Faced with such a tough design dilemma, the Cubicle Seven team managed to do a superb job – they didn’t cast their net too wide but they cast it wide enough to catch the full range of possibilities offered by the Whoniverse.
Sure, the game is not a « setting bible »… but it is not its purpose. If you are interested in a Doctor Who RPG, there is a good chance that you already own such a book… and if you do want a Doctor Who Encyclopedia or a complete history of the Whoniverse, well, go buy one – there are many excellent books out there – in fact, some of them are even listed as recommended reading in the Gamemaster’s Guide. Although it makes numerous and frequent references to the TV show, the game clearly focuses on the stories that YOU, as players or gamemasters, are going to invent and play – and this is precisely what a GAME (as opposed to a setting bible) should do. What this game offers you is a complete, ready-to-play set of rules embracing the whole array of possibilities offered by the Whoniverse as a game setting and allowing you to recreate the feel and tone of Doctor Who around your gaming table (but more on this later). In order to achieve this, the game chose to emphasize spirit and creativity over data compilation or canon orthodoxy. And yes, this really was definitely the way to go. The message here is not « Look all you have to digest before actually considering to even run a game set in that universe. » but « Look at all the possibilities this universe has to offer. »
So, the Cubicle Seven designers did not cast their net too wide… but they sure cast it wide enough. Take, for instance, the character creation rules. With the novice gamer / Doctor Who viewer audience in mind, it would have been very easy for them to, say, restrict the player-characters repertoire to the Doctor and his companions… and toss the rules to create ‘original characters’ in some future, companion-type supplement. Not so here. Sure, you can play the Doctor and his companions – but this is just the ‘default assumption’ of the game… Not only do the rules allow you to create your own characters but they also allow you to create virtually ANY type of character, including (among many other things) aliens, humans from past eras, UNIT soldiers, cyborgs, psychics and even Time Lords. Yes, it’s all here.
Speaking of Time Lords…
Sure, the Doctor told us he was « the last of his kind »… so what ? Perhaps he is wrong. Or perhaps a few other Time Lords have survived the Time War in an alternate universe. Or escaped on another planet where they are trying to found a « new Galifrey ». Or just woke up from suspended animation in some forgotten « temporal shelter » (Doctor Who meets The Morrow Project !). All these possibilities (and many other) exist. All these possibilities would make great starting points for a campaign. And all these possibilities can be explored with this game.
When I bought this RPG, I was already working on a one-on-one campaign concept (my wife is a Doctor Who enthusiast too) with a lone demi-Time Lord heroine as the player-character – by « demi-Time .Lord », I mean someone with a Timelord as one of her two parents… and in the case of our heroine, someone who will discover her true heritage at the start of the campaign and then spend quite a few adventures trying to uncover various secrets about her missing Time Lord father (and no, he is NOT the Doctor). The rules do not specifically cover such a character concept… but they allowed us to create the character nonetheless with a minimal amount of rule-tweaking – all I had to do was to cook up a weaker version of the Time Lord trait, reflecting the character’s hidden lineage and lack of a true Timelord education… something which I expected to be a bit tricky but it worked like a breeze. Once I had devised this variant trait, translating our « demi-Time Lady » concept in game terms took us less than twenty minutes. If anything, this particular example is a good illustration of how much this game offers you in terms of possibilities… as well as a conclusive test of the simplicity and flexibility of its character creation rules – which takes us to the next section.
Characters in Game Terms
Character creation is a very simple and quick point-based affair, with no random element involved. The definition of characters in game terms is remarkably efficient and elegant : six attributes, twelve skills, binary (yes/no) good or bad traits, a pool of story points and voilà ! That’s right : no sub-stats, no derived scores, no unnecessary complexity.
The six attributes are : Strength, Coordination, Awareness, Ingenuity, Resolve and Presence - a straigthforward, solid package, which also shows a great deal of attention to the way characters are defined in the TV series. The concept of Ingenuity, for instance, is really more Who-esque than the usual (and often all-too encompassing) Intelligence attribute. Just look at the episodes : when the Doctor or his companions manage to solve a problem by using their brains, they really display Ingenuity, rather than some kind of abstract « intelligence ».
The skill list shows the same attention to source emulation ; instead of a sprawling list of ultra-specific abilities, characters are given twelve very general skills (including Science, Fighting, Knowledge, Technology or Subterfuge), which really cover everything that needs to be rated in game terms. This « generalist » approach to skills is also is perfectly consistent with the « jack-of-all-trades » quality displayed by the Doctor and his companions during their adventures. And if you really want to add an extra degree of focus or specialization, a simple optional rule allows you to add Areas of Expertise to your character’s skills – so, yes, you can have your marine biologist who is not very good at using guns but is a crackshot with a crossbow and is also an expert on Renaissance history.
Characters also have a Home Tech Level which affects their use and understanding of technology – an indispensable feature in any time / space travel game… and one that allows players to create virtually any type of character, from a Viking warrior to an Elizabethan doctor or a 51st century Time Agent… all this as easily as, say, a 21st century newspaper reporter or UNIT soldier.
Attributes and skills are rated on a 1-6 scale but this maximum may be exceeded by Time Lords and other über-powerful beings. The human average for attributes is 3 but judging from the specific descriptions for each attribute in the GM’s Guide as well as from the various pre-gen character sheets (including that of Rose, who is only given a 2 in Ingenuity), this « human average » feels more like « average of player-characters » rather than true average and would perhaps have been more accurately described as « typical », « OK » or « acceptable » rather than just « average »; in other words, the proverbial man-in-the-street would probably have a mediocre 2 in his attributes rather than the « average » 3.
Traits cover individual characters advantages or drawbacks, including the usual stuff like Quick Reflexes or Phobias, as well as eminently Who-esque traits like Boffin (allowing you to build all sorts of weird gizmos from scratch), Insatiable Curiosity or Run for Your Life ! (giving you an edge when , well, running for your life). Traits also cover things like psychic powers, special alien characteristics or all sorts of weird possibilities, such as being a robot… or a Time Lord. These special traits are very well defined ; their description is concise without being vague, providing a simple and solid basis in terms of game mechanics while leaving enough interpretative freedom for the Gamemaster. As with pretty much everything else in this game system, the key concept here seems to be « possibilities »… but whereas many games which claim to offer « endless possibilities » often just provide vague guidelines or barely functional rules, this game system actually gives you the keys to these possibilities.
These traits also manage to avoid two common pitfalls of binary advantages and disadvantages : the well-known risk of ‘min-maxing’ characters (ie making ultra-powerful characters by loading them with all sorts of improbable, irrelevant or barely-disadvantageous disadvantages) and the less-frequently noticed tendency of such lists to pointlessly duplicate things already covered by attributes, skills or even other traits, which often turns character creation into a series of agonizing hair-splitting choices and makes it needlessly difficult to create a well rounded-out character (the official Lord of the Rings RPG from Decipher, for instance, had more than half-a-dozen different advantages reflecting the simple idea that your character was more courageous than most people, all of which with different, ultra-specific effects in game terms and (of course) names which seemed to convey pretty much the same idea. You will find no such thing in this game : the lists of good and bad traits are well-furnished without being ridiculously plethoric and, although there are a few overlaps here and there (such as « Attractive » and « Charming », which could probably have been united into the same trait), each trait corresponds to a clearly-defined concept – no agonizing choices or pointless hair-splitting here.
One of the boldest design choices of the character rules is their stance on character advancement : during the course of play, characters may sometimes improve their skills or even their attributes (but this is extremely rare) ; they may also gain new good or bad traits reflecting their various fortunes… and all this occurs when the Gamemaster decides it should. That’s right. No experience points, no improvement rolls, no real rules. Characters get better when the GM feels they should. Period. Many gamemasters and players have been using such freeform experience system in play for years (and they could tell you it works at least as well as saving XPs or counting skill checks) but it is really great to find this in a big commercial, official, licensed RPG – and it’s actually an important design choice, since it clearly makes character improvement an incidental aspect of the game rather than the often obsessive goal it tends to become for so many players, leaving enjoyment as the only real purpose of the game.
Actions & Conflicts
Let’s now take a look at action resolution. The game uses a very simple and intuitive core mechanic : you roll 2d6, you add the relevant attribute and the relevant skill (plus any bonus or penalty from applicable traits) and try to score as high as possible. The basic target number is 12. Thus, if you were trying to use your Ingenuity attribute of 4 with your Technology skill of 2, you would roll 2d6+6 – meaning you’d need to roll 6 or higher to succeed on an average action. The total you roll can be compared either to a fixed target number ranging from 3 (Really Really Easy) to 30 (Nearly Impossible !) or, in the case of conflicts and other opposed actions, to somebody else’s own rolled total – nothing really new or especially complex here.
Depending on how well succeed (or how bad you miss), your result can also be given a degree of success or failure, ranging from Disastrous to Fantastic. A nice touch here is the way these degrees of failure are described : « Yes And » (Fantastic), « Yes » (Good), « Yes But » (Success), « No But » (Failure), « No » (Bad) and « No And » (Disastrous). This simple symmetry is a very well thought-out way to familiarize novice players with the concept of degrees of success and failure – the « Yes But » and « No But » results are also a nice incentive to add all sorts of minor incidents and opportunities to the flow of the game.
The system also includes the usual options for cooperation, complications and opposed actions – or « conflicts », which are broken down into simple conflicts and extended conflicts. All these things are simply treated as extensions of the core mechanics detailed above ; in a conflict, for instance, your target number is not a fixed number but the rolled total of your opponent’s action or reaction and it’s about as complex as it gets.
Combat & Damage
Combat barely gets its own section and is simply treated as a typical example of extended conflict – a design choice which is, this time, perfectly consistent with the overall philosophy of Doctor Who : every effort is made to de-emphasize the importance of combat in play and present it either as a bad solution or as a last, desperate resort. But instead of simply telling us : hey, combat is bad, nice time travellers should always try to use brains over brawn (not to mention guns !) to solve problems, the rules actually integrate this overall philosophy in the inner workings of the conflict resolution system – this is especially obvious in the rules on initiative and injury, two topics you should always check first when you’d like to know what combat represents in a game and what consequences a combat scene is likely to have during play. The way the rules handle each of these topics shows is as simple as it is inspired – and above all, the way these rules work will directly contribute to recreate the « Doctor Who feel » in play.
Let’s start with initiative. In a typical action sequence, characters act in the following order : Talkers, then Runners, then Doers and then, in the last phase of the round, Fighters. In other words, there is (normally) always a chance to talk yourself out of a nasty situation OR to run away OR to do something else before combat becomes inevitable – sure, special circumstances (like ambushes) may alter this sequence of action, but this is how most « combat » scenes play in this game : combat is the last option, in every sense of the word « last ».
And then you have injuries. The rules do not use hit points, health ranks or even wound levels. Injuries may have three different effects : you may lose a number of attribute points (more on this later), you may be stunned… or you may be killed outright. Yes, that’s right – in most circumstances, getting hit by a Dalek’s death ray will disintegrate you. Automatically. Shock, horror… and perfect genre emulation – especially, I hasten to add, since players can spend Story Points to avoid such automatic kills on their characters. In other words, if you run into a Dalek : run for your life… or be prepared to sacrifice a few Story Points just to stay alive (and then run for your life). This is just how it works in the series – and how it should work in a game where a Dalek is supposed to be Dalek.
As mentioned above, injuries which don’t kill you outright will make you lose attribute points – and a single injury is usually enough to reduce one attribute to zero (which has various consequences in game terms, depending on which attribute is affected). Every attribute can potentially be reduced in this manner – a leg wound, for instance, will probably reduce your Coordination, while a head wound may reduce your Awareness, Ingenuity or even your Presence ; Strength and Resolve are the two attributes which are the most likely to be reduced by physical damage. So what does this all entail in terms of play and drama ? Simple : it means that most heroes can quite easily avoid harm (as long as they have some Story Points) – but that when they do get hit, they are very likely to be seriously hindered or even incapacitated by their injuries. Another good reason to avoid violent confrontations if possible. Healing, on the other hand, is rarely a problem – recovery tends to happen automatically between episodes, with no further complications.
A word should also be said about player-character death, which is presented here as a dramatic, suitably heroic or tragic event rather than as the unlukcy and purely mechanical consequence of a few bad dice rolls. And since a character can always expect to cheat death as long as he has a few Story Points left and since players frequently gain extra Story Points during play, here again the system handles things in a very effective and elegant manner. Thanks to their powers of regeneration, Time Lords have quite a few extra lives in store but the game also offers an interesting alternative to death for mortal companions – one brush too many with death can make them Unadventurous, eventually leading them to leave the TARDIS and the Doctor and get back to their normal life as NPCs, much like a character who « retires » from active adventuring when his actor leaves the show – just think about the fates of Rose, Martha and Donna.
Glitches, Quirks & Tweaks
Warning : This part of the review goes into some very specific aspects of the resolution system - see, I told you I tended to be slightly over-obsessive on such things. If you are not a compulsive rule-tweaker and just want to know how the game handles the essential elements of its source material, just skip this section and go directly to the next one, which examines the very important topic of Story Points.
My only (very minor) reservation about the resolution system lies with the target numbers for average and easier-than-average actions – not with the target numbers themselves but with the corresponding examples, which include things like driving a car in traffic (12), setting a video timer (9) or even opening a can of drink without spraying you in the face (6). Perhaps these examples were intended as humorous but they also convey the idea that every task, including the most trivial or routine ones, actually warrants a dice roll, which is quite incompatible with a dynamic, fast-paced game flow and also seems to contradict the overall design philosophy of the game and its emphasis on simplicity and flexibility. Any 21st century human with a single level in the Transport skill should be able to drive a car in normal traffic… but if we do make this a difficulty 12 task, an average character with, say, a Coordination of 3 and a Transport skill of 1 would still need to roll 8+ on 2d6 – which makes virtually anyone a serious traffic hazard ! This is really a bit ridiculous… but fortunately for us Gamemasters, there is a simple solution : simply disregard these examples and evaluate the difficulty degrees as you wish or restrict dice rolls to situations which actually challenge a character’s abilities – an approach which seems much more consistent with the overall spirit of the game.
The resolution system also has an interesting quirk, which I first interpreted as a wart on an otherwise very slick system but which actually made perfect sense upon closer examination. As mentioned above, the usual formula for resolving an action is (attribute + skill) – but in some situations (those where no suitable skill seems to apply), you may add two attributes instead. The justification for this quirk can be found, oddly enough, in the skill section of the character creation chapter. The basic idea here is that the « paired attribute » approach should be used for instinctive actions, as opposed to « trained actions », which use the regular (attribute + skill) formula. This does make sense but the explanation should really have been made more explicit or simply put in the right place, in the section on action resolution, rather than buried in a section where it can easily be overlooked. Examples of such actions explictly mentioned in the rules include overcoming the effects of fear or resisting a seduction attempt, which both call for an Ingenuity+Resolve roll.
Such distinctions may have deeper implications than it may seem at first – let’s take, for instance, the case of dodging. According to these rules, dodging a melee attack is a regular skill-based action (Coordination + Fighting), since learning how to fight also teaches you how to avoid attacks… but dodging (or, more properly, evading) gunfire is an instinctive action based on two attributes (Coordination and Awareness). The basic idea here is that learning how to dodge a punch or sword blow is part of any pugilist’s or swordsman’s training, while evading gunfire has more to do (at least in fiction) with reflexes and instinct than with expertise. So what was the problem, you ask ? Well, since attributes are usually higher than skills, this means instinctive actions tend to succeed more often than skill-based actions ; in other words, if you have no skill in Fighting but decent Coordination and Awareness, your chances of evading gunfire will be far better than your chances to dodge a punch. My first thought upon realizing this was : « Ah, this is soooo wrong ! »… but when you do give the matter some thought, this completely unrealistic and apparently slightly absurd rule actually makes perfect sense – if you take into account the tropes of the TV show and the need to emulate them in game terms : even in the few episodes where guns are blazing and bullets are flying, how often do we see the Doctor or one of his companions actually take a hit ? So yes, in this game, evading gunfire may be relatively easy… even easier than dodging a punch or sword blow. In other words : unless you are a skilled fighter, stay out of melee. And for those characters who do know how to fight and who do insist on fighting, this also means that a good, solid punch or a suitably swashbuckling strike with a sword may be a better (ie more likely to be effective) solution than a bullet.
One thing the system fails to explicitly tackles (unless I’ve failed my Awareness roll) is what we might call the « raw single attribute roll ». Let’s face it – sooner or later, you will encounter a situation where no suitable skill seems to apply… and where you can only think of a single attribute to do the trick. Think about breaking down a door or lifting a very heavy weight, for instance – such actions are obvious applications of a character’s Strength but how do we resolve them in game terms ? Since the description of the Athletics skill mentions swimming, climbing, running and other physical activities but says absolutely nothing about weightlifting (not to mention breaking down doors), we can safely assume that such actions fall into the « instinctive » category rather than the « trained » one… but unless we do think that Resolve is as important as physical Strength for such activities (which is obviously not the case), we are just stuck with Strength. And simply rolling 2d6 + Strength will not do the trick, since the success probabilities are geared for a pair of scores, not for a single one. The best solution would be to double the character’s Strength, thereby preserving those precious probabilities and also making Strength even more important in such situations – a fairly simple and intuitive approach, which should have found its way in the rules (if only for the sake of Strength feats).
But enough nitpicking – let’s take a look at one of the most essential components of the system : the ubiquitous Story Points.
Story Points
Story Points are the « narrative currency » of Doctor Who. Similar mechanics exist in many contemporary RPGs, especially those which encourage heroic, cinematic action. The Story Points of Doctor Who have all the typical uses of such fudge / drama / luck / hero points (they can be spent by players to improve their character’s chances of success at some crucial task or to increase their chances of escaping from harm or to get a clue when they are stumped etc) as well as a few more specifically Whoesque applications, like allowing characters to accomplish truly unique, never-done-before feats, like, say, absorbing the energy of the entire time vortex or using a gadget in a completely new, creative and suitably improbable way (such as using a sonic screwdriver to freeze the ambient temperature).
But what’s really special about those points is their very fast exchange rate between the players and the gamemaster. In most games which feature luck / drama / hero points, characters can only use a fairly modest amount of such point per scenario and cannot usually regain those points during play – not so in Doctor Who. Human player-characters usually start each episode with 12 Story Points (or even more for some of them) and everybody can be expected to regain at least quite a few points during play… or even go beyond one’s usual maximum (which only affects how many Story Points you start each episode with). Players can gain new Story Points in play by making their characters behave in a suitably heroic, brilliant or dramatic way… or by letting bad things happen to them (such as being captured by enemies or even turning a successful roll into a failure) to advance the story. And this is what Story Points are all about (and why, I suppose, they are called « Story Points » rather than, say, « Hero points » or « Luck points ») : they are the fuel and juice that keep a plot moving or, if you will, the game manifestation of dramatic tension.
The only way of losing (as oppose to spending) all your Story Points in one go is by killing somebody else in cold blood – a « game taboo » which is perfectly consistent with the Doctor Who ethos. This rule also illustrate another major purpose of Story Points – to inject, encourage and enforce genre tropes during play.
Because Story Points are frequently spent or gained during play, they are materialized as nifty hex-shaped tokens (you get a whole myriad of them in the box), which relieves players from the fastidious task of constantly erasing and updating their current total on pen and paper. These tokens also favor the narrative continuity of play : since spending a Story Point can simply be abstracted by the gesture of handing a cardboard token to the Gamemaster, players don’t even need to disrupt the action or ‘break the spell’ with ugly gaming jargon (ie instead of saying : « Okay, I spend 3 Story Points on this… » at a crucial moment, you simply give three tokens to the GM and use your voice to utter something much more dramatic, such as : « Let’s live to fight another day ! » or « Now is the moment of truth ! » (you get the idea).
The various effects associated with spending or gaining Story Points give quite a lot of narrative power to the players but the ultimate control of events remains into the Gamemaster’s hands – whose « word is final », as we are reminded several times throughout the rules. In other words, a player’s power of decision is not restricted to his own character’s actions – everyone can (and is encouraged to) directly contribute to the flow and pace of the plot but the Gamemaster keeps his traditional prerogatives of moderator, referee and main narrator. Of course, handling this in play will require a good deal of flexibility, quick thinking, narrative agility and group awareness from the Gamemaster and, perhaps to a lesser extent, from the players themselves ; this is a collective balancing act… but this is just what running any RPG is all about, right ?
Ordinary human characters like Rose or Martha get more Story Points than superhuman / immortal characters like the Doctor or Captain Jack Harkness – the distinction here is pretty much the same as the one between Slayers and White Hats in the Buffy RPG. This distinction (which, it should be noted, only affects a character’s starting maximum of Story Points) has more to do with that special, hard-to-define quality often ascribed to humans by the Doctor (you know, the indomitable, enduring, unpredictable human race and such things) than counterbalancing the extraordinary abilities of characters like the Doctor or Jack – let’s face it : such characters ARE more powerful than mere mortals and thee is NO way any amount of Story Points are going to change that. But then it’s not a problem, since Story Points do not measure how ‘powerful’ your character is but how important he is to the story – and this is the only form of « game balance » which actually matters in a game like this one.
NPCs also receive a set number of Story Points, depending on their dramatic stature… and here lies my only serious gripe with the whole Story Points NPCs, because this applies to ALL NPCs and creatures – yes, that’s right, even rank-and-file guards and thugs. So if you are facing, say, a Judoon leader with ten Judoon soldiers, every one of these ten soldiers will have his own Story Points reserve… which seems to me very, very wrong both from a dramatic and a practical perspective.
Let’s start with the dramatic side of things. Giving every faceless Judoon trooper or nameless UNIT soldier even a couple of Story Points will give such minor characters a genuine degree of influence over the flow of the story – and this seems to completely contradict the spirit and genre tropes of the TV show, which, in action scenes, tends to draw a very clear line between important (named) characters (which should definitely have their own pool of Story Points) and nameless extras (who are mainly there for show) : the most obvious way to render this distinction in game terms would be, of course, to give zero Story Point to these extras. It made so much sense that one is left to wonder how on Earth (or Galifrey) could the designers miss this…
Let's now take a look at the practical side of the problem. Giving Story Points to every rank-and-file villain will simply drive any novice Gamemaster into mental overdrive when running any big action scene involving hordes (or simply a dozen) of such minor NPCs, especially since those scenes are supposed to be run at a dynamic, fast-moving pace – just imagine having to keep track of every individual Story Point expenditure for ten or twenty faceless Judoon troopers during an extended conflict… Sure, this CAN be done (after all, generations of GMs have routinely kept track of the decreasing Hit Points of hordes of goblins) but even with a quick-thinking GM, this will undoubtedly slow things down just when they should move faster… and in a game which advocates the use of Story Points cardboard tokens to save players from the tedious task of constantly erasing and updating a running total, this really strikes me as seriously nonsensical. That being said, once again, the problem is really easy to fix - simply give zero Story Point to NPC extras.
Gadgets & Tech
The rules on gadgets are really, really well thought-out. The gadget creation rules allow GMs (or players) to create handy gizmos without any complex calculations ; just like traits, gadgets cost character points and can be ‘minor’ or ‘major’, with effects chosen from a repertoire of typical possibilities (or agreed upon by the player and the GM). But where the game really shines is in the way it differentiates gadgets (stuff like the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver and psychic paper are gadgets, as is Captain Jack’s vortex manipulator) and ‘things’ (pieces of standard equipment) – and this distinction is not as obvious as it may seem in a game where characters can have easy access to advanced technology from future times or alien worlds. What is the ‘real’ (in game terms, that is) difference, for instance, between a player-character’s trusty gadget ray gun and a very similar ray gun commonly found on the planet Zetron 8 ? Or, in other words, what makes the player-character’s ray-gun unique ?
The answer is simple : gadgets, just like characters, have their own pool of Story Points – a small pool (usually no more than 1 or 2 points) but points which can be used in critical situations involving the gadget, which includes (among other things) pulling off special stunts with it or using it to affect the story in a significant way. So, in a way, gadgets are more like minor characters than inert pieces of hardware – and their special role in play is materialized by the use of nifty gadget cards, which adds a very nice ‘iconic’ touch to the whole thing. Really, really neat stuff here, with the right balance of game mechanics, story considerations and genre emulation.
Timey-wimey Stuff
And what about the TARDIS, you ask ? Well, the dear old blue box gets almost 10 pages of the 20-page chapter on time travel – a very well-executed section, with a very well-balanced mix of technical considerations, setting information and game mechanics. If gadgets are treated a bit like micro-characters, the TARDIS is treated like a major character in its own right, complete with her own set of attributes, skills, traits and, of course, Story Points… but more importantly, the TARDIS is treated as a pivotal, ubiquitous plot device – just like in the series.
The term « plot device » is especially appropriate here, since the TARDIS could also be described as a « time device » - and this may be the underlying key concept of the treatment of time (and time travel) in the game : « time » here, just like « plot », is something that the player-characters can affect but which is ultimately placed in the hands of the Gamemaster.
Instead of attempting to bring order to the Vortex and translate things like temporal paradoxes, time loops, nexus points and other consequences of time travel into strict (and restrictive) « laws of time » (which would go against the « timey-wimey » nature of time as defined by the Doctor himself), the game presents them as possibilities, tools which can be used to build a great story – and this was definitely the way to go, since this is exactly how the BBC writers treat time in their Doctor Who scripts. Sure, the section on « Gamemastering Time Travel » is a bit short (and ends on the familiar promise that we’ll « find more advice about time, time travel and the history of the universe in a future supplement ») but it clearly sets what time travel should be in the game – « a tool for the Gamemaster to create adventures, not a rope to tie yourself up in. »
The key concept, here again, is possibilities – like the ongoing plot of a story, time is in a constant state of flux… hey, this works so well we could even swap the two concepts here : like time itself, the plot of a story is in a constant state of flux… so yes, time is plot, time travel devices are plot devices, time is the game and the gamemaster is the master of time – sorry, I was looking for a suitably grandiloquent way to end this mega-review. Ah no, wait, it’s not over yet…
A Trip to the Future
Cubicle Seven seems to have a lot of neat stuff in store for the game – the Gamemaster’s Screen should be released very, very soon, an Aliens and Creatures boxed set is announced for early 2010 and while I was writing this review, a UNIT supplement was announced for Spring. The rules also mention a future supplement exploring time travel and the history of the universe… and there also have been unconfirmed rumors about a Ninth Doctor supplement (which would be… fantastic !).
Summing up
So, to sum up, is Doctor Who : Adventures in Time and Space a good game ? Defintiely yes. It’s even better than that – it’s a GREAT game, with a simple and elegant system and some really brilliant features, which show a remarkable understanding of its source material and how to translate it in game terms – sure, it has a few glitches and rough edges, but nothing any GM worth his salt cannot deal with. It is also a beautiful, lavishly presented and generously furnished product, well worth the money I paid for it – especially when compared to other, similarly-priced games which offer you far less stuff (both in the material and intangible senses of the term) for your bucks. Like the TARDIS herself, this game is a box full of wonderful, infinite possibilities. And it can take you anywhere. Allons-y !
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