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In Short

The Good: The use of lore from the show is excellent. The entire package is very attractive, complete with useful handouts and effectively two copies of the rules all of which facilitates play. Players can easily build whatever they want to play. Emphasis on non-violent problem resolution is very setting appropriate.

The Bad: More experienced characters can so consistently outshine classic companions that it can result in some players feeling frustrated as Time Lords and veteran travelers handily succeed on most tasks. The Story Point metacurrency is a difficult balancing mechanism to use as it can swing between not being strong enough to being far, far too effective depending on the situation. Some fans may be disappointed that this RPG focuses exclusively on the new series.

The Physical Thing

Under the Cover

The Doctor Who series is the longest running science fiction series in existence. In fact, it's so old that many of the early episodes are simply lost to time. It chronicles the travels of The Doctor, a Time Lord who travels through time and space accompanied by friends and fellow travelers. Time Lords are ancient, incredibly powerful, and generally benevolent. One of the challenges for those of us who have run games set in this setting has been to allow players to portray Time Lords without those characters completely overshadowing human or more mundane characters. In the show The Doctor is simply better than most people at most things, especially when it comes to knowledge and technology.

With those concerns in mind, let's begin by looking at what we have in this boxed set. The Player's Guide is meant to orient players to the game, provide all the mechanics they need to be familiar with, and aid them in building the concept portion of a character. The GM's Guide contains a second copy of the character creation system along with rules for special circumstances, setting information, and advice on running a game. The Adventures Book includes one detailed adventure and a few adventure hooks to get the GM going. Player handouts, 6d6, and Story Points are also included in the box to aid the group in play. Between all of these support tools and the fact that many rules are reprinted in each book, this boxed set is all a group needs for play.

With all of that in mind, let's turn to system discussion. Doctor Who uses a simple task resolution system of 2d6 + Attribute + Skill for most actions. Average people trained in a task are likely to be rolling somewhere around 2d6 +5, though exceptional characters in the game can get modifiers of +14 or higher. Conflict resolution is largely the same. Characters roll initiative and then take turns acting, with non-violent actions like Talking having precedence over Fighting. Damage takes the form of reduction to Attributes. For example, a wound to the leg could be justified as a reason for reducing coordination. Some conflicts can result in death, but this is setting appropriate since Daleks, Cybermen, and many other villains are incredibly lethal. PCs have Story Points to help mitigate this.

Characters are composed of six Attributes – Awareness, Coordination, Ingenuity, Presence, Resolve, and Strength. Twelve Skills – Athletics, Convince, Craft, Fighting, Knowledge, Marksman, Medicine, Science, Subterfuge, Survival, Technology, and Transport complement these. Characters are built on 24 Character Points, 18 Skill Points, and 12 Story Points. Character Points are used to purchase Attributes and Traits, special abilities, and more may be gained by taking Bad Traits. Story Points may be gained or lost depending on whether or not the character purchases specific Traits.

In my game the players took on the role of two Time Lords, a very inexperienced shop girl, a Time Agent from the 1930s, and an alien. Our back story was that one Time Lord, The Engineer, accidentally resulted in the destruction of a species because of his negligence and lack of compassion in introducing advanced technology to that species. As punishment he was made caretaker of the last surviving member of the species and placed under the watchful eye of The Shepherd, an older Time Lord who was far more interested in humanity than machines. The Time Agent was learning how to negotiate with powerful entities from The Shepherd, while the shop girl was rediscovering herself by sticking close to The Shepherd. By way of illustration, let's build The Shepherd.

Rather than beginning by spending Attribute points, let's pick up the necessary Traits. The Shepherd must have the Time Lord Trait. This costs 2 Character Points and reduces her Story Points by 4. In return she gains two levels of the Ingenuity Attribute, the Feel the Turn of the Universe Trait (allows the character to sense when time is being messed with), and the Vortex Trait (allows for TARDIS piloting). Time Lords also receive a free Major Gadget, which typically costs Story Points to buy. Most will take a sonic screwdriver, but The Shepherd has a crook that can project a force field to protect others.

Psychic is purchased for 2 Character Points, allowing The Shepherd to concentrate and probe another's mind. She only uses this to help people, of course, though less scrupulous entities could use it more aggressively. Experienced Time Lord is purchased three times at 1 Character Point each. This uses up a regeneration, adds about one to two hundred years of life, and provides 4 more Skill Points. The Shepherd is around 500 – 700, is on her fourth regeneration, and has accumulated several life times worth of Skills.

Experienced is a Trait that trades Story Points for more Character and Skill points. I pick it up for -3 Story Points, +2 Character Points, and +2 Skill Points in total. While I'm at it, Time Lords have to have some Bad Traits and I decide to go ahead and pick those out. Forgetful, Eccentric, and Code of Conduct (Pacifist and Guardian of Humanity) net me 4 more Character Points and will serve as a useful means to gain more Story Points in play.

My current total of Character Points is 23. I have 32 Skill Points and 5 Story Points as well. Character Points are distributed among Attributes to result in the following: Awareness 4, Coordination 2, Ingenuity 3 (2 more form Time Lord makes 5), Presence 6, Resolve 6, and Strength 2. Her Skills include Athletics 2, Convince 6, Fight 2, Knowledge 6, Medicine 3, Science 2, Subterfuge 6, Survival 1, Technology 2, and Transport 2. In play she was easily able to overcome social obstacles, but her limited Story Point reserve meant that any Story Editing was unlikely to happen.

The most common difficulties are around 12 (Normal) to 21 (Difficult), though there's plenty of room for movement in either direction. With the use of Story Points even very challenging tasks can be overcome. The downside is that if difficulties are often high enough for Time Lords to need Story Points then there's no way the other characters will be hitting those difficulties. If they're low enough for the Time Lords to consistently succeed then other characters may need to be using Story Points with some regularity.

Story Points can be used to edit the game world, with 1-2 allowing a character to remember a hat and 10 or so allowing The Doctor to trap the Family of Blood forever. They may be gained in play due to Flaws or GM imposed setbacks. Adding 2d6 before the dice are rolled, increasing a success level by 1, reducing damage, gaining access to a Gadget, or getting a clue from the GM are other uses of the points. It's a fun mechanic, but it needs a very active GM to keep it that way. Regular rewards of the points encourages spending in play, and separating the Time Lords from the other characters is an excellent way to advance the story without having the Time Lords stealing the scene.

Conflict is interesting in that those who are talking or performing non-combat actions go before those who are fighting. This is in perfect keeping with the show, and considering the number of entities that can potentially kill a character outright it makes a lot of sense. Daleks don't pull any punches, it's EXTERMINATE or bust for them. While attacks can be lethal, Story Points mitigate this and even in battle against Daleks my crew was able to evade and outsmart the Daleks to save the day. Damage from all types of conflict is found in the form of reduced Attributes, a simple and reasonable way to keep track of injury. While some may not care for how abstract it is, the good news is that even a zero attribute just reflects exhaustion or bad injury and not instant death. This tends to result in a game where as long as the characters are smart enough to run from things they should run from then death is highly unlikely. On the downside, having many lethal entities also encourages players to hoard Story Points for that single bad hit rather than regularly spending them to advance the story.

As far as setting support is concerned, the material here is of greatest value to those who are loosely familiar with the show. The game assumes a certain degree of familiarity, and I wouldn't recommend the product to someone who has never watched Doctor Who. Fans of the show who are intimately familiar with The Doctor and his various incarnations will still find some of the setting details useful, as the sort of stuff you need to know in play (the Vortex, common time paradoxes, TARDIS operation) may not be in the general knowledge of every fan.

My Take

I probably won't be playing Doctor Who again, as I find that I have other systems that already do a great job of handling it without the downsides that my group encountered. My personal recommendation is that if you're already having fun playing a Doctor Who game with a different system then you're probably better off where you are, but if you can't think of a nice system fit for the setting then this is worth your time to pick up. I don't believe this game reaches the pinnacle that Buffy the Vampire Slayer did when it was released, but it's close in terms of matching game design to producing sessions that play like the show.

While I don't consider the design to be revolutionary, and there are play problems, I think that many fans of the show will have a lot of fun with this game. If money is an issue then it may be worth passing on this title, however, as $60 is a lot to ask for a relatively small amount of content. Nevertheless, Doctor Who offers high production values, focuses in on creating play just like an episode of the show, and steps away from a heavy system to give the players plenty of freedom to come up with their own creative solutions to problems.

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