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The movement amongst indie games and elsewhere towards non-traditional RPG designs is extrem ely significant in our hobby. For while on the one hand, such off-shoot movements can be a sign of stagnation in traditional design avenues, of designers crying out for a whole new paradigm, history has also shown that such movements are also signs of the traditional avenues reaching their greatest heights. It is a sign, in other words, not so much of stagnation of the traditional artform as it is the perfection of it.

Which is to say: don't expect anything particularly new from Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space - but absolutely expect something good.

Like Unisystem, like Cortex, like Savage Worlds – and like CODA and ICON and Action! and Tri-Stat before them – we have six attributes, and a list of skills, and virtues and flaws, and hit points and drama points and all that good stuff. So it's familiar, but it is in the details and the execution that we find the meat of the matter, and just because it follows a solid format does not necessarily mean it comes up roses. Hence, of course, a review. However, perhaps more than anything, it borrows from the book of Buffy, and if you've read my review of that particular work of genius, you know that I consider Buffy one of the high water marks in RPG design. So borrowing from this particular master is is no bad thing at all - especially when it comes to handling a very popular and quite stylised licence like this one.

The one thing that is against typical form (although, as I predicted back in 2008, something that is becoming increasingly more common these days) is it comes in a boxed set. Within are a Players Guide, a GM's guide, six beautiful six-sided dice and a plethora of hand outs. There's an adventures booklet, a quick-start rules summary, fun little gadget cards and an enormous stack of character sheets. Some of these sheets contain fully statted characters from the show, including K-9 thank you very much, although unfortunately not all of them are built according to the rules, which is always a bugbear with such things. Meanwhile, some of the other sheets are half-full, so you can quick-stat some archetypes (Torchwood operative, nosy journalist, musician, etc). Likewise, some of the gadget cards aren't just sonic screwdrivers and psychic papers but pre-designed not-quite-flavoured items to let you build your own creations without learning all the rules.

This quick-and-easy, from zero-to-gaming-in-2.4-seconds is repeated throughout the whole product. Combined with the spilling-over-abundance of toys to play with, this box is taking a big lesson from Ghostbusters (still one of the best introductory RPGs ever written) in how to encourage new players to join in. This always makes sense when you're dealing with a big licence, because pretty much nothing else has the potential to bring in new players into the fold.

And as licences go they don't come any bigger. Doctor Who is something akin to cricket, drinking tea and the Anglican Church: something so essentially British the one cannot satisfactorily be removed from the other. It is also something, moreover, that demands a roleplaying game. It's had two already over the years but with the recent reboot of the series with Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant, there was a definite need for a new RPG as well.

Of course, the RPG focuses on what is colloquially dubbed “nu-who” - the recent years. Indeed, the game is almost entirely focussed on Tennant's doctor, to the point that I'm not sure there's even a picture of Eccleston in it. This has deeper implications in the writing too: this is an RPG that recreates less the entire canon of the show and very much more the spirit and style of Tennant's run – there's a chapter called Alons-y, for example. For those of who found Eccleston a far superior timelord and thought that a lot of the jokes and the emotional folderol of the Tennant years were insufferable twee (or just insufferable) this isn't superb news. Luckily this doesn't curtail the mechanics in any way, and the writing is good enough to get away with some occasional tweeness, especially since it's aimed at totally new gamers and younger gamers to boot.

Now I know some of you will start whining about that last statement, thinking that the game is going to talk down to you or think young people are stupid. Rest assured that I can tell good writing aimed at children from bad writing aimed at idiots. Also note that most Whologists agree that there is a childlike heart to Doctor Who that is vital to its continuing success and appeal, and so failing to, at the very least, welcome the young with open arms would be out of genre.

And genre is strong here. Deep and strong. Mister Chapman clearly loves and understands the show in a way that has nothing to do with memorising canon. Certain concepts are hard-coded in to the design and although they are spelled out in the text, there is also the unwritten assumption throughout that the players know them and will follow them. There is, for example, no system for buying equipment or acquiring wealth of any kind because the show is never about such things. There is no need for suggestions about motivating characters to go adventuring or having virtues and flaws modelling emotional motivations because it is assumed that the characters will be objectively good people seeking adventure while working constantly to save the universe – because otherwise it wouldn't be Doctor Who.

The consequence of this – and a consequence of the extreme simplicity of the rules – is they have potential to be abused. They may also be a little vague for some people, because the assumption behind them all is “do what fits the show best”, and trusting your judgement on that issue. For the most part, I don't have a problem with this, because ultimately the rules can't cover everything and encouraging the GM to trust his own judgement is a good thing. However, there are times when the rules are so vague and GM fiat so frequently invoked that the game is simply not pulling its weight. Systems are necessary to keep things balanced and precise and consistent and smooth, so you don't have to keep making judgement calls, and this rigidity can be achieved without a subsequent increase in complexity or without curtailing creativity.

However, there are those who thought that the Buffy RPG was a bit too complex and rigid for something as bendy and fun as Buffy. For those people – welcome home.

Much like Buffy's Unisystem, Doctor Who Adventures in Time and Space (or the fun-to-pronounce acronym DWAITAS) has six attributes. These are Awareness, Coordination, Ingenuity, Presence, Resolve and Strength, a very appropriate list for Time Lords and their companions. The skill list is very short, only twelve of them: Athletics, Convince, Craft, Fighting, Knowledge, Marksman, Medicine, Science, Subterfuge, Survival, Technology and Transport. I love a short skill list personally, because it's so simple and easy, but it does come with the usual problems. Firstly, it can be easy for players to double up with others, even with specialisations, and even if you do chargen together (because the Archaeologist and the Lawyer will both just have high Knowledges).

Second, it is fairly easy to max out in something while still being okay at a few other things. For example, if you have slightly above average Ingenuity of 4 (both Attributes and Skills are rated 1 to 6) and are a clever clogs with Technology 5, you have +9 to your rolls on such things. Since the basic difficulty is 12 and you're rolling 2d6 and adding your attribute and skill, you now can only fail on a snake eyes. If you also take the almost certainly apt virtue of being Technically Adept you get a further +2 and now you can never fail. Yes, the difficulty can go up, but the point stands – focus just slightly and you may be hard to challenge. While others in the party may have almost no chance of succeeding on exactly the same task. That's a consequence of using 2D6, with its less likely extremes, as opposed to the flat D10 of Unisystem. The pay off is increased reliability of results, which is a good thing, and also that extreme results feel more special simply because they happen less.

The system doesn't reward good rolls, only good results, which means high statted types can get boons without having to rely on luck. Rolling 0 to 3 points above the target number is a middling success. 4 to 8 over is a regular success, 9+ is a fantastic success. I'm presuming there is some statistical reason for these numbers because I wish they had been more logical or intuitive, like 0-3, 4-7, 8+. Or they could have followed Buffy's lead and put it on the character sheet. It's a little thing, but it niggles, because it could so easily have been fixed.

Nicely, however, it doesn't make the mistake of having difficulty levels AND difficulty modifiers, a design insanity I've never understood. It also takes an extra step by providing conceptual narrative guidelines to each success level, rather than just examples. That is, a middling success is a “Yes, but” - you succeeded but something not great happened as well. A fantastic success is a “Yes and”, and similarly there is also “No but it's not so bad” and “No and it's even worse” for failures. This is a nice simple rubric for coming up with results, a nod to indie design perhaps, and easily ignored for when you don't need it. In combat (or rather conflict), levels of success translate into damage modifiers (half, base, or one and half).

I say conflict rather than combat because the game goes to great lengths to focus on mental and social conflicts as well as physical ones, and the mechanics and treatment of them are identical. Indeed, for simple encounters, characters may face off with completely different attributes. For example, if a Cyberman wants to shoot and the Doctor wants to convince him not to, the Doctor rolls Presence plus Convince while the Cyberman rolls Coordination plus Marksman. In extended conflicts the Cyberman might roll to resist the talk and then the Doctor might dodge out of the way, if that seems more appropriate. Whichever the case, the lack of combat focus is further highlighted by a lack of hit points. Losing a conflict means you lose attribute points, from an appropriate attribute. Hit zero in one of them and you're out of the fight, whatever that means in that particular conflict. This is abstract enough to work in all situations meaning you don't need to learn special rules for different kinds of conflict, but it's concrete enough so that every die roll and outcome has a clear meaning in the setting. Which is great.

Aside from a lovely little model for exciting chase scenes, that's the extent of the mechanics – apart from Story Points. The box contains a punch-board of about a hundred of these delightful little glossy hexagons and players begin each episode with twelve of them. (Yes, it resets off screen, and so do all wounds, because it's TV logic, as it should be.) Players may start with less Story Points if they have some of the more awesome virtues and flaws, such as being a Time Lord. This is the only balancing factor in the system for being such an awesomely powerful character; Chapman has tackled the issue of 'who gets to be the Doctor?' for the most part by ignoring it, and letting everyone be on mostly an equal footing. Which is to say, with four people around the table, it is easier to just let them all be equal participants rather than trying to model that the Doctor knows everything and always saves the day. This fits the modern Doctor fairly well, too, with Rose and Donna in particular very often getting equal or greater screen time.

Also in line with the new shows – shows plural, as in including Torchwood and Sarah Jane Adventures - are plenty of options for powerful characters who aren't Time Lords, be they time agents, aliens, cyborgs, robots or vampire slayers. Well, maybe not vampire slayers but it is reminiscent of Buffy in that you don't need to have or know a Time Lord to play – you can do Sarah Jane adventures or Torchwood (or even Roswell) just as easily as you can do Doctor Who with these rules.

Regardless of your show's concept, kewl powers (and gadgets that mimic them) are bought not just with build points but also with Story Points (and vice versa, you can trade in build points to get more Story Points if you like to play lucky ingenues, and who doesn't?). However, this isn't like Buffy where non-heroes get twice as many: Time Lords get only four fewer story points. Which is not to say this drop in Story Points is completely insignificant. They are relatively powerful things, so much so that Doctors and Companions alike need to be awesome, and so indeed, Time Lords are not greatly bereft of them. The result is that on paper, special characters look unbalanced against companions. The game's attitude, as I said, is generally applying handwavium, and for the most part this works: power isn't important in the Whoniverse, so why care about it in game? Surprisingly, in practice, this seems to work. It also means you have more flexibility in campaign design – Buffy is somewhat screwed without White Hats providing back up of Drama Points (and using their Support Your Local Slayer rule to keep Slayers sane) but an entire party of Time Lords would work fine.

Speaking of Supporting Your Local Slayer, also like Buffy there are rules in the game for going too dark or sad and no longer wanting to adventure any more. This is akin to death (since you get written out of the show) so is a big deal, but I'm not sure it's supported totally by the series, since all the companions so far left for other reasons. I may be missing something, however.

Of course, you can die as well, and you will if you're not careful. The average pistol does 6 or 7 points of attribute damage and you're likely to only have about 18 points to lose in total. What's more, most of the weapons in the game don't bother with a damage rating, instead defaulting to L for Lethal. As in “you are dead”. This is important to give Daleks and Cybermen their true menace, and is leavened by the use of Story Points. To wit: the main purpose of those points is to turn failures into successes, allowing you to dodge out of the way. You can only get a maximum of a middling success with these so you can never be awesome, but you can stay alive.

Story Points can also be used to power gadgets so they can be twisted to do what you need (yet they are cleverly delineated in their overall function so they don't turn into magic wands). They also allow for scripting in some dramatic convenience by the players, getting clues from the GM, healing up some damage mid-story and adding 2d6 to the next die roll and more. GMs can also hand them out for shafting the players, for playing up flaws and for unrestrained heroism. The uses have cute names like “I'm stumped” and “It was just a scratch” and are extremely reminiscent of the names and uses seen in Buffy. Again, I'm not complaining. If you're going to borrow, borrow from the best.

So that's the rules. Now let's talk content.

As mentioned, the box contains a Player's Guide and a Gamemaster's Guide. Both are perfect bound softbacks with glossy hinged covers stacked to the gills with stills from the show, and with detailed and very useful indices on the back. The PG is 88 pages, the GMG 138, but here's the kicker: both of them contain all the rules described so far, including full chargen. That's about fifty pages of double up, and that might give a buyer pause.

However, the sections are not identical. The Players Guide has more explanations and examples and works as a teaching work (yes, on top of the already simplified hand out – it's called stepping stones, and it's a great idea). The GM's Guide is more of a reference work. Either way, it means whatever book you pick up, you've got all the rules you need (although I wish the Gadget rules had made the Player's Guide – and while I'm wishing, I wish those rules had been easier to understand, too). The result is you start with an extra book at the table, to hand around to players and help them learn the game. This is very useful indeed – but whether you want to pay for it is up to you.

The Player's Guide also has some things a GM doesn't need, most notably the final chapter on how to be a good player, which is very sharp indeed. It seems to over-emphasise metagaming being the ultimate sin but also covers not being a loner, getting involved, supporting others, playing in character and not hogging the spotlight. It also concludes with a look at the major tropes of the genre, in terms of what kind of heroes feature and what those heroes do, which is an extremely important inclusion..

The Gamemaster's Guide does much the same: it's second last chapter is a huge look at how to GM and GM well, including notes specifically tailored to the issues of the Whoniverse (like technobabble). This is followed by a chapter that takes a large look at crafting TV-like episodes and series arcs, and again, this is really top quality information that demands to be present for a licenced game like this and actually revealed to me structures in the TV show I hadn't noticed before.

Wedged between the rules at the start of the GM's Guide and these GMing lessons at the end are the two setting chapters. The first is about time travel and I thought it was going to be a lot of redundant generalities because hey, time travel works however the writers want it to, right? Except it certainly does not, and although canon is extremely bendy in Doctor Who there are rules and some of them have become quite explicit in recent years. What's more, there is a particular art to running stories in a universe with time travel and this chapter is a godsend to helping you ground those stories in some basic concepts and rules so it doesn't just unravel or become dull – as well as providing heaps of inspiration for making those stories sing. For example, if you really want to nudge the players onto the plot, this chapter reminds you that the PCs can send messages to themselves from the future. What this chapter does, effectively, is teach you how to write episodes like Blink and The Girl in the Fireplace, instead of just going back to visit the Romans or the Mongols. Excellent stuff.

This chapter also covers the TARDIS and other devices which travel in time. The TARDIS is not bought with points because it's basically just a narrative contrivance: either your series has one or it doesn't. In fact, the rules treat the TARDIS much like an extra PC or NPC that everyone has some control over, but also has a mind of its own. To this end, the TARDIS' has the same stat line as any PC, and can make rolls in just the same way. This is not just a simple way of modelling it in the rules, it also helps to stop players from thinking of the TARDIS as just another piece of equipment. I like it.

Next chapter has the monsters. Obviously it has to be a small selection; obviously it focuses on recent beasties. We get Autons, Carrionites, Catkind, Clockworks, Cybermen, Daleks, Judoon, Krillitane, Ood, Roboforms, Slitheen, Sontarans, Sycorax and Toclafane. And frogurt. I question a few of the inclusions but it's good to see races which can be both good and bad, like the Judoon and Catkind, and races which can take many forms like the Roboforms and the Autons. It is, in short, a good list for a roleplaying game.

After this we get rules for making your own alien species, which can also be used for making PCs. Unfortunately, the handwavium comes to the fore here again when it runs into hard-to-define monster abilities, grouping all such things under the category Special, and saying that the GM should just guess what they should cost if he is giving them to a PC. Which would be fine if there were examples but none of the monsters have their special powers costed. I'm sure these issues will be fixed in the upcoming creature book but it's another niggle.

You might be wondering where the adventures are in all that GMing stuff – you know the examples of all the advice in action - but it's okay, they're in yet another booklet in the box, which means two players at the table can have the rules while the GM still holds the adventure notes – another great idea. The adventures themselves are...decent. The problem may be they are a little too much in genre, particularly the first one which is set in a typical British seaside town (which, in Tennant style, the Doctor is supposed to find hilariously fun) complete with a haunted carnival. The weaknes is that by following the format of an episode, there is a lot of mystery and freakiness going on, and that freakiness has a massive amount of backstory. This means that players will spend a lot of time being weirded out without really being able to understand anything, because only the precise pivotal NPCs have the information they need. Worse, when they find those NPCs there is a massive amount of exposition-dumping that needs to happen (or the players are going to have to be fantastic guessers). And finally, that dumping isn't exactly very clearly laid out in the adventure itself – I've read it twice and still don't understand some of it – which means it's going to be even harder for the GM to explain it and the PCs to understand it. A confused audience and blundering protagonists are fine in a TV episode, but not as fine in an RPG session. The second adventure, set on a Judoon ship is less convoluted, but is still quite multi-layered and also relies on a single NPC who has all the clue tokens. Both are entirely salvageable, however, and get points for being right on genre, but could have been better.

These two full works are followed by a list of 24 short adventure outlines, of which three form a trilogy. The quality here is a bit varied but by virtue of having so many, the bad are far outweighed by the abundance of the good. Combined with some ideas a certain person came up with, there's a lot of meat here for the hungry GM.

With support for the GM out the wazoo, stacks of hand-outs and toys, and a system designed to grab new roleplayers and stuff them in a bag and brainwash them until they can't do anything but play RPGs any more, this is a game which sits up and begs to be played. And while I can't ignore the niggles and the handwavium, neither detracts sufficiently from the unstoppable locomotive of imagination this game represents, ploughing ideas and zeal into your fore-brain at frightening speeds. After reading it, characters and monsters and plot hooks tumble from your fingers unconsciously. The rules sit in your brain like you've always known them. Many times I had to force myself to go back and finish this review because I figured I knew the game so well I must have already reviewed it and everybody must be playing it.

It's that kind of ready to play, and that kind of simple and easy to use and that kind of familiar to what you already know. You don't just want to play it, there's a chance you might wake up and find you already are. And in a world where both indie and traditional games are becoming increasingly complicated and convoluted, this simplicity and familiarity is a cool balm of refreshment as well as a moon rocket to awesome.

It has it's niggles, yes. It's not quite as good as Buffy. But it has learnt exceedingly well from the master, and as such is a first class take on a licence that deserves nothing less. If this is stagnation, I say bring it on.

Style 5, Substance 4.

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