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TIMELORD: Adventures Through Time and Space
Introduction
As this year is the 40th anniversary for Britain’s longest running and most popular sci-fi programme, Doctor Who, I find it rather odd that there hasn’t been a review of the Timelord role-play game on RPG net. Especially as it is not only, in my opinion, the best adaptation of the venerable series one could hope for, but also an excellent system for playing any other genre of game, with particular emphasis on games based on ‘TV Reality’ or Pulp Action.
Virgin Publishing Ltd originally released the Timelord RPG as a 287-page book. Although it has been out of print for over a decade, you might still find some copies over E-Bay, or for those of you living in the US, you could try and contact the Carol Publishing group to see if they have any spare copies lying about someplace. I highly recommend trying to obtain this book for any Dr. Who collectors, as it is graphically interesting and a piece of the show’s history.
For those who can’t find a copy or don’t give a rat’s rumpus about collectables, you’re in great luck. The game authour, Ian Marsh has released the game onto the Internet for absolutely free! You can find it numerous places, but as this is my review, I’m going to plug my website…
http://www.torsononline.com/hobbies/timelord/main.htm
The difference between the Print and PDF copy is cosmetic for the most part, the biggest change being the absence of the print version’s art and the removal of the adventure The Templar Throne in favour of the Curse of the Cyclops. More on that below…
The Layout
The rulebook is divided into 5 chapters. Each is well organized and easy to read, with a very scholarly feel to its dissemination of Dr. Who as both a television series and game. And I mean that in an interesting, informative way as opposed to the sand-chewing-academic way some RPG rule sets are written in, particularly the ill-fated FASA version, which was poorly edited and dull as a spoon.
Part 1: Dr. Who –
A legend in it’s own primetime…
Perhaps the most important job for any television series based RPG is to get the feel of the series across within the first few pages (the Buffy RPG being an excellent example). In this chapter, we not only get a historical overview of the series, complete with a timeline from the series’ conception in 1963 to its end in 1990, we are also given the key concepts that make Dr. Who unique, as well as the first chapter of a Dr. Who novel.
This chapter is a great introduction for those new to the series as well as a good sum up for those trying to capture the essence of ‘Who-ness,’ and all in only 12 pages. For those looking for more detailed analysis of the show, say a season by season summary of the history of the character ala B:tVS, you’ll need to look elsewhere, but in all fairness, the show did run for 30 years! Also, you’ll find plenty of specific information on the characters and aliens from the series in the Cast of Thousands section. For more info, I can suggest any number of great resources, and will do so at the end of the article…
Part 2: Role
Playing – What it is and how to do it…
At first glance, the more jaded of you RPG veterans out there will think the title of this chapter should be ‘Obligatory Newb Chapter,’ and skip right over it. But while the chapter does contain a (well organized) list of Key Concepts for RPGs in general, there are two other items of interest.
The first is a brief history of role-playing, which I have never before seen in a rules book. While I knew most of the history (although the existence of a Beatles Yellow Submarine RPG was news to me), it is a scholarly, fascinating read and an excellent way to describe to new players what it is, exactly, that you are getting them into.
The second is a solo play adventure that takes you through the gist of the Timelord rules using an episode from the Dr. Who radio play Switchback. This beats, hands down, the ‘example of play’ section one finds in most RPGs, allowing the referee to actually play the game and get a feel for it before getting too deep into the rules (and all while having a bit of fun in the process).
Again, this is a short section, but I’ve never read a similar section in another game and actually wanted more to read, so that actually comes out in its favour. I truly enjoyed reading this portion of the book, jaded veteran that I am.
Part 3: How to Role
Play a Dr. Who Adventure
The actual Timelord rules take up only 37 pages of this 287-page book. That’s because long before D20 came along, Mr. Marsh had devised a system based on a single die roll for every situation. This system, 'Beating the Difference,' is the heart of the Timelord rules.
It works like this: you compare the ability + the skill of the character to the difficulty set by the referee. If it exceeds the difficulty, it is an automatic success. The concept being that if the right person is picked for the task, as opposed to letting ‘any old ham fisted idiot’ have a go, it should be successfully completed.
When only ‘ham fisted idiots’ are about, however, or the job is extremely difficult (i.e. the ability + skill of the character is lower than or equal to the difficulty), than the player must ‘Beat the Difference.’ This is done by rolling two six-sided dice and subtracting the lower from the higher, getting a number between 0 (an automatic failure) and 5.
Example: A companion of the Doctor is trying to break him out of 18th century jail. They have an ability rating of 3, but no applicable skill with lockpicking. The lock is old and the referee judges that it is difficulty 3 to pick. The difference is (3-3=0) and so any result other than ‘0’on their roll will spring the Doc.
The rest of the rules are basically further applications of that concept, everything from movement to combat to falling, drowning and being poisoned. There are task modifiers that increase or decrease the difficulty ratings (say picking the above lock with only a bobby pin), but the addition of 1 or 2 to a rating is such a huge difference in difficulty that you will never have to worry about getting lost in a sea of number crunching.
As with most other roleplay games, every character has your basic abilities representing various physical and mental traits. There are 8 in Timelord: Strength, Control (read dexterity), Knowledge (a rating of your education and broad learning ability), Determination, Awareness (combining perception and charisma), Move, Size and Weight, each with a subset of skills that go with them.
Size and Weight as stats? Yep. Timelord doesn’t use kilos, pounds or other exacting measurements to determine whether or not your character is too heavy to cross that rickety bridge. They use your weight as a difficulty for the bridge's strength. If it isn’t strong enough, then there is a chance it might break and the referee will roll for the bridge to beat the difference between its strength and your weight. Same for size. Doctor Who stories are replete with corridors, access tunnels and tight places to crawl through and if your size is greater than the hole you’re trying to get into, you might get stuck if you don’t beat the difference (although for those who are very flexible, Contortionism is available as a Size skill).
Move as a stat? Definitely. There are no set measurements for distance either. Movement and space are broken up into abstract Areas. These can be 5’x 5’ in the case of a corridor, or 15’ by 15’ in an open field. It really doesn’t matter as your Move score is your ability to cover distance, not an absolute limit on your movement. To move you must ‘beat the difference’ between the number of areas you want to move and your move score. You want to move 5 areas down the corridor with a Move score of 3? Beat a difference of 2. If you have running 2 to go along with it, beat a difference of 0 instead. It’s all easy peasy and based around the core rule of the system.
Now, you might be thinking that’s all nice and generic but how does it reflect Doctor Who? It’s all in the way the core rules are implemented. Weapons, for example come in the usual two varieties, melee and ranged, but each category has only a few generic weapon types. One alien blaster is pretty much the same as another in the universe of Doctor Who, i.e. dangerous to be on the business end of. And a bloody great sword is a bloody great sword no matter what planet you’re on. Thus, the characters can travel throughout time and space, and don’t need a ton of rules to follow along with them. Any period in history and any tech level can be simulated by these rules.
Skills are particularly evocative of the series. While you have the obligatory RP skills like Edged Combat and Science, you have some particularly Whovian ones as well, such as MacGuffin (building a device that will be ready at the last possible moment to stop the bad guys), Resourceful Pockets (to conveniently find the part needed to make the MacGuffin work even though you’re 100 light years from the nearest Radio Shack), and Bench Thumping (so that when you fail your MacGuffin roll, you can give the MacGuffin a good whack and hopefully get it working that way).
The combat rules are also very Who. Characters can run through withering hails of gunfire with nary a scratch, even if the fire is coming from only a few areas away, a testament to the tiny sets at the BBC and the incredible luck of television heroes. This doesn’t mean that they can walk up to a Dalek and start teasing it about its inability to climb stairs, however. The group fire rules and broad beam stun settings (which can be found in appendix 2: safe combat) can take out the characters in a flash if they get cheeky. Plus you have the added bonus of they’re not knowing whether or not their characters are truly dead or just knocked out. Another very Who plot device and one that should be used by the referee to add tension to the game.
Part 4: Cast of
Thousands
This section makes up a large chunk of the book and contains the stats and descriptions of all 7 of the TV Doctors, every one of their companions and a good portion of the most famous foes, foils and villains from the series 30-year history. From Autons to Zygons, from Davros to the Master to Sil, this section, along with the next, will provide you with all you will ever need to play the game for a very, very long time.
A very cool inclusion to the list is the generic soldier and generic robot. They come with suggestions for tailoring them to specific time periods and adventures and are very useful as a base for tailoring your own villains for historical pieces or creating the mindless servitors that populate the starships and cities of the future.
One thing you will notice about some of the standard baddies, such as the Daleks and Cybermen, is that they are almost impossible to harm by anything less than their own weapons. This is intentional and, again, a reflection of the way the series works. It is very rare that the Doctor or his companions get into a running gun battle with the alien menace, and they usually solve their problems in other ways when confronted by the likes of the Autons. As Brigadier Lethbridge Stuart once lamented in the episode Robot “Just for once I’d like to meet an alien menace that WASN’T immune to bullets…”
Part 5: The Never
Ending Script
This section helps the referee to pull all the previous sections together and create endless adventures for his players. While this will seem, much as chapter 2 did, a superfluous section for more experienced gamers, it is also, again, filled with some fascinating bits and bobs to run the game with.
One of these, which strongly reflects the feel of Doctor Who, is the Research Turn. While combat and most other actions are covered either by action turns or just plain old fashioned role-play, there are some tasks, such as shifting a rockslide of building a MacGuffin, that take a greater amount of time than the players would be comfortable using action turns for. These activities are instead covered in a number of time increments of roughly 15 minutes in length, known here as Research Turns, with one roll for success being made at the end of the task. Players may increase or decrease the number of Research Turns necessary for completing their project by decreasing or increasing the difficulty.
This has many thematic uses. Take the following for example:
The Doctor and his companions have locked themselves into a room to evade the Daleks. They look about for a way out, but find that a cave in has blocked the exit tunnel. They start to shift the rockslide when suddenly the door into the room starts to glow red. The Daleks are cutting through the door! The game switches to Research Turns as the PC’s race the Daleks to see who gets through their respective barrier first.
Very tense, indeed, and worthy of a cliffhanger until your next session. If that isn’t Doctor Who, I don’t know what is.
This section also contains various tables and rules that will help you to run the game. There is a table listing Ability/Difficulty ratings and comparisons, a table giving example research tasks and the number of Research Turns it will take to accomplish them at a corresponding difficulty, a table of cutting devices and material strengths, rules for Hypnotism and Negotiation (‘I am the Master, you will obey ME!) and a table of explosives and rules for blowing things up (yes, even Daleks).
Then there is the ‘How To Invent Adventures’ portion of the chapter. In all the years of role-playing, after all the games I’ve played, I have never come across a How-To-GM section as useful as this. It even includes a two page list of basic Dr. Who plotlines that rivals Lester Dent’s Master Plot for Pulp Fiction when it comes to generating a story.
It is followed by a ready to run adventure. This was the Templar Throne in the published book, and it has been replaced in the PDF version by the Curse of the Cyclops. This is a very good thing, as the Templar Throne was really the antithesis to all the good advice given a mere page earlier. It was overcomplicated, lacked the feel of a Doctor Who adventure outside of the Doctor and Ace being present, and was very, very looong. The Curse of the Cyclops (a reprinting from an article released in Dr. Who Monthly number 182) is MUCH better and is a shining example of what a Doctor Who adventure should look and, and more importantly, feel like.
The only thing missing from this chapter is the rules for Transport, and they’re not really missing, they’re mislaid. They can be found at the end of Chapter 4. Why, exactly, they’ve ended up there is beyond me, but they contain rules for Vehicles, a few vehicle stats and rules for the TARDIS and Time travel. There is also a listing of equipment that has been used by the good Doctor over the years, written up in a ‘500 Year Diary’ format, that is highly amusing and describes some of the things, people and places the Doctor has encountered during his travels.
Appendices
There are 3 Appendices. The first contains rules for creating yourself as a character to travel around in time and space. While the method is interesting, it provides no hard rules for creating anyone other than yourself. Make no mistake, there are no character creation rules anywhere in this book and you will have to wing it if you want to create your own unique Timelord or Alien character. This is probably the biggest drawback to the game, but the authour addresses it in appendix 3.
Appendix 2 contains the rules for ‘Safe Combat.’ I don’t see why these rules are optional and not a part of the combat rules proper, as they add a great deal more to the feel of the show than the unmodified version. They include rules for shock, changing the power setting for blasters, broad beam stun settings (a bonus to hit at the cost of not killing your target) and energy weapon power/ ammo rolls. Use them. They rock.
Appendix 3 contains the designers notes. They are definitely a good read, and explain Mr. Marsh’s concept behind the game and even includes a breakdown of the odds of beating the difference against various difficulties! He also explains why he chose not to include a chargen section. A rational argument, but one I disagree with.
Ratings
I love this game. I’ve been playing it off and on for over a decade, and the rulebook is one of my most cherished (and dogeared), possessions. The book is well written, evokes the style and flavour of Doctor Who, and best of all, it is easy to learn and run. It was truly a labour of love, for both the game and the show, on Mr. Marsh’s part, and for that it deserves a Substance rating of 5. The lack of a solid character generation system, however, means that even I have to drop it to a 4.
As for style, the game is so easy to read, the rules layed out in such a flowing manner and contains so much information about, well, practically everything you need to know to play in the universe of Doctor Who, that it deserves a 5 as well. The only minor problem, is the placement of the Transport, Time Travel and 500 Year Diary sections at the end of 4 and not in chapter 5. But as it butts up against the appropriate chapter, making it easy to find (as is everything else in the book), I won’t take off marks for that.
Conclusion
This game is great. This game is free. What are you waiting for?
O.K. so you don’t like Dr. Who. No problem. The best thing about this system is that it is so generic and captures the feel of so many television series that you could adapt it for almost anything. Like Pulp Fiction? This system is tailor made for mad scientist plots, weird science and pulp action. You like Space Opera? Duh, it’s Doctor Who, for cryin’ out load! You want Buffy the Vampire Slayer but don’t want to shell out the cold cash for the Eden game? This game is all about the television heroics, so patch on a few magic skills and you’re off. Cthulhu, the Prisoner, Dark Shadows (especially Dark Shadows), whatever, I believe that you can use this system for just about any series.
For those who are worried about the lack of a chargen system, there is good news. There is one in a document called the Timelord Companion. It can be found at the same address as the main rulebook. It also includes the stats for the Eighth Doctor and his companions ( but ignore the bit about the earth technology making him half human. He was half human from the start).
As for support material, there are 40 years worth of Episodes, Books, Comics, Radio Plays and whatnot to browse for ideas. Here are a few links to get you started:
The Official BBC Dr. Who Website
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/doctorwho/
The Doctor Who Universal Databank
http://www.lofficier.com/dwindex.html
Big Finish is THE source for new Dr. Who stories in audio format.
Happy 40th, Doctor!
