Which Doctor Who RPG? There were two.

FASA's Doctor Who RPG

&

Virgin Books' Time Lord (click on the www link below this post and you can get a free copy, all legit like).

I have FASA Doctor Who, and I found that it was rather clunky in areas, as it was essentially the FASA Star Trek RPG system reworked for Doctor Who. I found the rules to be a bit heavier than I preferred, and in addition the background material sometimes contradicted Doctor Who canon, which is NEVER a good thing. But I am digressing. Since I found the Star Trek RPG clunky in areas, especially character generation, on the whole it wasn't the best game I've ever owned, but up until Time Lord was released, was the only fish in the sea. However, I had to get it in order to be able to convert FASA characters over to the Time Lord system, which is my system of choice for Doctor Who gaming.

Time Lord is rules light skill based, with its only major mechanic being the "beat the difference" system. The book is geared for those who have never roleplayed before (not many of us), so it actually skips character generation, assuming that one of the players will play The Doctor or one of his companions. If the book had done well, there were plans for a companion volume that would introduce character generation.

Sadly, this was not to be. The book flopped, due to Virgin's inability to market it properly. It was placed with the Doctor Who fiction in bookshops, instead of being placed in with the RPGs. When the game completely flopped, through a series of negotiations the rights to the book were returned to its authors, and a freeware version of the rules made available.

There was that quirky issue with character generation though, so I wrote out a booklet with rules on how to create new Time Lords, and at the same time made it possible to create new aliens. Unfortunately, the "beat the difference" mechanic didn't work all that well, so with a lot of help, a point buy system was introduced that actually works rather well.

Oh, and did I mention that Time Lord is free for the taking?

The two episodes I saw...presumably of the most recent Dr. Who actor...were pretty good.  I had never watched an episode of Dr. Who before.

Mark  

Watched my third episode of Dr. Who on the Sci Fi Channel this week.

I really like the newest shows.  It makes me wonder how fans of the older shows like the new ones.

Mark  

I've been a Doctor Who junkie since the late 70s.  It used to scare me but I was only about 5 at the time.  A lot of the old shows are great.  Part of what makes them good is that the story continued from show to show or throughout the season.

I was excited to see that the new show has taken off and looks like it will be around for a bit.  They tried a revival in 1996 with a TV movie but for some reason it didn't make it.

When the new series started, I watched it but didn't really like the early episodes.  I liked most of the characters but the first show enemy was the autons which is based on an old show that I didn't like very much.  But they have had some really good episodes since then.  The K9 revival show was great!  In fact I got a remove control K9 for Christmas this year to go with remote command Dalek last year.  They are great for chasing my dog around

JohnGaunt wrote:I've only seen the first series of new Dr. Who episodes.  For me, the new Who has been updated for the better in all ways - FX, acting, writing, overall mood/suspense/editing.  He's still the Doctor, though he's changed for his audience.

The 1996 one-shot Dr. Who showed how much times have changed.  The old-school Dr. Who had to change, and what better way than to have the Doctor step out of the TARDIS and . . . well, meet with the grim reality of 20th century Earth?

I didn't see the 1996 TV movie.

One problem that movie versions of TV shows have is that they tend to be about the one time that the main characters did NOT do whatever made them entertaining.

For instance, any Gilligan's Island movie has always been about the time the castaways were NOT on the island.

What happens when Captain Kirk is NOT on the Enterprise?

Mission Impossible is about the time the impossible mission does NOT go as planned.

The 70's Brady Bunch gets moved to the 90's, rather than the 70's where the show made sense.

The Thunderbirds movie was about the time that the pilots did NOT have their machines.

How about the time the Beverly Hillbillies did NOT live in Beverly Hills?

The most recent Shaft movie was about the time that Shaft was NOT a cop.

Most superhero movies are about the time that the superhero in question either wants to give up his powers and/or loses his powers for a time.

I suspect that is what happened to the Dr. Who movie.  Am I right?

Wandering Monster wrote:I did buy all of the modules and supplements, but only once did I ever get to play one of them, called "The Hartlewick Horror," which was an attempt to infuse some of the cosmic horror of Call of Cthulhu into the Doctor Who RPG format.

In point of plain fact, the author did in fact write the adventure as a CoC adventure originally but it was rejected by Chaosium...so he re-wrote it and got it published by FASA. I am presently running it for Time Lord.

By the way..I wrote one of the earliest attempts at a character creation system for Time Lord, which was "published" on Usenet and later became inspiration for the system found in the fan-produced Time Lord Companion.

Allen Shock

Allensh wrote:
In point of plain fact, the author did in fact write the adventure as a CoC adventure originally but it was rejected by Chaosium...so he re-wrote it and got it published by FASA. I am presently running it for Time Lord.

By the way..I wrote one of the earliest attempts at a character creation system for Time Lord, which was "published" on Usenet and later became inspiration for the system found in the fan-produced Time Lord Companion.

Allen Shock

That's pretty cool, Allen.  

Traveller wrote:*buffs nails*

I'm the fan who put out the Time Lord Companion.  Allen's work was definitely an inspiration, along with Ian Marsh's work and William Keith's.  Allen's point buy system, Ian Marsh's experience rules, some of William Keith's regeneration mechanics from "Doctor Who & The Rebel's Gamble", and some of my own little tweaks (skill losses during regeneration) got melded together into something that apparently worked well.

Of course, The Time Lord Companion isn't the only generation system for the game these days, but it to me is still the best of breed even though it was written some five years ago.

Yahoo! GeoCities: Get a web site with easy-to-use site building tools. is the url for anyone interested, since some time ago I apparently removed the link to the Time Lord web site from my signature.

Pretty cool, Traveller.

Hmm, that predates the BTRC version of TimeLords, which was drafted about that time, but not actually released until 1987.  However, unless it has actual references to The Doctor, it's not a Doctor Who RPG.  Nevertheless, I'm interested to hear more about this set of books you have.

Not including this new entrant, the only time travel role playing games I know of are the ones I own:

TimeMaster (Pacesetter)
TimeLords (BTRC)
Doctor Who (FASA)
Time Lord (Virgin)

As for Allen's rules, he can answer better than I can, but his rules could not have been posted any earlier than 1991, when Time Lord was published by Virgin.