[Doctor Who] Obviously, it'll be a cold day in Hell...

[jdrakeh]

Obviously, it'll be a cold day in Hell when I obtain the rights to commercially publish an official Doctor Who RPG - so until then, I've uploaded Tempus Denuo.

Tempus Denuo is largely inspired by future possibilities of the current Doctor Who continuity, the events of The Ancestor Cell (the Doctor Who novel in which Gallifrey and all but four Time Lords are obliterated), a Salvador Dali painting and a few cans of Coors Light.

The mechanical aspects of the game are a diceless variant of the basic Fighting Fantasy RPG published by Puffin Books in 1984 (well, to be fair they're pretty far removed from the original FF rules, but that's where the idea came from).

What I need from my fellow Forge members is a critique (even if you just stop to say "Dude, there's already a Doctor Who RPG!" - you'd be missing the point of Tempus Denuo entirely, but hey, I'm not one to judge). I've tried to design the system to specifically reflect setting assumptions (covered in the section of the document entitled "A Brief History Lesson") and would liek to know how well I've succeeded in doing so.

[Edit: This really should have been my 24 Hour RPG - I mean, hey, it's Doctor Freakin' Who!]

[Doctor Xero]

Three quick responses apropos the current version of your game :

1) I very much like the core attributes of Persistence, Expertise, and Possibility because they give a very strong sense of a specific metaphysics and thematics for your game.

Combining all health/sanity/lifeforce issues into one attribute, Persistence, makes it clear that the focus characters are not independent biological creatures but rather embodiments of willpower, and the idea that they return to the racial consciousness rather than "die" reinforces the idea that they are individuated manifestations of the species will instead of being autonomous biological entities.

Combining all intellectual, academic, and physical training into one attribute, Expertise, lets us know that this is not a game system about students slowly acquiring knowledge and training but a game about powerful individuals who already know what they need to know -- in other words, with only one attribute to represent all intelligences and skills, the player knows that the important thing in the game is not what the character knows but what the character does with his/her knowledge and skills!

The Possibility attribute is the equivalent to Powers in superhero or Magic in standard fantasy, but again, it works to reinforce the time/space powers theme.

HOWEVER, I don't think it works to have so much of your brief game write-up focus on combat, weaponry, and injury when none of the three attributes really focuses on such matters.

If you provide the player with only three attributes and no skills, and one of the attributes focuses on willpower, one covers all possible character knowledges and trainings, and one on reality manipulation, your attribute schema seems to promise a game focusing on keeping one's spirit strong and rallying one's courage,  not on protecting oneself from combat, and it seems to promise a game focusing on leading/shepherding the rest of the universe through one's vast scope of knowledge and trainings -- on using all one's intellectual development -- and not on a lot of fighting.

So while having a combat section is fine, with an attribute like Expertise, I think the player expects a far greater section on how he/she might apply that considerable scope of knowledge and trainings.

2) I would want more explanation of how the referee adjudicates determining the static difficulties for a task and, more importantly, the possible uses of Possibility.  What little I have found in the write-up gave me no insights as to how I might run this game.

3) While I see a lot of potential in this game, I don't see any real reason to have this an unofficial Doctor Who game.  To be candid, to play out the Doctor Who television series, I would prefer to play the Time Lords game, no offenses intended.  I hope I won't offend if I suggest you let go of the specific links to Doctor Who.  

The time factor in this game is minimal outside of the Possibility attribute, and even then, it is minor.  The time aspects of this game remind me far more of the feel and abilities of Sapphire and Steel, and even a little bit of Donnie Darko (particularly the "rabbit"), than of Doctor Who.

I think that works in your favor : instead of a gaming equivalent to a fanfic, you have come up with an original work which has been strongly inspired by previous works.  (I see more in common between LOTR and D-&-D than I do between Doctor Who and your game, which again works in your favor.)  This game would work well not only for Gallifreyan Time Lords but also for Cosmic Guardians, Emissaries of the Universal Consciousness, Angels, etc.  I think it would even work well as a replacement attribute system for Mage.

Since I like the implications of the attribute system, and the idea of player-characters as linked to their species consciousness, I would recommend you keep the system and further develop your initial inspiration to forge a new campaign background.  I would definitely like to see what comes of your efforts!

I hope this helps.

Doctor Xero

[jdrakeh]

Thanks for the reply! I'll address it in detail when I get a bit more time. For now the only point I wanted to address is the 'why' of associating it with Doctor Who. And very simply put, it's because Doctor Who isn't about anything that it was prior to the destruction of Gallifrey.

That is, the Doctor has no memory of his past exploits (he doesn't remember Gallifrey, the Time Lords, or even The Master), there are only (and perhaps not even) four Time Lords still about in the form with which we're familiar, the Doctor doesn't even have two hearts anymore. And of course, the Doctor has a daughter now, was engaged to married, and so on...

In short - it's very much not the Doctor Who of years past and, frankly, Timelord isn't very well suited to deal with the new assumptions that the setting makes ;) A big question was raised about who or what filled the vacuum of power left after Gallifrey was destroyed and the Time Lords were removed from the space-time vortex (existence). It was stated that their energy was dispersed throughout the univverse, but it never got about to explaining how it was dispersed.

This is the question that Temus Denuo seeks to answer (at least in part) ;)