Where & When
The story takes place in, and just outside, Paris during the eponymous Reign of Terror. For the first time in a historical story, we can place the date exactly because it includes a known event from real-world history. Specifically, it takes place over a six-day period concluding on 28th July 1794.
Setting
The TARDIS lands in a field about 12km north of Paris. The exact location is, of course, never given, but assuming that this refers to the distance from the Parisian outskirts rather than the city centre, and judging from the very brief look we get at a map in episode 3, it’s possible that this could be somewhere near Franconville. This is now a suburb of the great Parisian metropolis, but at the time was a town with a population of about 1,000 that would certainly have had farmhouses and woodland nearby.
Most of the story, however, takes place in Paris itself. The king had been executed in January of the previous year, although he had been out of power since September 1792. France was, at the time, at war with pretty much all of Western Europe, Britain included, which goes a long way to explain their suspicion of foreigners. Elsewhere in the world, for context, George III is still on the British throne and not currently mad, Germany is still the Holy Roman Empire, Italy hasn’t been unified, and George Washington is in the White House – or he would be if it had been built yet, which it hadn’t.
In theory, France was already on its second republican constitution, which provided for government by the National Convention without any designated head of state. In practice, however, partly due to the ongoing war, the constitution had never really come into effect, with most governmental authority handed over for the duration of the emergency to the twelve-man Committee of Public Safety. Officially, this had no single leader, but Robespierre was undoubtedly dominant.
This, of course, is the ‘Reign of Terror’ from which the serial takes its name. The exact date it began is arguable, but it was at its height by the time of the story – technically, it ended the day after the story does, although it was another year before the mass executions stopped altogether. Nobles, and anyone associated with them, were obvious targets of the Revolutionary Tribunal established by the Committee, but it also hounded out suspected foreign spies (a particular concern for PCs, one would imagine), purged political rivals of the leadership, and even went after tax dodgers.
In the serial, the characters are taken before a judge in his office who summarily hands down a death sentence on them all. In reality, things were more formal than this, with a courtroom, a panel of five judges, a twelve-man jury, a prosecutor and two deputies. But this made little practical difference, since by the date of the story a series of laws had been enacted to speed things up. The principle of ‘guilty until proven innocent’ had been introduced, all the jurors were directly appointed by the Committee of Public Safety, defence lawyers and witnesses had been banned, and death by guillotine was the only permissible sentence for anyone found guilty, as about 75% of those accused were. (The tax dodgers doing hard labour in an earlier scene must have been convicted before this last rule came in).
This basically sucked.
Perhaps the key location in the story is the Conciergerie, the unsavoury prison with the rather incompetent jailer. This is attached to the Palais de Justice, where the Revolutionary Tribunal meets, and is located on the Ile de France, the largest of three islands where the Seine passes through the centre of Paris. The island also hosts Notre Dame Cathedral and, apparently, the tailor’s shop in the serial, since the Conciergerie is visible from it, and seemingly not across the river. By the time of the story, the Conciergerie would have been overcrowded and many of the cells were even less pleasant places than shown, with straw on the floor in place of a bed.
The main location for the guillotine by this date was the Place du Trône Renversé. Now named the Place de la Nation, in the present day this is in the 12th arrondissement and thus well inside Paris, but in 1794 it was close to the outskirts, and officially outside the city proper. It’s at least 3.5 km (2 miles) away from the Conciergerie, so there is a fair distance for the tumbrils to travel when they transport prisoners.
A few other locations also appear in the story. Jules’ house, and the nearby physician, could be anywhere in Paris, although if they’re on the north side of the river, then they wouldn’t have to cross the Seine to reach the route of the tumbrils. (Which may or may not be a plus, depending on how easily the GM wants moving around Paris to be). We also see an abandoned church, something that would have been quite common in Paris at the time, with prohibitions against the Catholic Church and promotion instead of Robespierre’s deistic Cult of the Supreme Being.
We can’t place the Sinking Ship Inn precisely, beyond the fact that it is on the road between Paris and Calais, and is likely no more than a couple of hours away from the former. This isn’t very far, given the speed of horse-drawn coaches – it could, for example, be roughly where the Charles de Gaulle Airport is now, in or near the village of Roissy-en-France.
On the one occasion where a character (Robespierre) gives the exact date of the story, he uses the standard Gregorian calendar. One could put this down to TARDIS translation circuits, but in-game, it might add flavour to note that France was, at the time, using the Revolutionary Calendar, with twelve 30-day months and a 5-day intercalary period (six in leap years). Thus, the date the TARDIS arrives, from the perspective of the French characters, is 5 Thermidor, and it leaves on 10 Thermidor, after the protagonists’ escape on the previous day. For what it’s worth, the calendar used ten-day weeks, with 10 Thermidor being the equivalent of a Sunday (it was a Monday from the point of view of everyone else)… but it may be going too far to note that decimalisation also extended to hours, minutes, and seconds, so that a Revolutionary ‘hour’ was actually 144 of our minutes. Besides, not even the French paid much attention to that, because it was too confusing.
Three of the guest characters in the story are real historical people. Maximilien Robespierre was, in effect, the dictatorial ruler of France. As depicted in the serial, by this time he was aware of a possible coup to depose him and was fighting for his political (and literal) life. He was aged 36, single, although with a probable mistress and, originally trained as a lawyer, had been in politics for several years. The precise details of his arrest are altered to fit the story and available budget but the timing is essentially correct, and he was executed the following evening following a brief show-trial, by which time the TARDIS has already left.
Paul Barras, seen plotting in the Sinking Ship, was a former infantry officer and current member of the National Convention. When it became clear that even members of the Convention were not safe from Robespierre, and they would eventually be guillotined if he wasn’t, Barras became one of the plotters that led to the dictator’s downfall – although, not perhaps as prominently as he appears to be in the story. 39 at the time of the story, his plans for the future were unlikely to have been anywhere near as advanced as shown but, after the Committee of Public Security was abolished and the old constitution officially scrapped, he did become one of the leading figures in the new government until it, too was replaced in 1799.
Which, of course, leaves us with Napoleon, who really needs no introduction. He was only 23 at the time, and already a Brigadier General, so meteoric had been his rise. He has even less interaction with the protagonists than Barras, never actually speaking to them… but if he’s going to show up in a game, you’ll probably want to do more with him than that.
Scenario
Perhaps even more than with Marco Polo, an issue here is that, because it includes a real historical event, this only works as part of a time travel story, or one where the PCs are local to the action; there’s no way to make it a regular science fiction story. The time travel element doesn’t have to involve the Doctor Who milieu, though; any RPG that involves time travel would work. But we are more limited even than we are with The Aztecs, where running into worlds with cultures mirroring our own past is at least a part of shows like classic Star Trek and Stargate SG-1.
The first five episodes of the serial are a capture-escape-recapture story that results from some of the choices made by the protagonists – and that PCs might well not make. While exploring the abandoned farmhouse to work out where and when they are, the Doctor is separated from the companions, who are arrested and taken to the Conciergerie. Once there, they are separated further, then Barbara and Susan are rescued, and Ian escapes on his own. From there, everyone is trying to get back together again so that they can leave, with the companions each being captured a second time, and escaping again before finally noticing that there’s a subplot going on that they could be involved in.
Fortunately, in the final episode of the serial, the characters decide to become involved in a spying mission. To get the PCs involved in that, it’s possible to introduce it via Rouvray at the farmhouse, rather than the dying Webster at the Conciergerie. In the original, Webster inconveniently dies before he can explain what he’s talking about, or how to identify Sterling, but if Rouvray is the source, he merely has to be planning to meet up with Webster to get the full story, and then find Webster already dead when he gets to wherever the meeting place is. (Or Rouvray dies at the farmhouse and the PCs later find Webster dead themselves). That way, whether the players get themselves arrested or not, there’s at least something for them to aim for. You just have to find a way to justify Rouvray trusting the PCs with the little he knows, which probably isn’t difficult when they both end up being threatened by the soldiers.
This changes the plot to the PCs trying to track down Sterling via the contact with Jules at the Chien Gris tavern but also keeps things moving should the PCs manage to get themselves arrested and escape from the Conciergerie either under their own steam (as Ian does) or by having NPCs save the day (as happens to Barbara and Susan). The segment with Susan getting sick and then suddenly recovering as soon as it ceases to be relevant to the plot can easily be cut out, but the meeting with the traitorous Leon at the empty church can still go ahead – although likely with the PCs on a more even footing with the villains.
In a time travel game where PCs tend to be sent on missions for a time agency of some kind, much the same plot could still work. There are also other ways to use the setting as the basis for scenarios; facing the evils of the Reign of Terror is the basis for The Scarlet Pimpernel for one. (Once again, the audios have done just this, albeit adding a heavy science fiction element to the plot). Or villains working against the time agency could be trying to save Robespierre, assassinate Napoleon, or otherwise change the course of history. Saving Napoleon could be an interesting one here since, unless you’re French (and possibly even then), he tends to be regarded as a bit of a villain – but he’s hardly Hitler and removing him early on in his career could have untold consequences for future history.
If, on the other hand, we do stick with the original spying mission at the Sunken Ship, it’s probably a good idea to spice this up a little with unforeseen obstacles. And you surely want the PCs to get the chance to interact with Napoleon himself, which doesn’t happen in the original – why go all the way there and miss the chance to properly meet one of history’s most famous figures?
Rules
As a relatively recent historical setting, there is little need for special rules beyond what you would find in a generic RPG anyway – or, indeed, most science fiction RPGs. The tech level is early industrial, which equates to 4 in Doctors & Daleks, 5 in GURPS, and 3 in Traveller.
The standard weapons issued to the French infantry at the time were Charleville muskets, fitted with bayonets, and often with a sword as a backup weapon. The standard example of a musket given in most game systems is the Brown Bess, the British counterpart of the Charleville but, apart from a slightly smaller calibre for the French gun, the two are almost identical. The calibre (.69 rather than .75) might make a difference in highly detailed systems, but in the great majority, it’s too minor to matter. Flintlock pistols, such as the one Leon uses in the story, are more variable but even there, a standard model is easy enough to use. As for bayonets, although they are often not specifically mentioned in RPGs, they’re basically daggers if used on their own, and spears if still attached to the musket.
Although it doesn’t appear directly in the story, the guillotine is significant within it, as a threat if nothing else. In most circumstances, this won’t need rules to describe – it’s an instant death machine to any character that’s remotely human. Still, in the right sort of game, questions could arise if one was used on a character with stone-like skin, or a robot, or an alien whose brain isn’t inside their head.
Here, a guillotine is essentially a large axe blade wielded by the equivalent of somebody with more than maximum human strength, that automatically hits against a prone, immobilised target, striking the neck/head if rules for that exist, and getting an automatic critical (or equivalent) if they don’t. So, yes, if you have natural armour that can’t be removed – would it be enough to protect against that?
Even here, in systems like 5E that are more about heroic action than realistically deadly combat, this can produce nonsensical results if taken too literally – it’s only about 20 points of damage, which any high-level character would simply shrug off. Here, one can use the rules for a vorpal blade; it instantly kills anybody normal but beings that don’t need their head take 6d8 slashing damage instead.
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