Where & When
The story has three distinct settings. It starts off in southern England on the 20th July 1966, immediately after the events of The Faceless Ones. The main section, however, takes place on the 2nd and 3rd June 1866, at an English country house, with all of the action being confined to the building and its grounds.
The concluding part takes place on Skaro at an unspecified point in the far future, at least two thousand years away from our present time. Fan theories mostly place it between 4066, a few decades after The Daleks’ Master Plan, and 7500, shortly before the establishment of the Third Human Empire, but there is no hard and fast evidence either way.
Setting
After leaving Gatwick, the time travellers follow the stolen TARDIS to a nearby urban area. This is never named, but it’s worth noting that all of the events of The Faceless Ones take place in a single day, which, even if they start in the early morning, means that Evil of the Daleks must begin well into the afternoon. They arrive at their destination at least a couple of hours before the sun sets, which, at this latitude and time of year, it does at around 9 p.m.
Today, London is about 75 minutes from Gatwick by car, although it may have been longer in the 1960s, before the M25 was built. Thus, even starting at 6 p.m., it is possible that this part of the story takes place in London, especially if it’s on the outskirts – say, Croydon or Epsom. However, we could be closer to our starting point, with Crawley in Sussex being the largest nearby town to the airport. There’s little to choose between these options, other than the length of the trip we want the PCs to make. This, of course, assumes that we are even starting in Gatwick, rather than some other airport, and that we’re directly following on from The Faceless Ones, neither of which is a given.
Whether we’re in London, Crawley, or Los Angeles, we only need three locations to follow the plot as written. The first is a nondescript warehouse or similar building, the details of which don’t matter. Second, however, is the Tri-Colour coffee shop. In the 1960s, such places were trendy and often doubled as small music venues – perhaps even more so in the US than in the UK. But all we need is a place where a meeting could take place, and that a clue could lead to. Somewhere like Starbucks or Costa is an obvious choice, but it could just as well be a regular café or a completely different entertainment venue, such as a bowling alley.
Similarly, there isn’t much to say about the third location, Waterfield’s antique shop. Any urban area could plausibly have one, and they are certainly common in the UK. Investigating the shop, possibly by breaking in, is the sort of thing that PCs are inclined to do, so we probably want a map, in which case the significant point is the hidden room. In the story, the Doctor notices that this must exist from the mismatched lengths of Waterfield’s office and the corridor next to it; it probably isn’t going to be hard for PCs to spot using the same method.
The main section of the story, however, takes place in a 19th-century country house. We are told that the nearest town is Canterbury, in eastern Kent, which puts it about 75 miles from central London. While houses of the size shown here are not common, there are a few in the area described, and adding an additional one is not difficult. There is a rather different atmosphere if we were to place it somewhere like the US. Still, even if we relocate the first part to such a place to maintain familiarity for the players, the historical part doesn’t have to take place nearby. Waterfield’s time machine can clearly also travel through space, and if we’re changing the initial setting to a different century anyway, then moving to Victorian England from (say) 21st-century California isn’t a much bigger leap.
Although it is not relevant to the story as broadcast, we may as well take a brief look at the rest of the world at the time it is set, to provide some background for PCs who might be native to the era. Queen Victoria is, of course, on the throne. Her Prime Minister is John Russell, but his government is collapsing after failed efforts at voting reform, and he will be replaced by the end of the month. The Crimean War had finished ten years earlier, and Terrall is described as a veteran of that conflict, having fought at the Battle of Inkerman in 1854.
Andrew Johnson is US President, governing a country that is even more recently out of its own divisive conflict. France is an Empire and is still seen as the traditional enemy by most people in England, while the German Confederation is in its last throes as it moves towards becoming an Empire itself. On the other side of the world, Australia is still, in part, a penal colony, and Japan is in the last years of the Shogunate, having recently opened up to foreign trade.
The middle section of the original story was partly filmed at Grim’s Dyke house in northwest London. Often used in television productions, it was converted into a hotel in 1970 and remains in operation to this day. It is a three-story building with a large garden and was built in 1870, not far from the time the story is set. Thus, we can use the actual building as a guideline for what Maxtible’s fictional house is supposed to be like.
In its current form as a hotel, Grim’s Dyke has nine guest rooms, all on the upper two floors. This also fits the fictional version, which we know is home to two residents and three guests, but still has at least one bedroom free for the Doctor and Jamie (not that they use it) despite the fact that the entire south wing is closed off. In addition, there is sufficient accommodation for five servants, including a butler, cook, maid and two footmen, but these will be small rooms, perhaps near the kitchen on the ground floor, or else up in the attic.
Much of the ground floor today is taken up by dining areas and a bar, plus the kitchen and other parts of the hotel administration. Back in the day, the real building had a library and a billiards room, at the very least, but Maxtible has converted the largest room on his ground floor (most likely the billiards room, which he doesn’t need) into a laboratory. In addition, we see a drawing room that inexplicably has a painting of Waterfield’s late wife above the fireplace, the kitchen, a study, and what may be a library. There are also stables outside, as we would expect of a large Victorian house.
The south wing, however, is sealed off behind what’s almost a secret door, although it’s hard to imagine that there isn’t also at least one locked door leading to the outside. PCs with the right skills would also be able to enter through the windows, since the existence of the wing is hardly a secret. We don’t see much of what is inside other than some corridors and the attic room to which Victoria is moved when she is serving as bait. (She was previously in a bedroom with barred-up windows and presumably a locked and guarded door, which may also be in the south wing.)
The attic room is notable for a couple of reasons that we may wish to duplicate if hewing close to the original plot. Firstly, the only visible approach is via stairs to a balcony outside; these have somehow been blocked, although quite how is unclear from the animation. That they exist at all is only implied by the fact that there would otherwise be no visible way of getting to the room, which would be a bit of a giveaway for the second point, the existence of a secret door. This leads to a corridor with stairs heading back down towards the entrance.
The closing section of the story takes place on Skaro, a world previously seen in the story The Daleks. Since then (assuming it is later, which seems likely), the radioactive fallout from the nuclear war has faded away, leaving the atmosphere safe. There is no sign of the petrified forest, which the Daleks may have cleared away along with the last of the Thals. Instead, we see a desert, a barren landscape where all life has been eradicated, although it is clear that we are meant to be at the same city, and the hills and cliffs look much the same as before.
This must logically be the centre of a galaxy-spanning Dalek Empire, with the fan consensus being that the story is set later than The Daleks’ Master Plan, when this already existed. Apparently secure in their belief that no threat could get this close to them, the Daleks are aware of the underground approach to their city, but make no effort to guard it until an alarm is triggered. This may be the same route that Ian and Barbara used to get in the first time, although PCs without prior knowledge are going to have to figure it out for themselves, or find another way in.
Scenario
The straightforward nature of the first part of the story makes it possible to insert it into any relatively modern time period. The original follows on directly from the end of The Faceless Ones, in which case the date of that will also determine this; both the ‘60s and the modern day would work well. In the case of a modern setting, about the only difference is the nature of the clue that leads to the Tri-Colour, since places like Starbucks don’t give out branded packets of matches. A loyalty card or a set of recent receipts could do the trick here, since we merely need to indicate that it’s somewhere the suspect frequently visits. (And, if a GM specifically mentions such a thing when they search the body, players would have to be fairly perverse to ignore the hint).
If we’re not following on from The Faceless Ones, however, we need a way to entice the PCs to follow the trail, whether it’s as a one-off scenario or part of a campaign. The thing to remember here is that the villains actively want the PCs to track them down and will have set things up so that they do so. The simplest solution is to have the villains steal something valuable from them, but in such a way that they can trace it, perhaps via a coffee shop/bowling alley/nightclub, to the antiques shop.
In the serial, that’s the TARDIS, but other options may present themselves in different genres, especially if it’s a one-off. It just has to be something that could plausibly be stolen when the PCs aren’t present to have a chance of preventing it. It doesn’t even have to be something truly crucial, since most players will probably be miffed that anything at all has been stolen from them and want to chase down the culprit if they can.
The trail of clues followed, and the antique shop (probably) broken into, we have to get the PCs to Victorian England. In the serial, that’s because the protagonists fall prey to a knockout gas trap. In a game, this presents problems since the party is probably bigger and, in any event, RPGs are set up to allow saving throws (or equivalent term) against such things, which means that we can’t guarantee that everyone, or indeed anyone, will fail. We can get around that by railroading, but that probably feels unsatisfactory.
There are at least three ways to deal with this. The first is to cut out that segment altogether, having the PCs start off in Victorian England, or its equivalent setting, and creating some reason for them to be visiting or investigating Maxtible. This is especially easy to set up in a one-off story, not least because the villains want to lure the PCs in anyway.
If we’re not going down that route, we could split the party. Anybody who fails the saving throw gets automatically transported into the past by the time machine, and the others have to follow them, whether immediately or by reactivating it. In the latter case, they might arrive a little later, making it easier to keep the earlier parts of this segment on track until they arrive, fully armed and prepared. The third option is to have the PCs want to use the time machine, most likely because they have already found a clue that whatever item (and/or thief) they are following has gone through it. Either of these options would, however, likely create a very different start to the main segment.
Depending on how they arrive, there may be a chance, as there is in the TV serial, to figure out some of what’s going on by interacting with the various residents of the house. Molly is possibly the best candidate here, unless the PCs can convince Maxtible that they are on his side or are awed by his genius.
The main focal point of the story, however, is Jamie negotiating the south wing of the house to rescue Victoria. This, in RPG terms, is essentially a dungeon crawl, something that has been adapted to many other genres in different game systems. In the TV serial, in addition to bypassing Kemel and, later, the guard outside Victoria’s room, he faces a spear trap triggered by opening the entrance door, an axe trap triggered by stepping on a loose floorboard, and a spiked mace trap triggered by entering a room. Doubtless, there are others in rooms or corridor sections that he doesn’t visit, and, in a game, we would probably want to add a wider range of traps and perhaps more of an opportunity for a fight with the final guard.
A key difference is likely to be that we probably want to involve more than one PC in this section. This is easy to fit within the context of the plot, since the idea behind the dungeon-style setup is to explore how humans react to and overcome the various challenges. Demonstrating teamwork is a key element of that, so it’s something the villains will want to analyse; they will have lured the PC party here specifically to see how it operates and how its members interact and work together (possibly while arguing, if they’re like many PCs… but watching how they win despite that would be part of the point).
All of this means that we will likely need more numerous and more complex challenges, enhancing the “dungeon crawl” theme. Other changes will include the fact that we don’t really need someone to take the Doctor’s role of apparently collaborating with the villains, the possibility of some other MacGuffin than a damsel-in-distress and, of course, having a suitable stand-in for the Daleks.
This latter should ideally be something that’s hostile to whatever culture the PCs come from and doesn’t fully understand how it works. In Star Trek, for instance, several aliens have tried experimenting with Starfleet officers to find out how they tick, and we could either use a pre-existing one, such as the Tholians or the aliens from the episode Schisms, or devise a new threat to the Federation. The Markan from GURPS Aliens are another race tailor-made for this sort of plot.
In other settings, something so inhuman may be difficult to come by, at least on a scale that’s going to be a threat to civilisation. In Traveller, for instance, we already know who the major players are, and none of those in the established setting are both alien enough and hostile enough to bother with the scheme. In such settings, the plan may be aimed at the PCs more specifically, if they or their organisation have repeatedly beaten some foe before, and the latter wants to know why they keep losing; they’re not so much interested in a “human factor” but in how this particular group operates.
There doesn’t need to be a time travel plot to use the basic idea behind this, either, and it can work in other genres. For instance, in a fantasy game, the idea of traversing a dungeon to acquire some particular prize won’t even seem strange. Here, the Dalek stand-ins could be infernal demons, or just something weird like Mind Flayers.
Once the obstacle course/dungeon crawl is completed, the villains need to develop and test the resulting ‘Human Factor’ (or equivalent) and then reverse it. The PCs need to discover this, with the best way to achieve this being to give them some reason to sneak back into the north wing and overhear what the villains and/or Maxtible are up to. Which could be as simple as trying to rescue Molly, Waterfield, and the others, or to reverse the control on Perry – the latter likely being required anyway, if you also want to rescue Ruth.
This provides for an equivalent of the “dizzy Daleks” scene, the threat from the bomb, and an escape to wherever the Dalek stand-ins come from. Again, probably with some motivation to use that route rather than simply running out of the house, which merely requires that they have some inkling as to what the villains are up to, but it’s even better if the PCs think they can use the Human Factor against them if only they can get into their base.
Assuming that we are using something other than Daleks as the ultimate antagonists, this destination obviously won’t be Skaro… but there can still be parallels in the layout and so on. In a fantasy game, for instance, the idea of an approach to the citadel of the Mind Flayers/devils/whatever through a system of treacherous underground caverns is about as in-genre as you can get, and it’s not especially unrealistic in other settings, either.
Rules
If we’re sticking with the Victorian setting, the tech level is 5 in GURPS, 4 in Doctors & Daleks, and 3 in Traveller. However, if we keep the story as is, this has relatively little effect on it, as most of the technology we see is more advanced than this, either because it’s a fictional invention of Maxtible’s or because it belongs to the Daleks.
What’s of more significance is the Human Factor and its malevolent counterpart. In many RPGs, we can reasonably expect that not all the PCs will be human, in which case we may want to rename it, but the idea remains the same – it’s whatever quality distinguishes the ‘good guys’ from the villains and that typically gives them their edge. A ‘Starfleet Factor’, or whatever.
The Daleks, or their stand-ins, use this to construct a ‘positronic brain’ that they can implant into their own newly created soldiers – perhaps purpose-built clones – to give them the same edge the PCs would normally have. The question is, what does this do in game terms?
Most RPGs with specific races give each of them distinguishing abilities. So an approach here is to have some of those abilities implanted into the subject. Ideally, these should be mental traits, rather than ones down to physiology (and certainly not those that are explicitly anatomical, like having extra arms). So, for D&D dwarves, that could be “stonecunning” and tool and weapon proficiencies, especially if these get used by the relevant PC during the setup dungeon crawl.
An issue here is that, in addition to these probably not making much difference to a race of villains, in many systems, humans are the default, and have no special abilities at all, beyond, perhaps, the option to pick a wider variety of skills during character generation. In consequence, while implanting some of the racial traits may be a way of indicating what’s happened, we will often want to include something more intangible. In D&D, for instance, that would be alignment – or, at least, the average alignment of the party.
In GURPS, Savage Worlds, and similar systems, suitable Edges could form part of the package, while many modern systems also have traits, drives, motivations, and so on built into character generation. In Star Trek, we are talking about a Vulcan’s logic or, in Star Trek Adventures 2E, an Andorian’s “intense” ability. We don’t want to overload things or to include features that cancel out, but it may be possible to work out something suitable in advance based on our knowledge of the particular PC party.
The focus here, however, should be on being entertaining rather than getting too far into the nitty-gritty. The aliens implanted with the Human(ish) Factor initially start off childlike; they are all NPCs, and there’s a good chance that the technology (or magic potion or whatever it is) won’t make it through the scenario intact to be used again.
What may be of more relevance is the inverse Factor that the villains are actually trying to create. This turns its victims mentally into Daleks. In game terms, this may be little more than mind control, although it’s supposed to last indefinitely and would add the effects of whatever alignment or other mental attributes our Dalek stand-ins possess – or in some cases, that an existing servitor race does. For instance, if we use a Changeling faction as the villains in Star Trek, they may be seeking to turn humans into Jem’Hadar counterparts without the need for ketracel.
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