Doctor Who, however, presents a problem with alien PCs that most other science fiction shows do not. If the character is obviously alien, it's going to be difficult to justify them doing much in a historical or contemporary setting. And, in fact, even in mid to late 21st century settings. To get around this, when I have run non-convention games where the players design their own characters, I stipulate that all PCs must at least be able to pass for human on cursory examination, and I've used the same principle in these templates. An alien that simply looks human (such as Trion or a Drahvin) isn't terribly interesting unless, like Time Lords, there's something else inherently cool about them. Human-seeming androids might well work since they, too, will likely have unusual abilities. But your other options are some device that disguises the alien's appearance or... well, shapeshifting.
Friday 17 May 2024
Character Templates: Alien Rogue
Friday 10 May 2024
Settings: Skaro (The Daleks)
Where & When
The story is set on the planet Skaro. The few stories that have attempted to give any hint as to where this might be in relation to Earth generally place it in a different galaxy but all we can say with certainty is that it’s a long way away.
Since the story, taken on its own terms, has no connection with Earth, the date is equally impossible to determine. As one might expect, multiple different theories have been advanced, some placing it very early in Dalek history, before they developed space flight, others in the far future, when a forgotten and degenerate group have been left behind on their home planet, cut off from their fellows. Most go for somewhere in between, often one or two centuries into our future, but it's probably more accurate to say that we just don’t know.
Friday 3 May 2024
Character Templates: Adventurous Space Pilot
In this case, I've picked a space pilot, something that's a common enough idea in more typical SF games. On the other hand, Doctor Who has less need for a pilot than would something based on say, Firefly, so we need to have a bit more scope than that - something aided by the broad skills of DWAITAS. Rather than a hot shot Top Gun sort of pilot, I've gone for one that's more of a space trucker, making her physically tough and with the maintenance skills to not only fix a spacecraft, but most other things as well.
Friday 26 April 2024
Settings: 100,000 BC
Where & When
Based solely on internal evidence, there is no way to date the setting of the story much more precisely than ‘the Stone Age’. This is a vast stretch of time, perhaps 99% of the whole of human history, depending on your definition. However, we know that the writer envisaged the date as 100,000 BC and that that was even the title used in some early BBC publicity in the days before the serials had onscreen titles. The geographical location is even vaguer, and, again based solely on the story as televised, we can’t even be confident it’s on Earth, since the DW universe has many alien races physically indistinguishable from humans. However, it’s clear that that’s not the intent, so “somewhere on Earth, approximately, 100,000 BC” it is.
Friday 19 April 2024
Character Templates: Post-Apocalyptic Survivor
The character as I've created them for DWAITAS has good outdoor skills - less useful on a space station, perhaps, but handy enough in jungle or rocky wasteland planets, both of which crop up a lot in the show. More importantly, though, they have decent combat skills and ability at first aid. Compared with the UNIT soldier, they also have fewer technical skills, coming from a postapocalyptic world where those are of less immediate use, replacing them with intuition and athletic ability. A key point, however, is that the character has a background that directly fits into a particular element of the Whoniverse.
Sunday 14 April 2024
Settings: An Unearthly Child
This has, of course, been done before. It’s pretty much the basis of the DWAITAS individual Doctor sourcebooks that I’ve reviewed elsewhere. But I don’t have a constraint on page count here, nor a publishing schedule to keep up with (these are likely to be very irregular) and, hopefully, I can come up with some different angles and try to avoid duplicating what they did too much.
Friday 5 April 2024
Character Template: Amateur Sleuth
My original set of pre-gens for convention games included a couple of characters that did not prove popular. One was a nurse, intended to fill the "support" role that's exemplified by the Stalwart in Doctors & Daleks and that maps to characters on the show such as Rory or (to a lesser extent) Rose, Polly and so on. If I was running Doctors & Daleks rather than DWAITAS that would could well be more popular, but I'm not, and it isn't. The second was a barbarian warrior in the Leela mould, which I think proved unpopular because of the low tech, especially in a game that normally isn't heavy on combat.
So I ditched both of those from the selection and added two new characters to replace them. I've no idea how popular they will prove, but the first of them fills the niche of the investigator now that I've made the private eye more physical since that was the way he usually got played. This time, we have an amateur sleuth, intentionally low on physicality but with observational and problem-solving skills that should (I hope) have an obvious function in any RPG scenario that isn't a straight dungeon crawl. Sarah Jane, as an investigative journalist, is perhaps the closest analogy from the show, at least conceptually (although it's arguable how often that comes into play) although the background details here are very different.
Wednesday 3 April 2024
DW Monsters: Ogri
- Underworld – the enemy here is a unique one, a computer that has built its own robots.
- The Invasion of Time – other than the Sontarans, this features the Vardans, who have powers of telepathy and teleportation and can turn insubstantial but otherwise basically appear human.
- The Ribos Operation – The only ‘monster’ here is the Shrivenzale, a local predator. From what we can tell, there is little to suggest that its game statistics would be radically different from, say, a tiger.
- The Pirate Planet – This story does not feature a monster.
This brings us to The Stones of Blood. This features three different types of alien. Apart from their physical appearance, the only significant difference between Diplosians and humans is that the former are essentially immortal. The Megara are microcellular machines, more of a game effect than a ‘monster’ in the RPG sense.
That leaves us with the titular monsters of the story, the Ogri. Although they have since been mentioned in passing, the Ogri are a one-off monster on the TV show. They have made brief appearances in the spin-off novels, although not so far in the audios… at least partly, one assumes, because they are silent.
Description and Biology
Like the Kastrians, the Ogri are silicon-based lifeforms, but they take the rocky nature one step further. Physically, they are large, tall and somewhat irregular rocks, lacking any visible sense organs, orifices, or limbs. When they are awake, they glow with a golden light and they can move about, but other than this, there is nothing visible about them to distinguish them from regular rocks and they are, for example, completely rigid.
How they would work biologically is a mystery. The lack of visible sense organs doesn’t rule out an ability to sense vibrations, perhaps even soundwaves in the air, although it’s hard to imagine how they would see in visible light. It’s also unclear exactly how they move, but perhaps they can manipulate the crystals in their bases to create a sort of conveyor belt-like effect, pulling them along and leaving dust in their wake.Game Attributes
While they are not immobile, the entirely rigid structure of the Ogri makes them unusual in game terms. That they can move implies a dexterity, since this is often used to calculate things like initiative and reaction speed, but the complete lack of manipulative appendages means that it isn’t dexterity in the everyday meaning of the word. Given their slow movement rate and inability to (for example) meaningfully dodge anything thrown at them
it’s probably at the lowest level that a given game system will allow without being zero and, if possible, well below the minimum score that a human character could possess.
For similar reasons, strength is also unusual; they don’t have any means of exerting leverage. But they can push things and they won’t
have any difficulty carrying heavy objects if somebody places one on top of them, so, even if they can’t use it to wield a sword, it’s likely very high. Their ability to resist physical damage is going to be even higher, although different systems may reflect this in varying combinations of armour and constitution/vigour. But, basically, they are rocks, and it’s hard to damage a large rock with weapons designed to injure fleshly beings unless we’re talking high explosives or powerful energy weapons. They’ll be resistant to fire, cold, and electricity, among other things, although strong acid would still be a problem. If they are using the protein component of blood, organic poisons that work on that might affect them, but it seems more likely that their biochemistry (or equivalent) is too alien for that to be the case.
There is no indication that the Ogri are intelligent. At best, they are probably equivalent to something like a dog… although, admittedly, it’s not obvious how you would tell.
Special Abilities
The key distinguishing ability of Ogri is the ability to extract blood from a living being by flesh contact. Indeed, it’s probably the only
attack method they have other than falling over onto somebody or nudging them off a cliff. Most of the time, they just do this passively, but on the one occasion we see them attack, the victim becomes stuck to them – possibly by having their flesh partially absorbed into the rock – and then they extract all the blood in a matter of seconds. For game purposes, we’d likely want to slow this down a bit, and give more of a chance of resistance or escape. Having said which, an attack that relies on the victim touching you with bare flesh and that doesn’t involve actively striking out, is more of a ‘trap’ effect than a regular combat action.
5E - Ogri
Large earth elemental, unaligned
Armour Class: 18 (natural)
Hit Points: 84 (8d10+40)
Speed: 5 ft.
STR 20 (+5) | DEX 1 (-5) | CON 22 (+6) |
INT 3 (-4) | WIS 10 (+0) | CHA 4 (-3) |
Damage Resistances: bludgeoning, piercing, slashing,
fire, cold, electricity, poison.
Condition Immunities: blinded, grappled, prone.
Senses: Tremor sense 60 ft., Passive Perception 10
Blood Drain. Melee Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit: 11 (3d6) necrotic damage. The target’s hit point maximum is reduced by an amount equal to the damage taken. The reduction lasts until the target takes a long rest. The target dies if this reduces its hit point maximum to 0.
Challenge: 4 (1,100 XP)
BRP - Ogri
STR 2D6+15 (22) | CON 2D6+15 (22) | SIZ 2D6+12 (19) |
DEX 1 | POW 2D6+6 (13) | |
Hit Points: 21 | Move: 1 | |
Base SR: 6 | Damage Bonus: +2D6 |
Armour: 12-point solid rock
Combat Skills: Drain Blood 50% (1D6 CON damage)
GURPS - Ogri
ST 20 | DX 1 | IQ 3 | HT 20 |
Thrust: 1d-4 | Swing: 1d-3 | ||
Speed: 1 | Move: 1 | Size: 1 | |
Advantages: Body of Stone, Damage Resistance +8, Innate Attack (1d, Toxic, Contact Agent, Melee Attack), Vibration Sense
Disadvantages: Blindness, No Legs (slithers), No
Manipulators, Restricted Diet (very common)
Savage Worlds - Ogri
Agility: 1 | Smarts: d6 (A) | Spirit: d8 |
Strength: d12+1 | Vigour: d12+1 |
Skills: Fighting d6, Stealth d4
Abilities: Armour +8, Elemental, Environmental
Resistance (cold, heat)
Blood Drain: A ‘strike’ (actually a touch) from the
Ogri does Vigour+d4 damage.
Pace: 1 Parry: 5 Toughness: 8 Size: 1
STA - Ogri
Control: 5 | Fitness: 12 | Presence: 7 |
Daring: 11 | Insight: 5 | Reason: 2 |
Command: 0 | Security: 2 | Science: 0 |
Conn: 0 | Engineering: 0 | Medicine: 0 |
Stress: 14 | Resistance: 3 |
Attacks: Blood Drain (Melee, 3^, 1H,
Vicious 1, Debilitating)
Friday 22 March 2024
Character Template: Former Time Agent
Wednesday 6 March 2024
DW Monsters: Usurians
Other than their original appearance, the Usurians have only featured in one story, an audio where they are manipulating events from behind the scenes.
Friday 1 March 2024
Character Templates: Torchwood Scientist
So I include a scientist, somebody with the technical skills to solve problems in a more in-genre way. To keep them grounded in our world, rather than alien, and to fit them in with the setting, they are specifically a Torchwood scientist, something that also allows them a little bit of the "magic" role through their familiarity with alien technology (they'd have "boffin" in the 1st edition of DWAITAS, but that doesn't apply in the 2nd).
Saturday 17 February 2024
Character Templates: Hardboiled Detective
Background
You were working a missing persons case in your home city when you stumbled into a temporal rift and found yourself flung almost a hundred years into the future to a hotel in Kent. Discovering that the missing person had been similarly trapped but had subsequently been killed and taken over by the Gelth, you teamed up with other people who had travelled through the anomaly to close it and defeat the alien invasion plan. Unfortunately, that still left you trapped in the year 2022! Using a TARDIS drawn to the hotel, you and the others are now travelling through time and space (note: how effectively depends on whether one of the other players is playing a Time Lord…) either to get back home, or simply to explore.
Wednesday 7 February 2024
DW Monsters: Fendahleen
The Fendahl does not appear again in the TV series, but it has featured in a tie-in novel and both a Doctor Who and a Torchwood audio, which give some suggestions as to how it could return.
Sunday 28 January 2024
Character Templates: UNIT soldier
When I run DWAITAS games at conventions, I present the players with a batch of ten possible pre-generated PCs. With typically five players per session, that should give everyone a reasonable chance to play something that they like, without locking anyone in to "the one nobody else wanted". Each is a fairly generic character type suitable for the genre, although some are more explicitly tied into the setting than others. These are, after all, convention games, not an ongoing campaign where such things as inter-game consistency, character growth, and continuing investment in "your character" are an issue.
Wednesday 10 January 2024
DW Monsters: Rutans
They have done better in the expanded universe, featuring in four audios, two of which of do not include the Doctor, two home videos (one of which was subsequently novelised) and four further novels. In these stories, they often appear alongside the Sontarans – although this has so far not happened on TV – and frequently as lone individuals cut from the rest of the Host. As usual, they have also appeared in comics and short stories, although far less frequently than the Sontarans have.
Wednesday 13 December 2023
DW Monsters: Kaldor Robots
Wednesday 15 November 2023
DW Monsters: Kastrians
Wednesday 18 October 2023
DW Monsters: Krynoids
Description and Biology
Krynoids are plants that begin their life cycle as seed pods flying through space. Once they land on a suitable planetary surface they germinate, infecting the nearest large animal by injecting them with bacteria-like cells. The original plant then dies, but the infective cells take over and restructure the host's body using it as the foundation to grow the second, reproductive, phase of the Krynoid. Essentially, then, we have two forms: the plant inside the seed pod, which produces the infective spores, and the much larger form that the spores grow into and that eventually produce new seed pods.
Wednesday 20 September 2023
DW Monsters: Androids
- Planet of Evil – the anti-matter monster here is an apparently unique entity and, in any case, is more a sort of mobile hazard than something with creature statistics
- Pyramids of Mars – although we only encounter one Osiran, they are a race… however, they’re sufficiently powerful that they are more effectively described as one-off NPCs. I’m also going to pass on their servitor robots for the time being as there isn’t much to say about them other than them being large, strong, robots.
This brings us to The Android Invasion. The alien race here are the Kraals, which have leathery skin, sculpted skulls, and a small nose-horn. Other than their physical appearance, however, there seems little to set them apart from humans, and in game terms they (as with races such as the Draconians) probably don’t need any particular rules. Their titular android creations, however, are a different matter.