DW Companions as PCs: Steven Taylor

Ian and Barbara left the show almost at the end of the second season, firmly cementing the idea that, in Doctor Who, all companions are temporary. Indeed, the Doctor goes on to have a further six companions over the course of the next twelve stories. I'm going to deal with two of those quite briefly, because they're difficult to fit into a game that sticks to continuity, and I'm going to pass on Ben and Polly altogether for now, because I feel they more properly belong with the second Doctor.

And I'm going to ignore John and Gillian on the grounds that who the heck wouldn't?

That leaves me with two that deserve more discussion. In our imaginary TV-show-as-RPG-campaign, Barbara's player has decided to leave the group. The GM incorporates a method for her character and Ian to finally get back to their own time into his latest scenario, thus completing their plot arc. Ian's player agrees, because it fits the story, and the two metaphorically walk off hand in hand into the sunset.

DW Companions as PCs: Vicki

The Doctor's original companion, Susan, left the series early on in the second season, the first indication that the cast wasn't as fixed as it might have appeared from watching the first season alone. Unlike many other stories of the time, Susan's last episode doesn't end with the first few seconds of the one following it, giving a possible slot for continuity-minded GMs to insert stories with only Ian and Barbara as the companions. (On the flip side, the fact the Doctor temporarily forgets about Susan's absence at the start of 'The Powerful Enemy' suggests that it can't be a very long gap, if it exists at all).

At any rate, the very next episode introduces a new companion for the first time since the show started.

It's hard to come up with a role-playing analogy for what's going on here. That's because, having decided, for whatever reason, to ditch the Susan character, her player comes up with a new PC that's essentially the same idea. Perhaps she likes the character concept, but wants the chance to smooth off a few rough edges with a second attempt.

DW Companions as PCs: Susan

Of the initial set of characters in the first season of Doctor Who, it's Susan who is the hardest to see as a typical PC. That's because one of her key roles on the show is to be put in peril, to be the young, attractive, woman, menaced by the monsters. Equally important, from the show's original perspective, is that she's an audience identification figure, based on the intended age of the viewers. Neither of these functions makes much sense in an RPG context.

Precisely because she's an audience identification figure, however, she is often a viewpoint character on the show. Furthermore, unless there's only three players available (which, admittedly, is not impossible) it would seem odd to run a game based on this era of the show and not have her as a PC. But doing so, while trying to stay faithful to the ethos of the time, presents challenges that don't really crop up if you're only emulating Nu-Who.

If we look at her suggested character sheet in DWAITAS, though, she doesn't look all that bad. True, she is the weakest of the initial four characters, and the only one who is actually under-powered for a starting PC using the rules-as-written. But not, if we're honest, by much, and giving her the Inexperienced trait (and, thus, more story points) would bring her level with Barbara at least. In other systems, of course, trying to stat her up might have different results, but she's still unlikely to look rubbish.

DW Companions as PCs: Barbara Wright

Continuing from last time's look at Ian, let's turn to another of the original trio of companions: Barbara Wright.

Imagining that the first two seasons of the show had actually been an RPG, what can we say about Barbara? Knowing that the game is going to be about time travel, Barbara's player has decided that History skill will be particularly useful, and has built her character around this idea. However, clearly that won't be enough, since History is likely to be even less usable on alien planets than Ian's science skills will be in the past. So she saves plenty of points to round her character out with social skills.

As the campaign proceeds, this turns out to have been a good idea. They're particularly key in The Aztecs, in which she not only manages to carry off her masquerade as a goddess for most of the story, but, at one point, talks the bad guy out of revealing her secret when he sees through it. They also become more relevant when the show begins to focus more on the science fiction elements than on time-travelling into the past (as had been the original idea). From an RPG perspective, her History skill, good though it is, isn't always terribly helpful: it's fine for providing exposition in the TV show, and sometimes in working out what's going on, but, once the scene is set, it doesn't tend to move the plot along.

DW Companions as PCs: Ian Chesterton

Having recently begun re-watching some of the Hartnell era episodes of Doctor Who, reading a couple of books reviewing them (I recommend TARDIS Eruditorum as the more interesting of the pair) and, of course, the DWAITAS guide I reviewed in March, my mind has naturally been turning towards how the era would work in an RPG. Most of what needs to be said already has been in the sourcebook, and said better than I can do here. But it still leaves me pondering a few issues.

As I said in my review, a game based on this era would feel very different to one based on Nu-Who. That's not just because of the 50-year gap between then and now, but because that era told, on the whole, a quite different kind of story. In a way that, for example, Troughton's era didn't. So I'm not actually planning on running a campaign set there, interesting though it might be. A one-off game, though... yeah, that's a possibility. For a con, maybe. We'll see.

Still, one of the things that strikes me, re-watching these old episodes, is how much like a role-playing game they do feel. More so than the new shows, in fact. I think a lot of this has to do with the pacing. In more modern TV shows, a lot gets elided that doesn't if you're playing it out. That a lot this was kept in in the 1960s style of show does sometimes make it easier to view things through an RPG lens.

For instance, there's a scene in 'The Dead Planet' (that is, The Daleks #1) where our heroes come across a mysterious box, and cautiously prod it with a stick from a distance a few times before convincing themselves it won't go boom. This is the sort of thing that PCs do, but one expects Matt Smith would, at best, wave his sonic screwdriver over it for half a second, and probably wouldn't even do that. Heck, that entire episode basically consists of the characters wandering around trying to figure out where they are, something that PCs tend to do a fair bit of, but that would be rather out of place in a single 45-minute TV episode.

DWAITAS: 1st Doctor Sourcebook

A bit of a departure as far as my sparse and occasional reviews are concerned, I know. Not least because I haven't got round to reviewing the actual game. That's largely because I haven't yet had the chance to play it, and it's not really fair to review a game system you haven't actually used. I mean, it looks good, but how do you know until you get the dice out and give it a whirl?

But supplements are a different matter. I can't comment on how well the stats have been balanced, or whatever, but I can at least comment on what's provided. Also a bit odd, perhaps, that I'm starting with this one, given it's the fourth supplement to come out (although one of the others was a bestiary, where the utility of the stats is kind of crucial). But, hey, this is the way it is, so there!

Obviously, the reason for me buying this is that I'm hoping to get some use of it. I have some ideas for a DWAITAS game, and hope to put them into practice in the none-too-distant. Then I guess I'll know how well the rules work. The reason for me starting with this in particular, apart from the fact that it's hot off the presses, is that I have been going back through some First Doctor stuff of late, including reading volume one of TARDIS Eruditorum, which I reviewed here. As I was reading that - before this book was even announced publicly, I was pondering how DWAITAS would handle that era, and what material a (then hypothetical) sourcebook would cover. Now I know.

And, you know, the great thing is, this is almost exactly what I would have wanted. Pretty much everything that my random musings had thrown up along the lines of "they ought to do this" is here. It's a really excellent RPG sourcebook for this era of the show's history.

Pavis: Gateway to Adventure - Review

By now, Moon Design has a tradition of producing expensive, but hefty, sourcebooks for Glorantha. The latest offering, Pavis: Gateway to Adventure is no exception. At $60, it's two to three times the price of urban sourcebooks such as the Zobeck Gazetteer or Pirate's Guide to Freeport. But there's clearly a reason for that: those books are 116 and 256 pages, respectively, whereas this one is over 416. And, for that matter, the price compares well with the monumental Ptolus: City by the Spire, which weighs in at 808 pages and $150. (I'm ignoring PDF versions here).

Pavis is billed as the third part of the Sartar line, with the other two parts being Kingdom of Heroes and the Sartar Companion. Like those two books, it is divided between source material and adventures, with about two thirds of the book being taken up by the former. As the third in a line, it isn't intended to be stand-alone, and the nature of Glorantha would probably make it harder to port into other settings than, say, Freeport would be. As such, it's probably fair to say that this is aimed at existing fans, rather than the casual RPG purchaser.

Indeed, that's probably more true with this volume than the previous two, since, it is, of course, an update of the RQ2 supplements Pavis: Threshold to Danger and Big Rubble: the Deadly City from the early 1980s, and has obvious old-timer appeal. The new version is written for HeroQuest 2, although, frankly, that's such a rules-lite system (and most of the setting-specific rules are in Kingdom of Heroes, anyway) that, assuming you're willing to put the work in, the book is almost equally useful to someone playing some version of RuneQuest. Or whatever else your system of choice might be, come to that. (Well, okay, so something like Pathfinder might be a lot of work, but you get the idea).