Character Templates: Time Student

So we come to the final character template, the one that's essential in a game like this, even if only as an option. I have found that the character isn't as popular as one might expect, probably because players realise that the ability to control a time machine isn't terribly relevant in a one-off convention game that's likely to have only a single setting. Which is why, in fact, it isn't essential for anyone to pick this character, or even the time agent... the TARDIS is a means to get characters to the plot and they don't really need to be able to steer the thing. Or, at least, not in anything I've written so far, since possibilities clearly do exist for such a scenario.

DWAITAS has mechanisms built in to balance Time Lord characters against regular humans - essentially giving them high skills at the expense of limited plot points - but here I've made that more apparent by making this particular Gallifreyan a student who's basically on an unauthorised gap year. So, while she does have some clear advantages, she's not a fully qualified Time "Lord" yet (though she might claim otherwise, depending on how the player interprets her) and shouldn't overshadow the others, or take a clear leadership role.

Settings: Inside the Spaceship

Not all of the stories in the Doctor Who TV series will lend themselves to the sort of posts I’m doing in this series, and so it is with the third serial, The Edge of Destruction. A major reason for this is that I’m focussing primarily on the setting, and how it can be expanded upon or used elsewhere and this one… doesn’t have a setting. Or, rather, apart from the teaser for the next serial, the story is set entirely inside the TARDIS with no guest characters, monsters, or anything else external.

This is therefore going to be a much shorter post than usual.

A second reason is that the story, as written, is unlikely to work well as an RPG scenario. There are no NPCs or monsters and, in game terms, what’s basically happened is that the Doctor has fumbled a roll operating the TARDIS and it takes everyone the better part of an hour to figure that out. During which time, they act strangely for no particularly good reason; the story relies on them doing that and not finding the source of the problem early on. That could happen in a game, certainly, but you probably wouldn’t want to rely on it.