Doctor Who Monster and Alien Stats (Intro)

Following on from my previous series of classic Doctor Who companions considered as if they were characters in a roleplaying game, I'll be starting another occasional series here looking at some of the "monsters" from the series. The aim here will be to consider how they would be described in game terms, rather than to expand on what we know, or provide other intangible details. There are plenty of online guides already giving that sort of information, with the TARDIS Data Core being perhaps the most thorough. 

Unlike I did with the companions, I'll conclude by providing some suggested game stats. These will not be for the DWAITAS system, since those stats already exist; this is more an exercise in seeing how other systems might cope with particular concepts. But, rather than sticking to one single system, I'll be trying out five different ones, to see what we get. 

Here, of course, I'm limited by what I have available and, to be honest, that's the biggest limitation on the systems I'm picking. Furthermore, most RPG systems are written primarily for fantasy, which would require more distortion than seems worthwhile, so those are (mostly) out. Others are too old; for instance, I could likely make a stab at the Last Unicorn version of the Star Trek RPG, but why bother? And there's little point doing multiple systems that are very similar to one another, which cuts out some other options.

Rules-lite systems are also out, because there's little to do there for a stat block once you've got the basic text description down. I like such systems, and I've had material officially published for the earlier editions of the-game-now-known-as-QuestWorlds, but the upcoming version of that actively advises against statting up things in advance, which would render the exercise moot. With others, any stats would be trivially easy to derive - great for a game, but not much use for what I'm doing here.

Probably the most obvious system that I won't be including, unless something changes, is Traveller. Although it remains fairly popular, I don't have the latest version, or, indeed, any recent edition, and I'm not going to buy it just for this. I could do one of the older editions (it probably hasn't changed much), but it doesn't seem sufficiently worthwhile. So out it goes. Sorry, Traveller fans.

Instead, I have picked five systems that have sufficiently different approaches to contrast with one another, and that still seem useful to this kind of exercise.

• D&D 5E - Obviously, this is a fantasy system, but it would seem odd to leave out the most popular system on the market. Since I'm only doing "monsters", I don't need to worry about what character classes there might be in the setting or other such issues. Including it does, however, cut out other systems based on the same engine, even if they are more directly suited to a science fiction setting, so out goes, say, Starfinder. 
• BRP - The engine behind Call of Cthulhu also has a version intended for use with a wide range of genres. As such, it's reasonably well-known, and it's still being produced and I happen to have experience with it. Since it's also very different in approach to both 5E and to many 'modern' systems, I feel it's one worth including. The version being used is the one from the SRD, rather than any specific iteration.
• GURPS - An older system that's probably no longer in the top tier, but is very much still being produced. The advantage is that it's a highly detailed generic system that drills down into the details of how things work, a very different approach to the other systems I'm using here. 
• Savage Worlds - This is another one of the most popular systems at the moment, and also has the right amount of detail to be worth doing for something like this. And, again, it's striving for a different feel than either BRP or GURPS, and in a very different way than 5E.
• 2d20 - Another currently popular system that has been used for science fiction games, among other genres. In this case, it's going for a more freeform feel than at least the first three systems on this list. The downside is that it has no generic version, so I'm going to be using Star Trek Adventures as the source for the skills and traits.

Most of the "monsters" will actually be alien races, so that individuals may well vary significantly. The stats will reflect a baseline - a typical warrior, or whatever. Significant, typically named, characters would have additional abilities and skills or (in 5E) hit points and proficiency. In many cases, they would also have superior attributes, etc. In the case of 2d20, the assumption is that the described character will be a Minor NPC (and thus lacking Values and so on) unless there's a compelling reason to the contrary.

The obvious aliens to start with are, of course, the Daleks. However, they are also far from the easiest race to do, both because of their non-humanoid nature and their huge number of appearances and tweaks down the years. So I'm giving them a pass for the time being, and will instead start by looking at some of the other races that have made multiple appearances in the TV show and that present simpler challenges to describe.

I'll reiterate that this is going to be an occasional series, at least for the time being. I'm still working my way through biological musings on D&D monsters, and there are enough there that that series won't finish for well over a year yet. Those are way more popular than my existing Doctor Who posts, so they take priority, The first one will be up soon, but after that... who knows?