Character Template: Former Time Agent

Some of the characters I include as pre-gens for convention games are historical or contemporary, which makes it easy to envisage the sorts of roles they'd fall into from other genres, and fits with many of the companions in the TV series. But this is science fiction, and many players will be more keen on playing a character that fits in that mould. One of the pre-gens I have that fills that niche is a former Time Agent, something that also ties us into the modern show. Not, I have to say, that anyone has yet played him like Jack Harkness or Captain John... although that could be the limitations of one-off convention play.

The general theme of this character is to have a mix of action-oriented skills with advanced technical skills; not, perhaps, a real specialist in anything, but an all-round concept that would still work in many SF games. There's also the key advantage that the character has some familiarity with time travel. Their vortex manipulator is of limited use in the sort of stories I'm running as one-offs, but they act as a useful backup if there isn't a Time Lord in the group. And that happens more often than you might think...

DW Monsters: Usurians

The next story is The Sun Makers, where the primary villain belongs to an unusual alien race called the Usurians. Even compared with the Ood, which can at least go mad or be possessed by evil psychic entities, the Usurians are physically harmless and one could therefore argue that providing stats for them is not necessary, since they basically can’t fight back. But that makes for something different, and, in any event, it’s at least possible to match wits with one, or attack it psychically, so I’m going to do it anyway.

Other than their original appearance, the Usurians have only featured in one story, an audio where they are manipulating events from behind the scenes.

Character Templates: Torchwood Scientist

At conventions, I have so far found that players tend to go for the obvious adventurer archetypes when picking from the list of pre-gen PCs for my Doctor Who games. That makes sense given the one-off nature of the game session; it's easier to work what a character is supposed to be doing if they fall into an obvious niche. So, although I originally included a pre-gen that fell into the support role (a military nurse from the 1940s) that was never popular, and I no longer include it. But this is Doctor Who, so it would feel odd if all the character options were traditional fighter or rogue types; we also need characters with scientific or knowledge skills. It's not quite the "wizard" niche of fantasy games since you aren't getting to zap people with fireballs or transform into animals or whatever, but it does fit the genre. 

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).

Character Templates: Hardboiled Detective

When I have run Doctor Who games at conventions, the UNIT soldier seems the most popular of the default character types I offer as pre-gens, but the detective comes close. I initially envisaged this as a character focused on investigation, but I've observed that people are keener on the implications of a tough combative type with investigation and breaking-and-entering as a secondary set of skills, so I shifted the first version of the character in that direction, with the result that's shown below. While the UNIT soldier is implied to be British (although he doesn't really have to be) the illustration I used on the character sheet for this one implies an American... although it isn't specified, and not everyone has played it that way.

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.

DW Monsters: Fendahleen

The next story is The Invisible Enemy, where the “monster” is the Swarm, which, in game terms, is more of a disease than a creature. Even then, it's a unique entity and outside our scope here; individually infected people could be described in game terms, but they're basically just mind-controlled. The monster in Image of the Fendahl is slightly more ambiguous, in that it's presented as if it were a unique entity, but some of the dialogue suggests it is merely the last of its kind and, while the others may be trapped in a time loop, they could theoretically show up again. 

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. 

Character Templates: UNIT soldier

Judging from the number of hits, my ongoing series discussing various Doctor Who monsters in RPG terms is not one of the most popular things I've done. Which is fair enough. The original plan was to do the Tennant era next (Weeping Angels and all), but I'll likely give it a rest once I reach the end of the Fourth Doctor's run. While I will be back in a couple of weeks with the next monster in that series, I have some other ideas for what I might do further ahead. In the meantime, there is also this.

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.

DW Monsters: Rutans

While The Talons of Weng-Chiang does include a giant rat, that’s nothing terribly unusual in RPGs, and, in any event, it’s a one-off creation. The next story, however, is Horror of Fang Rock, which introduces us to the previously mentioned, but never-seen, arch-enemies of the Sontarans: the Rutans. While they have occasionally been mentioned since, including in the modern series, they have yet to make a repeat appearance. 

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.