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.

DW Monsters: Kaldor Robots

The next story in the series is The Deadly Assassin, which does not have a “monster”, or any aliens other than the Time Lords. In the next story, The Face of Evil, we have a mad computer, but then we come to The Robots of Death. Robots, particularly human-shaped ones, have featured several times on the show, but these remain fondly remembered, at least partly for their Art Deco look. They featured in a 1999 novel, Corpse Marker, by the writer of the original TV story, but it’s really in the audio medium that they have had their greatest success. They have so far appeared in three audios alongside the Doctor, and in two series of their own, one of them reaching eighteen episodes.

DW Monsters: Kastrians

The primary antagonist in The Masque of Mandragora is not only a unique entity, but one that’s more of an abstract threat than something we could stat up; it produces visible effects and controls people, but it doesn’t really qualify as a “monster”. Following that story, though, is The Hand of Fear and Eldrad. Now, Eldrad himself is also unique, in that he’s the last surviving member of his species, the Kastrians, but because we can throw time travel into the mix, that doesn’t mean we could never meet another. Having said that, the Kastrians do not return, or even get much of a mention, elsewhere in the TV series. Indeed, their only other appearance to date is in the audio story Eldrad Must Die! which is, of course, a direct sequel.

DW Monsters: Krynoids

After The Brain of Morbius, which features a unique monster, we come to The Seeds of Doom (not to be confused with the Second Doctor story The Seeds of Death) and the Krynoids. There are only two in the story, but they’re a species of alien that could plausibly be found on many other planets, so they’re within my remit for these posts. The Krynoids are a one-off monster within the series, and have been little used elsewhere. Other than a few short stories, they have featured in only one licensed audio, Hothouse, which acts as a sequel to the TV serial without really expanding the description of the species.

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.