OSSR: Time Lord

[fectin]

OSSR: Time Lord
I like bandwagons, I have booze, and I have a bargain basement RPG, which I had never seen before, and have not yet read.

So join me on a magical journey through time, space, and booze. It promises to be a race to the bottom between intoxication, apathy, and disgust.

This is the Doctor Who RPG, published in 1991. That's well before the BBC kicked off the new series, so we're doing this classic-style. That means Tom Bakewr pulling crazy faces instead of David Tennant. Now, I have a passing familiarity with classic Doctor Who, because when I was in the fifth grade and thought the Doctor Who novelizations were the best thing ever, and read all six of the ones the library had. Recently, I've also watched a smattering of the old series. That's more than enough familiarity to not go "WTF policebox?!", but less than enough to quote the fights historical from Master's plans to Daleks' ruin in order categorical.


Cover
First up, we need to talk about the cover. Here it is:

Notice how the scenery forms a DM screen? That's kind of clever. What's more ominous is the way the Doctor is apparently both the all-knowing star player, and Mister Cavern. That's... not great, but it's startlingly close to the feel of a lot of the early series. It probably replicates that early companion experience especially well, where they are nothing more than annoyances who are along for the ride.

The booze is a rum which has been aged for seven years, which was a waste of seven years. It tastes like a nice rum which someone has mixed with a not-very-nice gin.

I've never heard of the authors. Some quick googling shows that they were together ast Games Workshop in the Eighties, after which Marsh became a writer, and Darveill-Evans became a manger at a company which produced both Doctor Who novels and erotic literature for men. So there's that. Anyway, FASA had the right's to Doctor Who until 1990 or so, and this came out pretty well immediately afterwards

Apparently, Marsh 'recovered' the rights in '96, and republished it for free on the interwebs. That's in astonishingly good taste, and makes me care more about this thing already. (If you'd like to follow along, look here. Heads up, it looks like there were a few major changes, and all the illustrations were cut.)

Introduction
This is a one page frontispiece about what is an RPG and what is Doctor Who, and also about the book's typesetting conventions. Compressing the Cops and Robbers speech into one paragraph is a bit ambitious, but good on them. I may not get through very much of this rum after all.

How refreshing.


Part One
The full title is actually "PART ONE <newline> DOCTOR WHO:<newline> A Legend In Its <newline> Own Primetime," which goes to show that formatting really can pad your pagecount. I don't know why they bother though, The next few pages are walls of text. This looks like 8 point, single spaced, no pictures. IT goes through the entire production history of the show, 1963-1990. Fun fact: it was originally planned as an educational program. Episode 2 introduced the Daleks.

Black and white pictures of the first seven doctors.

Then a two page subsection on The Doctor Who universe. We are promised that section four will be all about the Doctor Who universe though, so I'm not sure why you'd stick this in here. Apparently, the four most important topics, in order, are Gallifrey, Time Lords, TARDIS, The Doctor, and Companions. That's... probably fair.

Let's examine these real quick: "The Time Lord known as the Doctor, perhaps the most brilliant, erratic and mysterious of them all...has made it his mission to protect the weak and combat evil throughout the universe. He has developed a particular affection for the unpredictable inhabitants of the planet Earth, who are threatened throughout their history by alien invaders and by the results of their own waywardness." If this weren't a 50 year old character, I would swear his name was Gary.

Next we have the first chapter of The Necromancers, a novel featuring the Seventh Doctor. It's followed by a synopsis of the rest of the book. Here's the catch: this book was never published. If you're thinking that sounds like Darvill-Evens had a treatment lying around that he couldn't be arsed to finish, you and I are on the same wavelength. It's comfortingly schlocky though, so I'll give it a pass. Also, the synopsis drops down to about 6 point type. That's teeny-tiny.

The section ends with this admonishment. It's surprisingly good advice, and surprisingly restrained.

Finally, it should be noted that a DOCTOR WHO story is often more than just a science fiction adventure cum detective thriller. Depending on how it was written, The Necromancers could contain a commentary on the evils of colonialism, for instance, or on the corrupting influence of political power. A background theme of this nature is not essential, but it does help to add an element of realism and significance to a story that might otherwise seem fanciful or trivial. When you create your own DOCTOR WHO adventures using TIME LORD, you will find that the players will become even more involved in their roles and in the plot if they believe that their characters are fighting a realistic injustice or a believable evil.

I should mention the illustrations too:

There aren't many of them, but it's all fairly high quality. Also, it looks like every character with stats gets a tiny portrait, and there are a LOT of those.

That's all for tonight. I'll do more sections over the next few days, but now I have only 8 hours left before I need to be alert and in a meeting.

Sneak Preview: flipping through to check if the illustration quality stays constant(it does), I found the character sheets. You can look forward to the Pseudoscience stat.

[Darth Rabbitt]

I've never heard of the authors. Some quick googling shows that they were together ast Games Workshop in the Eighties, after which Marsh became a writer, and Darveill-Evans became a manger at a company which produced both Doctor Who novels and erotic literature for men. So there's that. Anyway, FASA had the right's to Doctor Who until 1990 or so, and this came out pretty well immediately afterwards.

Peter Darril-Evans also produced three of my favorite Fighting Fantasy titles: Beneath Nightmare Castle, Portal of Evil, and Spectral Stalkers.

(I need to get copies of the latter two since I lost my old ones.)

Hope that's not too off topic.

[talozin]

Some day I need to get my copy of the FASA Doctor Who RPG out of the attic and OSSR it. From what I recall, it's every bit what you'd expect from a mid-1980s FASA RPG.

[fectin]

My opinion matches Count's:

1. The off-topic rule is retarded. It was retarded on wotC, it was retarded on Nifty, and it continues the legacy of retardation here. If the thread goes off topic, it's off topic. If no one can manage the Diplomacy check to get it back on topic, then they should have invested in more diplomacy, or not have taken Charisma as their dump stat. If the thread was about the Duskblade, and five paces later people are talking about burgers, the thread is now about burgers.

I'm actually pretty impressed with the quality so far, including the actual writing (layout and planning could use work). If it holds up, I'm going to start citing it as a model for how WotC should publish SRDs, in the hupothetical world which conforms entirely to my vision.

[Username17]

Apparently, the four most important topics, in order, are Gallifrey, Time Lords, TARDIS, The Doctor, and Companions.

I couldn't decide which Monty Python image macro that deserved, so I just did both.

-Username17

[CCarter]

Peter Darril-Evans also produced three of my favorite Fighting Fantasy titles: Beneath Nightmare Castle, Portal of Evil, and Spectral Stalkers.

(I need to get copies of the latter two since I lost my old ones.)

Hope that's not too off topic.

I think I remember something about Spectral Stalkers being influenced by Dr Who. I hadn't realized those 3 were all by the same guy though.

[fectin]

It's time for

PART TWO

Role-Playing:
What It Is And
How To Do It

(I was going to find a funny picture here, but most Doctor Who cosplay seems to be woman, playing the TARDIS. I don't even.)

Either the font size has dropped again, or I was too optimistic before. Either way, it's at about a thousand words per page. That's a lot. I don';t know my book sizes, but this is the next size up from a trade paperback, so those words are tiny.
The secoin opens with a page of story in the second person (and another picture), where you are screwing around up on a roof, and see two monsters dragging the doctor off. It closes with

You look at your watch: six minutes to detonation. Have you enough time to follow the Kysarans into the tower, rescue the Doctor and get him clear before the blast occurs? You have to decide what to do, and you have to decide now. Every second counts.
Imagine yourself in this predicament. What would you do? Can you decide? You must decide!
Have you decided what to do? You have? Congratulations, you have just taken the first step in role-playing!

...which is a better introduction to role-playing than many, and only took a thousand words. It's okay though, the next subsection is A BRIEF HISTORY OF ROLE-PLAYING, which is only relatively true. Apparently, role-playing is srs bsns; more srs than "play-acting" but not as srs as "real acting." Children are play-acting when they pretend to be fighter pilots, etc. "So are adults who put on airs and pretend to be more genteel than they are." But "Actors who put on costumes and pretend to be heroes or clowns are engaged in real acting."

Despite that, it's actually a fairly good intro, though it meanders through method acting, role-playing, a short history of D&D (which "became a cult hobby among teenagers"), and an odd assortment of pop culture shout-outs (James Bond! Star Trek! The Hobbit! The Beatles!).

The next subsection, KEY CONCEPTS IN ROLE-PLAYING GAMES, is really a rehash of the usual stuff. Of note though, it lists the rulebook first, as the most important element. That's unusual, but nice. Also, it doesn't try to pitch miniatures, which is less unusual, but still nice. (Whoops, I spoke too soon: it's pitching minis now. I can live with that.) Other tidbits come right at the end and include urging you to run from fights, surrender to if you're outmatched, and have fun with inter-party squabbling.

So now we're about 5000 words into this chapter, and its time to ease us gently in to mechanics. To do that, the next subsection ("SWITCHBACK") is apparently adapted from a Doctor Who Adventure. I cant find a record of that as a separate book, so I suspect this is another thing already lying around the office.

Okay, so this is a sort of choose your own adventure with stats. It's another 7.5 pages, with another picture. including headers, this is probably another 6000 words. Jeebus.

Unfortunately, this is also where the basic mechanic gets explained. It is called "beat the difference," and it is literally the worst I have ever seen. You have Abilities (like "knowledge") and Special Abilities within them (Like "TARDIS," inside knowledge) It looks like abilities are generally 1 to 5, and special abilities are 1 to 3. So far, so good. Everything you might want to do has a difficulty (1 to 10ish, I think). Here's where it goes bad. To perform a task:

-Find your skill (Ability plus Special Ability) for that task.
-Subtract it from the difficulty. That is "the difference."
-Role 2d6, and subtract one from the other.
-If that value is greater than "the difference," you succeed.

The Doctor has the right idea.

In case you're curious, the probability breakdown for that is:
Result: 0 1 2 3 4 5
Likelihood: 17% 28% 22% 17% 11% 6%

That's terrible.

Anyway, the rest of the section is just the rest of the decision tree. It's nice enough, and a great way to introduce people to roleplaying, but I'm still sad inside from the mechanics.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

Could you shrink or spoiler the cover photo? It's fucking with my page widths and making this thread hard to read.

[codeGlaze]

A spoiler tag would work, too.

What TN are they generally assuming? What Ability rank? 2d6 + mod + mod2 doesn't sound like it's doomed to failure if the GM watches his numbers.

[fbmf]

Could you shrink or spoiler the cover photo? It's fucking with my page widths and making this thread hard to read.

Good idea.
[\tgfbs]

[fectin]

Sorry for that.

[fectin]

What TN are they generally assuming? What Ability rank? 2d6 + mod + mod2 doesn't sound like it's doomed to failure if the GM watches his numbers.

There is no direct TN. It's |1d6 - 1d6| > (Difficulty - (Ability + Special Ability)). And sure, you can rearrange that, but I think this is actually the best chunking possible.

Rules are covered in more detail later, so I'll check then. Roughly, it looks like the Doctor's skills are usually around 4-7, and everyone else's are around 2-5.

[hyzmarca]

What TN are they generally assuming? What Ability rank? 2d6 + mod + mod2 doesn't sound like it's doomed to failure if the GM watches his numbers.

There is no direct TN. It's |1d6 - 1d6| > (Difficulty - (Ability + Special Ability)). And sure, you can rearrange that, but I think this is actually the best chunking possible.

Rules are covered in more detail later, so I'll check then. Roughly, it looks like the Doctor's skills are usually around 4-7, and everyone else's are around 2-5.

|1d6-1d6| + Ability + Special Ability > Difficulty, works better, I think.

Remember, you can performing the same operation to both sides of an equation without changing it.

[Prak]

I actually thought it was a fairly reasonable, if absurdly esoteric resolution mechanic.

But I had missed the "subtract one from the other" bit of "roll 2d6."

[Ikeren]

Wow. That is hilariously awesome. I'm so using that in some troll game I run sometime.

[fectin]

I think their order is actually better though, because you do all the math, then a roll, then a comparison. That only leaves you remembering one number at a time. Either way, I was digging it until the "roll 2d6 and take the difference" part.

[Doctor_TOC]

I quite like Time Lord, but it's really only half an RPG. The character generation rules are pretty thin and there are enough gaps in the general mechanics that there are various expansion rules available online (including this one http://www.torsononline.com/hobbies/timelord/tlcomp.pdf, written by one of the writers of the current Doctor Who RPG from Cubicle 7). Still, it was fairly entertaining to read and was a nice attempt to capture the structure of the TV show as it was before it's regeneration into it's present form.

[codeGlaze]

My brain apparently couldn't accept the 1d6 - 1d6. Everytime I looked at it my immediate thought was 'what?... he must have written that wrong.'

That's... so weird.

[fectin]

Righto. I'd been putting this off, because the next section is

PART THREE
How To Role-Play
A
DOCTOR WHO
Adventure

aka The Rules.

Again, it's centered in an otherwise blank page. The rest of the pages are so word-dense that it's hard not to hear it in a policy debater's rapid delivery, punctuated only by these section headings as he changes lines, and by deep, tortured, oxygen-starved gasping as he reaches a new card.

Anyway, I have a tastier rum this time (Zaya), so I am prepared to delve deep into the quirks of two-decade-old British roleplaying mechanics. Unfortunately, here's how it opens:

TIME LORD is a simple yet sophisticated game that has a few basic mechanisms on which the rules rely. It is important to understand what is meant by abilities, how to use the dice, how distance and movement affect game play, and how to take turns before trying to learn the rest of the rules.

While those are key skills for RPGs, I think this is the first time I've seen them called out like that. It goes on to imply that there will be more rules in another section. I'm not normally for breaking up mechanics, but players are also less likely to rebel at 'read 10 pages' than 'read 50 pages', so maybe this will work out well. (Afternote: I looked ahead. This is all of the system; the rest is basically MC advice.)

Abilities
"Basic Abilities" are stats: Strength, Control, Size, Weight, Move, Knowledge, Determination and Awareness. (separating 'size' and 'weight' seems overly granular to me, but we'll see how that plays out). Typical range is from 1 to 6 (I was wrong before). "Special Abilities" are specializations, and are typically rated 1 or 2. E.g. Marksmanship adds to Control in combat. "Total Ability" means add the two together, "Special Ability" means don't add, just count the specialization.

Using Dice
Apparently 2d6 was selected because you can steal them from Monopoly or whatever. Kudos to them for making it easy. The MC sets difficulties for tasks (no explanation of how given here), and difficulties go from 0 to 10. If your Total Ability beats the difficulty, you auto-succeed. Hooray. The MC might make you roll anyway "for dramatic effect," because difficulties are apparently secret.

Beat The Difference
Same mechanic as last time, but described again to make sure you get it. You must roll when Total Ability =< Difficulty, and the difference between the dice must be greater than (not equal to) Difficulty - Total Ability (aka "The Difference"). Plus this gem: "In most cases, only the referee knows the difficulty and therefore the difference that must be beaten; players should trust his judgment."

Counters And Figures
TL;DR: You should draw a map. An overhead map. Put some tokens ("plastic tiddlywinks, Ludo counters or coloured pieces of cardboard") on it to show where everyone is. Figures are nice ("The ideal ones are made of metal and are 25mm to 30mm high; they contain lead and are not recommended for small children.")

Distances
In a nice reflection of Doctor Who's set-piece roots, you don't move distances; you move a certain number of Areas. Areas are not well defined (in the rules; they're supposed to be for any given game), but it looks basically like "places you might want to be." So I think that when you're in an office, you might have "behind the desk" and "in front of the desk", then walk out the door into "the hallway near the office," then to "the hallway near the exit", then to "the loo." Then maybe you have a much bigger area, "out front." It suggests defaulting to 3x3 meter squares inside buildings. The facing page has little silhouettes on partial staggered grids running away from Daleks. It's a pretty good diagram.

Anyway, slap some post-its down to represent your areas and go to town. They suggest staggering your rows(i.e. build a post-it hex grid). You can move to adjacent areas, like spaces in a board game, and can move a number equal to your Move each turn. (FALSE! see below.) Ranges are also measured in areas. Anything in the same area is Range 0, one away is Range 1, etc. That affects Difficulties and weapons, in as-yet-unspecified ways.

I've seen a similar system in Danger Patrol, and it works out fantastically there, so I'm willing to give this the benefit of the doubt.

Movement
Most humans have Move 3. The First Doctor has Move 2. The number of squares you want to move is the Difficulty of moving that far, so you can move up to one less than your Move without rolling You can take an action in a turn which you move less than your Move. If you try to move at least your Move, that counts as your action for the turn, and you must roll. If you fail, you only move as far as you could have without rolling.

Some Special Abilities can modify your Move (e.g. "running"). If you use one, it counts as your action. Some of those abilities add to vehicle Move ratings instead (e.g. "driving"). This is the first mention of vehicles.

It's rather a lot of words for something fairly simple.

Terrain
Each Area can have terrain, which increases the difficulty to move through it. Most terrain is either Easy (convoluted explanation which boils down to "counts as one square") like fields and roads, or Obstructed (counts as moving through 2 squares), like sand dunes. Rarely, terrain is Difficulty 3 (sheer cliffs, maybe?), where it's passable, but only barely. Difficulty 3 terrain does not appear to get a name.

Terrain may be different for different characters (i.e. Daleks hate stairs).

Turns
There are Action Turns and Research Turns. Action is for chase scenes and fights, Research is for building widgets, cunning plans, and manual labor. Action turns are a few seconds; Research are 15 minutes. Players don't knowingly interact with Research Turns; they're just for the referee to have a timer for explosions, or alien menaces, or whatnot.

There is no initiative. Everyone declares, then everything resolves at once.

Actions
You can only use one skill each turn. Movement is kind-of excepted, as described above.

ABILITIES (this header is noticeably bigger)
- Strength! Also includes stamina
- Control! Because everyone already calls it dexterity
- Size! Higher is smaller. Big people are easier to shoot; little people hide in air ducts. All hail the tiny masters! Default is 3; kids and small women are 4.
- Weight! Heavier is harder to toss across the room or carry off, but more likely to fall through floors. They were starting to get a '3 is average' convention going, but this time 4 is average. Big Human is 5, small human is 3. Objects also have weights, which determines if they're easy to carry.
- Move! As above. Normal is 3, horses are 4.
- Knowledge! Ability to figure out what the hell the Doctor is saying, an poorly defined excuse to get hints from the referee, and "ability to believe or disbelieve in the improbable. Anyone who enters the TARDIS for the first time will find their Knowledge tested; it is the ability to doubt." No, I don't know what that means either.
- Determination! Like glomming together Charisma and Wisdom (i.e., who knows!). Uses include resisting hypnosis, resisting a different kind of hypnosis, and psychic combat.
- Awareness! Perception, now with a side of diplomacy.
- Other Abilites! Yet another discussion of Special Abilities. This time they usually go from 1 to 3 though.

How To Use Abilities
O...kay. It's yet another explanation of the basic mechanic. Still agrees with the others, but this is some serious recapitulation. Or possibly an unusually clear-eyed look at how deeply most players will read the rules ("Shit! This is important. Better put it on every other page.")

Using Special Abilities
Really, book? It's the same topic as the section immediately above it, and explains the same thing. Again, Marsh and Evans have found new words and a new example.

You know what? I'm done for now. Next up in the section is a list of the "most common" Special Abilities." Sneak preview: "Screaming"

[Ikeren]

a policy debater's rapid delivery, punctuated only by these section headings as he changes lines, and by deep, tortured, oxygen-starved gasping as he reaches a new card.

I'm pleased someone else knows what policy debate is.

Size! Higher is smaller. Big people are easier to shoot; little people hide in air ducts. All hail the tiny masters! Default is 3; kids and small women are 4.
- Weight! Heavier is harder to toss across the room or carry off, but more likely to fall through floors. They were starting to get a '3 is average' convention going, but this time 4 is average. Big Human is 5, small human is 3. Objects also have weights, which determines if they're easy to carry.

Why is higher smaller?

the "most common" "Special" Abilities. Sneak preview: "Screaming"

FIFY

[fectin]

Why is higher smaller?

Who the hell knows? For funsies maybe? Giant Frog?
Best guess: they expect you to make rolls to squeeze through small spaces, so it's like a skill. Second best guess: size is the difficulty to hit you in ranged combat, so higher number represents mechanical advantageousness? (counterargument: weight)

Anyway, enough procrastination. I have vodka and Mr. Pibb (because I'm classy like that, and it's time for:

"Special" Abilities
I was tryign to find a way to show this without just listing the skills, but it isn't possible. So, here


Lets move right into disjointed comments and mockery. I'm not drunk enough to excuse that (yet), but I bet I can be by the end of this section! The following are in order of ascending disbelief:

- Weight doesn't have any skills. Let's get that out of the way: for this game, fatties are not allowed. Also, beefcakes are right out. I might have made "weight" double as constitution, or poison resistance, but no.

- Knowledge makes you a pimp. It adds to everything. High move makes you a chauffeur, high knowledge makes you a universe hacker. (That's probably a fairly accurate reproduction of the series, but still.)

- On the other hand, knowledge is also super granular. There are separate skills for Math, Computing, and Cryptoanalysis. Also, for Engineering, Electronics, Robotics, and Cybernetics. Also for First Aid and Medicine. Super-granular skills are an invitation for MCs to glory-hole the players: "I need Cybernetics? But I have a triple PhD in Science, Medicine, and Robotics!" (Paging Doctor Trollface...)

- Continuing that "fuck you, it's realistic" theme, Awareness has Separate skills for Acting and Disguise, Eloquence and Bargaining, and Singing and Musicianship. Because fuck you. Yes, Awareness will continue being a clone high reference every time. Also because fuck you.

- I'm not sure I would have called a skill which only children can take "contortionism". That's just asking for trouble. It's okay, that skill is small in the pants anyway (KiffExasperated.wav), because of the Escapology and Gymnastics skills. Also those key off of a real ability (control), so that's what you'll want anyway.

- Nearly all of the solutions to your problems are in knowledge. TARDIS lets you walk away from your problems. Detective Powers let you solve your problems. Linguistics lets you talk to your problems. Explosives let you blow your problems up. If this were a real game, why would you put points anywhere else?

- Control is nearly as good as knowledge: That's where all the filler lives. You know how in Doctor Who, the cast always run around for a while, then the Doctor pulls a solution right out of his ass? Control covers the "run about" part of that plot. It's where all the fighting/running/etc live. As before, it's granularity, on a scale of one to ten, is firmly pegged at "Fuck You!" Fisticuffs and Martial Arts. Mountaineering doesn't come with a Sense of Balance. Blunt Weapons are separate from Edged Weapons (hilariously, I can imagine dulling a blade to suddenly gain proficiency). Gymnastics does not confer Leaping ability.

Let's move into a few specific "Special" complaints though. My Vodka-Pepper knockoff has mysteriously disappeared, and I've moved on to a Martini. I feel more at peace with this game, but it will be a long road to acceptance. (Protip: if you take cheap spanish queen olives, pull the pimento out with a toothpick, and restuff them with strong blue cheese, your martini is instantly classy. You will be able to snob it up with the best!) I'll go ahead and skip the actually useful and balanced ones, like Acting.

- Animal Handling not only follows immediately after Animal Empathy, it includes this tidbit: "The ability extends to reptiles, so a character with Animal Handling could be an exotic dancer whose act includes snakes!" Yes, that is an option. No, it did not merit mention. Yes, the exclamation point is in the original.

- Bench-thumping aka percussive maintenance. I was all set to ridicule this one, but I actually think it might be worth stealing for other games. It's basically a re-roll for a repair or construction -type roll. If I stole it, I'd cap it at whatever the first roll was at, but then you'd capture Han Solo's Emergency Repair Procedure Number One, and have a flavorful way to have people be really good mechanics

- Cheat Death. It's actually just bonus health, with an overwrought name.

- Command. Tell people what to do, and have them do it. Sort of a weird hybrid of Bluff and Leadership. mostly notable for this: "The ability to give orders is hereditary among nobility".

- Eloquence "Eloquence is the ability to use the correct form of address when negotiating with nobles. It implies a knowledge of procedures, and a character with this ability will rarely put a foot wrong when addressing important people." Were they maybe thinking of 'etiquette'?

- Fast Reactions. Apparently this is not a rolled skill, it's I GO FIRST. Lovely.

- First Aid. Pretty normal application, until this tidbit: "A character uses his total ability of Knowledge and First Aid to determine whether he successfully applies the techniques, but heals only an amount equal to his
special ability on its own." I literally have no idea how you would apply that mechanically.

- Gloating. Without further comment: "Gloating is a trait of cruel or evil characters such as the Master which exhibits itself when the Doctor or his companions are trapped or about to die. A character with this ability may be compelled to gloat in such circumstances, giving his captives time to formulate a particularly cunning plan of escape." Why would that be an ability?! (okay, I lied about "without further comment")

- Juggling I was going to be mad, but how can you hate an ability centered on trolling your MC? "The ability to juggle objects requires good hand to eye co-ordination. Its main use is for entertainment, but two characters with Juggling could accurately throw objects between them to confuse or annoy a villain."

- Mathematics "Mathematics is the ability to perform mental gymnastics with numbers and abstracts. It is invaluable when trying to set co-ordinates for the TARDIS or to calculate how long it will take to travel anywhere. Mathematicians are almost human in comparison with statisticians." Unlike, say, the TARDIS skill. Also, what's up with that crack about statisticians? It's completely out of the blue. Was that maybe a Doctor Who trope which I'm not familiar with?

- MacGuffin It's exactly what it sounds like. Whatever the plot coupon you might need, you can build it. That's... oddly forward thinking, but also demands the question: Why run your plot on coupons in the first place?

- Precision "The character with this ability is uncannily accurate at judging distances, angles and speeds." Um, okay. So what? I was willing to let dancing slide past, but this? What is this?

- Pseudoscience "Pseudoscience is the ability quickly to come up with convincing scientific arguments or explanations which either sound impressive or are accurate but confusing. A character with Pseudoscience has the ability to baffle people with science. The Doctor once started to explain the Blinovitch limitation effect to Jo Grant about time travel in The Day of the Daleks; pseudoscience could have been used to come up with name of the effect and provide a brief explanation. Pseudoscience can be made into a personality trait of a character: the Doctor would not explain that a piece of apparatus had blown a fuse without first declaring that the temporal feedback circuit had overloaded." So, apparently, the Doctor has just been dicking over all his companions for years, by giving them bullshit explanations of how stuff works? That's not completely out of character, but it puts a much, much more depressing spin on the show.

- Resourceful Pockets kind of does what it says on the tin: you have some random junk on your person. Sometimes, it's useful. I don't hate that as a skill. I can imagine porting it into e.g. DnD as a skill somehow, so you stop having to track individual fishhooks on your character sheet.

- Screaming. "Its main purpose is to alert the Doctor that one of his companions is in distress" Because if you aren't the main character, you might as well be an NPC.

- Serendipity It's what it sounds like: luck rolls. I don't actually hate luck mechanics. I do hate poorly defined and implemented luck mechanics though, so no free pass here: This is a travesty. Either it's encouraging fishmalkanism, or it's an excuse for the MC to play your character too.

- Sports not only is this a useless skill, it's even more granular than it seems: you have to choose a specific sport to be good at.

- Temporal Science notable only because there's already a Science ability, and you already have to specify a field, so including a separate entry here is just silly.


Next up: combat!

[Ted the Flayer]

I think I dated a girl that took Screaming as one of her skills...

[fectin]

I've been putting off finishing this, because I've been watching more classic Doctor Who on Netflix. And you know what? This system matches it pretty well. The Doctor is just better than you, the entire show does revolve around companions bumbling about and using improbable skills, and the final solution is always building some Macguffin. Complaining that this game duplicates those (dubious) features seems more and more like that Penny Arcade:


It's not that my criticisms or mockeries are wrong; they're just irrelevant.

Oh well, let's finish this sucker out anyway.




Combat

TIME LORD uses a normal sort of declare-then-act system. There are five basic actions you can declare:
- Recover
- Dodge everything
- Act (while parrying or dodging one specific opponent) (attacking is an action)
- Move a number of areas >= move ability (requires a check)
- Move < move ability and act OR dodge a specific opponent
and one action you can abort to:
- lose everything else; stay still; do some action at +2 difficulty

There's also a table for what your close combat defense, ranged defense, and action penalties are. Depending what your geography looks like, running away is actually a valid life choice. It goes like this: base difficulty to hit you is your size. For ranged combat, difficulty to hit you is size + range. If you're dodging, difficulty to hit you is size + range + control. so if you're running away, you move probably [your move] + [running] + 2. That's probably~ 6 spaces. That adds six to the 'difficulty' of hitting you, and remember that the entire RNG is 0-5. You can also move less than [your move], and dodge, which puts less distance between you, but also adds your [control] to the difficulty toi hit you. Further, if someone does chase you, they take a penalty to their actions equal to the number of spaces moved.

Overall, it seems like the only two winning strategies are tricking someone into close combat and ambushes. That's... remarkably like Doctor Who physics. Ganging up is powerful, but easily countered by "running away."

Damage is completely a function of what weapon you use. Fists are 1/2 [strength]; ranged weapons go from 3-8 (mostly 5); blunt weapons are 3, edged weapons are 4. The simplicity there is pretty nice, especially if you fall back on improvised weapons.

Some things have Armor. Armor is all-or-nothing. Wounds > armor go through automatically, wounds <= armor have to check to go through. The example is cybermen, with an armor of nine. Most guns are 5 wounds, so you would need to roll a [6, 1] or [1, 6] to actually damage one, even if you hit it (1/18 chance). That's a sucker's bet.

so when you're wounded, you add the new wounds value to any you were already carrying around, and check it against your strength. if wounds > strength, bad things. Otherwise roll: if you beat the difference, bad things. If you do not, no effect. "Bad things" in this case generally means you fall unconscious at the end of the round (i.e. you get to act first). It might mean you die then instead, but it's not clear yet how that's determined.

Housekeeping stuff: you can make called shots, using the size of your target as the difficulty. Generally, 5 people can be in an area without crowding, after that there are a couple special rules about that area being melee-only. There are grappling rules, which are no worse than any other grappling rules. There are grenade rules, which don't suck (if you fail your attack in a specific way, there's a possibility of someone aborting to chuck the grenade back at you, which is nice). There's a rule for combined fire, where basically each person after the first can instead add one to an attack roll (remember, the RNG is 5 and skews low, so +1 is valuable). There's a rule for shooting into melee (protip: don't), and for (essentially) readying ranged attacks.

Then we're into weapons. No surprises here, except that cybermen will apparently fuck you right up. Their fists hurt more than most guns, and they have moderately impressive armor (protip: do not get in punching matches with robots). Otherwise, relatively few surprises. Close combat weapons include: soft natural weapons (fists), hard natural weapons (horns, teeth), blunt weapons, edged weapons (list ends). Each has an associated damage value (1/2 strength, strength, 3, and 4; respectively) That's pretty straightforward, and I'm okay with that. You can't parry anything but soft weapons with soft weapons, but martial arts training turns your weapons hard (there's a joke in there, and I am not making it). So, basically how DnD monks should have worked, but didn't. Edged weapons are explicitly likely to fuck up your day if you aren't armored.

The section on ranged weapons is longer and slightly more detailed, but essentially the same. Most weapons have a maximum range though, and that range is surprisingly short. light/heavy thrown weapons are 3, sidearms are 4, bows are 5, rifles and blasters are unlimited. Again, running away is very viable.

There's a short screed about how the Doctor et al. rarely have guns. That's pretty fair; apparently a large set of things you might want to shoot are basically immune (still looking at you, cybermen). Shooting might make sense if you had a lot of people focusing fire on weak points (David Tennant is apparently genre savvy; the first new dalek episode seriously seems to comply with these rules quite well), but two or three dudes is probably not going to do it. It rails against firearms complexity, but does explicitly say that most characters should be able to fire any gun (just maybe not reload or maintain it). All guns can be used as makeshift blunt weapons.
- Muzzle loaders are fuck-you slow to reload.
- Everything else takes one round to reload, and otherwise fires each round until there are no bullets. "Referees who wish fully to detail actual weapons should feel free to do so."
- Muskets are +1 difficulty to hit.
- Submachine guns have some slightly weird rules. They're slightly worse on single shot, and slightly but noticeably better on burst (which burns through 10 rounds of a (default) 30 round magazine.
- Blasters will own you if they hit. They also have a stun setting, which will probably make you need a lie-down (3 wounds), but does not use a stovepipe system.

On to Armor. Basically, if you don't make a called shot for an unarmored point, you hit armor. it works as described above, in combat. Body armor is a pretty good deal. So is running away though, so there's that.

Damage and healing: wounds < 0 is lightly wounded, which is cosmetic, mechanics-wise, except that it might mean you're knocked out. Wounds < strength is seriously wounded: you get another wound every hour until you get first aid, then it's cosmetic. Seriously wounded implies knocked out, but that's not clear here. Wounds greater than 2 x Strength makes you dead. Most strengths are 3, so nothing except alien blasters will take you directly from healthy to dead, but many things will come close.

Okay, it looks like you are incapacitated any time you take wounds, thought that's not completely clear. You have to make checks to not be incapacitated. you get many opportunities to wake up in combat, and few opportunities out of combat(4 per hour). If you got shot up bad, you might well bleed out and die. Moral: don't split the party. You heal [strength] wounds for each week of bed rest. You can apply First Aid only once, which is a test of [first aid] + [control] to heal [first aid] wounds immediately. Medicine works exactly the same way, but requires stuff, and can be tried once per 24 hours.

Poison, Falls, and suffocation work about like you'd expect. Infection gets all of four lines, and is treated like a not-very-serious poison.

Next up: section four, "the cast of thousands"
(no joke; it's literally the middle third of the book.)

[fectin]

All right. I'm pushing this now. It's only taken months, so it's good enough for government work. In true government work form though, I will be slashing capability to meet schedule. Enjoy.

Cast of Thousands
First up, the seven Doctors. What about later Doctors? Shut up, this was published in '91. The Doctors are better than you. They may or may not be better at running/jumping/shooting/etc, but as we saw in the rules, that doesn't matter much. They all have McGuffin at 8, so there's that.

Next up are the companions. There are about 30. They are not balanced in any way, aside from being uniformly worse than the Doctor. Each has a short bio, 200-300 words, which is nice. Each also has a fairly nice drawing, roughly 1.5x3 inches.

The Aliens section follows, with no break and roughly 500 words of justification for how these aliens were statted up (most effective version from the show, followed by most consistent). It also explicitly says that some abilities aren't available to PCs, in a bit of a non-sequiter. There are roughly 25 aliens. Descriptions here are generally longer, sliding up towards 1000 words each.

After aliens, there are a half-dozen villains. Davros, the Master, the Meddling Monk, and a couple others I'd never heard of. Next up is the three pages of vehicles.

That may not sound like a lot, but there are ~ two dozen crammed in there. Next a brief discussion of time travel, and a longer discussion of TARDIS features. Notable: apparently there is a swimming pool hanging out there.

Next is a section titled "A 500-Year Diary," purporting to be excerpts from the Doctor's diary. It's the equipment section (mostly), and covers 4.5 pages. And that's all for the "Cast of Thousands"

[Shrapnel]

- Screaming. "Its main purpose is to alert the Doctor that one of his companions is in distress"

Only if the companion is female, though!

Fun fact: The chick they hired to play the 1st Doctor's granddaughter was chosen specifically because she could scream real good.

- Sports not only is this a useless skill, it's even more granular than it seems: you have to choose a specific sport to be good at.

It's not useless! If your the 5th Doctor, then you're an expert cricket player! That's only ever touched upon in one episode!