Eternally Lost Zeppo
3rd Incarnation
The Lonely God
Posts: 246
Favourite Doctors: David Tennant, Matt Smith, Peter Davidson
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Post by Eternally Lost Zeppo on Feb 12, 2012 0:06:06 GMT
As part of this year's resolution, I've decided to run a one-shot once every month. This month I'm going to do a Doctor Who one-shot, and as it's a leap year I thought I'd try and come up with something based on the fact that Leap Day (or February 29th) only occurs every four years.
I've got a few ideas already:
- The TARDIS crew investigate a haunted house at the centre of a series of disappearances that happen every four years on the night of February 29th.
- The Doctor takes his companions to a world which is out of temporal synch with the rest of the universe, and only appears once every four years. Not a problem for a time traveler, but things are a bit unstable on the planet, and the crew get cut off from the TARDIS. If they don't find a way back before the window closes, they'll be trapped until it opens in another 40 years (from the planet's perspective).
- The TARDIS crew help a girl rescue her friend, who has been kidnapped and taken to a parallel universe which intersects with ours every four years on February 29th.
- A mysterious mishap causes the party to 'leap' back in time, into the bodies of other people on February 29th, but they may not be there entirely by accident.
- For reasons unknown, a group of strangers slip through time from different years, and are brought together to the same place and time on February 29th 2012. And if they don't get to the bottom of things, time itself could be ripped apart.
These ideas are all a bit vague though, so I'm open to a few other suggestions if anyone has any?
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Post by cliffordjones on Feb 12, 2012 3:43:20 GMT
I think that something like the legend of Brigadoon might work well in this context. Some sort of pocket universe that is only accessible to the outside world on February 29th. The people inside experience time differently (one day every four years would seem to make sense).
I also think that something like this might well involve Faction Paradox in some way. The whole thing has a very Eleven Day Empire feel to it, with abstract calendrical 'time' being somehow converted into actual relative time.
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Post by da professor on Feb 12, 2012 9:22:33 GMT
When Pope Gregory had the calendar corrected, he got rid of Leap Days on century years not dividing by 400, so when the TARDIS lands in (Earth location of GMs choice) on February 29, 1900, something is clearly amiss
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Post by zebaroth on Feb 13, 2012 2:42:27 GMT
there was this tv show i watched as a kid that had different spookie storys on it. they had one that these ghosts/entities that would exist for one day every four years. on February 29 and if you went to the Inn that is closed
for the season they would try to keep you there by making you think that the inn was open and if you were in
the inn when the sun went down you became one of them. the ghosts/entities did not like the sun light it would not kill them but turn them to smoke or something. and as one of my Gm's said there is nothing wrong with Browning.
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Post by brainsnaffler on Feb 13, 2012 10:00:16 GMT
All these suggestions sound pretty cool to me. The only other thing that springs to mind is that the leap year is kind of a fold in time. The adventure being discovering why. As for the paralel world hook, it could be trying to avert a disaster and leave whatever parallel world they find and get out again before a time window closes again. Very interesting concepts here. Intriguing :-)
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Post by Craig Oxbrow on Feb 13, 2012 23:01:41 GMT
All the other February 29ths happen, but people skip over them, leaving the world empty for a day, except for time travellers - and people born on February 29th in a leap year. Only they can see when invaders from an impossible alternate history come to try and take over before the day ends.
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Post by Curufea on Feb 14, 2012 2:14:13 GMT
It could also be a Faction thing, after all they have the Eleven-Day Empire and there was the brief Thirteen Day Republic - both founded on calendar gaps. The Feb 29ths would act as good storehouses for material on Earth (spare biomass banks for example).
Which leads to several plot hooks-
*Osirans or other Time Lord tech equivalent races wanting the biomass or the tech for their own reasons (e.g. making an instant army complete with years of training, skill and experience from biodata memory banks)
*Faction members making a deposit or withdrawl being randomly encountered.
*Gallifreyans getting rid of Faction bolt holes
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Post by Marnal on Feb 15, 2012 20:35:14 GMT
@craig Oxbrow I am SOOOO stealing this idea!  |
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Post by Craig Oxbrow on Feb 16, 2012 0:59:59 GMT
@craig Oxbrow I am SOOOO stealing this idea! That's what I'm here for.  Let me know how it goes. |
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Eternally Lost Zeppo
3rd Incarnation
The Lonely God
Posts: 246
Favourite Doctors: David Tennant, Matt Smith, Peter Davidson
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Post by Eternally Lost Zeppo on Feb 19, 2012 19:49:20 GMT
Lots of great ideas guys, thanks! I've taken a bit longer than I should have to prepare for this, but I've combined a bunch of the ideas mentioned on here to come up with this: The TARDIS crew investigate the reactivation of a Time Lord weapons cache used in the Time War. February 29th 2011 is portion of 'lost time' that has been converted from abstract calendrical time into actual time through spacey-wacey timey-wimey Time Lord technology. They soon find a team of advance scouts from an alternate universe where the Silurians never went into hybernation and became the dominant species on earth. Now their universe faces extinction, and they're using this 'lost day' as a staging ground for an invasion of our own earth. |
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Post by cliffordjones on Feb 25, 2012 2:43:42 GMT
They soon find a team of advance scouts from an alternate universe where the Silurians never went into hybernation and became the dominant species on earth. Now their universe faces extinction, and they're using this 'lost day' as a staging ground for an invasion of our own earth. Sounds awesome. I want to visit 'Silurian Earth' now |
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Eternally Lost Zeppo
3rd Incarnation
The Lonely God
Posts: 246
Favourite Doctors: David Tennant, Matt Smith, Peter Davidson
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Post by Eternally Lost Zeppo on Feb 25, 2012 22:24:51 GMT
Darn. I was all prepared, went to the monthly gaming marathon, but I couldn't get any players. The majority of people there were more interested in the MtG draft.  |
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Post by Craig Oxbrow on Feb 26, 2012 0:05:21 GMT
BURN THEM DOWN.
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Post by Kit on Feb 26, 2012 1:43:23 GMT
It could also be a Faction thing, after all they have the Eleven-Day Empire and there was the brief Thirteen Day Republic - both founded on calendar gaps. The Feb 29ths would act as good storehouses for material on Earth (spare biomass banks for example). Which leads to several plot hooks- *Osirans or other Time Lord tech equivalent races wanting the biomass or the tech for their own reasons (e.g. making an instant army complete with years of training, skill and experience from biodata memory banks) *Faction members making a deposit or withdrawl being randomly encountered. *Gallifreyans getting rid of Faction bolt holes I wonder if Faction Paradox will incorporate the fact that Samoa skipped Friday December 30, 2011 and moved across the dateline to Saturday, December 31. of note, Samoa did the opposite in July of 1892 and apparently had July 4 twice. |
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Post by cliffordjones on Feb 27, 2012 18:21:25 GMT
Darn. I was all prepared, went to the monthly gaming marathon, but I couldn't get any players. The majority of people there were more interested in the MtG draft. It's a real shame that you didn't get to run your game. The more that I think about the Planet of the Silurians the more I like the idea and, frankly, I'm stealing it I was thinking that I might do a version of the Planet of the Silurians that's set in it's own version of the Victorian era, with Silurian ladies and gents promenading about in Victorian costume. And with Queen Vastra in charge of the British (or whatever) Empire ;D Silurian street urchins make a living catching live rats to sell as penny snacks. I'm also thinking that this Planet of the Silurians should have enslaved primitive humans. And sympathetic Silurian intellectuals who don't approve of the use of slave labour. Silurian Torchwood could be interesting... |
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misterharry
Dominus Tempus 
Dalek Caan's Lovechild
Posts: 3,246
Favourite Doctors: Second, Third, Fourth, Eleventh, Thirteenth
Traits: Empathic, Face in the Crowd, Insatiable Curiosity, Stubborn, Phobia (Heights), Unadventurous
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Post by misterharry on Feb 27, 2012 20:08:08 GMT
It's a real shame that you didn't get to run your game. The more that I think about the Planet of the Silurians the more I like the idea and, frankly, I'm stealing it You could have one of the Silurians snarling "Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!" at one of the human PCs. |
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Post by Curufea on Feb 28, 2012 4:20:12 GMT
I wonder if Faction Paradox will incorporate the fact that Samoa skipped Friday December 30, 2011 and moved across the dateline to Saturday, December 31. of note, Samoa did the opposite in July of 1892 and apparently had July 4 twice. They could, but it's a "perceived reality vs observed reality" thing which means it may not be as valuable. In other words - if anomallies or paradoxes are observed by lots of people over a greater period of time, they're more valuable and usable than small groups that are quickly forgotten. Not wishing to insult the Somoans, but the English have a more significant cultural impact with mass media and a larger population. |
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Eternally Lost Zeppo
3rd Incarnation
The Lonely God
Posts: 246
Favourite Doctors: David Tennant, Matt Smith, Peter Davidson
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Post by Eternally Lost Zeppo on Apr 26, 2012 19:56:38 GMT
Well, it looks like I may get to run this one-shot after all. I'll be taking over GMing responsibilities from our Marvel X-Men GM for a week or two, depending on how long it takes to get through the plot. I'm going to be revamping the original idea slightly, because I'm supposed to try and tie it in to his 'multiverse crisis' plot. Also, I just felt the idea I had originally needed mixing up a little. Scenario: When people born on February 29th seem to vanish at midnight on March 1st 2011, the TARDIS crew track the disappearances to a bubble of 'abstract time': February 29th 2011. The bubble was created as a fallout shelter by the Time Lords during the War, and abandoned because humans born on February 29th tended to 'fall' through into the bubble. The crew arrive in the bubble to investigate, and find the world populated by Silurians who are in the process of migrating here from a parallel universe where they never went into hybernation, and who are using the 'stray humans' as slave labour. Something's very wrong though, these Silurians' technology is advanced - in a Victorian steampunk sort of way - but nowhere near as advanced as it would need to be to create a bridge from another universe, let alone locate and activate this time bubble. Behind the scenes, it seems the Master - posing as a benevolent advisor - has been guiding the Silurians, and is manipulating them for his own ends. But even the Master may not be who and what he appears to be... One potential side-plot involves a resistance force of Silurians loyal to Queen Vastra, who has been overthrown by the government for her pro-human sympathies, and her doubts about the mysterious Advisor. (P.S. cliffordjones, hope you don't mind me stealing your ideas as well.  ) |
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Post by cliffordjones on Apr 27, 2012 2:31:05 GMT
Hi ELZ, I've got my fingers crossed for you - hope you get to run your game this time. The Planet of the Silurians really is such a fantastic idea of yours, I'm only too happy to have some of my own thoughts about it incorporated into the revised version of the adventure The adventure reads like absolute classic Who - Invading 'aliens', enslaved humans, resistance fighters, the Master up to his old tricks. It sounds so cool - would love to read an actual play report. I also really like the idea of the Time Lords creating a temporal anomaly to use as a war bunker. |
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