Post by comicbookhero on Mar 25, 2015 13:30:46 GMT
My friends and I are avid gamers and we all met playing Star Trek CCG. We were all kinda looking for something new to play so that STCCG didn't take up all of our time, and we came to the decision that an RPG would be an interesting change of pace. I and one of the other players are big into Doctor Who so we threw out the idea of DWAITAS and it was so well received that we got three of our other friends and even our two non-gamer wives interested! So now we have 6 players and myself as GM. It has been hard to nail a majority of people to a day to all get together though. That is why we have only played twice so far.
I threw a lot of the "big" choices at my group as I did not want to be one of those "you play it MY way" GM's. Maybe I should have been a little more strict at the start as you will see, but so far, it is working ok. I knew I wanted to play a campaign set after the Time War (since most of the other players have very little to no knowledge of classic Doctor Who) and I would prefer if we didn't use the Doctor (just so I could have the option of some crazy out-of-continuity stories if I need to do it). Everyone was cool with those stipulations, so they decided they wanted to play as a non-Doctor Time Lord and his companions. The character creation process was a bit of slog as we all are either very rusty at RPG's or have never played them. Making characters for the wives ended up being interesting to say the least. Also, one of our players was not sure how often he could show up so he wanted to take up an NPC for the days that he can be there. So here is what we came up with:
The friend who really wanted to play DWAITAS created a relatively inexperienced Time Lord who is very unattractive but has a strong moral code and is knowledgeable about a great many things. Two members of our group came up with a nervous scientist and his "subject," an amnesiac cyborg that was the product of a failed Cyber conversion during the Battle of Canary Wharf. My wife wanted "something funny," so we flipped through the sourcebooks and she instantly gravitated to K-9. "I want this, but let's make it a cat." I said that would be fine on two conditions, "you have to roleplay with the indifference and independence of a cat...and your name has to be Fe-9!" So far, Fe-9 has become a role she was born to play. Now my friend's wife has never played an RPG before, so I knew she would be hard to find a character for. She was looking through the books and just asked "can I be Rose?" Luckily for me, as soon as she said that, I realized how I could incorporate Rose into the campaign that I had already started writing and the mini "introduce the characters" story that I had prepared for that first night. I told her that would be fine so she just took the pre-rolled Rose stats from the LE Rulebook and we were off. The NPC I had in my back pocket for our other friend would show up as the villian near the end of our first night's adventure.
Now for the campaign. The basic concept of the campaign is in the setting. I've set the story after the events of The Day of The Doctor. Gallifrey is lost in another dimension, but what happened to any Time Lords on the other fronts of the war? Our Time Lord, the last survivor of a scout team, and the ship's robotic assistant were in the Vortex escaping from a heated battle with a group of Daleks. They were on their way back to Gallifrey when the planet disappeared. The force of that event reverberated through the Vortex, heavily damaging his TARDIS and hurling them toward Earth. He crashes, meets up with the scientist, the partial Cyberman, and a girl who seems to have appeared out of nowhere the same time his TARDIS did. The group realize something is wrong and that the TARDIS had an extra passenger stuck to the hull as well...one of the attacking Daleks! The group is able to dispatch the Dalek and realize that whatever happened was so powerful that it ripped Rose out of "Pete's World" and deposited her here. They decide that they will travel together to gather what they need to repair the TARDIS so they can get this girl back home.
Between this evening and the next, my NPC player thought that everyone was having so much fun that he actually wanted his own character as well. Again, luckily for me, I had planned for this contingency and knew that the NPC I made for him for the next adventure would be a character that he would love to continue playing.
Our second adventure was a quest for the first part that the TARDIS needs to fully repair itself, the clearest mirrors in the galaxy in order to contain the energy in the engines. The group found themselves on a giant space station bazaar orbiting the planet where the mirrors are manufactured, but the planet's entire current stock has been bought by a group of Sontarrans on the station. After being detained by the Sontarrans, the group finds out that the Sontarrans are using the mirrors to build cages for Weeping Angels that they intend to launch on Rutan planets as WMD's. The group end up foiling the Sontarran plans with the help of bungling Sontarran underling who ended up joining the group.
I am planning for the story to continue with questing for the needed parts to rebuild the TARDIS, but I have laid seeds for some MAJOR shakeups if I need to employ them. I am going to continue to feel out the group, and if I think they can handle it, I have a huge plot twist that I can throw at them down the road.
I threw a lot of the "big" choices at my group as I did not want to be one of those "you play it MY way" GM's. Maybe I should have been a little more strict at the start as you will see, but so far, it is working ok. I knew I wanted to play a campaign set after the Time War (since most of the other players have very little to no knowledge of classic Doctor Who) and I would prefer if we didn't use the Doctor (just so I could have the option of some crazy out-of-continuity stories if I need to do it). Everyone was cool with those stipulations, so they decided they wanted to play as a non-Doctor Time Lord and his companions. The character creation process was a bit of slog as we all are either very rusty at RPG's or have never played them. Making characters for the wives ended up being interesting to say the least. Also, one of our players was not sure how often he could show up so he wanted to take up an NPC for the days that he can be there. So here is what we came up with:
The friend who really wanted to play DWAITAS created a relatively inexperienced Time Lord who is very unattractive but has a strong moral code and is knowledgeable about a great many things. Two members of our group came up with a nervous scientist and his "subject," an amnesiac cyborg that was the product of a failed Cyber conversion during the Battle of Canary Wharf. My wife wanted "something funny," so we flipped through the sourcebooks and she instantly gravitated to K-9. "I want this, but let's make it a cat." I said that would be fine on two conditions, "you have to roleplay with the indifference and independence of a cat...and your name has to be Fe-9!" So far, Fe-9 has become a role she was born to play. Now my friend's wife has never played an RPG before, so I knew she would be hard to find a character for. She was looking through the books and just asked "can I be Rose?" Luckily for me, as soon as she said that, I realized how I could incorporate Rose into the campaign that I had already started writing and the mini "introduce the characters" story that I had prepared for that first night. I told her that would be fine so she just took the pre-rolled Rose stats from the LE Rulebook and we were off. The NPC I had in my back pocket for our other friend would show up as the villian near the end of our first night's adventure.
Now for the campaign. The basic concept of the campaign is in the setting. I've set the story after the events of The Day of The Doctor. Gallifrey is lost in another dimension, but what happened to any Time Lords on the other fronts of the war? Our Time Lord, the last survivor of a scout team, and the ship's robotic assistant were in the Vortex escaping from a heated battle with a group of Daleks. They were on their way back to Gallifrey when the planet disappeared. The force of that event reverberated through the Vortex, heavily damaging his TARDIS and hurling them toward Earth. He crashes, meets up with the scientist, the partial Cyberman, and a girl who seems to have appeared out of nowhere the same time his TARDIS did. The group realize something is wrong and that the TARDIS had an extra passenger stuck to the hull as well...one of the attacking Daleks! The group is able to dispatch the Dalek and realize that whatever happened was so powerful that it ripped Rose out of "Pete's World" and deposited her here. They decide that they will travel together to gather what they need to repair the TARDIS so they can get this girl back home.
Between this evening and the next, my NPC player thought that everyone was having so much fun that he actually wanted his own character as well. Again, luckily for me, I had planned for this contingency and knew that the NPC I made for him for the next adventure would be a character that he would love to continue playing.
Our second adventure was a quest for the first part that the TARDIS needs to fully repair itself, the clearest mirrors in the galaxy in order to contain the energy in the engines. The group found themselves on a giant space station bazaar orbiting the planet where the mirrors are manufactured, but the planet's entire current stock has been bought by a group of Sontarrans on the station. After being detained by the Sontarrans, the group finds out that the Sontarrans are using the mirrors to build cages for Weeping Angels that they intend to launch on Rutan planets as WMD's. The group end up foiling the Sontarran plans with the help of bungling Sontarran underling who ended up joining the group.
I am planning for the story to continue with questing for the needed parts to rebuild the TARDIS, but I have laid seeds for some MAJOR shakeups if I need to employ them. I am going to continue to feel out the group, and if I think they can handle it, I have a huge plot twist that I can throw at them down the road.
I have a vision of a Time Lord with a bag of bacon treats in his pocket and needing to bribe the cat to get it to help.
I like it! Clever use of the Weeping Angels and what campaign can't be improved by adding a comically inept Sontaran.
