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Post by olegrand on May 1, 2017 23:37:24 GMT
Awww, shucks! You have me blushing, Olegrand. That's awfully nice of you to say. Thanks so much. And inspiration works both ways! This sounds like a cracking episode. Perhaps the Dark Dimension described here should play a role in our own campaign... Well, you're welcome And indeed, you can never have too many Dark Dimensions
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Post by olegrand on May 5, 2017 22:26:18 GMT
To celebrate the recent regeneration of Lady Penelope (now in her sixth incarnation), here are the six faces chosen by the player since the start of our chronicle (now in its 11th season): The First Penelope (Jaime Murray) The Second Penelope (Cate Blanchett) The Third Penelope (Rachel Weisz) The Fourth Penelope (Miranda Otto) The Fifth Penelope (Janet Montgomery) The Sixth Penelope (Vanessa Kirby)
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Post by olegrand on May 8, 2017 6:39:30 GMT
The Sixth Lady's first adventure!
Episode 8: Spark of Genius Vienna, spring 1787. In the dazzling days of Mozart’s reign, the freshly-regenerated Lady Penelope meets those who live for music – and those who prey on their souls. Can the Time Lady protect a 16-year old Ludwig van Beethoven from the stealers of genius? And is there any hope left for those who have lost the irreplaceable? A battle of wits,allegro con anima.
It was a fantastic session in actual play. Everything fell into place at the right time - and yet the player's wonderful performance allowed me to add a whole extra, improvised dimension to the story, making it so much better than what it was on paper and giving it a deeper, almost existential scope. That's one of the greatest things about one-on-one rolegaming - when you get the feeling that you ARE simultaneously creating moments of shared, perfectly-flowing, synchronized creativity - OK, I'll stop getting lyrical now and get back to preparing Episode Nine.
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Post by Hedgewick on May 9, 2017 19:59:24 GMT
It was a fantastic session in actual play. Everything fell into place at the right time - and yet the player's wonderful performance allowed me to add a whole extra, improvised dimension to the story, making it so much better than what it was on paper and giving it a deeper, almost existential scope. That's one of the greatest things about one-on-one rolegaming - when you get the feeling that you ARE simultaneously creating moments of shared, perfectly-flowing, synchronized creativity - OK, I'll stop getting lyrical now and get back to preparing Episode Nine. This. This is why we roleplay. Roleplaying represents the potential for truly collaborative storytelling. At the best of times, the players are able to contribute to the narrative in ways that the game master never would have imagined. In the end, the story and its characters are something that belong to everyone at the table. This was an inspirational post, one that reaffirms why we're all so drawn to this unique medium. It's great to hear that Lady Penelope's Odyssey continues to achieve such heights.
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thereviewer
3rd Incarnation
Posts: 278
Favourite Doctors: Jodie Whittaker, Matt Smith, Peter Capaldi, David Tennant, Christopher Eccelston, John Hurt, Paul McGann, Sylvester McCoy, Peter Davison, Tom Baker, William Hartnell
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Post by thereviewer on May 9, 2017 22:48:23 GMT
olegrandI like the campaign you're running a lot. Interesting choices you have for your PC's Time Lady. Can I ask how they came about? Was there any discussions? The reason I ask is that I'm going to soon be running my friend's first adventure in which her PC Time Lady will regenerate in three more 'episodes.' I've already written up a topic for discussion on Time Lord/Time Lady's last words (See here: dwaitas.proboards.com/post/29060/thread) and I'm trying to get as much info as I can so that when the adventure finally arrives, I have the info I need to make this one a truly memorable, Season Finale styled adventure. Anyways, looking forward to hearing more about the stories of Lady Penelope. Perhaps even one day we can do a story where Kanya and her companions accidently land in Penelope's world or vice-versa. Best wishes!
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Post by olegrand on May 10, 2017 2:03:33 GMT
I like the campaign you're running a lot. Interesting choices you have for your PC's Time Lady. Can I ask how they came about? Was there any discussions? Well I actually based the campaign on a secret premise: that the player-character was, indeed, a Time Lady! When Sylvie created her character, all she knew was that we were going to try a solo campaign set in the Whoniverse but she believed the character she was creating was a human heroine. Right from the start, I knew she would discover her true, hidden heritage in the first two episodes - the idea was that she had grew up as a human being thanks to the 'magic' of the Chameleon Arch, hidden among modern-day humans by her true father (a long-dead Time Lord with a very rich history and some hidden agendas) so that his enemies (especially Penelope's real mother but I'll save all this backstory for another time) could neither harm her or try to use her against him. But this absent father had also devised a plan which would one day allow his daughter to claim her true heritage - her own "Time Lord lifeforce" (hidden, of course, in a fob watch)... and even her father's TARDIS (a box of full of secrets and mysteries, of course). So that was the secret plan I had in mind when we start discussing the profile of the character : I told Sylvie that her character would be a human from our times and that she probably had to devise a profile that would make her character something of an "adventurer", without specifying anything. She almost immediately came up with the following concept (which formed the basis of Penelope's mortal / purported identity): she was the daughter of a top-ranking, aristocratic, utterly British Torchwood agent, whose father had died heroically saving the world; an only child in a somewhat very unhappy marriage, she had trained during her childhood and adolescence in the hope of following one day in her father's footsteps, learning all sorts of stuff to eventually become some kind of 21st century Torchwood Emma Peel... except that when her father had died, she had realized she had never really wanted to be this. And so, while she remained extremely close to her father's best friend ("uncle Larry", a NPC who'd become very important early on but I'm digressing again), she had completely abandoned her "dreams of Torchwood" and chose the life of a slightly blasé (and actually very lonely) high society dilettante. In several ways, this aspect of the character is a bit reminiscent of the younger Silk Spectre character in Alan Moore's "Watchmen" - the whole "I've trained years for something I actually didn't really wish for" etc. All this came from Sylvie (who tends to love psychologically-complex characters with family relationships or what we might call a strong 'family element', even when said family is conspicuous by its absence etc.). At this stage, I was secreky beaming because her backstory actually provided me with plenty of elements on which I could nicely graft what I knew to be "the truth" (such as why, for instance, the Time Lord father had chosen a top-ranking Torchwood agent as her secret adoptive father etc.). (Incidental notes for DW continuity experts: Penelope's secret backstory is deeply rooted in my own take of the Arthurian age in the Whoniverse - one that was heavily inspired by "Battlefield" but does not completely correspond to it - think of it as an alternate universe version... later on, Penelope would discover that her true mother was actually... the Queen-Sorceress Morgana, but let's get back on track) So we started playing - and our two-part "pilot" could be summarized as: Penelope mysteriously finds herself thrown back in time at various eras by some mysterious force which seems to take her through an unfathomable quest of some sort, gathering elements of a mysterious necklace while being pursued by terrifying Hounds of Tindalos (think an extradimensional Wild Hunt) and trying not to go mad - this was, she was catapulted in 1966 London (meeting her human father as a young man and realizing some very important truths about him), then in 1890s London (meeting another of her ancestor, a famous victorian explorer whom Sylvie had mentioned as an important character in her family's history and Penelope's childhood musings) to eventually end up in the (normally tilme-locked but she wouldn't learn about all this later) reign of the historical King Arthur, with a very "dark ages" feel... and where she discovered that Stonehenge had had an extra stone back then and that this extra stone seemed to hold the secret of her "lost in time" predicament. And of course this stone was actually the TARDIS of her father. Waiting for her. Right from the start, I had decided that her TARDIS would be special (aren't they all) in that she would be 'inhabited' by a 'spirit', a ghost-in-the-machine which would actually pilot / steer the ship and with which Penelope would have to learn to interact - a "fully awakened TARDIS", you might say (and here again, this concept was developed over the whole campaign, with this "spirit", called Nim, having her own backstory etc. - to cut a long story short, she once was a Time Lord - Penelope's father's protégé but got her lifeforce drained from her and could only be preserved by her mentor in this disembodied state, becoming / merging with the very soul of the ship - and losing many memories in the process, at least at first but hey, I'm digressing again). So thanks to her ghost-piloted TARDIS, Penelope could at last get home - back to her time and to some serious conversations with "uncle Larry" (whom, she had gathered, definitely knew more) - and that's when the Big Revelation occurred - the gift of the long-kept fob watch, its opening... and Penelope's transformation from human being to Time Lady (actually, in DWAITAS jargon, she would qualify as a Neo-Time Lord but they hadn't coined that yet back then so we used to define her, at first, as a "hybrid Time Lord" or as "a Time Lord's child" etc.). The most wonderful aspect of this Moment of Revelation was that Sylvie hadn't really realized yet that her character was really a Time Lord - she had thought that the spirit of the ship had called her "Child of Time" as some kind of poetic licence" and she "simply' had received the wonderful opportunity to travel through space and time using this mysterious, long-lost Time Lord's ship as her own vehicle... I hadn't anticipated this - I thought that the 'revcelation' would become obvious BEFORE she opened the fob watch and that she would do it as a deliberate, "allons-y", 'let's get back my legacy" gesture. But she was so focused on all the stuff that had already happened to her character - and all the revelations & unanswered questions she still had (Why me? Why did this Time Lord guy involved my father in all this?) that she made it open the watch to see what would happen, believing more-or-less that the lifeforce of the mysterious Time Lord would emerge and, perhaps, reunite with his TARDIS or something like that. I'll never forget the look on her face when I started describing what was happening. A pure moment of roleplaying gold - and the start of our DW odyssey! (Sorry for the long post, I hope I haven't rambled too much - and if you have specific questions, don't hesitate to ask them This. This is why we roleplay. Roleplaying represents the potential for truly collaborative storytelling. At the best of times, the players are able to contribute to the narrative in ways that the game master never would have imagined. In the end, the story and its characters are something that belong to everyone at the table. This was an inspirational post, one that reaffirms why we're all so drawn to this unique medium. It's great to hear that Lady Penelope's Odyssey continues to achieve such heights. Thanks a lot, sir - and I wholeheartedly agree with you about the reasons why we roleplay (even after decades of the stuff, for old geezers like yours truly). Yes, this can be a unique medium - one that can give us lots of unique moments. An inspiring post? Well, this IS an inspiring forum, with some very inspiring people. Actually, it's probably one of the friendlier, more constructive and interesting RPG message boards around. There IS something special here, believe me. Flame wars seem nonexistent, rants are utterly rare and discussions are usually full of constructive advice, invaluable Whovian insight and freel-given fascinating ideas. Perhaps it's because Whovian fans are accustomed to entertain very different sensibilities in their midst (you know, Old Who, New Who, RTD vs. Moffat) - there is a spirit there... something unique, eh?
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thereviewer
3rd Incarnation
Posts: 278
Favourite Doctors: Jodie Whittaker, Matt Smith, Peter Capaldi, David Tennant, Christopher Eccelston, John Hurt, Paul McGann, Sylvester McCoy, Peter Davison, Tom Baker, William Hartnell
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Post by thereviewer on May 10, 2017 2:48:01 GMT
I like the campaign you're running a lot. Interesting choices you have for your PC's Time Lady. Can I ask how they came about? Was there any discussions? Well I actually based the campaign on a secret premise: that the player-character was, indeed, a Time Lady! When Sylvie created her character, all she knew was that we were going to try a solo campaign set in the Whoniverse but she believed the character she was creating was a human heroine. Right from the start, I knew she would discover her true, hidden heritage in the first two episodes - the idea was that she had grew up as a human being thanks to the 'magic' of the Chameleon Arch, hidden among modern-day humans by her true father (a long-dead Time Lord with a very rich history and some hidden agendas) so that his enemies (especially Penelope's real mother but I'll save all this backstory for another time) could neither harm her or try to use her against him. But this absent father had also devised a plan which would one day allow his daughter to claim her true heritage - her own "Time Lord lifeforce" (hidden, of course, in a fob watch)... and even her father's TARDIS (a box of full of secrets and mysteries, of course). So that was the secret plan I had in mind when we start discussing the profile of the character : I told Sylvie that her character would be a human from our times and that she probably had to devise a profile that would make her character something of an "adventurer", without specifying anything. She almost immediately came up with the following concept (which formed the basis of Penelope's mortal / purported identity): she was the daughter of a top-ranking, aristocratic, utterly British Torchwood agent, whose father had died heroically saving the world; an only child in a somewhat very unhappy marriage, she had trained during her childhood and adolescence in the hope of following one day in her father's footsteps, learning all sorts of stuff to eventually become some kind of 21st century Torchwood Emma Peel... except that when her father had died, she had realized she had never really wanted to be this. And so, while she remained extremely close to her father's best friend ("uncle Larry", a NPC who'd become very important early on but I'm digressing again), she had completely abandoned her "dreams of Torchwood" and chose the life of a slightly blasé (and actually very lonely) high society dilettante. In several ways, this aspect of the character is a bit reminiscent of the younger Silk Spectre character in Alan Moore's "Watchmen" - the whole "I've trained years for something I actually didn't really wish for" etc. All this came from Sylvie (who tends to love psychologically-complex characters with family relationships or what we might call a strong 'family element', even when said family is conspicuous by its absence etc.). At this stage, I was secreky beaming because her backstory actually provided me with plenty of elements on which I could nicely graft what I knew to be "the truth" (such as why, for instance, the Time Lord father had chosen a top-ranking Torchwood agent as her secret adoptive father etc.). (Incidental notes for DW continuity experts: Penelope's secret backstory is deeply rooted in my own take of the Arthurian age in the Whoniverse - one that was heavily inspired by "Battlefield" but does not completely correspond to it - think of it as an alternate universe version... later on, Penelope would discover that her true mother was actually... the Queen-Sorceress Morgana, but let's get back on track) So we started playing - and our two-part "pilot" could be summarized as: Penelope mysteriously finds herself thrown back in time at various eras by some mysterious force which seems to take her through an unfathomable quest of some sort, gathering elements of a mysterious necklace while being pursued by terrifying Hounds of Tindalos (think an extradimensional Wild Hunt) and trying not to go mad - this was, she was catapulted in 1966 London (meeting her human father as a young man and realizing some very important truths about him), then in 1890s London (meeting another of her ancestor, a famous victorian explorer whom Sylvie had mentioned as an important character in her family's history and Penelope's childhood musings) to eventually end up in the (normally tilme-locked but she wouldn't learn about all this later) reign of the historical King Arthur, with a very "dark ages" feel... and where she discovered that Stonehenge had had an extra stone back then and that this extra stone seemed to hold the secret of her "lost in time" predicament. And of course this stone was actually the TARDIS of her father. Waiting for her. Right from the start, I had decided that her TARDIS would be special (aren't they all) in that she would be 'inhabited' by a 'spirit', a ghost-in-the-machine which would actually pilot / steer the ship and with which Penelope would have to learn to interact - a "fully awakened TARDIS", you might say (and here again, this concept was developed over the whole campaign, with this "spirit", called Nim, having her own backstory etc. - to cut a long story short, she once was a Time Lord - Penelope's father's protégé but got her lifeforce drained from her and could only be preserved by her mentor in this disembodied state, becoming / merging with the very soul of the ship - and losing many memories in the process, at least at first but hey, I'm digressing again). So thanks to her ghost-piloted TARDIS, Penelope could at last get home - back to her time and to some serious conversations with "uncle Larry" (whom, she had gathered, definitely knew more) - and that's when the Big Revelation occurred - the gift of the long-kept fob watch, its opening... and Penelope's transformation from human being to Time Lady (actually, in DWAITAS jargon, she would qualify as a Neo-Time Lord but they hadn't coined that yet back then so we used to define her, at first, as a "hybrid Time Lord" or as "a Time Lord's child" etc.). The most wonderful aspect of this Moment of Revelation was that Sylvie hadn't really realized yet that her character was really a Time Lord - she had thought that the spirit of the ship had called her "Child of Time" as some kind of poetic licence" and she "simply' had received the wonderful opportunity to travel through space and time using this mysterious, long-lost Time Lord's ship as her own vehicle... I hadn't anticipated this - I thought that the 'revcelation' would become obvious BEFORE she opened the fob watch and that she would do it as a deliberate, "allons-y", 'let's get back my legacy" gesture. But she was so focused on all the stuff that had already happened to her character - and all the revelations & unanswered questions she still had (Why me? Why did this Time Lord guy involved my father in all this?) that she made it open the watch to see what would happen, believing more-or-less that the lifeforce of the mysterious Time Lord would emerge and, perhaps, reunite with his TARDIS or something like that. I'll never forget the look on her face when I started describing what was happening. A pure moment of roleplaying gold - and the start of our DW odyssey! (Sorry for the long post, I hope I haven't rambled too much - and if you have specific questions, don't hesitate to ask them This. This is why we roleplay. Roleplaying represents the potential for truly collaborative storytelling. At the best of times, the players are able to contribute to the narrative in ways that the game master never would have imagined. In the end, the story and its characters are something that belong to everyone at the table. This was an inspirational post, one that reaffirms why we're all so drawn to this unique medium. It's great to hear that Lady Penelope's Odyssey continues to achieve such heights. Thanks a lot, sir - and I wholeheartedly agree with you about the reasons why we roleplay (even after decades of the stuff, for old geezers like yours truly). Yes, this can be a unique medium - one that can give us lots of unique moments. An inspiring post? Well, this IS an inspiring forum, with some very inspiring people. Actually, it's probably one of the friendlier, more constructive and interesting RPG message boards around. There IS something special here, believe me. Flame wars seem nonexistent, rants are utterly rare and discussions are usually full of constructive advice, invaluable Whovian insight and freel-given fascinating ideas. Perhaps it's because Whovian fans are accustomed to entertain very different sensibilities in their midst (you know, Old Who, New Who, RTD vs. Moffat) - there is a spirit there... something unique, eh? (Takes out inhaler and takes a deep intake of air Osgood-Style) Wow. That is a lot of backstory! Funny enough, I do plan to have my player eventually have to face the Time War and I have a perfect end which'll lead into a sort-of 'temporary retirement' much like the show actually did before I bring it back with a 'Christmas Special' that uses elements very similar to your 'Pilot Episode' but also takes heavy inspiration from Total Recall with not only the question of is what's going on real or not, but also whether or not these memories can be believed. In many ways, now that I think about it, this special I wrote up also harkens back to Jackson Lake in The Next Doctor. But now I'M getting too far ahead of myself. Anyways, that's a very interesting backstory. I remember when I sat down with my friend who had never RP'd this game before (likewise, I'd never GM'd a game before this, though I had been a player for various games including two DWAITAS sessions at ReGeneration Who Conventions 1 and 2), but I gave her the option of running a story using one of the TV Characters, or an Original Gallifreyan Character for an RPG Treatment I'd written. She chose the second option and I asked her to come up with her character's backstory making sure she was Gallifreyan. She surprised me by choosing Archeologist, but I managed to work with what I had. To my surprise, she adapted quickly and reacted as her character would. In our own 'Pilot Episode' when she broke a human who'd been kept secretly on Gallifrey out, she stole her own TARDIS (this is going to pay off in the final three episodes to feature her first incarnation), she managed to escape the Transduction Barrier when it was lowered only to hear a knocking on the TARDIS door once she was light-years from home. Hearing a voice from outside asking to be let in, she was hesitant at first, but when the voice assured her that he had been sent by Lord President Romana (having her second incarnation's appearance, since it was the one in the animated Shada, and because I love that version and have personally had the honor of meeting the lovely Lalla Ward herself and getting a photo with her at the 50th Anniversary Convention in London back in 2013,) Kanya let the door open. To her surprise, it was a floating message cube with a bag tied to it. As the voice thanked her, she removed the bag and the cube attached itself the communications console as a holographic image appeared of a young gentlemen in a Wild Bill Hickok Costume, with long dark brown hair who introduced himself as "A Time Lord. But probably not the one you were expecting." My friend's face became a big grin since I'd been sharing some of my Classic Who DVD's and she'd been able to know more about Paul McGann's first outing. Look at me. Now I'M the one rambling. So yeah, many similarities with the experience. Although my question wasn't how did you decide on the PC Species, but rather what was the process behind choosing how the appearances changed over time with each regeneration. Like I said, I'm building up to this big finale and I'd like to know how you and your PC's decided on how the new appearance and personalities would be once you were ready to regenerate. Just so I can have experience. I've actually printed out some other British Actress photos so my friend has various choices to look at. Her current incarnation resembles herself in real-life, but I think she was looking at the possibility of having an incarnation with the appearance of Emma Watson at some point. Funny enough, some of my other suggestions are also some of the faces your Time Lady has. Perhaps if my player does choose one of Penelope's former (or even current) faces, and if we find the time, we could do a crossover campaign which sees Kanya crashing into Penelope's world or vice-versa (I did see mention on your blog that Gallifrey didn't survive in your story, whereas mine follows the TV Continuity or at least my idea of what happened between the TV Movie, Night of the Doctor, and all the bits and pieces we've seen before the End of the Time War, before we do the jump to the Modern Who Era. So that'd probably be the best way to do a crossover). So yeah, if you could give me some advice on how the various incarnations of Penelope's appearance were chosen, that'd be appreciated. Thanks!
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Post by olegrand on May 10, 2017 3:34:13 GMT
So yeah, many similarities with the experience. Although my question wasn't how did you decide on the PC Species, but rather what was the process behind choosing how the appearances changed over time with each regeneration. Like I said, I'm building up to this big finale and I'd like to know how you and your PC's decided on how the new appearance and personalities would be once you were ready to regenerate. Just so I can have experience. Ah, regenerations! We've developed a special way of handling it - it was improvised for the first one, which came at a surprise for me (it occurred at the end of the first season, when Lady Penelope decided to sacrifice herself on purpose to outwit an apparently unstoppable enemy - there was another way but obvioously the one Sylvie chose was so dramatic and climactic it made our first season finale even more worthwile) and then it became our "standard procedure". It works as follows: When regeneration occurs, I try to narrate the experience of the "change", with some echoes of recent (or, sometimes, older) memories etc. (flashback glimpses etc.) and then we take a 15-minute break. During this 15-minute break, Sylvie choses Penelope's new face. Sometimes she already has a clear idea in mind, sometimes we discuss possibilities, surfing the web for images of actresses in movies or series we've enjoyed etc. We usually end up with two or three candidates and then she must make the final choice before the end of the break. Then we resume play - in mpst cases, there isn't much left to play, since regeneration tends to take place during climactic or final scenes, but we always get at least one or two scenes to show the "waking up", the discovery, possible disorientation etc. Then, once the episode is over, usually the next day or so, we take some time to discuss the new incarnation and what little things could change in her outlook or personality - we've decided from the start that Penelope's personality would remain more constant than the Doctor's (it does seem to be the case of some Time Lord) but that there should be some quirks, tweaks and things making each incarnation unique (such as, for instance, her varying tastes in TEA or the Third Penelope's things for sophisticated hats or the Fourth Penelope's more 'warrior-like mentality' (owing to the fact that her regeneration had been caused by Fenric and that defeating him / it was now her driving goal) etc. We've found that the necessity to choose a new face within a very limited time is a very good way to emulate the "surprise" element of regeneration, while still giving the player enough creative control over the process - let's say it's a very good, RPG-specific approximation of the unique process of regeneration. If I had a group of players, though, I think I'd probably go for the "rotating Time Lord" approach, with each new regeneration being passed to a nesw player in the group - but solo campaigns obviously require special approaches (like my approach to Story points, which gives Sylvie a bigger reserve than what most Time Lords PCs have - 10 points BUT none of her allies, companions etc. receive any of them so that she must often give / devote / entrust Story points to people under her responsibility or protection. Even her TARDIS does NOT have its own Story points reserve so that any sort of special TARDIS trick etc. must be paid for by the player-character herself - the idea being that these Story points are actually Sylvie's rather than Penelope's (i.e. the player's resource, as opposed to the character's). On the whole, this may seem to make things easier for the PC but it's actually not the case: rather, it makes her the only active "heroic" force in the story, while avoiding any instance of using NPC companions as auxiliary pools of Story points and making things more dramatic in play) - ah, lost rambling in the vortex again...
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thereviewer
3rd Incarnation
Posts: 278
Favourite Doctors: Jodie Whittaker, Matt Smith, Peter Capaldi, David Tennant, Christopher Eccelston, John Hurt, Paul McGann, Sylvester McCoy, Peter Davison, Tom Baker, William Hartnell
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Post by thereviewer on May 10, 2017 11:55:00 GMT
Ah, regenerations! We've developed a special way of handling it - it was improvised for the first one, which came at a surprise for me (it occurred at the end of the first season, when Lady Penelope decided to sacrifice herself on purpose to outwit an apparently unstoppable enemy - there was another way but obvioously the one Sylvie chose was so dramatic and climactic it made our first season finale even more worthwile) and then it became our "standard procedure". It works as follows: When regeneration occurs, I try to narrate the experience of the "change", with some echoes of recent (or, sometimes, older) memories etc. (flashback glimpses etc.) and then we take a 15-minute break. During this 15-minute break, Sylvie choses Penelope's new face. Sometimes she already has a clear idea in mind, sometimes we discuss possibilities, surfing the web for images of actresses in movies or series we've enjoyed etc. We usually end up with two or three candidates and then she must make the final choice before the end of the break. Then we resume play - in mpst cases, there isn't much left to play, since regeneration tends to take place during climactic or final scenes, but we always get at least one or two scenes to show the "waking up", the discovery, possible disorientation etc. Then, once the episode is over, usually the next day or so, we take some time to discuss the new incarnation and what little things could change in her outlook or personality - we've decided from the start that Penelope's personality would remain more constant than the Doctor's (it does seem to be the case of some Time Lord) but that there should be some quirks, tweaks and things making each incarnation unique (such as, for instance, her varying tastes in TEA or the Third Penelope's things for sophisticated hats or the Fourth Penelope's more 'warrior-like mentality' (owing to the fact that her regeneration had been caused by Fenric and that defeating him / it was now her driving goal) etc. We've found that the necessity to choose a new face within a very limited time is a very good way to emulate the "surprise" element of regeneration, while still giving the player enough creative control over the process - let's say it's a very good, RPG-specific approximation of the unique process of regeneration. If I had a group of players, though, I think I'd probably go for the "rotating Time Lord" approach, with each new regeneration being passed to a nesw player in the group - but solo campaigns obviously require special approaches (like my approach to Story points, which gives Sylvie a bigger reserve than what most Time Lords PCs have - 10 points BUT none of her allies, companions etc. receive any of them so that she must often give / devote / entrust Story points to people under her responsibility or protection. Even her TARDIS does NOT have its own Story points reserve so that any sort of special TARDIS trick etc. must be paid for by the player-character herself - the idea being that these Story points are actually Sylvie's rather than Penelope's (i.e. the player's resource, as opposed to the character's). On the whole, this may seem to make things easier for the PC but it's actually not the case: rather, it makes her the only active "heroic" force in the story, while avoiding any instance of using NPC companions as auxiliary pools of Story points and making things more dramatic in play) - ah, lost rambling in the vortex again... olegrand, Thanks. This'll definitely come in handy. I know it might've been easier with more players, but seeing as this is a single-player campaign (unless you count me balancing GM while playing Kanya's companion, Murphy), I think discussing before regeneration works out well. One last thing I'll ask; do you have any memorable regeneration moments? Any great last words from Penelope before the change happened? If so, feel free to let me know in the link I provided here: dwaitas.proboards.com/post/29060/threadThanks again!
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Post by olegrand on May 21, 2017 7:44:06 GMT
Season 11, Episodes 9-10
Episode 9: Facing the Dragon Can the bonds of love and destiny survive and transcend regenerations? This question brings Lady Penelope back to the Otherworld of the Tanu to stand before her royal lover (and former enemy) King Fenn – only to find that the tormented monarch is about to face a mortal ordeal of his own, with the future of his kingdom hanging in the balance…
Episode 10: The Lost Abbey Suffolk, 1911. Lady Penelope teams up with psychic detective Everett Blake to investigate the ruins of a medieval abbey where two Cambridge men have mysteriously disappeared. What sinister pact did the Last Abbot of St-Waldred seal with forces better left undisturbed? A not-so-classic ghost story featuring Weeping Angels, Reapers and Montague Rhodes James…
Notes on Episode 9: This episode was entirely based on Sylvie's wish to have the newly-regenerated Penelope return to the character of King Fenn, who had played a major role in her previous incarnation. We had no preconceived idea of what would happen when they'd meet again face to face: would it result in a painful or friendly separation? In a continued or renewed relationship? In a somewhat unresolved situation? In the end, their bond was renewed yet changed - "regenerated" if you will and Penelope decided to spend three (unplayed) years without travelling in time - taking the "long path" for a short while...
Notes on Episode 10: I've been wanting to do a scenario with the great Montague Rhodes James as a NPC for AGES but could never quite find the proper way to do it, since involving MRJ in explicitly fantastic events (i.e. like Shakespeare in "The Shakespeare Code" or Charles Dickens in "The Unquiet Dead") would not have felt right, considering this author's well-known "reticence", to use a typically Jamesian term... But this episode gave me the perfect opportunity, since it was also the first one involving a new (occasional) player-character (the Edwardian psychic detective Everett Blake, played by our longtime friend Cyrille): this 'teamp-up' focus allowed me to use MRJ as a source of precious scholary information and (yes) "warnings to the curious", without actually confronting him to the menace (and then some) of the Weeping Angels - not to mention the Reapers and the decaying, half-immortal Last Abbot of St-Waldred. I also peppered the story with all sorts of Jamesian references - Cambridge academia, scholarly bits of church history, lonely ruins in the Suffolk landscape and a central villain bearing some deliberate resemblance to the typically Jamesian evils practitioners of the dark arts found in stories like "Number 13", "The Treasure of Abbot Thomas" or "Lost Hearts".
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thereviewer
3rd Incarnation
Posts: 278
Favourite Doctors: Jodie Whittaker, Matt Smith, Peter Capaldi, David Tennant, Christopher Eccelston, John Hurt, Paul McGann, Sylvester McCoy, Peter Davison, Tom Baker, William Hartnell
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Post by thereviewer on Jun 1, 2017 20:14:25 GMT
Season 11, Episodes 9-10
Episode 9: Facing the Dragon
Can the bonds of love and destiny survive and transcend regenerations? This question brings Lady Penelope back to the Otherworld of the Tanu to stand before her royal lover (and former enemy) King Fenn – only to find that the tormented monarch is about to face a mortal ordeal of his own, with the future of his kingdom hanging in the balance… Episode 10: The Lost AbbeySuffolk, 1911. Lady Penelope teams up with psychic detective Everett Blake to investigate the ruins of a medieval abbey where two Cambridge men have mysteriously disappeared. What sinister pact did the Last Abbot of St-Waldred seal with forces better left undisturbed? A not-so-classic ghost story featuring Weeping Angels, Reapers and Montague Rhodes James… Notes on Episode 9: This episode was entirely based on Sylvie's wish to have the newly-regenerated Penelope return to the character of King Fenn, who had played a major role in her previous incarnation. We had no preconceived idea of what would happen when they'd meet again face to face: would it result in a painful or friendly separation? In a continued or renewed relationship? In a somewhat unresolved situation? In the end, their bond was renewed yet changed - "regenerated" if you will and Penelope decided to spend three (unplayed) years without travelling in time - taking the "long path" for a short while...
Notes on Episode 10: I've been wanting to do a scenario with the great Montague Rhodes James as a NPC for AGES but could never quite find the proper way to do it, since involving MRJ in explicitly fantastic events (i.e. like Shakespeare in "The Shakespeare Code" or Charles Dickens in "The Unquiet Dead") would not have felt right, considering this author's well-known "reticence", to use a typically Jamesian term... But this episode gave me the perfect opportunity, since it was also the first one involving a new (occasional) player-character (the Edwardian psychic detective Everett Blake, played by our longtime friend Cyrille): this 'teamp-up' focus allowed me to use MRJ as a source of precious scholary information and (yes) "warnings to the curious", without actually confronting him to the menace (and then some) of the Weeping Angels - not to mention the Reapers and the decaying, half-immortal Last Abbot of St-Waldred. I also peppered the story with all sorts of Jamesian references - Cambridge academia, scholarly bits of church history, lonely ruins in the Suffolk landscape and a central villain bearing some deliberate resemblance to the typically Jamesian evils practitioners of the dark arts found in stories like "Number 13", "The Treasure of Abbot Thomas" or "Lost Hearts". Hi! Sorry I haven't posted here in a while. Real-life got in the way again, but fortunately I didn't disappear for another few years. Anyways, these sound like great adventures. Funny enough, as I listed in my post on the Adventures of Kanya a while back, the next adventure I have planned will also feature the Weeping Angels. They're one of the Moffat-era monsters I hope to still see whether on TV or in any of the expanded media after Moffat steps down. My adventure with them differs however since I noted how I was using more classic-era lingo despite having the Paternoster Gang make an appearance in our last adventure. Then I remembered that we already have Big Finish's Classic Doctors, New Monsters line so I figured I'd take a page from that and have a story where Kanya comes face-to-face with the Angles. It made sense since being a Time Lady Archeologist who grew up around the era of the Fifth Doctor, plus being an archeologist in general, she would only have heard stories and to come face-to-face with an angel, it made for the perfect way of storytelling. Which brought me to how I plan to use them. See, this isn't just a Weeping Angel Story, but it's also a Classic Cyberman Story featuring the 'Earthshock' Cybermen 'teaming-up' with Nazis in WWII to try and unearth a power source they detected to help them, you guessed it, take over everything. So it plays much like a classic Who episode but still has the new series elements such as the Angels. Add to that an Indiana Jones-styled subplot involving Nazis trying to get their hands on power that they don't understand completely, and you have probably my second favorite roleplaying adventure that I've written so far. There's also one other thing that'll be very familiar to Kanya (both the character and her player,) but I won't say what it is yet. I'll only say that it will mean that Kanya and her companion will have their hands full when we rejoin them. Anyways, sound like you're having a great time with this game. One more thing though; I mentioned that I was researching how to handle my PC's regeneration. I previously gave you a link to a post I'd made for people to share the last words of their Time Lord/Time Lady PC Characters before the change. Do you think you could help a fellow GM and give me some good ideas to help my PC in terms of final words that Penelope might've had before her regeneration? Here's the link again if you need it: dwaitas.proboards.com/post/29060/thread . Thanks! Keep up the good work!
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Post by olegrand on Jul 6, 2017 15:15:47 GMT
Our eleventh season approaches its conclusion with episodes 11 and 12. Not a two-parter - more like a diptych ("the Dark Diptych"?):
Episode 11: Shadow Play After a brief stay in Avalon, Lady Penelope must honour a sad appointment with history - the funeral of her dear old friend Sir Lawrence Stapleton, aka Uncle Larry, former director of Torchwood and her first-ever time travel companion. But in the corridors of power, a conspiracy is being hatched against the great man’s legacy and history is being manipulated by an invisible hand… A tale of hidden agendas, dark designs and unseen enemies.
Episode 12: Gaze of the Abyss Her hunt for the Millington Entity takes Penelope to the East End of London in 1896, where an all-too familiar monster has once again begun to walk the streets, sowing death and terror in its wake - but as the Time Lady well knows, Darkness comes in many shapes, not all of them faceless. As the Dark Dimension looms in, Time is, once again, of the essence.
Notes: So Who (or What) Was the Millington Entity, Anyway?
The Entity was the ultimate incarnation of a character whom Penelope had first met in Season 7 (in Episode 7.8: Darkness Ex Machina) back when she was battling the returned Fenric; she started life as Professor Andrea Millington, cold-hearted scientific genius, daughter to the Commander Millington from The Curse of Fenric) and one of the "Wolves of Fenric" chosen by their masters to engineer His Triumphant Return in various time periods (in this case, the 1990s). This dark design was foiled by Lady Penelope, whose interference caused a "big infernal device disaster" which left Professor Millington crippled - yes, this was, of course, a weird, cosmic (or meta-narrative?) wink at Dr. Judson's condition in Curse of Fenric.
Professor Millington returned in Episode 2 of Season 9 (set in 2015 or so) - now working as a scientific adviser for UNIT but with a sinister hidden agenda of her own (to keep things as brief as possible: get a new, healthy and potentially immortal body by stealing Penelope's life-force). At the end of this episode, Professor Millington was a prisoner of UNIT - a bit like the Master in the 1970s but at least she was still (biologically) human. She waited for the time of her revenge (and so did the game master)...
Shadow Play (see above) saw her return in a new role and condition (the mysterious "invisible hand" mentioned in the blurb), that of a psychic menace using the "bloodline network" of the Wolves of Fenric to manipulate events and engineer her own rebirth / apotheosis as a kind of successor to Fenric, a new entity tied to the entropic infinity of the Dark Dimension.
Luckily for the universe (and history as we know it), this plan was once again foiled by Lady Penelope, who had to pursue the disembodied Millington Entity in time, back to the 1890s, where she took possession of one of her ancestors, a time-sensitive working for Torchwood in the East End of London... and tried to awaken "the Wound", a dimensional rift which gave access (among other things) to the Dark Dimension and which had played a significant role in some of Penelope's early adventures (see The Shadow Below London, Episode 9 of our first season). Penelope could not save the possessed ancestor (who was pretty much doomed the moment the Millington Entity took possession of her) but managed to trap the nascent Fenric wannabe in a specially-crafted temporal stasis, where the dark, entropic energies of the Entity eventually devoured her own remaining psyche, reducing her to just another cloud of mindless Dark Energy...
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thereviewer
3rd Incarnation
Posts: 278
Favourite Doctors: Jodie Whittaker, Matt Smith, Peter Capaldi, David Tennant, Christopher Eccelston, John Hurt, Paul McGann, Sylvester McCoy, Peter Davison, Tom Baker, William Hartnell
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Post by thereviewer on Jul 6, 2017 21:32:36 GMT
Our eleventh season approaches its conclusion with episodes 11 and 12. Not a two-parter - more like a diptych ("the Dark Diptych"?): Episode 11: Shadow Play
After a brief stay in Avalon, Lady Penelope must honour a sad appointment with history - the funeral of her dear old friend Sir Lawrence Stapleton, aka Uncle Larry, former director of Torchwood and her first-ever time travel companion. But in the corridors of power, a conspiracy is being hatched against the great man’s legacy and history is being manipulated by an invisible hand… A tale of hidden agendas, dark designs and unseen enemies. Episode 12: Gaze of the Abyss
Her hunt for the Millington Entity takes Penelope to the East End of London in 1896, where an all-too familiar monster has once again begun to walk the streets, sowing death and terror in its wake - but as the Time Lady well knows, Darkness comes in many shapes, not all of them faceless. As the Dark Dimension looms in, Time is, once again, of the essence. Notes: So Who (or What) Was the Millington Entity, Anyway?
The Entity was the ultimate incarnation of a character whom Penelope had first met in Season 7 (in Episode 7.8: Darkness Ex Machina) back when she was battling the returned Fenric; she started life as Professor Andrea Millington, cold-hearted scientific genius, daughter to the Commander Millington from The Curse of Fenric) and one of the "Wolves of Fenric" chosen by their masters to engineer His Triumphant Return in various time periods (in this case, the 1990s). This dark design was foiled by Lady Penelope, whose interference caused a "big infernal device disaster" which left Professor Millington crippled - yes, this was, of course, a weird, cosmic (or meta-narrative?) wink at Dr. Judson's condition in Curse of Fenric. Professor Millington returned in Episode 2 of Season 9 (set in 2015 or so) - now working as a scientific adviser for UNIT but with a sinister hidden agenda of her own (to keep things as brief as possible: get a new, healthy and potentially immortal body by stealing Penelope's life-force). At the end of this episode, Professor Millington was a prisoner of UNIT - a bit like the Master in the 1970s but at least she was still (biologically) human. She waited for the time of her revenge (and so did the game master)... Shadow Play (see above) saw her return in a new role and condition (the mysterious "invisible hand" mentioned in the blurb), that of a psychic menace using the "bloodline network" of the Wolves of Fenric to manipulate events and engineer her own rebirth / apotheosis as a kind of successor to Fenric, a new entity tied to the entropic infinity of the Dark Dimension. Luckily for the universe (and history as we know it), this plan was once again foiled by Lady Penelope, who had to pursue the disembodied Millington Entity in time, back to the 1890s, where she took possession of one of her ancestors, a time-sensitive working for Torchwood in the East End of London... and tried to awaken "the Wound", a dimensional rift which gave access (among other things) to the Dark Dimension and which had played a significant role in some of Penelope's early adventures (see The Shadow Below London, Episode 9 of our first season). Penelope could not save the possessed ancestor (who was pretty much doomed the moment the Millington Entity took possession of her) but managed to trap the nascent Fenric wannabe in a specially-crafted temporal stasis, where the dark, entropic energies of the Entity eventually devoured her own remaining psyche, reducing her to just another cloud of mindless Dark Energy... Great to see you're back! Nice update and story using the Curse of Fenric to continue on from where that story left off. If you haven't seen it, I recently had my player's character, Kanya, regenerate for the first time. In that story, I did a sort-of follow-up to the 96 TV Movie by having Kanya face off against the Master who survived the events by storing himself deep within the Doctor's TARDIS and then transferring his essence over to Kanya's TARDIS when she met the Doctor (still in his Eighth Incarnation whilst traveling with Charlie Pollard,) where he continued to feed off of the TARDIS energy and eventually gained the powers to warp reality thanks to draining the energy. Kanya stopped him, but was forced to regenerate. I took some of the advice I learned from the forums here and had my player select a new appearance. Ultimately, she decided on Kanya's second incarnation resembling Emilia Clarke in a Game of Thrones-style look, but with a Scottish accent. Can't wait to see what's next for Penelope!
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Post by olegrand on Jul 15, 2017 12:15:36 GMT
Season 11 continues with another diptych-of-sorts - two different episodes set in 1911...
Episode 13: The Trouble with Jack 1911. Once again, Penelope takes a holiday in her beloved Weston-super-Mare, savouring the last days of summer. No alien invasion to fend off, no monstrous entities to battle, no eerie mysteries to investigate – just the sea, glorious sunsets, the pleasure of farniente and the quaint charm of Edwardian friendships. And then Jack Harkness had to show up…
Episode 14: Family Ghosts Following her seaside holiday, Lady Penelope reunites with Edwardian psychic detective Everett Blake, who finds himself at the center of a devious psychic trap involving a gothic ghost simulacrum, dark family secrets and the terrifying legacy of Jack the Ripper. Will he become the living instrument of the sleeping Lloigor waiting in the Shadow Below London?
Notes
Episode 14 saw the return of our “guest-star” Cyrille who plays Everett Blake, a character who might be described as a somewhat decadent Carnacki. From Everett’s viewpoint, it was a very personal story, involving many revelations about Everett’s family and a make-or-break psychic ordeal at the end; it also gave us the opportunity to expand the character’s background and sow the seed of his future occasional involvement in the campaign. From Penelope’s perspective, this story allowed me to retro-weave together various elements from previous stories – including the “Jack the Ripper” episode from our first season (“The Shadow Below London”, yes that was years and more than 100 episodes ago!), recurring tidbits of Torchwood history and stuff from the far more recent “Gaze of the Abyss” (two episodes ago!).
Having recurring guest stars in a Doctor Who campaign is a delightful challenge – but a challenge nonetheless, since it requires the establishment of what we might call a “secondary continuity” in order to create a satisfying serial feel for the guest player-character, without unbalancing (or making things too dependent on) the main continuity of the campaign. And with a time-travelling RPG, this can become quite tricky.
From past experience, I’ve found that the easiest way to handle this is to firmly anchor the guest character in a specific time period to which the time-travelling character can regularly return. Making the guest character an independent time-traveller with his own means of temporal transport might seem a good idea at first but is bound to create a somewhat frustrating imbalance between the two players – i.e. player A having all the fun and player B’s various temporal travels remaining mostly unplayed except when they happen to cross the path of player A’s adventures…
All in all, it’s a better deal to “root” or “ground” the guest character in a more stable temporal environment and personal background – but this also has its pitfalls: in this case, the GM will have to avoid making the player feel “stuck” in a static background, as if his character was “frozen in time” between adventures… but the trickiest aspect of it lies with the following simple question: “Well, since we’re so good at adventuring together, why don’t you just hop in the TARDIS and come with me to explore all space and time?” and its obvious reply: “Well, my character would really love to and has no real reason to refuse… except that I cannot play as regularly as you so it cannot happen, can it?”. The only way to avoid this kind of meta-gaming cul-de-sac is to provide very strong reasons for the guest character to remain in his time period – a demanding job or dependent NPCs might work but it’s far more satisfying to establish some kind of “ongoing mission” tied to some major aspect of the campaign world, such as membership in (or strong ties with) UNIT or Torchwood – after all, one of the original purposes of UNIT was to provide a satisfying excuse for the Third Doctor to remain grounded on Earth for many episodes – you know, defending the Earth and all that. In the case of Everett Blake, I chose involvement with Torchwood (or more precisely with its semi-rogue “Ghost Department” – perhaps one day I’ll tell you more about this) and the necessity to stand guard against an underlying psychic menace (namely the Lloigor).
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Post by olegrand on Jul 16, 2017 14:54:50 GMT
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Post by Hedgewick on Jul 18, 2017 20:24:16 GMT
Having recurring guest stars in a Doctor Who campaign is a delightful challenge – but a challenge nonetheless, since it requires the establishment of what we might call a “secondary continuity” in order to create a satisfying serial feel for the guest player-character, without unbalancing (or making things too dependent on) the main continuity of the campaign... This is an interesting dilemma, and you've offered some very helpful notes on running these kinds of adventures. Thank you! Certainly, Doctor Who offers plenty of precedent for recurring guest characters who inhabit a very specific time and place, from Jago and Litefoot to Jackie Tyler to the comic strip's Maxwell Edison. It can also add an interesting dimension to the character of the time traveling Time Lord--as suggested by your descriptions for these two episodes--if they have some personal or nostalgic connection to a specific place.
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Post by olegrand on Jul 31, 2017 10:21:08 GMT
So, here are the blurbs of the three final episodes of our eleventh season. You'll notice that I haven't numbered them: technically, they would be episodes 15 to 17 (making season 11 our longest season ever) but as explained in my previous post, I've decided to leave the "Everett Blake specials" out of the regular episode count, so yes, within this clarified continuity, the final episode would be episode 15 (not that it matters very much, but you know how obsessive us GMs can sometimes be). Coup de Théâtre: Stockholm, winter 1789. Indulging in her relish for 18th century fashion and culture, Lady (or, rather, “Mademoiselle”) Penelope has joined the prestigious Royal Dramatic Theatre, gracing the Swedish stage and gathering her fair share of curiosity from actors and aristocrats alike - until an equally unexpected and impossible visitor crosses her timeline. And so it begins… Tempus Ultimatum: Penelope finally manage to return to Avalon with Alecta, the impossibly reborn daughter of Rassilon – only to discover that Magnus has staged a coup in her absence and that the haven of the last Time Lords is now under martial law. But the regenerated War Chief is not interested in mere temporal power: he wants the Key to Time in order to fulfill his glorious vision… and rip Gallifrey out of the Time War, even at the cost of a cosmic cataclysm. Lives will be lost, sacrifices will be made, tears will be shed and nothing will ever be the same again. Gallifrey: Through the sacrifice of Magnus, and despite that of Mortimus, the impossible has happened. Gallifrey has finally returned to the continuum, extracted from the Time War at the very last Moment. It is now time for Lady Penelope, Alecta and a newly-regenerated (or is that “resurrected”?) Doctor to face the last Lords of Gallifrey and their supreme master Rassilon. Will the Key to Time restore balance to the universe one last time? As two Eyes of Harmony now face themselves in the vortex, a new future beckons – and nothing will ever be the same. Yes, the last two episodes brought Gallifrey back from the Time War, which will (of course) have a tremendous impact on the fictional reality of our campaign. Even though this return was the logical outcome of a series of events that occurred throughout the last two seasons, it was not a set-in-stone, automatic conclusion and could have been prevented with equally – if very different – interesting consequences… But as critical choices (and some critical dice rolls) were made, we simply followed the flow of the story as it unfolded, as we’ve always done…
The next-to-last episode also saw the terminal death of two long major Time Lord NPCs, namely Magnus (who succeeded in bringing Gallifrey back but was consumed by the energy of the Key to Time in the process) and Mortimus (who finally sacrificed his last regeneration in an attempt to stop Magnus), which was a very emotional event for Penelope. And during all this climactic madness, Magnus also had the Doctor killed, which should have been final (since, in our campaign, the Doctor was in his supposedly final incarnation)… but was brought back to life (another impossibility!) by the energy of the Key, to which the Doctor had previously attuned himself, along with Penelope, during their quest – an event which spanned the first tier of this season but which seems so far away now. Dramatically, this miraculous regeneration acted as a very nice coda to Penelope’s own earlier regeneration (which occurred approximately mid-season – a nice coincidence, if such things actually exist).
Very satisfyingly, the Key to Time (which Penelope and the Doctor had taken the first half of the season to retrieve and reassemble) was also the instrument of the final, climactic event of our very last episode, namely the definitive (?) banishment of Rassilon (who had become something of a quantum ghost, locked in a perpetual state of half-existence and ravenously hungry for artron and vital energy) to eternal oblivion. But the Key to Time is gone now and a new universe has begun…
P.S.: In case you were wondering, our Doctor now has the face of Bill Nighy (in “The Limehouse Golem”). Check it here:
culturebox.francetvinfo.fr/sites/default/files/filefield_paths/the_limouse_golem_a.jpg
Yes, he definitely looks very much like the First Doctor (but looks can be deceptive, can they?).
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Post by Hedgewick on Aug 1, 2017 14:24:44 GMT
...extracted from the Time War at the very last Moment.
I see what you did there. P.S.: In case you were wondering, our Doctor now has the face of Bill Nighy (in “The Limehouse Golem”). Check it here:
An excellent choice! I've always imagined a Nighy Doctor. He'd be wonderful.
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Post by olegrand on Aug 1, 2017 14:57:06 GMT
...extracted from the Time War at the very last Moment.
I see what you did there. Well-spotted, Sir! The underlying idea is that there are now "two" Gallifreys - one that exists in the real continuum and one that is caught forever in the Moment of its destruction, behind the supposedly impassable time lock of the Time War (echoes of Schroedinger's Cat here). I don't know yet whether or not that "Moment-locked ghost Gallifrey" ever plays a role in the forthcoming seasons of Lady Penelope's Odyssey... For now, the newly-returned Gallifrey will be enough to fuel a handful of episodes in each season! We should start Season 12 somewhere in November or early December.
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Post by olegrand on Jan 1, 2018 13:56:51 GMT
SHE'S BACK! So, 2018 kicks off with the first three episode blurbs from the twelfth season of Lady Penelope's Odyssey, starting with a triad of adventures in the 18th century... Episode 1: Cry of the Banshee1771. Answering a call for help from the time-sensitive Alicia Maddox, Lady Penelope returns to the Scottish highlands to investigate what is either a typical case of autosuggestion through superstition or a genuine menace from the Grey Dimension - but where exactly is the frontier between belief and reality? Perhaps the answer can be heard in the Cry of the Banshee… Episode 2: BritannicaIt’s still 1771 and Penelope is still in Scotland, but in another world entirely – in Edinburgh, at the hub of the Scottish Enlightenment. The first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica has just been completed, heralding an age of Reason, Learning and British grandeur - provided the Time Lady can save history from the sleep of reason and the madness of kings. Episode 3: The Art of Escapade Back in 1790 Sweden for the New Year royal ball, mademoiselle Penelope soon ends up trapped in the TARDIS of the mad Collector, along with the chevalier de Marigny, the mesmerist Hesselius and her theatrical rival Louise Saint-Rémy. Will the Time Lady manage to save them, herself and the entire Braxiatel Collection from her captor’s deadly ultimatum? Also see my DWAITAS blog entry for a few extra details on our new season's beginning... dwaitas.blogspot.fr/2018/01/a-new-year-and-new-season.htmlHappy new year (past, present or future)
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Post by olegrand on Jan 7, 2018 11:14:05 GMT
Our latest episode blurb, straight from yesterday evening! Episode 4: Heir Apparent
S’ral, the Throne Worls of the S’rax. 25 years ago, Prince Mordred sacrificed his life to help his half-sister Penelope to defeat the psychic, sun-eating ghost of their mother Morgana*. And now the Time Lady has returned to claim her rightful title of Empress and rule the Nine Worlds – or has she, indeed? Introducing the Dark Lady, Penelope’s own shadow nemesis… * This was back in Season 2, Episode 13… You can find some extra details (quite a few, actually) about Penelope's new nemesis on my blog: dwaitas.blogspot.fr/2018/01/season-12-episode-4.html
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Post by Null and Void on Jan 7, 2018 13:35:54 GMT
Our latest episode blurb, straight from yesterday evening! Episode 4: Heir Apparent
S’ral, the Throne Worls of the S’rax. 25 years ago, Prince Mordred sacrificed his life to help his half-sister Penelope to defeat the psychic, sun-eating ghost of their mother Morgana*. And now the Time Lady has returned to claim her rightful title of Empress and rule the Nine Worlds – or has she, indeed? Introducing the Dark Lady, Penelope’s own shadow nemesis… * This was back in Season 2, Episode 13… You can find some extra details (quite a few, actually) about Penelope's new nemesis on my blog: dwaitas.blogspot.fr/2018/01/season-12-episode-4.htmlYou have such interesting subtexts to your campaign, and very thoughtful main plots. Its quite intriguing, and I only wish my own players would delve into this side of things the way yours seem to... Very interesting indeed
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Post by olegrand on Jan 7, 2018 16:30:24 GMT
Our latest episode blurb, straight from yesterday evening! Episode 4: Heir Apparent You have such interesting subtexts to your campaign, and very thoughtful main plots. Its quite intriguing, and I only wish my own players would delve into this side of things the way yours seem to...
Very interesting indeed
Thanks Well, even in a game like DWAITAS Dr Who RPG, there are many different types of players, with different tastes and expectations and one of the specific advantages of one-on-one gaming is that you don't have to worry about "keeping everyone in the group interested" . Sylvie, Penelope's player, has always liked psychological, emotion-based plots (more than, say, purely investigative or action-oriented ones), with lots of interactions with NPCs, a focus on choices and their consequences etc. so when I laid the basic building blocks of the campaign (and every time we embark on a new season), I deliberately put these elements in the foreground, while other stuff takes a backseat. In many Doctor Who TV episodes, novels, audiobooks etc., the Doctor often comes up with a solution that involves some kind of technology / jiggery-pokery / science-based stuff - whereas in Lady Penelope's Odyssey, the solutions tend to be more decision-based or drama-oriented, in accordance with the character's style and way of dealing with problems (and her player's inclinations). In the end, that's just another way of achieving similar results.
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thereviewer
3rd Incarnation
Posts: 278
Favourite Doctors: Jodie Whittaker, Matt Smith, Peter Capaldi, David Tennant, Christopher Eccelston, John Hurt, Paul McGann, Sylvester McCoy, Peter Davison, Tom Baker, William Hartnell
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Post by thereviewer on Jan 7, 2018 19:26:41 GMT
Our latest episode blurb, straight from yesterday evening! Episode 4: Heir Apparent
S’ral, the Throne Worls of the S’rax. 25 years ago, Prince Mordred sacrificed his life to help his half-sister Penelope to defeat the psychic, sun-eating ghost of their mother Morgana*. And now the Time Lady has returned to claim her rightful title of Empress and rule the Nine Worlds – or has she, indeed? Introducing the Dark Lady, Penelope’s own shadow nemesis… * This was back in Season 2, Episode 13… You can find some extra details (quite a few, actually) about Penelope's new nemesis on my blog: dwaitas.blogspot.fr/2018/01/season-12-episode-4.htmlCool! I read the details and The Dark Lady sounds like an awesome nemesis for Lady Penelope! I don't know if this was by coincidence or not that you chose to have her take Penelope's Second Incarnation, but the fact that it is basically Cate Blanchett playing a 'Dark Villain Character,' is appreciated. Even if I find Thor: Ragnarok's popularity to be just as overrated as Nicklebacks'. Yeah, sorry, folks. I thought Thor: Ragnarok was waaaaaaaay to overhyped last year. Interestingly, I am planning a 'Dark Kanya' One-Shot. If you didn't see it, my player's Time Lady Character Kanya regenerated (this time into Miranda Otto ironically, but retaining the Scottish Accent), and has picked up a new companion. As a one-off adventure to shake things off, I'm doing a scenario set in a 'Mirror Whoniverse' of our campaign (I had this idea a while back with Castmate, but college got in the way and it hung in limbo for a while. Maybe I'll return with him to finish it). In the one-shot, eKanya and the evil version of her Cannonical Counterpart's companion, Cam (God, I love alliteration), go up against the eWhoniverse's version of the first evil Time Lord Canonical Kanya faced (who is the good Time Lord in this eWhoniverse.) It's basically letting my player play her character's Mirror Counterpart while in our regular game's canon, she and her canonical companion are discussing alternate universes which opens and ends the adventure. I'll let you know how that goes. We're taking a break for a while now though to try other activities for a while before we continue. Maybe we'll be back in a month or two.
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Post by olegrand on Jan 8, 2018 6:03:03 GMT
I don't know if this was by coincidence or not that you chose to have her take Penelope's Second Incarnation, but the fact that it is basically Cate Blanchett playing a 'Dark Villain Character,' is appreciated. Even if I find Thor: Ragnarok's popularity to be just as overrated as Nicklebacks'. Yeah, sorry, folks. I thought Thor: Ragnarok was waaaaaaaay to overhyped last year. Aha! You've exposed my cunning plan! It was indeed no coincidence but the spark that gave brth to the whole Dark Lady idea: as soon as I saw images of Cate Blanchett as Hela in "Ragnarok", I made a mental note: mmmh... this looks like a perfect evil version of Penelope 2 - I've GOT to do something along those lines!
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thereviewer
3rd Incarnation
Posts: 278
Favourite Doctors: Jodie Whittaker, Matt Smith, Peter Capaldi, David Tennant, Christopher Eccelston, John Hurt, Paul McGann, Sylvester McCoy, Peter Davison, Tom Baker, William Hartnell
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Post by thereviewer on Jan 8, 2018 12:51:41 GMT
I don't know if this was by coincidence or not that you chose to have her take Penelope's Second Incarnation, but the fact that it is basically Cate Blanchett playing a 'Dark Villain Character,' is appreciated. Even if I find Thor: Ragnarok's popularity to be just as overrated as Nicklebacks'. Yeah, sorry, folks. I thought Thor: Ragnarok was waaaaaaaay to overhyped last year. Aha! You've exposed my cunning plan! It was indeed no coincidence but the spark that gave brth to the whole Dark Lady idea: as soon as I saw images of Cate Blanchett as Hela in "Ragnarok", I made a mental note: mmmh... this looks like a perfect evil version of Penelope 2 - I've GOT to do something along those lines! Yeah. It is a shame though that while Taika Waititi claimed to be a "fan" (and I say that with heavy sarcasm) of these characters, to paraphrase a great man's quote to describe how Taika handled every character that appeared "Amazing. Every word of what he just said was wrong." Call me old-fashioned, but I can only stand taking artistic liberties so far before they stop resembling the characters these people are supposed to be, and start feeling like a poor-man's attempt at trying to "modernize" them. Also, this may just be because I watched Rick and Morty's Vindicators 3: Return of Worldender, but this does raise a good point of how lazy the writing was. If Hela's plan was to bring about the end of everything, why the hell didn't she just kill Thor after destroying his hammer right then and there? Think about it. If she did, Thor could still have that uninspired Gladiator story in Hell, and there'd be more weight to it because it would be about Thor trying to reclaim his life. Plus, it'd make sense for Hulk to be there, since his ship crashed ON EARTH. You could still have The Grandmaster show up being that he's a powerful deity, and Thor would be fighting not only to reclaim his life, but Banner's as well. Perhaps then the only way back to the world of the living is to Earth which sets up Thor going to Stephen Strange for advice. I mean, even Bane in the Dark Knight Rises made sure Bruce Wayne had his back broken before leaving him in the pit because he couldn't have possibly seen that Bruce would find the drive and strength to recover and escape the pit after Bruce stopped being Batman for so long. Hela's plan just fell on coincidence after coincidence that I'm honestly amazed she felt this was actually going to work. But I digress. Anyways, I thought I'd share my suggestion of how to run a 'Mirror Universe' adventure if ever in the future you wanted to shake things up a bit. I've always been a fan of the multiverse theory, and perhaps letting your characters play versions of themselves in a universe gone wrong would make a nice change of pace. It could really be like that episode of Star Trek: Enterprise with the two-parter set entirely in the Mirror Universe as if we were watching an episode from that reality, and have references to your main game in there, just like the Enterprise episode featured a sort-of Mini Sequel to The Tholian Web with the USS Defiant of the TOS Canonical Timeline being sent to the Mirror Universe of the past. I could easily see bits and pieces of your Dark Dimension having shifted things around from various realities. Another Trek Idea you could do that the recent IDW Ongoing Series has been highlighting in their most recent arc is a story featuring multiple Lady Penelope's from different universes converging in one place in time and space and having to figure out how to reverse it. You could have various alternate versions such as Male Penelope, Mirror Penelope, Cybernetic Penelope, Plant-Hybrid Penelope, and more with players filling out different versions of her working together. Just my thoughts.
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Post by olegrand on Jan 14, 2018 9:19:35 GMT
Hi everybody We had a terrific session yesteraday evening. Here's the blurb: Episode 5: The Cavern of KronosFor years, fans of Nightshade have tried to solve the mystery of Penny Smith, the never-seen-before, never-seen-after actress who co-starred along Edmund Trevithick in the final (and now lost) episode of the 1950s cult TV series. The truth (which is, of course, stranger than fiction) can now be revealed, in this tale of buried memories, phantom pains and secret lives. As for the previous episodes, more details about the whys & wherefores of this particular adventure can be found on my Journal of Impossible Things blog: dwaitas.blogspot.fr/2018/01/season-12-episode-5.html
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Post by olegrand on Feb 11, 2018 11:06:39 GMT
We played Episode 12.6 yesterday evening - a tribute to classic Torchwood! Episode 6: The Cardiff Syndrome2012: following the closure of the Cardiff Rift and the departure of Jack Harkness from Earth, Torchwood 3 was dismantled, its Hub closed and its Rift Manipulator disassembled. 2018: Everything Changes – again. The Rift has reopened and an ancient, unstoppable evil is rising from oblivion. Can Penelope and Gwen Cooper prevent the return of Abaddon the Devourer? As usual, you can find extra notes & details about this episode on my blog: dwaitas.blogspot.fr/2018/02/season-12-episode-6.html
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Post by olegrand on Feb 17, 2018 17:42:49 GMT
For once, I'll post some details about a scenario BEFORE running it (we start in less than 2 hours). So this is one of our "Everett Specials", special episodes where Lady Penelope teams up with another, occasional player-character (a bit like some kind of crossover with another - albeit nonplayed - series), psychic detective Everett Blake from the 1910s (who might be described as the decadent cousin of Carnacki the Ghostfinder). At the end of their latest encounter, they had decided that, the next time Lady Penelope would pop up in Everett's time-zone, she would take him to "the future" - say the extravagant 1980s, just to give him a taste of what the other end of the 20th century had in store in terms of Having Fun, Social Mores and Other Stuff (yes, the idea was to take Everett nightclubbing). And now this time has come.
So after a short 1912 prologue, the Time Lady and the Edwardian psychic investigator will find themselves nightclubbing in 1982 Covent Garden & Soho - I'm going for a strong new romantic / Blitz kids vibe here (with a proper period Soundtrack). In fact, I think the episode itself will be called "Fade to Grey", like the famous Visage song. Anyway, they'll soon stumble on some weird psychic phenomena which should logically bring them to befriend a young, Blitz-kid tranvestite named Miranda and investigate some mysterious events - young people who dreamed of becoming "the next Steve Strange" have disappeared, lured by false promises of quick fame and easy glory and their trail leads to the (fictional) Paradise Lost club in Soho.
There, our heroes will face... the Gods of Ragnarok, yes, the baddies from "Greatest Show in the Galaxy" (but I've rechristened them "the Gods of Twilight" to avoid any association / confusion with Norse myth, especially since I plan to use some Nose mythic elements in a forthcoming episode).
The plot itself (as opposed to the setting) is not very different from "Greatest Show (...)" but I've replaced the robot clowns with silent, grey psychic ghosts (hence the probable "fade to grey" title) and the head clown / main henchman with a Cabaret-like tuxedo-clad (and voice-stealing) lieutenant (who happens to be the official owner of the Paradise Lost club). No reflecting medallion either - but the PCs may be able to achieve similar results through the use of one of Everett's own mystical artefacts (an Egyptian Ankh which is actually an Osirian item of considerable power, as they're going to find out).
The main "roleplaying hooks" of the episode should be Everett's reaction to the "wonderful and strange future of 1982" (quite a tough one to play actually) and how the characterd will relate to Miranda (whom I have fashioned after the Marilyn character from the "Worried About the Boy" Boy George BBC biopic)
Anyway all this feels a bit "patchworky" (you know, various bits and pieces from here and there) and I hope the mix will work!
Alea Jacta Est and all that!
(For Everett's next appearance, I'll probably go for something more classic - at least on the surface - an Edwardian "haunted house" story with a twist, inspired by the excellent graphic series "The Alienist" from 2000 AD)
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Post by olegrand on Feb 20, 2018 11:21:02 GMT
Everett Blake Crossover 3: Fade to Grey
Lady Penelope takes Everett Blake seventy years forward to 1982 London to show him how people dress, dance and party in the future – well, at least that was the plan until the Time Lady and the Edwardian psychic investigator met a very special girl and the grey ghost hanging over her. Underneath the decadent Paradise Lost nightclub, something silent and sinister waits for the end of the world, preying on those who would do anything to be the next icon of the new romantic twilight. A tale of false promises, lost souls and stolen voices. So how did it go? Check my blog for some extra actual-play details, including a somewhat unexpected (but somewhat quite logical) consequence of this episode!
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