(Escher) The Doctor Who Sessions
Jan 16, 2017 12:49:28 GMT
misterharry, Hedgewick, and 1 more like this
Post by Escher on Jan 16, 2017 12:49:28 GMT
I've been meaning to do something like this for some time. Recently I had the chance to start running a new game with my partner, duet style (Game master and one player). We had a shorter session previously, introducing her character with the current Doctor and getting her up to speed on how to play.
We ran a session yesterday evening and afterwards I wrote up a synopsis of play. She loved every moment of it (including using the Doctor Who Dice she bought me for Xmas!). After the Doctor's sacrifice at the end, I introduced a new Doctor, in the form of Toby Stephens (who she likes).
SEASON 1
Episode 1: Pippy (Mini Episode)
Starring:
Peter Capaldi as the Doctor
Julie Cox as Pippy Brown
Liz May Brice as Miss Scarlioni
Pippy Brown was working on contract for Spectrum Labs, an independent genetics research centre, when she met the Doctor after he intervened to stop a vile genetics experiment that was combining Dalek and human DNA. She was instrumental in saving the day by using the Doctor's Sonic Screwdriver to disengage the fail-safes in the lab. In the ensuing conflagration, the labs went up with a bang, along with Miss Scarlioni, her former employer and mastermind behind the experiments.
Leaving her without a job, the Doctor offered her adventure throughout time and space. How could a girl refuse?
Promising her a trip to ancient Egypt, she packed her bags and left...
Episode 2: The Gilded Cage
Starring:
Peter Capaldi as the Doctor
Julie Cox as Pippy Brown
Michael Gough (CGI) as The Celestial Toymaker / The Governor
and introducing Toby Stephens as The Doctor
Pippy wakes in a bed in the Governor's mansion, Jamaica, 1680 with no knowledge of who she is or why she's there. The Governor tells her she was found alive on the beach from a supposed shipwreck but none of it sounds or feels right. Her mind struggles to remember...
After being dressed by the servants, she joins him for a breakfast of fruit, along with a hearty glass of Rum Punch, which raises an eyebrow from the Governor.
Later that afternoon as she reclines on a chaise long close to the beach attended to by the Governor's servants, a man runs towards her in the distance from the mansion, pursued by servants who tackle him to the ground. She finds him oddly familiar. He is dragged back to the mansion and the Governor explains that he is the Librarian and that he was overcome with a yearning to venture outdoors.
Over dinner with the Governor that evening, and as his daughter Penelope plays harpsichord, he tells her that she is never to venture into his Library, and that it contains rare and priceless tomes, some even from the lost library of Alexandria -one of the eight ancient wonders of the world. After excusing himself and leaving the room, Pippy finds he has left an odd strangely gilded key wrapped in a handkerchief. As she touches it, it awakens something tugging in her mind, making her question the reality of the situation again. He returns for it suddenly and asks her menacingly if she touched the handkerchief. She lies and he appears to believe her.
As she sleeps that night, a voice in her mind forces her to remember who she is and how this all came to be. The Doctor's voice. She remembers everything...
Her meeting with the Doctor and Miss Scarlioni, the Dalek DNA, causing the lab to explode with the sonic screwdriver, her first travels with the Doctor to ancient Egypt, it's scented streets, burning brass braziers, the Pharaoh himself and carrying two plastic supermarket bags full of goodies back from the ancient city...
The planet Solitude, where she saw the singing crystal mountains and the lakes scented of Jasmine, and of the glowing shimmering multi-coloured nebula with the Doctor holding her ankle as she floated outside the TARDIS door in space.
Then, the Toymaker's voice inside their minds and the white void of his realm as he captured them and forced the Doctor to play a ten-tiered game of logic, with chess pieces of The Doctor, Pippy and dozens of his past companions and friends, the game which the Doctor lost.
They were both placed inside a doll house in which they would reside forever. Endlessly repeating the same events over and over...
When Pippy awakes the next morning, she remembers everything and sees the days events play out exactly as they did previously, but she sees the world around her for what it is: unreal. The servants are just toys, the house, just a prop.
However, this time over dinner, she hears the Doctor's voice in her mind again and he tells her to switch the key with something else in the handkerchief before the Toymaker returns. The key will open the Library in which he is trapped.
After the Toymaker leaves the room with the handkerchief, now containing a caviar scoop, Pippy sneaks out to the hallway and opens the Library door.
Inside, a corridor lined with impossibly high shelves of books stretches into infinity. She locks the door behind her and searches each aisle for the Doctor. Again, she hears his voice telling her not to accept this reality, but to define her own. She closes her eyes, brings all her strength of will to bear and walks forward only a few steps and then she is with the Doctor, having momentarily broken the power of The Toymaker's reality. The Timelord sits motionless, eyes closed, in a high-backed armchair. He telepathically urges her to place the key in the keyhole in a Chinese Puzzle Cube which is placed on his left palm, but there is no keyhole Pippy can see. In the distance she hears the library door open and the slow echoing footsteps of the Toymaker getting ominously closer.
Again, the Doctor tells her to concentrate and define her own reality. With their combined wills she succeeds and opens the box which unfolds revealing the TARDIS key, and the Doctor awakes. He explains there is only one way they can both survive and that is if he makes a deal with the Toymaker, who then arrives.
Using his powers of intellect and reason, he states that the Toymaker can take one of his regenerations if he lets them both leave.
The Toymaker refuses at first but then realises that he can still claim his victory by taking one of the Doctor's lives and allowing the Timelord to go free to play his game again in the future.
Agreeing, the Toymaker touches the Doctor and the life drains out of the Timelord's body.
The library fades, revealing the white void of the Toymaker's realm and the TARDIS just a few feet away .
As the Doctor and Pippy enter the TARDIS, the doors close and the Doctor falls, his TARDIS key clattering to the floor. He tells Pippy he's so sorry but he won't be able to see her again – not in this body. The TARDIS flees the Toymaker's realm instinctively and returns to our own universe.
The deathly-pale Doctor gets to his feet and says goodbye just as blinding hot energy erupts from his face and hands, and he regenerates.
Pippy sees an entirely new man standing there - younger, classically handsome, with intense eyes.
“Now then, were were we going? - and more to the point who are you?” he says a bit grumpily and then he collapses again.
NEXT TIME...
Game Stuff
Character created with the standard starting points.
Pippy Brown
Awareness 4 Coordination 3 Ingenuity 4 Presence 3 Resolve 4 Strength 2
TRAITS
Brave
Pippy is a tough cookie, full of gusto and pluck. She gets +2 bonus to any Resolve roll when she could get scared or need to show her courage.
Empathic
She has a gentle heart and cares about others. She gets a +2 bonus on any rolls when she is trying to empathise or read another person. This could be a simple Presence + Convince roll to reassure someone who’s panicking in the middle of a battle, or an Awareness + Ingenuity roll to try to read another’s actions and speech to see if they’re lying.
Inexperienced (Special)
Pippy is very inexperienced when it comes to adventuring through time and space. In return, her maximum Story Point pool is increased by 3.
Impaired Senses (Minor) Pippy suffers a -2 penalty to Awareness when trying to see without glasses or lenses.
SKILLS
Athletics 1, Convince 1, Craft 2, Fighting 1, Knowledge 3, Medicine 1, Science 3 (Genetics 5), Survival 1, Subterfuge 1 (2 after the session), Technology 1, Transport 1
STORY POINTS: 15
TECHNOLOGY LEVEL: 5 (Early 21st Century: 2017)
STUFF
• Mobile Phone
• Glasses
Pippy Brown was working on contract for Spectrum Labs, an independent genetics research centre, when she met the Doctor after he intervened to stop a genetics experiment that was combining Dalek and human DNA. She was instrumental in saving the day by using the Doctor's Sonic Screwdriver to disengage the failsafes in the lab. In the ensuing conflagration, her place of work went up with a bang, along with Miss Scarlioni, her former employer and mastermind behind the experiments. Leaving her without a job, the Doctor offered her adventure throughout time and space. How could a lady refuse?
After Session:
I explained that Pippy and The Doctor had been trapped in the Toymaker's realm for three months. The Doctor, being too strong-willed to be forced into a repetitive cycle or suffer amnesia, had been locked away in the 'Library' and it had taken him all this time to break free and then use his telepathy to contact Pippy and awaken her memories.
I also make a note she has visited Ancient Egypt (Tech Level 1) and even though it was fake, Colonial Jamaica in 1680 (Tech Level 3). I decide that when she satisfies an arbitrary level of Time Travel experience, to award her the Time Traveller Trait for those Tech Levels, free.
Pippy used the two experience points given from participating in two sessions to plausibly increase her Subterfuge from 1 to 2 after all her sneaking around, using the experience rules from the Primeval Core Rulebook on page 111 (Primeval uses the same Vortex rule set as the Doctor Who Roleplaying game).
We ran a session yesterday evening and afterwards I wrote up a synopsis of play. She loved every moment of it (including using the Doctor Who Dice she bought me for Xmas!). After the Doctor's sacrifice at the end, I introduced a new Doctor, in the form of Toby Stephens (who she likes).
SEASON 1
Episode 1: Pippy (Mini Episode)
Starring:
Peter Capaldi as the Doctor
Julie Cox as Pippy Brown
Liz May Brice as Miss Scarlioni
Pippy Brown was working on contract for Spectrum Labs, an independent genetics research centre, when she met the Doctor after he intervened to stop a vile genetics experiment that was combining Dalek and human DNA. She was instrumental in saving the day by using the Doctor's Sonic Screwdriver to disengage the fail-safes in the lab. In the ensuing conflagration, the labs went up with a bang, along with Miss Scarlioni, her former employer and mastermind behind the experiments.
Leaving her without a job, the Doctor offered her adventure throughout time and space. How could a girl refuse?
Promising her a trip to ancient Egypt, she packed her bags and left...
Episode 2: The Gilded Cage
Starring:
Peter Capaldi as the Doctor
Julie Cox as Pippy Brown
Michael Gough (CGI) as The Celestial Toymaker / The Governor
and introducing Toby Stephens as The Doctor
Pippy wakes in a bed in the Governor's mansion, Jamaica, 1680 with no knowledge of who she is or why she's there. The Governor tells her she was found alive on the beach from a supposed shipwreck but none of it sounds or feels right. Her mind struggles to remember...
After being dressed by the servants, she joins him for a breakfast of fruit, along with a hearty glass of Rum Punch, which raises an eyebrow from the Governor.
Later that afternoon as she reclines on a chaise long close to the beach attended to by the Governor's servants, a man runs towards her in the distance from the mansion, pursued by servants who tackle him to the ground. She finds him oddly familiar. He is dragged back to the mansion and the Governor explains that he is the Librarian and that he was overcome with a yearning to venture outdoors.
Over dinner with the Governor that evening, and as his daughter Penelope plays harpsichord, he tells her that she is never to venture into his Library, and that it contains rare and priceless tomes, some even from the lost library of Alexandria -one of the eight ancient wonders of the world. After excusing himself and leaving the room, Pippy finds he has left an odd strangely gilded key wrapped in a handkerchief. As she touches it, it awakens something tugging in her mind, making her question the reality of the situation again. He returns for it suddenly and asks her menacingly if she touched the handkerchief. She lies and he appears to believe her.
As she sleeps that night, a voice in her mind forces her to remember who she is and how this all came to be. The Doctor's voice. She remembers everything...
Her meeting with the Doctor and Miss Scarlioni, the Dalek DNA, causing the lab to explode with the sonic screwdriver, her first travels with the Doctor to ancient Egypt, it's scented streets, burning brass braziers, the Pharaoh himself and carrying two plastic supermarket bags full of goodies back from the ancient city...
The planet Solitude, where she saw the singing crystal mountains and the lakes scented of Jasmine, and of the glowing shimmering multi-coloured nebula with the Doctor holding her ankle as she floated outside the TARDIS door in space.
Then, the Toymaker's voice inside their minds and the white void of his realm as he captured them and forced the Doctor to play a ten-tiered game of logic, with chess pieces of The Doctor, Pippy and dozens of his past companions and friends, the game which the Doctor lost.
They were both placed inside a doll house in which they would reside forever. Endlessly repeating the same events over and over...
When Pippy awakes the next morning, she remembers everything and sees the days events play out exactly as they did previously, but she sees the world around her for what it is: unreal. The servants are just toys, the house, just a prop.
However, this time over dinner, she hears the Doctor's voice in her mind again and he tells her to switch the key with something else in the handkerchief before the Toymaker returns. The key will open the Library in which he is trapped.
After the Toymaker leaves the room with the handkerchief, now containing a caviar scoop, Pippy sneaks out to the hallway and opens the Library door.
Inside, a corridor lined with impossibly high shelves of books stretches into infinity. She locks the door behind her and searches each aisle for the Doctor. Again, she hears his voice telling her not to accept this reality, but to define her own. She closes her eyes, brings all her strength of will to bear and walks forward only a few steps and then she is with the Doctor, having momentarily broken the power of The Toymaker's reality. The Timelord sits motionless, eyes closed, in a high-backed armchair. He telepathically urges her to place the key in the keyhole in a Chinese Puzzle Cube which is placed on his left palm, but there is no keyhole Pippy can see. In the distance she hears the library door open and the slow echoing footsteps of the Toymaker getting ominously closer.
Again, the Doctor tells her to concentrate and define her own reality. With their combined wills she succeeds and opens the box which unfolds revealing the TARDIS key, and the Doctor awakes. He explains there is only one way they can both survive and that is if he makes a deal with the Toymaker, who then arrives.
Using his powers of intellect and reason, he states that the Toymaker can take one of his regenerations if he lets them both leave.
The Toymaker refuses at first but then realises that he can still claim his victory by taking one of the Doctor's lives and allowing the Timelord to go free to play his game again in the future.
Agreeing, the Toymaker touches the Doctor and the life drains out of the Timelord's body.
The library fades, revealing the white void of the Toymaker's realm and the TARDIS just a few feet away .
As the Doctor and Pippy enter the TARDIS, the doors close and the Doctor falls, his TARDIS key clattering to the floor. He tells Pippy he's so sorry but he won't be able to see her again – not in this body. The TARDIS flees the Toymaker's realm instinctively and returns to our own universe.
The deathly-pale Doctor gets to his feet and says goodbye just as blinding hot energy erupts from his face and hands, and he regenerates.
Pippy sees an entirely new man standing there - younger, classically handsome, with intense eyes.
“Now then, were were we going? - and more to the point who are you?” he says a bit grumpily and then he collapses again.
NEXT TIME...
Game Stuff
Character created with the standard starting points.
Pippy Brown
Awareness 4 Coordination 3 Ingenuity 4 Presence 3 Resolve 4 Strength 2
TRAITS
Brave
Pippy is a tough cookie, full of gusto and pluck. She gets +2 bonus to any Resolve roll when she could get scared or need to show her courage.
Empathic
She has a gentle heart and cares about others. She gets a +2 bonus on any rolls when she is trying to empathise or read another person. This could be a simple Presence + Convince roll to reassure someone who’s panicking in the middle of a battle, or an Awareness + Ingenuity roll to try to read another’s actions and speech to see if they’re lying.
Inexperienced (Special)
Pippy is very inexperienced when it comes to adventuring through time and space. In return, her maximum Story Point pool is increased by 3.
Impaired Senses (Minor) Pippy suffers a -2 penalty to Awareness when trying to see without glasses or lenses.
SKILLS
Athletics 1, Convince 1, Craft 2, Fighting 1, Knowledge 3, Medicine 1, Science 3 (Genetics 5), Survival 1, Subterfuge 1 (2 after the session), Technology 1, Transport 1
STORY POINTS: 15
TECHNOLOGY LEVEL: 5 (Early 21st Century: 2017)
STUFF
• Mobile Phone
• Glasses
Pippy Brown was working on contract for Spectrum Labs, an independent genetics research centre, when she met the Doctor after he intervened to stop a genetics experiment that was combining Dalek and human DNA. She was instrumental in saving the day by using the Doctor's Sonic Screwdriver to disengage the failsafes in the lab. In the ensuing conflagration, her place of work went up with a bang, along with Miss Scarlioni, her former employer and mastermind behind the experiments. Leaving her without a job, the Doctor offered her adventure throughout time and space. How could a lady refuse?
After Session:
I explained that Pippy and The Doctor had been trapped in the Toymaker's realm for three months. The Doctor, being too strong-willed to be forced into a repetitive cycle or suffer amnesia, had been locked away in the 'Library' and it had taken him all this time to break free and then use his telepathy to contact Pippy and awaken her memories.
I also make a note she has visited Ancient Egypt (Tech Level 1) and even though it was fake, Colonial Jamaica in 1680 (Tech Level 3). I decide that when she satisfies an arbitrary level of Time Travel experience, to award her the Time Traveller Trait for those Tech Levels, free.
Pippy used the two experience points given from participating in two sessions to plausibly increase her Subterfuge from 1 to 2 after all her sneaking around, using the experience rules from the Primeval Core Rulebook on page 111 (Primeval uses the same Vortex rule set as the Doctor Who Roleplaying game).