Scenario Challenge

[olegrand]

Hi everybody!

I've just bought a Kindle book called "Doctor Who: Origins & Beyond". It contains a lot of interesting Who-stuff... including a lot of titles of "Lost Stories", episodes which were rejected by the BBC or planned but never finalized etc. As some of you may know, Big Finish has started a range of "Lost Stories" audiobooks, based on some of these never-filmed scripts... but I never suspected there had been so many.

The list below contains 80 such titles taken from the First to Sixth Doctor periods - some of them are very evocative, while others are quite cryptic... I've left out the ones which have already been (or will soon be) made into audiobooks by Big Finish (such as Leviathan or The Elite) as well as those which were a bit too generic to be inspiring (e.g. "Space Station", "The Automata" etc).

Let's see what beautiful, mad, Who-esque ideas we can cook up from these titles - just pick a title and get the creative engine working! I've grouped them into eight lists of ten titles each: if you really want to go completely random, roll 1D8, then 1D10...

The Living World
The New Armada
The White Witch
The Hands of Aten
The Big Store
The Hearsay Machine
The Heavy Scent of Violence
The Man from the Met
The Clock
The Evil Eye

The Herdsmen of Aquarius
The People who wouldn't remember
Britain 408 AD
The Dark Planet
Nothing at the End of the Lane
The Eye in Space
The Rosemariners
The Dream Spinner
The Aliens in the Blood
Bar Kochbar

The King's Bedtime Story
The New Machines
The Sleepwalkers
Twin World
The Mists of Madness
The Shadow People
The Cerebroids
The Spare Part People
The Mega
The Space War (aka "The Furies")

The Brain-Dead
The Shape of Terror
Multiface
The Prisoner of Time
The Angurth
The Mentor Conspiracy
The Dreamers of Phados
The Witch Lords
Erinella
Valley of the Lost

The Secret of Cassius
Avalon (aka "The Psychonauts")
Sealed Orders
The Beasts of Manzic
Child Prodigy
Fires of the Starmind
The Gaslight Murders
Into the Comet
The Lost Legion
Mark of Lumos

The Mendavy Fault
Mouth of Grath
Return to Sukannan
Shield of Zarak
The Silent Scream
Soldar and the Plastoids
The Tearing of the Veil
Hebos
The Enemy Within
The Torson Triumvirate

The Dogs of Darkness
The Psychron
Warmongers
The Zeldan
The SCI
Circus of Destiny
The House that Ur-Cjak built
The Nightmare Country
The Place where all Times meet
The Rogue TARDIS

The Romanoids
Way Down Yonder
League of the Tancreds
The Guardians of Prophecy
The First Sontarans
Dark Labyrinth
Doomwraiths
The Ghost Planet
Space Sargasso
Valley of Shadows

[garethl]

Hello Olegrand,

I'll have a go. I hope you don't mind that this is more of a new Who than a classic Who episode.

Into the Comet

Introduction: Earth, Near Future. The scientists in Houston are very excited. Today is the day that the Orpheus probe is scheduled to land and drill into the Denman-Stephenson Comet. The landing is successful and the drilling commences. The scientists are congratulating each other on this scientific milestone. The festivities are disturbed by the sound of alarms. The probe is descending rapidly ... too rapidly. They hear an unfamiliar whoosing sound and see a blue box materialise in Mission Control.

Things To Do: The probe has gone and Mission Control is losing signal. There are aliens inside the comet that are bent on destroying Earth and want to use the probe to find out where Earth is located exactly(see Antagonists).

Antagonists: The mole like aliens are practically blind and fly in rock ships. The rock ships block out most communications and the mole aliens try and be stealthy. They invade a planet, dig through it, rig it with explosives and use the blast to launch their ships back into space. They use ships the size of comets for scouts and shuttles.
There is a spy amongst the scientists. UNIT barges in to take the control away from the scientists when they find out about the aliens.

Action Scenes: The party could give a UNIT squad a ride to the inside of the comet and deal with the aliens.??Still a bit unsure what I should put here??

Visuals: Mission Control: a round chamber full of futuristic screens. The probe landing and drilling. UNIT barging in.

Problems: How to restore communication with the probe and/or prevent the aliens from finding Earth.

Things To Prepare For: A lot of NPCs that need to be fleshed out.

Continuing The Adventure: This comet was just a scout and it turns out the discovery of more Oort Cloud objects wasn't down to better telescopes but to a fleet entering the solar system.

I'm curious to see what the others come up with.

[misterharry]

Here's mine:

The Silent Scream

Introduction: A secret research base in 1950s America, with a project looking at developing psychic abilities for espionage and warfare. After years of little progress, a test subject is suddenly able to kill with a thought. The real source of this power is the Karvoral, an entity of pure mental energy from a plane of existence that cannot interact with the physical universe. The equipment in the experimental chamber created a link to the entity’s domain. It now possesses the psychic assassin and plans to spread itself throughout mankind, gaining control of new slaves through its psychic scream, starting with members of the base personnel to build up a gestalt hive-mind.

Things To Do: Firstly avoid being arrested for trespassing on a top secret installation! Witness the psychic assassin taking control of other subjects. Uncover a Soviet spy, who will try to kidnap the psychic. Discover what is really going on and work out a way to stop the Karvoral.

Antagonists: The base’s security staff (initially, at least). The Soviet spy. The psychic assassin and other enslaved humans. And finally, the Karvoral itself.

Action Scenes: A chase sequence shortly after the players’ arrival within the base. A psychic experiment goes wrong. The spy tries to kidnap the psychic. Attacked by the possessed humans’ “silent scream”. Finally, a showdown with the Karvoral – possibly a climactic sequence inside one of the player’s minds!

Visuals: 1950s style and fashion. The secret research base in the middle of nowhere – concrete bunkers and metal hangers. The circular experimental chamber: a reclining seat with restraints, connected to electronic aparatus, the whole thing surrounded by an observation deck. The mindscape for the final confrontation – a virtual world within somebody’s imagination.

Problems: Will the players just try to leave before they realise what’s going on? How will they convince the authorities to let them help? Will they be able to come up with a plan to confront the Karvoral?

Things To Prepare For: Who’s who in the base. What happens if a player is possessed? What clues and pointers do the players need? Work out how to handle a conflict inside somone's mind.

Continuing The Adventure: The authorities want to trap the Karvoral, to use its powers to develop a psychic army.

[starkllr]

I'll try one...

The Tearing of the Veil

Introduction Earth, mid-20th century to near future. Professor Bram claims to have made a stunning discovery - a device that brings the dead back to life, body and soul! And he's been using it, and from all appearances, it seems to really work.

Things to Do Investigate Professor Bram's claims. Track down some of the people he's brought back.

It turns out that he's not really raising the dead. What Professor Bram has unknowingly built is a device that, when supplied with the tiniest fragment of a person's DNA, tears open a portal to an alternate universe and brings that universe's duplicate of the person to this universe.

Anagonists Professor Bram, at least until/unless the PCs can convince him that his device isn't doing what he thinks it is, and is damaging the barriers between universes to boot. Some of the alternate unierse people, who might not want to go back. And their families, who don't want to lose their loved ones a second time.

Action Scenes Trying to shut down the machine before disaster strikes. Chasing alernate universe people who have made a run for it. Fighting government forces who want to seize the device for their own nefarious ends.

Visuals The machine in full, mad-scientistish glory. Folks zapping in and out from the alternate unierse.

Problems shutting down the machine. Repairing damage already done to the barriers between universes (probably using the TARDIS). Returning people back to the alternate universe.

Things to prepare for deciding which alternate universe to use. For a new series game, Pete's World is an obvious choice. For an old series game, the Inferno universe would also work. To complicate matters, there could be multiple alternate universes.

Continuing the adventure Professor Bram could have been helped by a "big bad" who's using these experiments for his/her own purposes (as Saxon/The Master was in The Lazarus Experiment), or just to cause trouble, or as a distraction from their own larger plans.

Returning the taken people to their proper universes could be an adventure in itself, as well.

[Craig Oxbrow]

8, 5

The First Sontarans
(Which apparently Big Finish are making, but never mind. And please note that all the following names, sides and circumstances of Sontaran history are made up by me, not taken from the extant script.)

Tracking a time fluctuation, the travellers land on a planet with a polluted but breathable-ish atmosphere and somewhat high gravity, in the ruins of a futuristic military base after a major battle. The Doctor only recognises the planet when they meet some of the locals - a rear guard who came to investigate the power signature of the TARDIS. Stout and heavily built, but of various heights and skin tones, some with sparse hair although most are bald. Sontarans - natural Sontarans, as diverse as you and I.

They're among the last supporters of the Council of Nations, smashed by the usurping Emperor Staa. It doesn't take long for the less shabby attack craft of the Emperor's forces to arrive. The Imperial troops are all squat, bald or shaven-headed, better equipped, and lead by a Commander who looks rather familiar...

Staa (who also looks a bit familiar) has seized control of a hospital ship run by Sontar's most brilliant geneticist, and he and his most loyal clan members are to be the first templates for an experiment in creating cloned shock troops...

Things To Do: Find the source of the time fluctuation - a renegade time traveller working to sabotage the cloning experiments and stop the rise of the Sontaran Empire. Be captured by the Imperial forces and brought before the Emperor, escape, witness the first clone being spawned...

Antagonists: Emperor Staa and his forces, rogue time travellers.

Action Scenes: Chases through laboratories, running battles on flying platforms, dodging laser blasts.

Visuals: Diverse Sontarans, young and old, male and female. Hover-battles above ruined futuristic cities. Giant bunkers. A slightly shabby Imperial Throne Room. Laboratories. And that first hand bursting out of a cloning vat and grasping at the sky.

Problems: The characters might be tempted to wreck the cloning process as well. This would cause a huge paradox, eliminating a "necessary evil" from the universe, so either remind them of this, show that the Sontarans are capable of good for their own reasons, point out that the saboteur's plans would be even worse, or keep them too busy to try it. If this is a major concern, perhaps you could bring in the rogue time traveller in a previous adventure, where the characters have to stop him undoing an act that is clearly good, so they'll be predisposed to oppose him.

Things To Prepare For: Take a look at the diversity of Sontarans - for a cloned race, they have some real outliers in some of the classic stories (look at Stike, he's enormous!) so you could put together a collection of distinctive Sontarans on both sides of the conflict. Find some suitable pictures of futuristic ruins and flying gunships as well.

Continuing The Adventure: While the rise of that first clone (an exact copy of Staa himself) is a major historical event, it's not the immediate end of the war. The characters could help natural Sontarans escape, ensuring the survival of the natural species. They could also pursue the time traveller, who has further plans to rewrite history to gain power for himself and his allies.

[Curufea]

1,9

The Clock
Somewhat inspired by an EscapePod story

Introduction: A very large human colony (Corialanus 4) is implementing a colony-wide network to co-ordinate all the robots, computers and the rosters of colonists. The day/night cycle of the planet is somewhat more random that the colonists like, as they have 2 suns giving alternate long and short days and 8 half-seasons. One of the engineers (Alex Bain) and one of the software programmers (Evelyn Sanders) for the project are horophiles (obsessed with clocks and time keeping) and proposed the project "NanoApp". All colonists personal electronic devices can have the app installed to access the network clock, all robots and computers can also have installed a synchronisation app. Each device that joins the system donates a small amount of computational power and communication which helps improve the overall accuracy of the clock.

Soon realising that as the app becomes more popular, the receiving and processing computer would not be able to handle the processing required, Bain upgrades the local computer hub to a quantum state core. Unfortunately the accuracy of the processing and the state fluctations of electron paths have had some time dilation effects in the local area, which randomly affect equipment that use the app when they synchronise with the I/O computer (Harvey). These effects can range from rapid aging to age regression to running through their programmed actions at a decellerated or accellerated rate, causing havok (e.g. if a robot harvest 3 acres in 5 minutes, the wheat will be moving at fast enough speeds to combust/explode)

Things to Do: Investigate the various problems at the colony which appear to be random and unrelated to each other, back-track to the source. Convince Bain & Sanders to turn off Harvey

Antagonists: Bain & Sanders, various robots/computers, random accidents

Action Scenes: Running from robots that are going by "this area was scanned as vacant" but are now too fast for scanning signals to halt. Several devices with apps synchronising at the same time causing cascading time dilations, so players need to either run from statis fields, or flee collapsing structures that have been time-eroded.

Visuals: Blur-fast robots and firey wheat fields, toddlers in suits, instant-ruin buildings

Problems: Turning off Harvey instantly saves every user of the app. The computer hub, howeve will have a massive time feedback, pulling itself into a time-loop. Players may workout before hand that whomever turns off Harvey, is basically committing suicide as they'll be stuck in the time-loop forever with the other computers. The only way out would be for a Time Lord inside with a Tardis (or equivalent equipment and energy source) to send a signal to a Time Lord outside that could be followed (just like Rassilon did in the end of Season 4 of the new series, with the Master).

Things To Prepare For: Make a list of interesting time effects that can occur on a large human colony near electronic equipment. Ideally these accidents should not be too blatently time, or app related as the players should not instantly realise what is going on.

Continuing The Adventure: The consequences of not being able time events will have immediate problems in the colony in the short term - especially in life-critical areas such as hospitals or any computer controlled vehicle. In the long term, the colony may develop aversions to time keeping depending on how the local media handles the situation. The players may sometime in the future work out how to save whomever sacrificed themselves in the time-loop as well, and come back and save them. This may be well after that person's lifetime though, so they may not have any friends or family left alive.

[cliffordjones]

Okay I rolled a 1 and a 4, so...

The Hands of Aten

Introduction: The Aten force is a living energy originally brought to Earth by the Osirians, who used it as a power source. At some point it became free to pursue its own agenda and promptly took possession of pharoah Amenhotep IV, who then became known as Akhenaten, “the living spirit of Aten”. Aten intended to live as an immortal god-king, inhabiting first the body of Amenhotep IV and then each of his male descendents, beginning with his son Tutankhamun. Aten was driven out of the body of Amenhotep IV by the priestesses of Hathor, aided by Queen Nefertiti. Hathor (a benevolent Osirian) revealed to them how they might construct a glass mirror within which Aten could be imprisoned indefinitely. This mirror, with the Aten force trapped inside it, was later entombed with Tutankhamun.

Jump forward to Summer of 1923. Six months earlier Howard Carter became the first person to step foot inside Tutankhamun’s tomb in several centuries. A few weeks ago his sponsor Lord Carnarvon died fuelling the popular notion of “the curse of the pharoahs”.

Peter Amoun is a Coptic Egyptian working for the Department of Antiquities and responsible for cataloguing finds at the Tutankhamun excavation site. He egotistically believes himself to be a direct descendent of the ancient pharoahs and it is this hubris that is the source of his undoing. The Aten force is able to psychically reach out to him, tempting him with whispered promises of immortal godhood, of infinite wealth and power. Seduced by these promises he smashes the mirror holding the Aten, releasing the alien energy force, which promptly takes possession of his body.

Things To Do: Amoun/Aten is motivated by the desire for wealth and power. He is currently focussed on stealing treasures from the Tutankhamun site (which he believes rightfully belong to him anyway). He has entered the tomb at night on two separate occasions, each time strangling an armed guard posted at the site. Attempts have been made to suppress news of these murders as the press would surely “have a field day”.

This is essentially a murder mystery. The Doctor and crew need to figure out what is going on. They will need to question NPCs. To discover information about the Aten they will need to examine artefacts (such as stone tablets inscribed with cryptic fragments) at the tomb site. They should be given the opportunity to discover remnants of the shattered glass mirror as this anachronism will undoubtedly perturb The Doctor.

Antagonists: Amoun/Aten is preternaturally strong and resilient enough to be considered effectively bulletproof. He is able to briefly mesmerize his victims by staring deeply into their eyes thus allowing him to get close enough to choke the life out of them with his terrible srength.

Amoun/Aten has recruited a few lackeys from amongst the less scrupulous locals with promises of ancient riches.

Action Scenes: The PCs chased through the moonlit Valley of the Kings by Amoun/Aten’s dagger-wielding minions.

Visuals: The Valley of the Kings. Interior of Tutankhamun’s tomb. The 1920s.

Problems: How to get access to Tutankhamun’s tomb. How to get information from people who are sick of talking to reporters. How to defeat the Aten.

Things To Prepare For: The seeding of clues so that the PCs can piece together what's going on.

The PCs might get stuck on how to defeat the Aten so include an NPC that can feed them helpful information. This is Maryam Shaarawi, a member of the secret occult order The Daughters of Heru. This order is descended from the priestesses of Hathor and is charged with, amongst other things, making sure that the Aten doesn’t return to the world. She will initially be secretive and unhelpful until the PCs can convince her that they are trustworthy.

FYI the Aten can be defeated by getting Amoun/Aten to look at his reflection in a mirror. The Aten force will then be drawn out of his body (it resembles a disc of bright white light) and will become imprisoned within the mirror.

Continuing The Adventure: The Daughters of Heru could easily reappear in any sort of occult conspiracy story. The benevolent Hathor, impressed by the PCs, might contact The Doctor for further assistance with some small matter.

[garethl]

The Enemy Within

After their latest adventure the crew wants to relax on Entera Prime, a luxurious resort and casino planet in the Priscian nebula. Of course not all is as it seems. The Doctor scans an unusual energy signature in the Hexagon Casino, which surprisingly looks like a big, golden hexagon. When the party investigates they will find out that the holographic entertainment suites have been malfunctioning. What has the Unlucky Gambler got to do with the situation? Can manager Numar P'operas be trusted?

Things To Do: Find the source of the energy signature - a computer virus turned sentient that is residing in the Hexagon's computer systems. Play with Investigate the malfunctioning holo suites.

Antagonists: Numar P'operas, the manager. He's not keen on people investigating the computer systems. The Unlucky Gambler, it doesn't matter what machine he plays, he'll lose... always. He doesn't seem to mind and the staff is happy to make sure he stays longer. He is actually a hacker who is trying to reprogram the sentient virus by giving it instructions via the gambling machines.

Action Scenes: Malfunctioning holo suites(think dinosaurs suddenly appearing on a pirate ship.) One of the characters could get into a high-stakes betting game with the local crime boss. The realisation that all of the computer systems might be compromised and that the buildings robot servants and the cybernetic implants of Numar turns against them.

Visuals: A giant golden hexagonal building, rows and rows of gambling machines, holo suites. A space Las Vegas!

Problems: Whenever their is a computer related problem, players will go to the basement and unplug it. The casino however will have an off-site redundant cloud back-up system. The virus will not be in the main computer but somewhere else and when the back-up comes online it could spread to the rest of Entera Prima. The players should remember that the Doctor values all life, including synthetic and they should find a way to save the virus.

Things To Prepare For: A map of the casino. Numar and the Unlucky Gambler.

Continuing The Adventure: The virus has got some information the Doctor would be very interested in, something about a lost Time Lord artefact in the hands of a private art collector.