Comparisons with previous Dr Who RPG and Timelord?

[sorin777]

Sorry if this is a rehashed question, I poked around first and didn't see it mentioned.

I recently downloaded the freeware Timelords PDF, and am waiting to purchase AITAS until the new set comes out. That being said, I am curious as to what Timelord, as well as the first Dr Who game have to offer? Assuming the game mechanics are likely incompatible, the other games may still have fun story seeds. I am a casual gamer and wasn't into Who back then. (I stopped watching after Baker, not sure if the 80's doctors were even shown in the US?)

SO, your thoughts?

[imajica]

Don't have Timelord - but if it's freeware now that's going to change real fast - but I do have the FASA Who RPG. Mechanically speaking they're definitely incompatible. FASA's system was a strange one, even then. That being said, mining for ideas depends on which Doctor's era you're trying to emulate.

FASA was predominantly based on Tom Baker's time in the TARDIS, if memory serves, so you've got a lot of great story ideas for that sort of time. PCs are members of the "Celestial Intervention Agency", so you've another Time Lord organisation to work with. There's a good deal of stuff on equipment found within the TARDIS... It's a great read and you'll get plenty of ideas from it. If you can find it cheap on eBay, get it. If not, and you're after a copy, give me a shout and we'll come to an arrangement ;-)

[sorin777]

I'm not in an immediate hurry, but yeah I'd like to get my hands on the 80's game at least for a good read.

A quick google for Timelords RPG and you can actually find this in a number of places:

boardgamegeek.com/filepage/58702/time-lord-freeware-pdf-version

[Craig Oxbrow]

The FASA game has a number of standalone adventures, sometimes available through eBay and the like since they can't sell PDFs. Descriptions here. They reflect the classic series by being longer, intended to run for a few sessions.

Time Lord only has two official adventures, The Templar Throne with the print edition and Curse Of The Cyclops (originally presented in Doctor Who Magazine) with the online edition. Another adenture, Curse Of The Conqueror, originally for gaming magazines, is available here. The two unconnected "Curse" adventures would fit a session of three to four hours quite comfortably. (Throne was longer and rather slow-paced.) There's also a DWAITAS conversion guide here as the two systems are fairly close.

Neither of them have short adventure hooks, although they might both provide inspiration.

[Corone]

For me, the FASA version had all the RPG elements I wanted (supplements and adventures, solid production, lots of support etc) but it had no heart. They used a varient on their house system so it never really reflected Doctor Who.

Timelord on the other hand had loads of heart with skills like 'Scream' and 'Bench knock' but no supplements, adventures or even character creation.

I managed to track down a complete set of both games from E-bay,
it took a little while but not really that long at all.
However, while I might use the adventures from the FASA version I'll stick with DWAiTaS

[Stormcrow]

Time Lord has been available legally free on the Web for more than a decade. I wouldn't worry about it going away.

[Pertwee]

Time Lord was a game well ahead of its time. But thanks to non-existant marketing by Virgin Books, and misplacing it, due to its format, in the wrong place in bookstores, and only one mention of it in Doctor Who magazine, it was doomed to obscurity. But I played the heck out of it.

In fact, when I was working with Mongoose trying to get the license in the early 2000's (a long and arduous journey that bore no fruit) Time Lord was my inspiration for the game. I eventually handed those notes over to Dave Chapman when Cubicle 7 got the license and that is why traits like Bench Thumping and Screamer ended up in the new game (along with the Drama Die option and a lot of other bits and pieces).

Incidentally, everything you need to play the game, including the Ian Marsh approved expansion 'Time Lord Journies,' can be found here... www.torsononline.com/hobbies/timelord/main.htm

[thewarchief]

I agree with most of what's been said about FASA's Doctor Who RPG and about Timelord. The FASA RPG was Doctor Who shoehorned into a variation of their Star Trek system. The game had more of a Trek feel to it than a Doctor Who feel.

I wouldn't say the system was "mechanically incompatible" with DWaitas. Both systems used a 2D6 roll. The FASA system used an odd table for partial modifiers, but one can get reasonably useable stats for DWaitas by using the attribute and skill levels (the roman numeral values) at the attribute and skill values. FASA did use a 1-7 scale for everybody, so GMs would need to cap stats for humans at 6, and cap skills for everyone at 6 as well, but the results wouldn't bee too far off the mark.

The Timelord RPG as previously mentioned, has all the "heart"(s) that the FASA RPG lacked. It feels more like Doctor Who than the FASA game ever did. Timelord definitely deserved more attention that it got. It holds up fairly well to the new Doctor Who RPG.

[Pertwee]

Jan 16, 2014 16:06:31 GMT thewarchief said:

The FASA RPG was Doctor Who shoehorned into a variation of their Star Trek system. The game had more of a Trek feel to it than a Doctor Who feel.

Not just shoehorned, they lifted actual text from Star Trek and just changed a few words here and there to replace Trek references with Who references. It was clearly a rush job. I have both games and you can read them side by side and see the lifts.

That said, I had a lot of fun with FASA products in the 80's. FASA, along with GW, were the two largest collections in my gaming closet. I think, of all the FASA lines, I only passed on Earthdawn. Doctor Who was rough, and mechanically didn't fit the series all that well, but the way I ran it, we ditched the AP system and combat complications early on and ran it more free form with the Action Matrix, so at that point it was all down to the story and the way I ran the game. I'd say the only real problem with it after that was the character generation system created uber-companions and was totally unfit for creating a Victoria or Dodo. One of my friends created a GW style Space Marine with the basic system!

The adventure modules were pretty cool, though, and much more in the spirit of the show. In fact, I recently ran Countdown for a lot of 20 something college students last Summer as part of my 'Gaming through the Years' series. We played the adventure in three parts, changing out the systems and reinterpreting the characters for the new rules, while carrying on from where we left off the last session. In that way, they got to see the FASA system, the Time Lord systems and the DWAITAS system and compare how the mechanics drove the same story and the way the players interfaced with it in three different ways. They learned a lot and it was fun dusting off the old systems.

[thewarchief]

Yeah, they did cut & paste some of the text, and in some cases the results didn't really fit Doctor Who. Part of the problem, IMO, was that the guys at Simulations who wrote the Star Trek RPG for FASA were Star Trek fans, and were very familiar with Star Trek, but not necessarily Doctor Who fans, nor as familiar with Doctor Who. So while the former was a labor of love for them, the latter was more of a job.

But the Who version of the RPG did have a few wrinkles that the Star Trek game did not. Traits for one, Oh, and the melee weapons were much deadlier in the Doctor Who RPG. I think that the system's best feature was that it was an RPG specifically for Doctor Who at a time when there wasn't any other such RPGs.

I also had a lot of fun running the game. When I ran it, I didn't tell the players what RPG they were playing (I even modified the character sheets to hide the logo), and gave the players a lot of freedom on their character designs. I got a nice assortment of characters.

[Catsmate]

Jan 15, 2014 14:59:57 GMT Pertwee said:

Time Lord was a game well ahead of its time. But thanks to non-existant marketing by Virgin Books, and misplacing it, due to its format, in the wrong place in bookstores, and only one mention of it in Doctor Who magazine, it was doomed to obscurity. But I played the heck out of it.

This. TimeLord was rules light and aimed at fans, easy to pick up and play. However the marketing was awful.

The FASA system was (IMO) overly complicated and poorly optimised for Who. They also concentrated far more on their Trek franchise. That said a couple of their scenarios are excellent, though difficult to obtain (at least legally).

Of course there are a few other time travel RPG that are good to loot for ideas. The unofficial fan adaptions of Doctor Who for Storyteller and Unisystem are OK (the GURPS one is terrible). TimeRiders (ICE,for Spacemaster) is a favourite of mine, though one of it's core assumptions (time cannot be altered) doesn't fit with the Whoniverse. BRTC's Time Lords (at least the older version) has some potential, though it's more about parallel universe travel that straight time travel. Some of the Time Master scenarios have potential for adaption to Who.

[stahlman]

I agree with the comments about the heart of the FASA game and having played a lot of their Star Trek RPG when the Dr Who rules came out it did feel like they had just changed a few bits here and there ( adding the levels concept,putting in a matrix eg). However there were some very nice elements and a good range of adventures.
A couple of years ago I ran The Iytean menace adapted for DWAITAS with relative ease. The books are worth getting hold of.