Post by covok on Dec 25, 2023 18:24:30 GMT
I ran a campaign last year using the 1st Edition of Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space. The campaign was a 9th Doctor Campaign, but with a twist. I said everything that occurred prior to NuWho occured, but we would be starting fresh from the end of the Time War. They were free to make an original Doctor and Companions. Only two people joined so we ended up with one Doctor and one Companion.
The first new Doctor was a woman. My player was an artist and drew her. This is what she drew below.
The companion was an American expat living in London who was exploring a "haunted house" with her friend. The Doctor had landed in her basement after the events of "Day of the Doctor" and has just recently regenerated. Confused and not sure what was going on, the dazed Time Lord wasn't much use as the Companion's friend was seemingly "eaten" by the house. After a few threatening phone calls and running into the Doctor doing odd investigations, they discovered the house was infested with "living mold" that had evolved to sapience as a result of the TARDIS landing there, damaged, and releasing artron energy into the home. They ultimately stopped it by regressing it back to non-sapience by using the TARDIS' dashboard. Which is something it actually wanted as it saw existence as pain.
After working well together, they began going on adventures. We had a few:
Fangs In The Night
Based on the actual story of the first Chupacabra sighting (which is believed to be the result of a Puerto Rican woman seeing the moving 'Species' and then thinking there were aliens in her backyard), they arrive in San Juan in the 50s (?) and end up finding out the island has been secretly infested by a race of vampire-like creatures. They've been feeding on townsfolk and their livestock. After a thrilling chase on a truck, they confront the creatures and discover they're sick. The vampire like state is basically a genetic infection and they regret their actions. The Doctor is going to kill them to put them out of their misery, but the Companion convinces her to spare them and put them in stasis for a cure to be found. This does come back later.
A House Divided By Itself
Arriving on an ice world, they are surprised to see the distress signal is coming from a Cyberman...working with humans. Due to an error in a batch of Cyberman's emotional inhibitor chips, a generation of Cyberman were created with their emotions only partially inhibited. This group of Cyberman don't want to forcibly convert people, only the willing, to their cause. As such, they have allied with the remaining humans against the rest of the Cyberman who want to "correct" them and convert all humans. This episode also followed up on a hint of "another Time Lord" from the previous adventure: the companion gets split up and finds what she assumes is another incarnation of the Doctor. However, this incarnation, while considering himself The Doctor, is violent and cruel, scaring the Companion. Eventually, The Doctor reunites with their companion without seeing the other Doctor and the companion is too afraid to bring it up, now weary of The Doctor. They find a way to use a virus to scare off the Cyberman and save the colony, who vow to make a new, better union.
The Mothman Prophecy
Arriving in America, the TARDIS is reacting to a massive paradox that is causing issues in West Virginia. Working with the guy who wrote the mothman prophecy (whose name I can't remember), they discover the paradox is centered on this new factory that has been pumping out state of the art technology. It turns out that the owner is a time agent who went rogue and is selling advanced tech to the people to make a killing. This attracted Reapers, who've come to deal with the paradox of mankind's future influencing its own past. These Reapers, of course, had been mistaken for the Mothman. Fighting them off, they eventually manage to fix the problem...somehow. I actually forgot how they solved this one. I have a recording of it I could check later, but they do and the paradox resolves itself before the entire city is eaten.
D-Net
Returning to the present for a break, Ana Gideon, the companion, finds out there is a new social media app, called "D-Net", which has taken the world by storm. It has come with a rise in right-wing violence worldwide and has been highly controversial. The Doctor takes a look and notices the algorithm running the site seems to be psychically checking people's minds and only showing them news that would radicalize them into fascists. It doesn't make you fascists, but it checks who you are and tries to see what news could eventually break you and make you one, playing on humanity's own inner evils. Investigating D-Net, the Doctor finds "The Sole Dalek," the only Dalek who survived The Time War. Aware the Daleks are gone, The Sole Dalek has tried to convert mankind into the new Dalek race, seeing potential in mankind's history of violence and hate. Kidnapping the Doctor, the Dalek amplifies D-Net using the Time Lord's brain to unlock every dark impulse and cause a world-wide riot. Saved by her companion, the two overcome the device by admitting their love for each other, which sends a different psyhic message out that overrides the hate and undoes the damage. Vowing revenge, The Sole Dalek escapes in time. Coincidentally, this is when the women playing the Doctor and her companion started dating, which they still are.
With everything fixed, there is no rest as UNIT arrives and informs them that something has gone wrong in America...something related to the The Time Lords.
The Master Plan
With UNIT's help, they discover America had allied with "The Other Doctor." I didn't get into it, but they did eventually talk about it, the Doctor and her companion. Basically, they reached an understanding about it. Well, this Other Doctor has been calling himself "The Valyard" and has promised the American government immortality. Apparently, he had escaped into The Time War and taken from it a massive Artron battery, promising to make mankind the new race of Time Lords by imparting them with the Rassilion Imperative. UNIT discovered this when an American solider..."regenerated." Sort of, the problem is they just kind of burned out, not able to handle the energy. Invading the American military base to stop The Valyard. This is where the Chupacabras come back in since they end up unleashing them to drain the artifically put in Artron energy from the soldiers, which ironically both cures the vampirsm and saves the American soldiers. Confronting the Valyard, the details are foggy, but he gets shot and killed and begins regenerating. This is when his mind gets more confused as he regenerated into Tenant and reveals that he was the Master, even if he didn't know it. Essentially, The Master infected the Doctor during the Trial to steal a regeneration from him -- informed in advance of the Time War by the Valyard -- which is what created the Valyard, a merger of the Doctor and the Master that used up one the Doctor's regeneration. All killing him did was burn out the Doctor's part and just leave the Master. Who then escapes into Time and leaves the dying Doctor to regenerate into her next incarnation.
Afterwards, Ana decides to stay in her time -- tired of the events and not sure who this new Doctor is -- and the new Doctor goes off for a new companion.
Through The Looking Glass
My players swapped roles and the new Doctor ended up in Victorian London, where she meets Alice Little. A girl that the Doctor quickly realizes shouldn't exist. Studying her more, she isn't sure, until she learns that time was altered in the past in such a way that her death in a fire didn't occur. The Doctor then uncovers someone calling themselves the Mad Hatter, who runs a hat shop that is selling hats that control people's minds. This man seems to know The Doctor and tells her "The Red Queen" wants her out of her business and that Victorian England was supposed to be his playground. Ultimately, he shocks the Doctor by escaping his imprisonment by escaping through time itself. After the events, and wanting to keep the paradox close since she might be linked to all of this meddling in time, the Doctor takes Alice as a companion.
The Talking Shadow
My memory gets really hazy here. It's basically vastra narda on a planet of alien, old-timey British cosplayers. All I really remember is the Queen cosplayer is a giant snake.
The Cyber-Daleks
Returning to the planet from "A House Divided", they find the alliance broke down. Eventually, they discover The Sole Dalek decided to use the Cyberman as a conversion factory to turn humanity into a Dalek-like creatures to preserve the legacy of the Daleks. While not much can be done, if I recall correctly, they turn off the hate chips and its a bit bitter sweet because the Cyber-Daleks were forcibly converted, even if they retain their memory.
Welcome to Triassic Park
It's funny how little I remember these sessions. If I recall correctly, this is basically another one of the Red Queen's men doing a Jurassic Park pastiche. But it gets interrupted halfway through as we return to the "girl who never lived" plot that seeded throughout and somehow the universe breaks and is left on a cliffhanger.
Wonderland
The universe now broken from too much time meddling, Alice finds herself in a dying, pocket universe where she is Alice from Wonderland and the Doctor is the Chesire Cat, guiding her through the story to the moment of her death. Somehow, they cheat it in such a way that they find a way for Alice to not have to die and stop the Red Queen as well. God, if only my recordings of these sessions weren't lost.
The Labyrinth
Responding to a distress signal, they end up at the end of time at a space station. This is a multi-Doctor story so both players reprised their roles as their companions sat it out. The labyrinth was guarded by a minotaur that hunted them and kept leading them to moments of trauma for them, from both classic who and the campaign. Eventually, by coming to terms with what happened, the minotaur let them through to its captive, The War Doctor.
Day Of The Doctor
Memory is still fuzzy, but it followed on from the previous one and basically recreated Day of the Doctor, saving Gallifrey.
A Planet Called Christmas
A Christmas special we did about a planet that was colonized and made a Christmas attraction by the British cosplayers from before, but left derliect and the enslaved indigenous people just keep miming through their roles until psychic control. They end up saving all the indigenous inhabitants from this never-ending Christmas.
Paradox Of The Daleks
This plot was going to end the "Sole Dalek" storyline, but the players got tired of my games being so dark and brutal so we agreed to stop. I forgot what happened here other than the Daleks invading the past and this causing time to fall apart. Ironically, afterwards, the next game was Call of Cthulu being run by the artist player. So, it is a bit funny we got tired of things being too dark and went to CoC instead.
This is the only time I ever got to run DW:AITS and the only time I ever got to interact with it at all. It was a ton of fun. I'm still friends with everyone. We did a CoC campaign, as mentioned, then played board games for a while, then I ran Marvel Heroic Roleplaying for them, and now I'm running Avatar Legends. The two players are still dating. And it honestly was just a good experience, warts and all. Thought it might be fun to share and some people may be able to use some of the session ideas as story seeds.
Edit: I forgot to mention, The Red Queen and her men were the survivor's of the Valeyard's experiments. They were humans with Time Lord memories who mastered time and made vortex manipulators. Their plan was to invade Earth's past to take everything over. And I forgot The Master showed up to help stop them because he was the villian of the last arc, not the Daleks. Paradox of the Daleks was caused because the Master stole Earth and sent it to a parallel reality in "A Town Called Christmas" to torture the Doctor. By doing so, all Earth did, including make The Doctor a good person, was undone. And Paradox of the Daleks involved an evil Tom Baker Doctor continuing the Time War as a tyrant as he never softened up from his first incarnations time with humanity and ended up a jerk. It had nothing to do with "The Sole Dalek", it was supposed to end with the Master defeated to wrap up that three season long plotline.