Doctor Who RPGTag line: Adventures through time and space
Makers: FASA (1985)
What is it?
The first RPG to feature the Dr. Who universe, using FASA's Star Trek RPG rules as a basis. The boxed set comes with a Player's Manual, Game Operations Manual, and Sourcebook for Field Agents. You play a Timelord or Companion on adventures spanning time and space.
Neat stuff
-For a Dr. Who fan, it's always fun to get a book full of pictures and information on a show that's hard to pin down sometimes. (There are literally decades of material to assimilate, and at the time, I didn't have access to some of the great ressources available today thanks in part to the show's return, and in greater part to the Internet.
-Whovian physics gets a fairly good treatment as does everything the TARDIS has been known to do, though rules to mimic all this are lackluster. -The planet and alien random design tables are kind of fun.
Bad stuff
-Lots of information duplicated between the 3 books.-Most evil races (Daleks, Cybermen, etc.) are statless. Almost criminal.
-Aside from a couple of Whovian skills like TARDIS Systems, the game's just not specific enough to the universe to stand on its own. The combat rules are fairly simulationist, where the show just winged it. You could throw a scarf at a Dalek and get the upper hand, y'know? The rules really do feel like a plug-in here.
Quote
"Apprentice Time Lords are cautioned to avoid showing their disgust at this primitive race [humanity], and are reminded that it is commonplace throughout much of the universe."
In conclusion
Dr. Who has yet to get a fair RPG treatment (Time Lord was better, but flawed as well), and maybe gamers aren't interested anymore. Too hokey for 21st-century gamers? The new series may change that. Well, I can see that as a cool genre to play, but the system has to support it. I think Unisystem, the same used for the Buffy game, would make perfect sense: It supports very well the idea of one powerful character (the Time Lord/Slayer) surrounded by a number of helpers (Companions).
How I've used it
Never played it, but my brother and I made a few characters at the time. Here's what I dug up:I was apparently gonna play a Time Lord called Otyughmazertibucavi, no doubt a name inspired Romanadvoratrelundar, starting with the word Otyugh, a D&D monster that was an injoke in my particular group at the time. It doesn't get any geekier than this, folks. From what I can see, the guy was a dwarf (and I HATE dwarves... I don't know what happened there) in a red robe. He was a collector of "magic" artifacts and medieval weapons and a trainer for the CIA (that's the Celestial Intervention Agency that the game suggests as the best "party"), My brother, for his part, was a companion called Janine Riceti, a 35-year-old, efficient and patient spy for UNIT, stuffed in a sweater.From the character sheets I saved it also seems I tried to get a game off the ground in university, because there's an incomplete Time Lord on his fifth regenetation whose both an optimist and undecisive, played by my good friend Doctor Mi, with his pessimist human companion Thalos Brewski, who apparently manages to have red hair and a moustache AND be attractive (all thanks to fellow role-player Pat Breton). That campaign appears to have been dead from the start and I remember nothing of it.
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