Since we've had svereal Doctor Who discussions, one thing I'm wondering is how you would build a TARDIS in HERO.
The most obvious thing to know about a TARDIS is that it can go anywhere in Time and Space. Usually, however, it is restiricted to a single universe (it would have to pass through some sort of phenomena to get into a different universe), it takes real time to get from place.time to place/time, its course can be altered mid-flight, and it can materialize anywhere.
The extrerior can be made to look like any phsycial object (unless the Chameleon Circuit is broken as in a certain Type 40 of our intimate acquiantance). In any event, the exterior look of the TARDIS, whatever its shape, is MUCh smaller than the interior of the ship. Although a crew of one can fly one, it has a potential carrying capacity of hundreds. You could jettison a quarter of its interior mass and still have a phenomenally large ship. It's very easy for people not familair with the interior to get lost, and the configuration changes eveyr so often so maps are no good.
Most TARDISes (TARDII?) come equippped with both utlitiarian food synthesizers 9that produce food that can taste like anything but looks like a gummy white stick), but also have full kitchens and well-stocker larders. A ATDRIS generally has enough food and drink stored aboard it SOMEWHERE to operate indefinitely, although you'll want to restock to suit your indivdual tastes. Figuing out how to work the kitchen equipment is probably a chore for any Earth person who happens to find themselves aboard a TARDIS and having to live there.
There are innumerable rooms of various sizes that can be used for a wide variety of purposes. A well-equuipped TARDIS has a very large wardrobe full of clothing for every occasion that most Time lords are too eccentric to really use more than once or twice an incarnation. (Companions, on the other hand, can go through the clothing like fiends.) No matter what size a companion is, or what kind of body a time Lord regenerates into, they can always find SOMETHING that fits (I like to think that Colin baker's choice of garb was partly inspired because it was the first thing he could throw on that fit that he liked and that if he had tried on a few more outfits he could have found something at least remotely approaching sane.) As for bedrooms and baths, there are an innmerable number of those. Everyone aboard a TARDIS can easily have their own room, and nobody needs to share quarters unless they want to. 9As to whether anyone WOULD want to.... no comment.)
The principal problem with TARDISes is that they're persnickety. especially the oilder models. Even when treated with endless TLC they have an alarming tendency to dump you where you didn;t want to go. No matter how many times you want to go to that popualr seaside resort, it'll reliably dump you someplace like telos in the middle of the Cyberman invasion. Something in the machines seems to be attracted to trouble. And even if you do get where you want to go, it's unliekly to get you there at a particularly peaceful moment. You could go to the shopping mall, and sure enough the moment you arrive it will come under alien attack. It also has an uncanny ability to just miss meeting improtant historical figures you want to pay a social call to. Unless of course that important hisotricla figure is Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart (for whom it seems to have a homing beacon....).
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Originally Posted by Solomon
Doctor into trouble. looking at the TARDIS in that manner I would make it so that it is actually not written up in any form and make the GM in control of the design at any given time. Whatever the format, provisions, gear, etc are at any given time will be determined at the time that it is desired, what it is desired for, commonness, and other factors that apply. This can mean that today there will be the sonic screwdriver that the Doctor loves will be in the mech lab but tomorrow it could be in the bio lab if it is there at all. In addition while the operator might make a successful roll to tell it to go to London on 23 Aug 1698 it actually will pop on the Enterprise during WWII, or some place not on the Earth.
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