Doctor Who Hero

[Anaximander]

I am an old movie and TV show buff, and sometimes, when watching an old show, I wonder how that might be done in a roleplaying setting, and recently I've been renting episodes from the 4th Doctor on back.  I've been meaning to check some the new Doctor Who episodes out, but I never get around to it.  Anyway, I would be interested in brainstorming on how to bring the various iterations of Doctor Who into a Hero System setting, and I would be interested in hearing different ideas from those who have are considered or are considering it or have done it already.  Appropriate conversations would be design issues of who to build the Doctor, the T.A.R.D.I.S. and his supporting cast and enemies or how to handle time travel in a campaign in general.  Also how to either introduce them into an ongoing campaign or how to produce Doctor Who or the Doctor Who universe in its own campaign.

 

I will start with two questions.  First, how would you build the T.A.R.D.I.S.?  At first blush, it would seem to be a combination base and vehicle, but considering the unreliability of navigational system, it might be better to use it as a base and plot device and ignore the vehicular components?  And, how would you model object being bigger on the inside than the outside?  My guess it some kind of extra-dimensional travel that can only be used by walking through the front door of the time machine.

 

The second question is how would you deal with the Doctor comes back as completely different characters at dramatically appropriate times?  To me, that might be best worked out as a resurrection the triggers some kind of forced change.

 

Any comments, questions, or suggestions for other topics on the issue are welcome.

 

(Warning:  I am just as likely to start similar topics on just about any show including sit-coms and dramas.)

[Steve Long]

Since this is a how-to rather than a rules question, I've moved it to the Discussion board, where anyone can chime in.

[WistfulD]

For bigger inside, buy increased size with "no figured characteristics" limitation.

 

As to whether or not to stat it as a vehicle, does its qualities as a vehicle as opposed to base ever get used?

[Hyper-Man]

A more complicated method that will give you more control in defining things would be to buy the vehicle's size normally to define it's 'Interior" space and then also purchase Shrinking on the Vehicle to get the "exterior" size down to that of a British Police Box.  From a technical standpoint anyone entering the vehicle is then affected by the Shrinking and will perceive that the interior is larger than the exterior per the show.

 

HM

[Ninja-Bear]

As to the resurection part, technically a Time Lord has 10 lives iirc. So it could be built as a duplicate 10 chg . trigger at death but not 100 % duplicate.

[tombrown803]

The Ultimate Vehicle (5th edition) gave an example of how to do it. Its suggestion was to buy the ship/base normally as it would appear from the outside, then as a seperate power buy the increased size with the power advantage Invisible Power Effect (Fully Invisible)

[Scott Baker]

I see the TARDIS as a plot-device more than a full-fledged base/vehicle that the character pays for. If there are some "features" that are used over-and-over and are actually useful, make them pay for those i suppose. Otherwise, it's something that the GM uses to get the characters to where the adventure is taking them.

[pinecone]

I see the TARDIS as a plot-device more than a full-fledged base/vehicle that the character pays for. If there are some "features" that are used over-and-over and are actually useful, make them pay for those i suppose. Otherwise, it's something that the GM uses to get the characters to where the adventure is taking them.

Word, in many ways the TARDIS is the equivalent to the "Tavern" in D&D. It exists to start and finish adventure arcs.

[Steve]

One common feature of the TARDIS is the telepathic universal translator it provides. Everyone conveniently speaks English when it's around. That might just be a plot element requiring no points, but sometimes (rarely) a language is encountered that it can't seem to translate. Maybe Universal Translator at a high roll with a Megascale AE?

[Mister E]

The TARDIS is more of a living sentient artificial pocket dimension than a vehicle. However you can ride on the outside of it if you want to.

 

Captain Jack Harkness rode it like a cat stuck in a tree all the way to the heat-death of the universe. Mind you Harkness had been immortalized by the TARDIS prior to doing this.

 

The outer police box shell is an indestructible camouflage/decoy/illusion projected into this universe from nowhere where the TARDIS is.

 

The only way to get into or out of the TARDIS is w/ the Doctor's key.

 

I would build the TARDIS as an extra-dimensional character like Doctor Manhattan.

[Scott Baker]

One common feature of the TARDIS is the telepathic universal translator it provides. Everyone conveniently speaks English when it's around. That might just be a plot element requiring no points, but sometimes (rarely) a language is encountered that it can't seem to translate. Maybe Universal Translator at a high roll with a Megascale AE?

Still a plot device for me. Normally they can communicate. For purposes of story, occasionally they can't.

[Sean Waters]

As to the resurection part, technically a Time Lord has 10 lives iirc. So it could be built as a duplicate 10 chg . trigger at death but not 100 % duplicate.

 

Originally 13, I think, so they get 12 regenerations.  Mind you The Master exceeded that limit by nefarious means in The Deadly Assassin (4th Doctor: Tom Baker) and, as the current Doctor is technically the 13th, because of some plot, the regeneration cycle limit has been magicked away, at least for the Doctor.

 

Not a geek...

[Mister E]

Tom Baker is the real thing. He played an elf in D&D the movie.

[Sean Waters]

I think the Tardis has to be a plot device because, in effect, it is  there to give background to the story and allow the GM lots of leeway.  It never (well, I say never...) gets used to loop back into last week's episode to put things right before they go wrong (unless it does and we don't see that happening, we just get the final cut of reality...er...) and you never have to worry about communication, changes of clothes or whatever.

 

If you are not happy with the TARDIS being simply a plot device you can certainly build it as a vehicle or a base but, well, you could also build it as a NPC because well, she is.

 

Alternatively you could build the Heart of the TARDIS as an NPC, the TARDIS as a vehicle or base.  Well, it is a vehicle, so you should build it as a vehicle if you are going to.  Then you have the Heart of The TARDIS running The TARDIS.

 

Mind you building it would be a thankless task as it can change shape and size, it can reconfigure itself internally and, whilst it can pretty much have anything in it it never really has anything useful, as such.

 

It really is a way to get to and from scenarios and explain away some shady plot, all of which benefits the GM mainly, so it would be unfair to charge players for it.

 

That's my view, anyway.

[Sean Waters]

Tom Baker is the real thing. He played an elf in D&D the movie.

 

And he starred with Donald Pleasence in a film called The Freakmaker aka Mutations, which well, I probably shouldn't have mentioned it, to be honest...

[Sean Waters]

I would build the Tardis as having an extradimensional entrance and exit system.  It both flies conventionally, well, I say conventionally, and through the Time Vortex.  The dematerialisation/time travel thing has to be EDM, IMO, but it also has conventional engines.  Recent episodes confirmed that the Tardis is in fact enormous and that its apparent mass is internally regulated otherwise it would crack any planet it landed on.

 

EDM also sorts the size differential issue.  Small door into a big room.

 

The biggest issue is probably cast.  You probably should not have the Doctor as a PC as he is just too good and experienced at everything.

 

I'd probably go for some young Time Lords, or just companions as PCs.  Then, basically, the sky is the limit.  Fur underwear one week, battlesuits the next.

 

Of course one issue is the reluctance of the Doctor to kill too often or too much (well, I say that...) which is fine if you are writing a script where you can make what needs to happen happen, less so in a RPG.  Worth noting that not all Time Lords have the same attitude...

[Mister E]

Don't watch D&D the movie...

 

... or worship the TARDIS...

 

... or you will be sent to the mazes.

[Sean Waters]

Don't watch D&D the movie.

 

True.

[WistfulD]

Still a plot device for me. Normally they can communicate. For purposes of story, occasionally they can't.

 

Yes, but this game (at least Champions) was started with the idea of puting stats to superheroes--the genre of characters whose powers all inherently haave the caveat "may vary according to the plot/author." Putting stats to things that work as they need to to advance the story is our bread and butter.

[Scott Baker]

Yes, but this game (at least Champions) was started with the idea of puting stats to superheroes--the genre of characters whose powers all inherently haave the caveat "may vary according to the plot/author." Putting stats to things that work as they need to to advance the story is our bread and butter.

This is where I would put the link to the thread on building a fork in Hero if I felt like searching for it.

[Sean Waters]

To break this down (Hammertime) we need to:

 

1. Agree that there is probably no point in actually statting out the Tardis as it is clearly a plot device and its abilities vary so widely from story to story that it is a fruitless exercise anyway.  In fact we could go further and not speak of it in terms of a plot device at all, but rather a setting, a backdrop against which the game unfolds, and entering the Tardis on the a London housing estate and emerging again in the killing fields of Tranzalore is nothing more, thematically, than cutting through Covent Garden to get from the Strand to Leicester Square.  Not that I'm suggesting that Covent garden is a time/space nexus.  I mean, it is, but that's not my suggestion.

 

2. Forget all that and actually stat out the Tardis.

 

So.  Travel powers in time and space.  In space it can fly and probably has FTL, although that has never been made absolutely clear, it is probably necessary for near-instantaneous travel between distant places in the same universe.

 

For travel in time and between universes you can slot in some EDM.  That is easy enough.  The 'travelling here' thing is more of a problem.

 

Now there often does seem to be travel time implications for getting from one place to another, but it is not clear if distance is the only consideration (or even a consideration, but for the sake of sanity, let us assume it is), but nowhere ever seems to take terribly long to get to.  You could explain this using EDM, of course, that the flow of time inside the Tardis when it is travelling is regulated to a short human scale pace and that the Tardis travels back in time as it travels sideways in space, so, in effect, the speed it can travel at is almost irrelevant because it can jigger with the time component of the distance/time formula at will.

 

Of course, that way lies only madness and, anyway, we should not be trying to replace an existing power with a combination of others, so back to FTL.

 

Now to get anywhere in the universe in a reasonable time (say between a few minutes and a week at absolute most), we need to know how far we might have to travel.  According to The Science Museum the universe is about 8000 miles across.

 

No, hang on, that's the Earth.  They are different, I think, except possibly semantically and philosophically (now that is an idea: a semantic drive.  I tell you, if you built one of those puppies I have a son who could travel anywhere in the universe before you could analyse a syntactic structure with predicates and arguments.  Anyway...)

 

Not 8000 miles, more like somewhere around 30 billion light years, that being the diameter of our light cone since the Big Bang (if, there even was a Big Bang) and about twice as far as we can see light coming from.  Of course it could be twice that size if it has been expanding at near the speed of light since the farthest light set off to us, and there is good practical evidence that it must be bigger because otherwise we would not be able to see as far one way as the other, unless we were the absolute centre of the universe, which was an idea that even the Catholic Church has now abandoned.  Bless.

 

Where was I?  Oh yes, plucking figures out of the air.

 

I'm going to assume that the universe is between 32 and 64 billion light years across and, yes I picked those numbers because they have whole number divisors in a binary sequence.

 

Now, assuming for a moment that 15 billion is 15 with 9 zeroes after it, rather than 12, to cover that distance in a day (that being a not unreasonable notional midpoint between a few minutes and a week. Perhaps.  Assumptions...) then, there being 84600 seconds in a day, that is 173611 light years a second, call it 174k, which is between 62 and 63 levels of FTL for 136 points at 63 levels.  OK.

 

Now you can not FTL in atmosphere, so we need a mechanism to get to space.  The classic method the Tardis uses is teleportation, or dematerialisation as it insists on calling it.  I mean, it can fly in atmosphere, well, I say fly, and dematerialisation COULD be a combination of flight and invissibility but that is not how it appears to disappear, and, in any event can arrive at or depart from inside other objects so, if you went with invisibility plus flight you would also need desolidification.  I've never known the Tardis to be prevented from appearing through any solid object or even force fields (although I might well have missed that bit) so we probably need teleport with scads of armour piercing so nothing can stop it, and we'll definitely need safe blind teleport and no range modifiers (although the arrival inaccuracies COULD be accounted for by range modifiers I suppose, but it does hit quite often and always when it needs to).  We can probably get away with megascale because it does not instantly disappear, so that looks like noncombat movement to me.

 

Using megascale  we can probably get across the entire universe for a 2m teleport with +7 megascale for 100 billion light years.  Damn.  That is a lot cheaper than FLT, but again we should be wary of using it because, well, FTL is a separate power.  In fact teleport, megascale plus extra time.

 

Oh, I don't know...let's see...so 2m of TP at +7 megascale with safe blind teleport and no relative velocity works out at - you are not going to believe this: 136 points.

 

Go Hero.  Consistency R Us.

 

And on that note, I think I might go and have a little lie down.

[Steve]

I don't have a problem with the teleport option because it fits the way it seems to work in the show. It disappears here and reappears there, there being anywhere in time and space. It has at least full phase for the movement or maybe even extra phase because it seems to take several seconds to move anywhere. It also has that audible sound it makes when it teleports or time shifts.

[Ninja-Bear]

Sean for the Doctors 50th, UNIT has a room which the Tardis could not t-port into.

[Sean Waters]

Sean for the Doctors 50th, UNIT has a room which the Tardis could not t-port into.

 

Yes, you are right.  I remember thinking at the time that it was odd that UNIT came up with something that seemed to have eluded the Daleks. Hmm.  Maybe they only think they have a Tardis proof room.

[Ninja-Bear]

Regarding the op question I think that for purpose of building a TARDIS you should look to how people have written up comicbook characters with a lot of history. I wouldnt try to build everylittle detail but stick with the major and defining parts of the TARDIS.