As you can tell from the title of this Blog of Holding, I am a big Doctor Who fan. I remember playing the Doctor Who Role Playing Game by FASA with my friends in the 90’s. I remember even running a game. However it has been a LONG time since I even looked at the rules that I hardly remember anything at all. So this entry into the Character Creation Challenge is almost like reading it again for the first time. Unfortunately there hasn’t been any opportunity to participate in an RPG session lately. One friend still uses the name of her Gallifreyan character as a nickname. Hi Agiani.
When this game was published, the Gallifreyans did not allow for interference in other worlds. This made The Doctor a bit of a renegade with the leaders of his people. To get around this in the game, characters could be Gallifreyans or companions participating in a group called the Celestial Intervention Agency (CIA). The agents in this rogue organization battle against the threats of Daleks, Cybermen and dozens other aggressive species across space and time.
Since I’ve never made a Time Lord character, the character that goes by the name The Barron. His birth name is Redbronovurudu, but that was too hard to pronounce by his Human companion. “Red what? Like Red Baron?” “Oh.. The Baron, I like that. It sounds very noble.”
There are six mental and physical attributes in the Doctor Who Role Playing Game. Strength (STR), Endurance (END), Dexterity (DEX), Charisma (CHA), Mentality (MNT) and Intuition (ITN). Attribute scores range from 1-30 (with 30 being the best) but they are also listed at Attribute Performance Levels. Level I is Handicapped. Level II is Untrained. Level III is Basic Performance. Level IV is Average Performance. Level V is Professional Performance. Level VI is Expert Performance and the last performance of Mastery is Level VII. Characters will also have Special Abilities and Skills. The skills, like Attributes, range 1-30 and have their own I-VII proficiency ratings from Unskilled to Mastery.
Your character’s initial attribute scores start at 6. To find out how many points are in your attribute point fund, roll 2d6+36. I ended up with 43 points to spend. The Baron was a Researcher in the Grand Library of Gallifrey before he unexpectedly found himself traveling the universe. So I gave him higher scores in the CHA, MNT and INT scores. They are as follows: ST: 10 (Level IV), END: 13 (Level IV), DEX: 10 (Level IV), CHA: 15 (Level V), MNT: 15 (Level V), INT: 16 (Level V). During the character creation process, a 3d6 die roll determines if your character has a special ability, and what it is if present. My roll ended up earning a Luck special ability. This added 5 to my INT making it 12 (Level VI). Endurance rates for health was quickly discovered and written down.
Like the FASA Star Trek Role Playing Game, there is a large number of skills used in the game. This skill system in the character creation process was… ugh. After reading through the books several times I finally just selected some skills I thought a brainy guy would have (with some skills he would have needed in the field without getting greedy) and not worry about points. This is probably a section that I would have needed an experienced GM to explain things to me. I then decided to wrap it up and scan the character sheet.
Afterthoughts:
The character creation process is explained in the middle of the Player’s Manual after they have explained the items that go into a character and a short story with play examples. The rules talks about selecting a race, but there are no stat adjustments for the two races playable in the game (Human or Gallifreyean).
The books kept switching between the use of INT and ITN. This must have slipped through the editing process.
The Game Operations Manual had a section on Judging Character Creation. I had to refer to it in order to get some of the numbers needed in the character creation process. The section for determining skills was needlessly complicated and it took several read through to understand it all (I think). I understood that skill points from one attribute would purchase more skills that fell under that attribute (Higher STR score made it easier to buy STR based skills), but the way it was processed was just overly complex. There could have been a better way to figure these out.
If I recall correctly, we used pre-generated characters when we played this game. After going through this process, I can see why. I think this is the first day I got frustrated and ended the process.
Additional Notes:
I’m still looking for more blogs or message boards of people participating in the Character Creation Process.
Coming Up Next:
Tall Tales BX