Friday Night Game Report - Doctor Who Roleplaying Game, Session 0
Rather than continuing to play the Rivers of London: The Roleplaying Game last night, the Friday night gamers decided to kick off 2024 by creating their player characters for the Doctor Who Roleplaying Game (formerly the Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space RPG, published by Cubicle 7. This scenario wasn't a first scenario, but rather the Session Zero for the game involving character creation and game background.
For those who don't know (and haven't read my blog), the Doctor Who Roleplaying Game is based on the (hit) BBC television series of the same name that follows the Time Lord known as the Doctor throughout his many lives with the various companions that accompany him through time and space. Anyway...
Since two of the players (Kathy and Ellie) in the Friday gaming group haven't created characters or played the game, though all are familiar with the tv series, I started the night off by going through subjects about the game and the tv series from the ground up. I talked to the players about the basic premise of the game, gave them an overview of the setting (if the tv series and the game can be said to have one), went over the very basic mechanics, and explained stuff about the contents of the character sheets. Finally, I explained the steps of Character Generation in brief. The players were quite hyped by this point, not to mention intrigued, and they set about creating their characters for the game.
Character generation for the Doctor Who Roleplaying Game is a relatively simple matter and quite easy, but there are some decisions to be made, notably about the character's job/occupation and the assignment of the Character Points into the various Attributes, Skills, and Traits. It uses a simple enough system and process that is called the Vortex system published by Cubicle 7 (naturally). After about two hours of total set-up for the characters, the Friday night players came up with an interesting mix of characters and personalities. Rather than playing a Time Lord and their companions in the TARDIS, the Friday night players decided to take on the role of a team of UNIT (United Nations Intelligence Taskforce) personnel who deal with unusual incidents and the like. Here's what the Friday players created.
*****
Kathy - Kathy decided to play the character she had from the earlier version of the game that I ran, and so recreated Gayle Tarrant, a thief and professional criminal who was recruited to work for UNIT by a mysterious contact that she has, a Professor Chronos.
Angela - Remembering what Kathy had told the players earlier about the characters created originally for the game, Angela decided she wanted to play the sister of Joanne's original character, and is playing Stellara ("Stella") Vostune, a 26th Century technician from a space station.
Ellie - My goddaughter decided that she wanted to play her original character, and so is playing Edwina ("Winnie") Tarrant - Gayle's *daughter* whom she doesn't remember having! Whether there's a sinister element to this sub-plot or not is another matter...
Mark - Mark decided that he wanted to play the group's leader and a weapons expert, and is playing the role of Sergeant David Masterton, a UNIT marksman and the weapons specialist of the group.
Peter - At first, Peter wasn't sure what he wanted to play, then hit upon the idea for what he wanted. He's playing Charles Arkwright, something of a English blueblood who's an expert at scouting at recce work, and has some medical skills as well.
*****
All in all, the players created an interesting group of characters with a lot of potential.
After character creation was complete, I asked the players what they felt they needed to know about in order to play the game and get a good feel for their UNIT player characters. At their request, I went over the Attributes with them, explaining what they meant once more, then talked with them about the Skills that they had and some of the nuances of those. I gave two of the players some clarification on their characters' Traits, and spoke to Peter about one of his Bad Traits. :) The players then asked me questions about setting up their characters' Backstories, and I gave them what guidelines I could from the game rulebook (there's some excellent advice on this, too!). We then talked about the characters' standards of living, and two of the players did some quick referrals on their mobile phones about where they wanted to live. The final bit of the day consisted of going through the basic rules and mechanics with the players, and then we talked about the Combat system and I explained the basic rules of said system. They commented that the Initiative system for the game was quite neat and innovative. I then had just enough time to run three sample combats with the players, showing them how Skills worked in the Combat system, as well as having them take each other on and then menaced them with some typical (and not so typical) bad guys and a Macra in the British Museum! It was a good way to wrap up the game session for the evening, and would give the players a few weeks to sort out some stuff for their backgrounds and figure out what else they would need to know.
The players told me that they have a wonderful time creating their characters for the Doctor Who Roleplaying Game campaign, and were very pleased how simple the game mechanics are, and how well they fit the Doctor Who universe and bring it to life. I suspect the next Friday game session of the Doctor Who Roleplaying Game, whenever I run it, will continue this Session Zero, as we'll go over a bunch of other material related to the game.
In the meantime, I'm looking forward to the game when I start running it! :)
For those who don't know (and haven't read my blog), the Doctor Who Roleplaying Game is based on the (hit) BBC television series of the same name that follows the Time Lord known as the Doctor throughout his many lives with the various companions that accompany him through time and space. Anyway...
Since two of the players (Kathy and Ellie) in the Friday gaming group haven't created characters or played the game, though all are familiar with the tv series, I started the night off by going through subjects about the game and the tv series from the ground up. I talked to the players about the basic premise of the game, gave them an overview of the setting (if the tv series and the game can be said to have one), went over the very basic mechanics, and explained stuff about the contents of the character sheets. Finally, I explained the steps of Character Generation in brief. The players were quite hyped by this point, not to mention intrigued, and they set about creating their characters for the game.
Character generation for the Doctor Who Roleplaying Game is a relatively simple matter and quite easy, but there are some decisions to be made, notably about the character's job/occupation and the assignment of the Character Points into the various Attributes, Skills, and Traits. It uses a simple enough system and process that is called the Vortex system published by Cubicle 7 (naturally). After about two hours of total set-up for the characters, the Friday night players came up with an interesting mix of characters and personalities. Rather than playing a Time Lord and their companions in the TARDIS, the Friday night players decided to take on the role of a team of UNIT (United Nations Intelligence Taskforce) personnel who deal with unusual incidents and the like. Here's what the Friday players created.
*****
Kathy - Kathy decided to play the character she had from the earlier version of the game that I ran, and so recreated Gayle Tarrant, a thief and professional criminal who was recruited to work for UNIT by a mysterious contact that she has, a Professor Chronos.
Angela - Remembering what Kathy had told the players earlier about the characters created originally for the game, Angela decided she wanted to play the sister of Joanne's original character, and is playing Stellara ("Stella") Vostune, a 26th Century technician from a space station.
Ellie - My goddaughter decided that she wanted to play her original character, and so is playing Edwina ("Winnie") Tarrant - Gayle's *daughter* whom she doesn't remember having! Whether there's a sinister element to this sub-plot or not is another matter...
Mark - Mark decided that he wanted to play the group's leader and a weapons expert, and is playing the role of Sergeant David Masterton, a UNIT marksman and the weapons specialist of the group.
Peter - At first, Peter wasn't sure what he wanted to play, then hit upon the idea for what he wanted. He's playing Charles Arkwright, something of a English blueblood who's an expert at scouting at recce work, and has some medical skills as well.
*****
All in all, the players created an interesting group of characters with a lot of potential.
After character creation was complete, I asked the players what they felt they needed to know about in order to play the game and get a good feel for their UNIT player characters. At their request, I went over the Attributes with them, explaining what they meant once more, then talked with them about the Skills that they had and some of the nuances of those. I gave two of the players some clarification on their characters' Traits, and spoke to Peter about one of his Bad Traits. :) The players then asked me questions about setting up their characters' Backstories, and I gave them what guidelines I could from the game rulebook (there's some excellent advice on this, too!). We then talked about the characters' standards of living, and two of the players did some quick referrals on their mobile phones about where they wanted to live. The final bit of the day consisted of going through the basic rules and mechanics with the players, and then we talked about the Combat system and I explained the basic rules of said system. They commented that the Initiative system for the game was quite neat and innovative. I then had just enough time to run three sample combats with the players, showing them how Skills worked in the Combat system, as well as having them take each other on and then menaced them with some typical (and not so typical) bad guys and a Macra in the British Museum! It was a good way to wrap up the game session for the evening, and would give the players a few weeks to sort out some stuff for their backgrounds and figure out what else they would need to know.
The players told me that they have a wonderful time creating their characters for the Doctor Who Roleplaying Game campaign, and were very pleased how simple the game mechanics are, and how well they fit the Doctor Who universe and bring it to life. I suspect the next Friday game session of the Doctor Who Roleplaying Game, whenever I run it, will continue this Session Zero, as we'll go over a bunch of other material related to the game.
In the meantime, I'm looking forward to the game when I start running it! :)