We have a spreadsheet ready to import for the Role-Playing Games, for example:
But these are pretty niche, not really designed as ‘stories’ to be read, but to be played, and everyone’s experience can be different, with different characters in them depending on number of players and choices made.
(I also feel the same with e.g. board games)
So I don’t really think they should count as “stories featuring the Thirteenth Doctor” for example, for the purposes of stats and Character Trackers, do you?
Just wanted some guidance before I import these, as I’ve not experienced them myself.
If we create a “Games” category, should the other games already on the site be moved there as well?
And yeah, I don’t think we should count these towards the tracker and stats. I’m not interested in role-playing games, so I will most likely never play these.
Yeah, I was wondering about this myself. Most of them can be played without even involving the Doctor (and indeed the rulebooks often advise against playing as the Doctor).
Knowing the community here, I wouldn’t be surprised if a couple of crazy Scandinavians suddenly decided they wanted toicomplete the games, and once they’ve done it, everybody else wants to do it as well
I think that a new game category would be great. Then add video games, board games, and RPGs as subcategories. Maybe live experiences as well, but that might be something else.
I think they fit into ‘games’ quite well. The escape rooms are obviously games and Time Fracture (the best Doctor Who related thing I’ve ever done) is almost like a live action role play.
To be fair, the roleplaying game books have a lot of scenarios and ideas in them that makes them interesting reading regardless of whether you play them.
The Rise of Jaconda: The Doctor arrives on Jaconda, two years after the events of the story, to check in on Lang. He’s delighted to see the planet is almost back to its former beauty, and even more delighted to see a statue to his old friend Azmael being unveiled in the new, above ground, Master’s Palace. But why are there so many earthquakes? What do the Church of the Holy Gastropod want? And why is Lang plagued with terrible dreams about Mestor?
The Fall of Jaconda: A Torchwood Archive team are working on Jaconda, cataloguing the various myths surrounding the Gastropods and attempting to work out where they came from. When one team member discovers a previously hidden painting, showing the Gastropods being led to the surface of Jaconda by the Sun God, a man with a bright head of yellow hair and a garish cloak, things get a little awkward. They get worse when the Doctor arrives and is put on trial for the attempted genocide of the Jacondan race. Then, a note is delivered to the courtroom by the Doctor of the future, explaining what he has to do to prove his innocence and things get downright dangerous. Racing against time, and with the reluctant help of the Torchwood team, the Doctor must infiltrate an old Time Lord weapon, hidden in the Jacondan sun, and confront the reality that, as a hero of the Time War, not everything that wore his face was him…
The Third Titan: The TARDIS arrives on Titan III, where to the Doctor’s surprise, he finds a memorial to Azmael. The old Time Lord asked to be buried there, and the Doctor stops and pays his respects to his old friend. As he enters the tomb though, a holographic message appears from the younger Azmael, the man he knew. It says: “Doctor, there is no time. Something awful is coming, a war that will sweep space and time up in its wake and change the universe forever. There is a way we can stop it, you and I, but we must act quickly. First go to Jaconda and find m-”
And the message cuts out. When the Doctor travels to Jaconda’s past, he finds Azmael apparently unaware of what he said and busy working with a group of visiting dignitaries, all of whom seem to have a special interest in Titan III. But why? What does the asteroid conceal? Why is it almost exclusively metal? And why is something inside it singing?
I actually was a member of a roleplaying group, but the Doctor Who RPG wasn’t one we played; only one other member had watched Doctor Who. The group’s also basically dead at this point.
I’ve always liked reading RPG manuals, though, and they seem to have especially gone out of their way to give you lots of plot hooks to hang potential adventures on.
Why Totter’s Lane?
The TARDIS does seem remarkably fond of IM Foreman’s Yard in Totter’s Lane doesn’t it? Several Doctors have spent time there and over the year there’ve been several explanations offered as to why this is the TARDIS’ favourite spot on Earth. Here are a few:
Favourite Place: The yard on Totter’s Lane is the first place the TARDIS travelled with the Doctor and it’s imprinted on it to some extent. Just like humans have favourite places, the TARDIS’ favourite place is Totter’s Lane and it will go there by choice, or if it’s hurt or damaged, whenever it can.
Anchor Point: The TARDIS and the Doctor both ran from Gallifrey when they met each other (although who stole who is a matter of debate). Totter’s Lane is the first place the Doctor went that wasn’t the stuffy world he’d fled from, and the first place his battered old Type 40 had been in countless years. It’s where they imprinted on one another, and where the relationship between a Time Lord and his TARDIS was forged. As a result, the area exerts a tremendous pull on the TARDIS even now, and unless a specific location in London is programmed in, it will always go there.
Time Lord Outpost: We’ve seen, time and again, that the Time Lords take far more of an interest in their errant, occasional, President than they want to admit. Perhaps Totter’s Lane is a Time Lord ‘safe house’, a place a TARDIS can be easily concealed whilst certain work is done…
