Campaign Notes : Our Second Season (last episodes)

Sylvie and I played the final (and quite climactic) episode of our second season yesterday evening. Here are the two-line blurbs of the last four episodes - see this post and this one for the first nine.

Episode 10: The Walls of Troy
Lady Penelope and her companions never found the Trojan War - but they did have a most interesting trip, complete with temporal phenomena and metaphysical dilemmas...

Episode 11: Phantasmagoria
Summer 1816. Lady Penelope meets Lord Byron, the Shelleys and a few other tormented souls in this dark romantic tale of revenge, melancholy and psychic infestation.

Episode 12: The King and the Land
Lady Penelope returns to the Avalon Project to attend a royal wedding - only to discover that Excalibur, the key to mankind's future, has been stolen by the lords of the Otherworld.

Episode 13: The Sun of Blood
Lady Penelope forges an uneasy alliance with her half-brother Mordred to defeat the power of the Sun of Blood - and prevent the rebirth of their mother, Morgaine the Witch Queen.

House Rule : Shifting the Scales

Once more unto the breach... Here is an addendum / adjustment to my previous post on Conflicts & Story points - more precisely, it is an alternative to the part called "Raising the Stakes", regarding the use of Story points during competitive conflicts.

The main idea behind this modification is to avoid to-and-fro expenses of Story points between the original loser and the original winner of a competitive conflict - a situation which may actually lessen dramatic tension instead of boosting it. So here is a new variant (which really works better in play) :

In a competitive conflict, if the loser has spent Story points to alter the result in his favor, the original winner may decide to shift the scales back in his favour by spending a single Story point (but no more) - and that's it. No further expenditure is allowed beyond this point.

In a reactive conflict, things remain as defined in the original article.

In other words, after any conflict roll (competitive or reactive), each character can only spend Story points once to alter the outcome of the roll; in addition, in a reactive conflict, the defender always has the last word (i.e. if he was the first to spend his Story points because he lost the original conflict, then the attacker cannot spend any point to shift things back in his favour).

Campaign Notes : For a Few Episodes More...

Here comes the new year - and with it four more episode blurbs from the ongoing second season of Lady Penelope's Odyssey. Episodes 7-8 actually were a two-part story, in which our heroine discovered a few shocking secrets about the last Time Lords and the passing of her own father - a major threshold in the evolution and growth of the character.

Episode 6 : Making History
Accompanied by the (not quite) late Christopher Marlowe, Lady Penelope attends three public executions, bumps into Oliver Cromwell and meets the Meddling... Puritan.

Episode 7 : Childhood's End
Lady Penelope is summoned to the Ark of Arcadia, a huge transdimensional ship, where she meets the Guardians of Infinity - beings formerly known as... Time Lords.

Episode 8 : The Never People
Question: How could so many Time Lords survive the Last Great Time War? Answer: By being already dead when it all happened. Featuring the Doctor!

Episode 9 : Time Off
Nothing can beat an evening at the Lyceum Theatre - especially when you get to meet Bram Stoker, Arthur Conan Doyle, E.W. Hornung, Sir Henry Irving and a Vortex Medusa.

Happy new year to all DWAITAS gamers out there - have fantastic adventures!

Campaign Notes : Our Second Season (so far)

So far, lack of time (ah ah) has prevented me from posting more detailed accounts of our scenarios. I've not given up on that idea, however, and will try to convince Sylvie (Lady Penelope's player) to help me write some actual-play stuff from our ongoing campaign - perhaps as some sort of journal entries. In the meantime, here are the two-line blurbs for the first five episodes of our second season, using the same format as in this previous post.

Episode 1: Space Princess
In which Lady Penelope experiences the joys of a 25th century luxury space cruise, including high-stakes gambling, dinner at the captain's table and, of course, an attack by space pirates.

Episode 2: For Queen and Planet
A most adventurous journey from a cursed temple in India to the farthest-reaching colony of the British Empire - the mysterious planet Mura. And yes, it all happened in 1894.

Episode 3: Operation Strikeback
There is no Mission:Impossible when you can jump back in time. Lady Penelope faces Felicity Warburton, the Triumvirate's Time Assassin, and saves Britain's future - again!

Episode 4: All Yesterday's Tomorrows
New York, 1933. Nikita Nova, inventress extraordinaire, is testing her new teleportation machine... but who the Hell is Nikita Nova and how come she looks so much like Lady Penelope?

Episode 5:The Doctor and the Angel
London, 1608. The Angel of Death has extended his dark wings over the city, heralding the reign of an even greater Terror. The dying Dr Dee sends a desperate call through Time...

That's all, folks - for now!

Next session/episode : Saturday!

Campaign Notes : Episode Templates (Part Two)

Template 6: Major Alien Crisis

The name says it all; aliens (or unearthly creatures) have decided to conquer, destroy, enslave or recycle Planet Earth, usually causing panic on a worldwide level, with lots of alarming TV broadcasts, government communiqués, emergency meetings, armed forces running around and, of course, UNIT intervention.

Because of the scale of events involved, episodes which follow this pattern are almost always two-parters, like The Aliens of London / World War Three, Rise of the Cybermen / The Age of Steel, Army of Ghosts / Doomsday, The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky or The Stolen Earth / The Journey's End... but this template can also be found in some Christmas specials, such as The Christmas Invasion or The Next Doctor.

Combining this template with the previous one (Lives Less Ordinary) gives us what we might call the "smalltown invasion variant", in which the perception of the alien menace has not reached the authorities or the medias and is limited to a small community, either because some secret plan is only beginning to unfold (The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood) or because the goals of the aliens is more limited or specific in scope (Human Nature / A Family of Blood) - but the pattern remains the same: all these stories deal with the ways human beings deal with menaces which threaten their world, whether "world" here means planet, family or village. In all cases, enemies must be fought and tough choices (including some sacrifices) must be made.

Template 7: Timey-Wimey Stuff

These episodes deal with the more complex, subtler or chaotic aspects of the Doctor Who reality - time loops, paradoxes and other weird temporal phenomena. In these stories, the Doctor and his companion(s) must face the sometimes very dangerous consequences of travelling through time and tampering with history - whether this tampering is caused by their own decisions (such as in Father's Day) or by someone or something else's actions (such as In The Girl in the Fireplace, Doomsday, The Sound of Drums / Last of the Timelord or Turn Left). In most cases, the solution of the problem comes from the same source as the problem itself, the possibilities and implications of time travel and temporal manipulation (as demonstrated by Blink and its wonderfully non-chronological storyline).

This template can also be extended to stories in which reality is warped or manipulated, such as in Amy's Choice; it works equally well on a personal, almost intimate level (Amy's Choice, The Girl in the Fireplace), in which case it is often combined with template 8 (Crossroads, see below) or on a grand, universe-shattering scale (The Sound of Drums / Last of the Timelord or The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang), in which case it is often combined with the Big Season Finale template (see below too); both extremes can also be combined, such as in Turn Left, in which the apparently trivial decisions of a single individual actually affects the whole of reality.

Template 8: Crossroads

This template, which could also have been called "dilemmas", deals with crucial, life-affecting choices which must be made by one of the Doctor's companions or, perhaps more rarely, by the Doctor himself - and with the often painful consequences of such decisions. It is probably the more personal and intimate template, since it deals directly with a major character's conscience, morality or feelings and often involves a touch of tragedy. Ultimately, all these stories deal with the theme of Destiny. It should be noted that this template is often combined with the previous one, Timey-Wimey Stuff (Father's Day, The Girl in the Fireplace, Turn Left or Amy's Choice); it is also present in The Waters of Mars, in which the Doctor makes the decision of altering a fixed point in history and must deal with the consequences of this choice (the fabulous "Time Lord victorious" bit). It can also be found in Big Season Finales, especially those in which a companion leaves the story (as Rose in Doomsday) or in which the Doctor regenerates.

Template 9: Who is the Doctor?

This template corresponds to what many DW fans call "Doctor-lite episodes", such as Love & Monsters and Blink, i.e. stories in which the Doctor merely lurks or runs around in the background while another character (such as Sally Sparrow in Blink) occupies the front stage; such episodes tell the story of someone's encounter with the Doctor - but from that person's point of view. In RPG jargon, these are episodes in which the Doctor and his companion are treated as NPCs - which makes this template a bit difficult to use in a campaign with Time Lord (or, at least, time travelling) player-characters... but makes it particularly interesting for one-off scenarios which use "normal people" as their main protagonists; it is definitely the template to use if you want your players to discover during play that they were actually playing Doctor Who all along.

This template is also present (without being prevalent) in The Lodger, in which the Doctor does play the "mysterious visitor" part, but which cannot really be labelled as a Doctor-lite episode. Because they deal with ordinary people facing extraordinary events, such episodes often combine this template with the Lives Less Ordinary or Crossroads templates.

Template 10: Big Season Finale

This template is always used for the epic two-parters which conclude each season of the show: Bad Wolf / The Parting of the Ways, Army of Ghosts / Doomsday, The Sound of Time / Last of the Timelord, The Stolen Earth / The Journey's End or The Pandorica Opens / The Big Bang. More than a scenario template in its own right, it combines the elements of several templates (such as a Major Alien Crisis, Timey-Wimey Stuff or Crossroads) into a grand-scale, spectacular, climactic confrontation. In most cases, this combination is made even more powerful by what we might call the "Nemesis element" - the opponent(s) the Doctor must face in such episodes are almost always old enemies of his, such as the Daleks, the Cybermen or the Master, arch-enemies which go back to the days of the Classic series and whose destinies seem to be cosmically tied to that of the Doctor himself; we also see this logic at work in the two-part special The End of Time (a "season finale" of sort), in which the Master AND Rassilon return (you probably don't get more "major" than this as far as Time Lords are concerned) to bring the Doctor's Tenth Incarnation to a tragic, beautiful end.

Campaign Notes : Episode Templates (Part One)

(Wow... it's been almost two months since I last updated this blog - I guess I was lost in time...)

Designing a Doctor Who RPG scenario can be quite challenging, mostly because the Whoniverse is so full of possibilities, from aliens and weird science to time travel and even alternate realities - indeed, with all of space and time to play with, it might well be one of the most possibility-rich fictional universes around. Faced with so many possibilities, the aspirant DWAITAS gamemaster may feel a bit dizzy at first - and the question he should ask himself here is : HOW DO THEY DO IT ?

Well, Doctor Who episodes tend to follow a fixed pattern or format – the episode from the latest season featuring Vincent Van Gogh, for instance, clearly follows the same pattern as The Shakespeare Code: in both episodes, the Doctor and his companion meets an artistic or literary genius and helps him battle some hidden menace; in both cases, the genius’ particular talent (Shakespeare’s words or Van Gogh’s vision) plays an essential part in the resolution of the struggle and in both cases, a trace or echo of this struggle can be found in the genius’ artistic work – Van Gogh’s painting showing the TARDIS or Shakespeare’s lost play “Love’s Labours Won”.

Template 1: Historical Errors

The Doctor travels to the past and discovers that something has gone seriously wrong, disrupting, contradicting or threatening history as we know it; in most cases, this historical divergence or distortion is the direct result of alien interference and must be straightened out to avoid serious damage to the continuum. Episodes which follow this pattern include The Empty Child, The Doctor Dances, The Idiot’s Lantern, Daleks In Manhattan, The Fires of Pompeii, The Vampires of Venice and The Next Doctor. Episodes which include a major historical figure, such as Winston Churchill, Queen Victoria or William Shakespeare tend to follow Template 2 (Meeting Famous People) - see below.

Template 2: Meeting Famous People

The Doctor travels to the past and meet a major historical figure – usually an artist or writer (Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, Vincent Van Gogh) – only to discover that weird, otherworldly events are unfolding around that famous personage. In most cases, the mystery or its solution is directly tied to the historical character’s life, personality or creativity. Epsiodes which clearly follow this pattern include The Unquiet Dead, The Shakespeare Code, The Unicorn and the Wasp and Vincent and the Doctor. The artist / writer may be replaced by a major historical ruler (such as Queen Victoria in Tooth & Claw and Winston Churchill in Victory of the Daleks), in which case the episode also tends to follow Template 1 (Historical Errors).

Template 3: The Darkness of Space

This is our aforementioned Alien-like template: The Doctor travels to a futuristic location (such as the inside of a spaceship, a space station, an underground base, a spaceship crash site, a gigantic museum / library or any other reasonably high-tech and claustrophobic place) and quickly realizes that some unspeakable hidden menace is lurking in the shadows. Such episodes always feature a significant supporting cast (spaceship personnel, fellow passengers, soldiers in the field etc) who either start disappearing one after the other, as they get eliminated, devoured or possessed by the menace or make the Doctor’s job more difficult by losing their self-control – until our heroes manage to solve the mystery, beat the entity and save the day. Many episodes follow this template, including The End of the World, Dalek, New Earth, The Impossible Planet / The Satan Pit, 42, Voyage of the Damned, The Doctor’s Daughter, Planet of the Ood, Silence In the Library / Forest of the Dead, Midnight, The Waters of Mars and Flesh & Stone / The Time of Angels.

This template also has a more ‘social’ variant (found in episodes such as The Long Game, New Earth, Gridlock, Utopia, Planet of the Ood or The Beast Below), in which the Doctor travels to Earth’s future (or to another futuristic place), discovers the darker secrets (or the less pleasant aspects) of a society gone wrong and (of course) attempts to make things better. These dystopian scenarios, which usually involve a fair amount of social satire and present-day topicality, often deal with moral or even philosophical themes and conflicts (e.g. society vs. the individual, freedom vs. control, morality vs. practicality, ends vs. means etc); nevertheless, they follow the same pattern as the more classic Alien-like episodes – simply make the hidden horror a social horror and voilà!

Template 4: The Truth Is Out There

In this somewhat X-Files-like pattern, the Doctor investigates some mysterious events in the present-day– such as unexplained disappearances, abnormally high-levels of what-have-you radiations in some ordinary-looking place, weird scientific experiments or the public trumpeting of some revolutionary, far-too-advanced technology such as a rejuvenation machine or a miracle diet. Episodes which follow this pattern include Boomtown, Rise of the Cybermen, School Reunion, Army of Ghosts, The Lazarus Experiment, Partners in Crime, Planets of the Ood and The Sontaran Stratagem. It should also be noted that quite a few of these stories feature a powerful corporation (such as Atmos or Ood Enterprises), a government agency (such as Torchwood in Army of Ghosts) or some sort of institution (such as the school system in School Reunion) acting as a façade for the conspiracy. Also, such stories are often used as the first part of a Major Alien Crisis two-parter, as in Rise of the Cybermen (prelude to The Age of Steel), Army of Ghosts (prelude to Doomsday) or The Sontaran Stratagem (prelude to The Poison Sky).

Template 5: Lives Less Ordinary

The normal life of a normal person is troubled, warped or even shattered by alien interference or some other weird, out-of-this-world events (which are often a forewarning or manifestation of a forthcoming alien attack or similar large-scale menace). Such episodes are often firmly rooted in some aspect of everyday life or deal with common personal themes – such as family life, work, childhood memories, complicated love stories etc. Episodes which follow this pattern include Rose, The Idiot’s Lantern, Fear Her, Smith & Jones, The Eleventh Hour and The Lodger; as this list demonstrates, this episode template is often used to introduce new companions, who are pulled away from the ordinary routine of everyday life by otherworldly events, meet the Doctor and end up adventuring in space and time. Like template 4 above, this template is also present in the first half of two-part stories like Human Nature / The Family of Blood and The Hungry Earth / Cold Blood, where they serve as the ideal introduction for major alien trouble.

Next time : Templates 6 to 10!

House Rule : The Nemesis Effect

So, Lady Penelope’s Odyssey is back for a second season - and we’ve already played the first three episodes!

The inter-season break has allowed me to toy with some new story ideas and future campaign events – but it has also given me the opportunity to do a ‘debrief’ regarding the various rule variants I have used in my games – including the most important ones about Story points (see these two previous posts).

Restricting Story points to the most important (and presumably recurring) NPCs has allowed me to run the game in a far smoother manner – and to focus on the use of Story points by the arch-baddies and other prominent NPCs… but even with this variant approach, I found that these NPCs didn’t really needed these Story points, especially because they tended to have very high attributes and skills, as well as some powerful traits, which already gave them significant edge in play - in terms of game mechanics as well as from a purely narrative angle.

Every single time I spent Story points on behalf of a major NPC, it was during a conflict with the heroine, usually to counteract a corresponding expense by the player. I did not premeditate this: it was simply how things turned out in each and every case - and it's not very surprising, since the concept of conflicts is one of the core elements of the game system. Still, all this got me thinking and I decided to do a retrospective analysis of these moments - how they had flowed in play and what the use of Story points had added or changed to their outcome or dramatic tension. In most cases, I found that such Story points expenditures had not really added anything to the story itself – and could even have worked against it in some cases, giving some NPCs a chance to nullify the effects of an inspired action or decision by the sheer abstract power of their Story points, without providing any rationale for this in story terms.

The only case in which NPCs’ Story points really added extra tension and dramatic power to a story was when the character faced her nemesis (and mother), the witch-queen Morgaine . During this scene, the use of Story points really “raised the stakes” of dramatic tension and helped convey the feeling of a truly climactic and desperate confrontation. Why did it work so well in this particular case and not so well in the others ? Because in the case of the Penelope / Morgaine confrontation, we had a dramatic rationale for such a clash of fates – let’s call this the Nemesis Effect.

In the series, we see this same Nemesis Effect at work when the Doctor faces arch-villains like The Master or Davros… but not when he faces, say, the Pyroviles of Pompeii, the Cybermen or hordes of nameless Daleks. Sure, these creatures are formidable opponents in their own right – and this is precisely what their attributes, skills and traits reflect in game terms: thanks to the alien Armour trait, any Dalek or Cyberman will only take 3 points of damage from a normally Lethal damage result, without having to spend any Story point… The same reasoning applies to Pyroviles: these beings ARE powerful - but if they really had Story points, there is no way the Doctor could take them out with a few squirts from a water pistol.

Running fifteen game sessions and re-watching various episodes from the show have only convinced me to go one step further in the direction described in my previous posts about Story points and NPCs. Giving Story points to NPCs should have nothing to do with “raw power” or “lethalness” (as reflected, for instance, by the various traits of Daleks and Cybermen) - but everything to do with the NPC’s relationship to the heroes. If there’s nothing personal at stake, if we are not talking about a “clash of fates” with the heroes, then giving Story points to a villain will probably work against the game rather than in its favor.

Of course, this is only my personal take on the matter, but after fifteen game sessions and numerous re-visions of various DW episodes, I feel I have some solid arguments to back it up. And DWAITAS is all about possibilities, experiments and alternatives…

So, in my next games, I will take this extra step and restrict Story points to those NPCs who can really qualify for the Nemesis Effect – something which should normally only occur once or twice in a single season, usually during one of those epic, climactic two-parters. And if this proves to be Not Such a Good Idea After All, well… I guess I’ll just have to jump back in time!