If you like Doctor Who and D&D...

[Tallifer]

Check out the 1995 novel called "The Sorcerer's Apprentice." It is a surprisingly successful mixture and balance of pseudo-mediaeval fantasy and space opera, complete with invading space marines and a grand magical duel. Guess which class the Doctor emulates in the final confrontation? I do not want to give anything away however! I just had the pleasure to read it this week. It is easily available if you search in the right places.

Makes me wonder if there could be a homebrew campaign of D&D mixing in some Doctor Who. Jelly baby anyone?

 

[Viking Bastard]

I think a lot of Doctor Who's tropes would fit right into Planescape (or other planar adventures). The Last of the Chronomancers (or is he?) picks up the heroes in the pilot adventure, only to disappear and leave them his Chronomancer's Box of Time and Planar Travel. Without the Chronomancer, they find the Box difficult to navigate, landing them in unexpected places.

What happened to the Chronomancer? And is his disappearance connected to the Mad Xenophobic Modron factions from the far future? "ERADICATE!"

 

[RangerWickett]

I've watched 3 seasons of Doctor Who in the past two weeks. My mind is trying to figure out how to make a time travel campaign.

 

[Viking Bastard]

I've watched 3 seasons of Doctor Who in the past two weeks. My mind is trying to figure out how to make a time travel campaign.

I think the easiest way would be to ignore Moffat's timey-wimey plots and stick to Time Travel As a Pure Plot Device. You step inside The Box; you step out of The Box; you solve The Crisis; repeat Step 1.

 

[Is_907]

I think the easiest way would be to ignore Moffat's timey-wimey plots and stick to Time Travel As a Pure Plot Device. You step inside The Box; you step out of The Box; you solve The Crisis; repeat Step 1.

+1

Avoid paradox-inducing plots until you've played time travel for a while, I think.

 

[Jif T94]

I think the concept of a Time Travel campaign would be AMAZING. Though I personally would take it from one perspective, and establish some "rules" that the "Doctor" would tell his companions.

For example, If I were to start a campaign, some base rules I would attempt to explain would be as follows:

Traveling back in time allows the PC to interact with past iterations of themselves and other characters (This would allow for some awesome RPing experiences where PC's have to play according to any interactions they may have had in the past)
Any change in the past has already been reflected in the future - That is to say that the timeline the PC's know has already developed in response to the PC traveling back in time. (This is an idea that I got when reading Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox)
Something left or forgotten while in the past becomes part of the timeline, and may or may not be exactly where the player left it upon returning to the present (Depending on if someone else moved it or not)
Dying in the past reflects no change in the character up to the point of the PC's death. That is to say that any past iterations of the PC will live an identical life, including traveling back to their own past and dying.
Killing oneself in the past wouldn't change the present, as it would have already happened, and thus the person you killed wouldn't be the person that existed today.

As you can see it gets a bit hairy, but I do think that laying down some core rules to avoid the whole "paradox" concept would be extremely beneficial.

 

[Zelda Themelin]

I like time travel games. Used to play actual ones Time Master and that Gurps version. Mage the Ascension.... ah.


Doctor Who tends to follow very twisty nah nah you never guess (I did) plotlines. I don't quite think that particular feeling would work well for roleplaying game. Sometimes it's easy to let players do whatever they want, and then tell them prophecy was fulled. But unless you have players that are really easy to manipulate I woudn't try anything that tricky, and I can think few plots that would upset me and people I play with.

+1 for Viking Bastard

I like some time travel stuff in my D&D to, even while it sometimes is mostly at background.

Also though I really like Doctor who as fiction, I am not sure I would like to play exactly in that universe. I don't like too fiction heavy universes, star wars, star trek and forgotten realms suffer all from this. Too little freedom to instal my own ideas. Especially if my players were fans. I prefer to rip cool ideas and some villains. the Sarah Jane Smiith adventures had some awesome villains. Though I mostly ripped them for my modern supernaral horror/action game.

Anyhow, Doctor Who universe makes IMO interesting inspiration. I probably woudn't play game set purely on it.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

I think the best way to do a Time Travel game is to have the character's arrival create a new timeline. That way they can do anything they want without worrying about paradoxes. When they return 'home' they go back to their original timeline.

 

[gamerprinter]

Well, I've been talking to Steve Russell at Rite Publishing, about the possibility of creating a short adventure for his Questhaven campaign setting, to be published in this year's soon to be released - Adventures Quarterly free PDF magazine (though it hasn't been created yet, just talked about...)

Instead of time travel through a police box, the goal is a party of standard Questhaven PCs visiting the southwestern desert region of Questhaven, which is inhabited by a native tribal people that say they have a connection across the timeline (a mystical means of time travel), however, they do not need to share their time travelling secrets to outsiders. Not to worry, there exists a temporal storm that appears from time to time, and will show up in this adventure to chronomance the PCs into the far future of Questhaven - to an Old West (Arizona-like) setting with gunslingers and shootists.

In this sense, the PCs do get to time travel, but have no control on destinations in the timeline - storm takes them there, and the storm brings them back. It's the chronomantic elements at work, not the workings of actual chronomancers.

 

[SiderisAnon]

While I rather love the Doctor Who setting, the problem I see with using him for an RPG is that he's less a PC and more a force of nature/plot device/god. From a review I read, the latest Doctor Who roleplaying handles that fairly well.

For a modern Doctor Who style, I believe the game also emphasizes that violence is never the answer because pretty much every enemy you face can defeat you in combat. (Though Tom Baker would beg to differ with that. Some people thought his more action-oriented era of playing the Doctor was too violent for television.)


If you're looking for a detailed handling of time travel and paradox, I understand that the Continuum game has a very good handle on it. I haven't played, but a friend of mine has been running it for years. The game goes so far as to basically require keeping a detailed journal of your time traveling so that you don't accidentally end up crossing over yourself. (Which is apparently very bad.)


Honestly, if I were to run time travel, it would be about the locations. That's how Doctor Who really seems to me. Sure, there are plots involving someone messing with the timeline or things "not being as they should" and all that, but really it's more about the fun you can have in Rome one day and the end of the universe the next.