The Adventures of FASA Doctor Who RPG!!

 

     Starting with The Lords of Destiny, written by William H Keith Jr who also painted the cover. The PC's land on an enormous ship containing an artificial black hole and capable of destroying planets. Unfortunately, the Milky Way galaxy is in it's path. This world ship contains a race (Ydaran) whose ancestors fled their planet after they lost an interplanetary war. They have traveled so long that they believe they are the only world in existence. The Supreme is a self aware computer which is in charge of the ship, and controls enforcer robots, continues to perpetuate that idea. A ruling class called captain lords have surgical implants which allow them to communicate with an overall brain called the Oracle, which can give them access to forbidden parts of the ship. The Supreme can also control enforcer robots. 

     Game wise, this adventure adds a few new skills and weapons, as well as a brief history of the Ydar and the ship. There is background information for Von Neuman Machines, black holes, and time dilation. The players can create their own Time Lords/assistants, use any from the main rules, or the included pre gens. This is a Time Lord known as the Professor, and Joan of Arc (historical figure), Sharyl Evans (modern day journalist) and Trask (test pilot from the future)

     

     Resolution can be very flexible, with one option being traveling in their TARDIS to a planet in the ships path or a ship tracking the Destiny of Ydar, looking for revenge. This adventure reminds me very much of the Fourth Doctor and Leela story Underworld. This seems like an interesting module with possibilities for new adventure ideas spun off from the main premise. I have never run or played any of these FASA modules, so if any of you have then please let me know. Thank you!

Doctor Who and RPG's

      Greetings, folks! I have included the above photo so you can see which version of FASA's Doctor Who RPG I had purchased in 1985. It was in the Westland mall Waldenbooks where I saw the boxset, which is apparently a second edition. I no longer have the box or the dice, but I still have those three books. The idea is that the characters are members of an underground organization (called the Celestial Intervention Agency) that travels time and space to ensure that things do not get out of hand. The Time Lord at the beginning of Genesis of the Daleks can be considered a member of this group. The Sourcebook for Field Agents doubled as a sort of Doctor Who guidebook, with it's timelines for Earth and the Universe and synopsis for various alien races. The system is a point buy, which I had no experience with and as far as I knew, no one else had a copy.

     The books were the Player's Manual, The Game Operations Manual, and the aforementioned Sourcebook for Field Agents. That last one was great because the idea, I believe, was you could hand that to the players as a in world reference. If the players were not aware of something that their character should know then they could look it up. This format continued in the next couple of supplements I found.

     These were the only supplements for the FASA Who line that I saw. Again, there is a book for the GM and a players book to give a little background information on the Master or Daleks. Each had a tweaked history, for the Master they state the Meddling Monk character (played by Peter Butterworth) is an early incarnation. The Dalek supplement added some alien races they have conquered, to give some variety and maybe the GM can use these as a jumping off point for an adventure. All of these contain a mix of photos from the show as well as illustrations. They made one more supplement for the Cybermen, which I have only seen once and it was only one of the two books.

     Regarding modules, I did not come across any for thirty years or so. Thankfully I found these four at the same time for a reasonable price. There were three more adventures published: The Ityean Menace, Legions of Death, and City of Gold. I will go into some detail about the adventures next week. I hope you all found this interesting.

Doctor Who Sketches day ten

One third of the way through

The sontarans! The clone race introduced at the end of Pertwee's Era (and Sarah Jane's intro story) Also they almost had a sourcebook for the FASA rpg, but the line was cancelled before it could be finished. Sigh! Let's see what you've got.