Blog Wandering - The Seasons of the Doctor

from: http://siskoid.blogspot.com/

Blog Wandering: Taking a brief break from writing stuff to point you at great content (possibly gaming related) that I chance upon on on the web.

Happened upon this while researching about the Doctor's Companions for some possible Victorian era outfits - Siskoid's Blog of Geekery. It has many things, but the posts that I've latched onto are a treasure trove of posts that provide stats beyond the current sourcebooks of the Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space RPG.

There are stats for the Doctors, the Companions, and for the NPCs and monsters in each episode.

Furthermore, Siskoid writes about each season as though the shifting and changing showrunners, actors, plotlines and arcs were all part of a tabletop RPG -- a very politically / dramatically charged one. Here's a starter list:

Character Sheets:

The Sixth Doctor
Peri
The Fifth Doctor
Turlough & Kamelion
Tegan
Nyssa
Adric
The Fourth Doctor
Romana II and K-9

Seasons:

Doctor Who RPG: Season 23
Doctor Who RPG: Season 22
Doctor Who RPG: Season 21
Doctor Who RPG: Season 20
Doctor Who RPG: Season 19
Doctor Who RPG: Season 18
Doctor Who RPG: Season 17

It's a really impressive series of posts, considering that he's also doing reviews of each of the episodes in those seasons, sharing his evaluations and insights into the shifts and changes in character and plotline, as well as (I assume) some of his knowledge on what was going on behind the camera.

For those interested, the official sourcebooks for the First & Second Doctors are available here:

• The First Doctor Sourcebook
• The Second Doctor Sourcebook

Blog Wandering: Krull, Ergo, and a Cyclops!

from http://goodwillhunting4geeks.blogspot.com/

Blog Wandering: Taking a brief break from writing stuff to point you at great content (possibly gaming related) that I chance upon on on the web.

I was thinking of a mini-series on nabbing memorable NPCs from TV and Movies and recasting them in D&D worlds, when I remembered the movie Krull and the character Ergo the Magnificent.

There were two quotes from this character that really stuck with me in a film rife with liftable NPCs (the main characters, not so much). The first quote is a fantastic establishing line, reverberating with false bravado mixed with caution, quite appropriate for a half-competent mage in a dangerous world:

"I am Ergo the magnificent. Short in stature, tall in power, narrow of purpose and wide of vision. And I do not travel with peasants and beggars. Goodbye!"

The other one, a quote mixed with regret, was said to the Rell the Cyclops when actually forced to bid adieu to an almost-friend:

"... we never had the time."

The latter one is harder to verify, unless I hunt down a copy of the film. But it does speak to the hint of a great friendship, had Rell survived the movie. In any case, I was thinking of finding or statting out the two almost-friends in a partnership for encounters in bars, roads, or even dungeons in a D&D world.

But then I found a page on the blog Goodwill Hunting 4 Geeks on a possible updating and retrofitting of the movie (plot and recasting). I like the premise of the terrible evil they are fighting to be an equivalent of the Borg, being the techno element of the technofantasy adventure, and the more fantasy elements being native to the world.

I also like the inspired casting of Tommy Lee Jones as Ynyr the Old One, and Hellen Mirren as the Widow of the Web. Perhaps, instead of merely an NPC write up, an entire mini-campaign should be crafted!

However, they really need to rename the central weapon of the hero -- the Glaive -- as people will be confused in this modern era why the named this thing after a very different looking pole arm.