Care and Feeding of NPCs (Part I)

This post comes as a request from the Comments in a previous post.

Almost every game is going to need NPCs. In fact, unless the PCs are the only living intelligent beings around, your game will need some. Even if there is no one to interact with directly, the presence of other people will probably be felt, like with the found documents and riddles in the first version of Myst.  I am going to assume, therefore, that everyone reading this understands the basic concept. Likewise, most of this post applies to any role-playing game, and is not limited to Dungeon Crawl Classics.

Basically, this is just a collection of ideas and observations arising from decades of play using various systems.

Non-Player Characters

Or, “The last monster we talked to ate half of the party!”

Remember the good old days, when adventures were underground, NPCs were there to be killed, and the finale of every dungeon was the dragon on the 20th level? Those days are back. Dungeon Crawl Classics adventures don’t waste your time with long-winded speeches, weird campaign settings, or NPCs who aren’t meant to be killed. Each adventure is 100% good, solid dungeon crawl, with the monsters you know, the traps you remember, and the secret doors you know are there somewhere.

If you are reading this blog, you probably know that quote as the tagline of the Dungeon Crawl Classics series of modules, starting from 3^rd Edition days, and published by Goodman Games. I am going to suggest that you replace “NPCs who aren’t meant to be killed” with “NPCs who aren’t meant to survive” in your thinking. The first implies that the NPCs in question should die at the hands of the PCs, but the tagline is actually a reaction against modules where NPCs are given plot protection to make an adventure run as intended by its author.

In the parlance of TSR-era Dungeons & Dragons, it is important to note that all NPCs were considered monsters, although not all monsters are NPCs. This meant that it is always okay to consider them as the opposition, to be met with violence – or even just simply as a target to be murdered and despoiled. On the other hand, as with many thinking monsters, talking to an NPC is often rewarded. In the 1^st Edition Player’s Handbook, Gary Gygax advises players to talk to creatures they encounter when it is possible.

One of the upsides of this is that NPCs are NOT and should not be DM PCs. They do not have plot protection. They are not favoured. If the PCs kill them, they die.  Or, if they do not die, there is some reason why they do not which makes sense within the milieu and tone of the game. 

Some of the potential uses of NPCs are:

Colour: There are people walking around in the marketplace. Someone is drinking in the inn. A server brings you your clichéd bowl of stew. Pilgrims are encountered on the road. Kids roll a barrel hoop down a muddy street. The Duke has hired people to repair the bridge. Etc., etc. The world around your PCs is filled with people. Many of them are just there because the world would feel barren without them.

Concealment:  The king disguised as a beggar, or the pickpocket, are going to stand out like sore thumbs if the PCs never encounter non-king beggars and non-pickpocket urchins. Don’t let that be your game. A vibrant population means that the assassin, the thief, and the would-be duelist don’t necessarily stand out initially. Determining who is important among the multitudes is a result of play, although some characters obviously stand out due to position (the Duke, the King, the old witch in the swamp) or circumstances (the weapon seller, the drunkards you are brawling with, the old witch in the swamp). This is similar in principles to a 2011 blog post, A is for Animals (or Lions, Tigers, &Bears, Oh My!).

Change of Pace: Talking to things provides a change of pace from fighting them. Especially if talking can lead to fighting, or vice versa, if the encounter is handled poorly or well.

Function

Or, “What the heck is this guy doing here anyway?”

Beyond the general notes above, major (and even relatively minor) NPCs can serve a function within game play itself. There are two general rules to keep in mind here:

(1) If the players are interested in an NPC, that NPC has just become elevated in the hierarchy of campaign importance. That doesn’t mean that he or she has become more important in the milieu. Rather, it means that the player’s interest makes them important in the game itself.

(2) No NPC should ever serve only one purpose if they can serve two or more. People are complex. The NPCs we focus on should also be complex, not necessarily in the way they are played (more on this later), but certainly on the way they impact game play.

Here are some functions NPCs can fulfill. Note that, while some of these are similar to each other, they are listed separately to encourage the GM to consider all of these functions.

Ally: Someone who is capable of giving substantial help to the PCs, but isn’t an adventurer (or, at least, not part of the PCs’ party). The viscount who offers them men and equipment, the priest who provides sanctuary, the senator who smuggles them out of the city when the political winds blow against them. In fiction, Elrond is an ally who provides rest and sanctuary in both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

Foil: A foil is an enemy, but not a combat-related enemy. Or, if a combat-related enemy, someone that the PCs don’t necessarily want to kill. A foil exists to complicate the PCs’ lives, causing irritations minor or major that cannot simply be solved with sword or spell. Tyrian Lannister, in A Game of Thrones, plays the foil to many other characters…in the early seasons, anyway. Even a character like Belloq in Raiders of the Lost Ark is a foil that gets his eventual comeuppance.

The thing that the discerning judge must remember about a foil is this: If you don’t want the PCs to kill your foil, you need to supply reasons why they should not. Something must offset the irritation of having the character survive, be it fear of her power, his superior position each time they meet, or even a grudging admiration due to aid received from the foil in the past.

And if the PCs do succeed in killing your foil, let the PCs succeed. Never, ever make your adventure rely upon the survival of a single NPC!

This doesn’t mean that consequences should not apply. The king looks unkindly on those who destroy his agents, for instance, no matter how annoying those agents might be!

Information Source: The NPC knows something the PCs need or want to know, and can convey that information to the PCs. Gollum knows a secret way into Mordor. Elrond can read the runes on Glamdring and Orcrist. A long-deceased NPC’s diary gives clues about an adventure location. A scarecrow can give directions to the Emerald City. And so on.

One of the nice things about an information source, as mentioned, is that the NPC need not ever be met in person, and need not even be alive. Some information sources are manipulators, which attempt to give misleading or false information to cause the PCs to act as their instruments. Other information sources are well-meaning but wrong. The players should always be aware that no NPC is the “Voice of the DM” telling them what they must do, but rather all information sources should be taken with a grain of salt.

In a game like Dungeon Crawl Classics, where “Quest For It” is the beating heart of play, information sources are especially valuable. How does one Quest For a particular spell, if there is no one who can say where such a spell might be found? These do not always have to be NPCs, but they must be something the PCs can interact with. Examples of information sources, living or otherwise, can be found in The Black Goat, The Giggling Deep, and TheSeven Deadly Skills of Sir Amoral the Misbegotten, among other places.

Instrument: The NPC is a tool that the PCs may use…an extension of their own powers, as it were. Rhadagast the Brown is an instrument of Saruman when he goes to fetch Gandalf from the borders of the Shire. Tyrion Lannister uses Bronn as a physical instrument in A Game of Thrones, and is later himself the instrument of Daenerys Targaryen. A PC who hires an assassin to remove a foe has made use of an instrument. Unlike a support character, the PC does not generally supervise an instrument.

Love Interest/Friend: The NPC is simply so likable that the players want to hitch their characters to him or her. When I wrote The Dread God Al-Khazadar, I created rules to encourage this sort of relationship. You can find rules in Drongo:Ruins of the Witch Kingdom that do the same. You don’t have to play out any part of the romance at the table, especially if it makes you or others uncomfortable, to establish that it is there. But having it there means that you have the option of creating PC dynasties in long-lasting campaigns, where the children of your adventurers grow up be heathen slayers themselves. Edgar Rice Burroughs certainly did this, giving strong love interests and full grown sons to both Tarzan and John Carter.

There will certainly be a temptation to place friends, loved ones, and family in harm’s way. This does happen often enough in Burroughs’ novels, for instance, and even Conan’s temporary romances often find themselves in need of his rescue. Yet, Conan and Tarzan are going to get recompense for their chivalry which, frankly, you are unlikely to want to play out at the table. And, even if you did, rolling dice is not the same as canoodling for real. What happens in games is that players quickly learn to avoid emotional entanglements with their characters. There is no real benefit to the player, but it does give the PC a vulnerability that the judge (and therefore his imaginary enemies) can exploit.

You overcome this in two ways:

(1) Provide a benefit. The NPC might have information, or provide support. The PC may get a mechanical game benefit, such as extra hit points. Something within the game itself offsets the vulnerability that the player is accepting. Another example: Princess Annegret in Creeping Beauties of the Wood comes with a chest full of gold and a dukedom once her father dies.

(2) Limit your exploitation of the vulnerability. Simply put, if you place your PCs’ significant others in danger regularly, your PCs will choose not to have significant others. In The Portsmouth Mermaid, the aforementioned Princess Annegret is never placed in danger, although she is often used as a foil to spur the PCs towards taking action in the situations they encounter. There is one scenario in Three Nights in Portsmouth where the princess might be placed in danger, but even that doesn’t require the judge to target her specifically. This is not accidental.

Family may be included in this category as well.

Opportunity: The NPC is a mark. Your thieves have to do something to earn the name, right? Here is someone whose jangling purse demands to be taken by stealth or force. Or someone whose home is in desperate need of burgling. Or who is ripe for a con. If you have thieves in your game (or rogues, depending upon what you are playing), let them act the part. Provide some opportunities.

This doesn’t mean that all opportunities turn out the way that the PCs expect them to. I would highly recommend Jack Vance’s The Eyes of the Overworld for a number of great examples of how a clever and observational fellow may attempt to scam the world around him, both to his weal and his woe.

Opposition: Some NPCs are out to kill you. They are more interesting if they also partake of another potential NPC function.  Darth Vader was compelling as a villain; he was exponentially more compelling as Luke Skywalker’s father. The initial appearance of the Master in Doctor Who was fantastic; the Master as an ongoing foil to the Doctor is better. But be warned – a little of this goes a very long way. Few and far between should be the opponents who were old school chums, family members, and so on. Once in a while is spice. Too much spice destroys the dish.

Patron: Possibly, but not necessarily, in the general Dungeon Crawl Classics magical sense, a patron is any NPC who sends the PCs on missions in exchange for something else (money, freedom, information, magical power, etc.). Again, the players should always be aware that no NPC is the “Voice of the DM” telling them what they must do, but rather all patrons should be taken with a grain of salt. But also, again, most patrons should be (relatively) level with the PCs, or the PCs will soon no longer desire the patronage of anyone.

Riddle: The NPC presents a challenge to the players. If they can figure out what he wants/how to treat her, then they can get some benefit from the relationship. If not, they might face some danger. More likely, they just won’t gain the benefit. For example:

(1) Determining how to deal with Gollum allows Frodo and Sam to get across the Dead Marshes, and then make use of a secret way into Mordor.

(2) Sam Tarly in A Game of Thrones is mostly cowardly, but by treating him well and giving him something worth fighting for, Jon Snow gains a useful ally.

(3) Sherlock Holmes, attempting to find out where a goose was raised in The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, makes a recalcitrant vendor more forthcoming by pretending to be a gambler who stands to lose a tidy sum if the vendor talks.

Note that these sorts of things should reward the player’s ingenuity rather than the character’s build, wherever possible. Even if the game is very build-centric, you can offer bonuses for how the players approach the problem….or even use their build as an excuse to present the problem more completely, while leaving the solution up to the players.

Support: The NPC is literally going on adventures with the characters, and might be used as a replacement PC if there is a death. These characters – known in Ye Days of Olde as henchmen and hirelings – should have their own personalities, but are often left mostly to the players to order about and control. Note that familiars and intelligent magic items are often NPCs of this sort.

Reward: The NPC is, or is the means to, some form of reward. The reward might be some esoteric knowledge, the start of a relationship, or even simply access to another NPC (directly or via letter of introduction). A familiar, a henchman, a lover, a friend, or a new patron are all potential rewards for successfully completing an adventure.

Service Provider: The innkeeper who sells you ale, the farrier who shoes your mighty steed, and even the cleric or chirurgeon who heals your wounds are all service providers. So is the person who runs the baths or mends your armour. In general, they provide a given service in exchange for coin.

Threat: The NPC provides a threat by which the PCs’ options are delimited. This can be relatively benign (the queen supplies the threat her tax collectors wield) or downright hostile (Sauron will send more orcs and Nazgûl, and probably obtain the One Ring, thus covering Middle Earth in darkness, should the Fellowship not proceed with care).  A threat is an NPC who is largely offstage, encountered only through the actions of his own servants and/or reputation during actual play. Another good example of a threat is Ernst Stavro Blowfeld until near the end of You Only Live Twice. Likewise, the shadowy Quantum organization is a major threat in Casino Royal and Quantum of Solace, only to be downplayed in 2015’s Spectre.

The important thing for the GM to remember about a threat is that, while it delimits the PCs’ options, the threat should not be used to railroad the PCs into a given course of action. The threat acts as context for the PCs’ choices, and can certainly lead to consequences, but a large part of the game is the players figuring out how to beat the limitations imposed by the threat – just as James Bond does when faced by the threat of Blofeld, or the Fellowship does when faced by the threat of Sauron’s dominion.

Even if a threat is initially portrayed as all-encompassing, in should not be. There should always be a way – not necessarily an easy one – for the PCs to come out on top! And, importantly, if the players can come up with a reasonable way for doing so, it should have a commensurately reasonable chance to work!

Gary Con Schedule

DCC—The Black Feather Blade 
Friday at 10:00 AM
Duration 4 hours

DCC—The Dread God Al-Khazadar 
Friday at 3:00 PM
Duration 5 hours

DCC—The Arwich Grinder 
Friday at 9:00 PM
Duration 3 hours

DCC—The Imperishable Sorceress
Saturday at 10:00 AM
Duration 3 hours

DCC—Trail of the Rat 
Saturday at 2:00 PM
Duration 3 hours

DCC—Blood for Cthulhu!
Saturday at 9:00 PM
Duration 3 hours

Making Monsters for Dungeon Crawl Classics

This post is the result of a request made on Reddit, asking for more information on designing Dungeon Crawl Classics monsters. While I would argue that this process is more of an art than a science, it is an art which, like all arts, is informed by rational principles. I’m going to break down the statblock first, and then talk about general design principles. Well, that’s the theory. As you will see, some general design principles are embedded in the statblock itself.

The Statblock

Init: Generally, human values run from -3 to +3. The easiest thing to do is to have an Init of +0. That way, when you roll the die in front of the players, what they see is what they get. However, if you have a monster which is known for speed, such as a cobra, increase the value to reflect that. For slower monsters, decrease the value. You are allowed to say “always first” or “always last”.

Remember, slower monsters are less likely to get attacks in before they are ganged up on by the PCs, but a slower monster with good defenses, or that is likely to get a surprise round, can be terrifying!

Atk: This is an easy one. List the kinds of attacks the creature can do, and then give them damage values.  Weapon ranges for damage are a pretty good starting point when determining what damage you should assign. Give bonuses (or penalties) for Strength as seems appropriate to you.

You will note a tendency to give the best attack bonuses to the attacks that do the most damage, at least when you examine creatures in the core rules. If you are going to do that, consider upping the creature’s Action Dice so that the secondary attack(s) get used. Another way to go is to make the less damaging attack more likely to hit, or to include some special effect, so that the judge (playing the monster) has a real decision to make about which attack(s) to use.

Ranged attacks make a creature far more dangerous, if it can choose a location that takes advantage of them!

Attack bonuses also have a synergy with Action Dice to define a creature. More on that later.

AC: How hard is it to hit this creature? Dungeon Crawl Classics uses static AC bonuses for various types of armor, starting with a base AC of 10. This should make choosing an AC simple. Equal to leather armor? That is AC 12. Full plate? AC 18.

AC can also be affected by things like size (small things are harder to hit, but big things might be harder to hit in a meaningful way if they are big enough), ability to dodge, and special qualities like being semi-corporeal. Make these factors clear in your monster description, if you can. That way, the players know why they are missing, and might be able to Mighty Deed or use a spell to alter the situation.

HD: You have two decisions to make here – how many Hit Dice, and what type of die. These decisions actually matter, because Hit Dice are ties to both hit points and critical hits. They may also interact with spells that affect creatures on the basis of their Hit Dice.

Imagine that you want a 26 hp creature. You could make this creature have 9d6 HD, for instance, or 1d50.  The first creature’s critical hits will be far more devastating than those of the second creature. One is M/d14, the other M/d6. The creature with 1d50 HD is also far more susceptible to spells which specify how many Hit Dice of creatures they affect.

You are strongly encouraged not to bloat the hit points of various creatures unnecessarily. DCC combat is fast and loose; don’t make every combat a slog!

But see also Action Dice, below, because there is a strong synergy between Action Dice and Hit Dice.

MV: An unarmored human moves at 30’, a dwarf or Halfling at 20’, and a horse at 60’. Gauge your monster’s speed by these benchmarks. It may also have one or more unusual movement speeds: fly, climb, swim, burrow, etc.

If converting from a game where the average human speed is 120’, divide by 4 and round to the nearest 5’.

Act: Here we get into some of the niftiest ways to play with DCC monster design.  They don’t apply to every monster, but when they do, they are useful. The basics for Action Dice are 1d20, with a critical hit occurring on a natural 20.

Multiple Dice: If you have more than one attack method, you can use multiple Action Dice to ensure that weaker attacks also get used. Action Dice can be used for movement as well, so a creature which is designed to move-attack-move could have two Action Dice. The description should tell the judge what behavior is expected.

Larger Dice: If you want a creature to get criticals a lot more often, consider using d24 Action Dice, with criticals occurring on a 20-24. This is how giants work. Even with a low (or non-existent) bonus to attack rolls, the creature can be horrendously effective.

Smaller Action Dice: A Halfling using two weapons gets a critical hit on a natural 16. That is not a normal thing. By dropping a creature’s Action Dice to 1d16 or lower, you can prevent it from gaining critical hits at all. This allows a cool synergy with attack bonuses – a creature with Act 1d16 but an attack bonus of +8 is going to hit almost every time, but it is never going to do more than its normal damage because of a lucky swing. This is a good option for small creatures where, in general, critical hits are unlikely to happen.

Synergy With Attacks: By shifting the Action Die up or down, one can alter the attack bonus to make hits more or less likely to succeed. What this really does is adjust the chance of a critical hit….from very likely to impossible, as you see fit.

Synergy With Spells: As with dragons, you can have an additional Action Die that can only be used for spells. This allows you to determine how likely the spell is to go off, and how powerful it will be when it does. Casting bonus is also important, obviously, but even with a high bonus, the chance of a natural “1” becomes increasingly greater the smaller the Action Die. You can have a creature which casts 1^st level spells, for instance, using 1d3 with a +9 bonus. The spell goes off, weakly,  1/3^rd of the time, is lost 1/3^rd of the time, and has serious potential problems 1/3^rd of the time.

Synergy With Hit Dice: Remember that type of Hit Dice determines what size of die is rolled when a critical hit occurs, while size of Action Die determines how likely a critical hit is to occur. If you want a monster that has horrendous criticals, consider “HD 10d3; hp 15” as a real possibility. That same monster is just harder to defeat with color spray if it has 1d16 for Action Dice, and is extremely likely to cause a critical hit if it has 1d24.

SP: Special abilities include infravision, bonuses to specific checks, and just about anything the judge can think of. A number of things that come up in General Design Principles, below, deal with special abilities. Did you give your creature some cool “Death Throes”? If so, include it here so that you don’t forget when you run the encounter.

SV: Saving throws. You can use a general law of averages, and divide up (say) 3 points of bonus per Hit Die, but that is rather boring. The better way, in my opinion, is to consider that an average gong farmer has +0 to each save, and then consider how much better (or worse) your creature is from that. You can also say that the creature should save like a 6^th level warrior and look up those saves.

What do you want your creature to be susceptible to? What makes the most sense? Remembering that Will saves are tied to morale in DCC, it is completely okay to make a creature immune to mind-affecting magic as a special ability, but give it a penalty to Will saves because it is also cowardly.

AL: Weird Lovecraftian monsters, and things that disrupt the natural order are typically Chaotic. Things that are well organized tend to be Lawful. If you can’t decide, the odds are that it can’t either – Neutral is your friend.

General Design Principles

Really, this is nothing more than asking “How do I come up with cool ideas for new creatures?”

First off, there are tables in the Dungeon Crawl Classics core rulebook for making monsters mysterious – use them! That bit about “Death Throes” in the core rulebook? That is gold – use it!

Secondly, if you don’t have a copy yet of The Random Esoteric Creature Generator – buy one! Spend an afternoon or three just rolling up random creatures. You are not turning them into DCC monsters yet, and you are not deciding how to use them. You are just filling a few pages in a notebook.

And then, when you have done that, start deciding how to put the pieces together. Again, you are not devising encounters yet. You are just making a stable of interesting beings – some of which may not even be monsters in the traditional sense – to spur your creativity.

Other books I have found useful in this context include The Metamorphica and The Monster Alphabet.

Third, when you are reading some fantasy or science fiction novel (in Appendix N or otherwise), keep a notebook by your side. Jot down quick stats for the creatures you encounter. Some of these you might want to revise later for your own adventures. If you encounter an interesting idea, write it down! The very act of doing so will make it more likely to come to mind when you are stuck for ideas.

Finally, here are three things to keep in mind:

What’s the worst that can happen?

Really consider that question. And then make it happen…or, at least, make it possible that it can happen, and make sure the players realize that it is possible even if it never actually occurs. My first published DCC work includes a monster that can pull the skeleton out of your body while leaving you alive. Give some honest thought about what would terrify you. Make it possible.

Target something other than Hit Points.

Hit points exist as a buffer protecting your PC from harm. Not every attack should target hit points. A 1^st level and a 10^th level character are not that far apart when Agility damage slowly turns you to stone.

And the thing being targeted doesn’t have to be a statistic within the ruleset. You don’t have a stat for having your brain stolen by mermaids from Yuggoth, but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen.

Monsters don’t play by the rules.

In some ways, rules mastery can be a hindrance to creating cool critters. Instead of thinking “Here is a great idea. How can I make it work within these rules?” the poor designer ends up thinking “What can I design with these rules?”

Putting the rules before the design is a serious mistake. All it can do is limit your creativity.

You can get around this kind of thinking by taking creatures from very different games and converting them to Dungeon Crawl Classics. The less direct rules conversion you are doing, the better. Your goal here is to allow the idea of the monster to take precedence over the game statistics.  Then, and only then, do you consider how that idea interacts with the game mechanics that you are using.

For instance, imagine that you are converting a creature from a game system with mana-based magic, and that this creature consumes the mana of spell casters. That idea – that it is consuming not only magical energy, but the magical energy that fuels spells – is the important thing to keep in mind. DCC wizards don’t use mana, but they do use Action Dice to cast spells. Perhaps a successful attack from this creature should reduce the die used to cast spells? And perhaps this loss takes time to heal – the die increases by +1d per night of rest until it is its normal value?

Here’s an example of the “Potted Plant” converted from the Munchkin card game!

Conclusions

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out the tools on People Them With Monsters, or the excellent Monster Extractor Series by Inner Ham. More example monsters than you can shake a stick at can be found at Appendix M or on this blog.

Dungeon Crawl Classics gives you a surprising number of dials for the creation of monsters, as examination of the statblock shows, but those dials are almost all fairly intuitive. It is by trying to imagine the monster as a whole, outside the rules, where truly unique creatures begin to appear.

Feel free to ask questions in the comments. I will do my best to answer them. I’ve enabled some level of comment filtering because of the proliferation of spam, but I guarantee that any non-spam comments will be allowed through!

Doctor Who - The Tsuranga Conundrum

Cross-posted from Reddit.

Okay. The Tsuranga Conundrum.

The basic idea is good. There is a lot of dramatic potential.

The Doctor recognizing her selfishness is good...but over too quickly. The dramatic potential for self-realization? Kind of lost.

Team TARDIS starts out injured? Good....but not really utilized. Only the Doctor is still hurt when the action starts, and it doesn't actually prevent her from doing anything.

Ryan is on a future medical facility, and never once considers that these people might be able to sort his disability. No one else considers that either.

Pregnant man needs a couple of folks there to cut his umbilical cords, but there isn't a lot of challenge for either Ryan or Graham in that role. The baby is not kept because it was brought into the world with difficulty, but because of how Ryan feels about his own father.

There was no reason that Yaz could not stun the P'Ting, punt it, stun it again, and punt it again, until she got it out the airlock. Using the bomb was actually a far riskier solution....and no one brought it up.

Why the General needs to pilot the ship, and her brother cannot, is...unsatisfying. There is a clear theme in the episode of the female characters being in charge, while the male characters perform supporting roles, and that is fine, but the General then needs to not only bring something to the table that her brother cannot, but this has to be seen. Better if the brother pilots the ship first, but the asteroid-littered region results in a number of collisions, forcing the General to take over. Specifically better if the General says something along the lines of "Just until we clear this field". Much, much better if the Doctor demanded that she didn't pilot, and then she did anyway while the Doctor was off dealing with the P'Ting. This would strengthen, not weaken, the theme.

Put these things together:

• Injured Doctor doesn't recognize her selfishness until after first death. No chance to say sorry. The injury is affecting her ability to think. I would suggest short temper and some real animal-in-pain nastiness. Channel the Doctor at their most sarcastic.

• Graham suggests that the future medics might be able to help Ryan's dyspraxia. They can, when they reach the hospital, but it is a year-long treatment. Again, the Doctor's selfishness can be highlighted. She can't wait a year to recover the TARDIS. She can promise to come back and get him, but Ryan has already seen how poorly her control of the TARDIS can be.

• The Doctor demands that the General doesn't fly the ship; her brother can do it. She goes off to sort the P'Ting and the bomb with Yaz. The Doctor is angry with herself. "I'm thick! It's this injury, still not healed. Using too much of my mental resources to keep the pain under control."

• Yaz has already done the stun-and-punt when the Doctor arrives, and has already worked out how to use it as a solution. But the Doctor already has her bomb-based solution, and shoots Yaz down.

• Collisions cause the ship to shudder, making the Doctor worse and causing complications for the pregnant man. The Doctor almost blows up the ship extracting the bomb, and yells angrily, "Can someone get this ship under control?" The flight smooths out; the Doctor is pleased.

• Pregnant man decides to keep the child because of the cost of bringing him into the world (effort, pain). Ryan can then tell his story about his dad. Now he is supporting pregnant guy, not convincing him.

• When Yaz finds out the Doctor's plan, she is upset. After all, she was ready to punt the P'Ting out without any risk to anyone, and the Doctor could have blown them all up.

• We find out the General took her brother's place flying the ship. The stress killed her. The Doctor is upset - she told the General not to fly - but has to acknowledge they would all be dead had she not.

• The Doctor then gets to apologize. In a quiet moment she tells Yaz that the punting wouldn't have worked. The P'Ting was able to launch itself at the ship once; it could do it again. Giving the creature the bomb satisfied its hunger and let it nap. "Let's just hope we never run into an adult."

Cheat Sheets

Did your gongfarmer just become a wizard? Is your elven chandler now a 1st level elf? Want to know what you need to do to make the transition in an easy-to-use format? Enter the DCC RPG 1st level Cheat Sheets, hosted here, and made available to you, Gentle Reader, with the knowledge and blessing of the Dark Master himself!

Includes sheets for all of the core DCC classes.

Cheers!

EDIT: If the first link is giving you problems, you can try here instead.

Some Thoughts on the New Series (Season) of Doctor Who

I have been a fan of Doctor Who for a long time. I have watched every episode known to still exist, and have watched reconstructions of those no longer available…including the BBC animations. Small tributes to Doctor Who show up in my game writing. Some are obvious. Others are buried under layers of personal and literary reference. I have watched all of Torchwood, all of Class, all of The Sarah Jane Adventures, K-9 and Company, and even the K-9 spin-off TV series. I have read a large number of Doctor Who novels, and have listened to many Big Finish audio adventures, although I am nowhere near as much of a completist in that regard.

All of the above is to indicate my default positon: I love the program, for all its warts and protuberances. That’s where I’m coming from.

Also, obviously, Spoilers Sweetie.

The Female Doctor

First off, let’s deal with the gender change.

I’m going to hope that this isn’t an issue for the Gentle Reader, but if it is, it should be noted that the possibility was first brought up during Tom Baker’s run as the Doctor. In The Hand of Fear, Eldrad uses Sarah Jane Smith to pattern his body, and then regenerates into his more typical male form. When the Doctor expresses surprise, Eldrad tells him that, as a Time Lord, the Doctor should have known that this is possible.

The first named Time Lord that we know switches gender is the Corsair, who is mentioned in The Doctor’s Wife. The Corsair seems unusual in that they changed gender regularly. While this might be going on in the background more that it appears to be, the few Time Lords whose regenerations we have followed do not seem to follow this pattern: Romana, Borusa, Rassilon, Morbius, and River Song have not changed gender within the program. The Master and the Doctor did so once, and the reaction of the John Simm version of the Master seems to imply that it was not a welcome change. Similarly, in Hell Bent, the General clearly finds the change in gender an annoyance, albeit a minor one.

Gender changes in Time Lords are therefore not common, but also not unheard of. Moreover, the variance of change may be unlikely (the Doctor did not change gender during his first cycle of regenerations, and it is implied that the Master did not either) to highly likely (the Corsair).

The Doctor changing gender is therefore very much supported by the program’s continuity, and may well be a subconscious reaction on the part of the Doctor to the events in Twice Upon a Time. That seems to be the implication to me.

The Doctor Herself

I think that Jodie Whittaker has a lot of potential as the Doctor, but I don’t think that she has hit her full stride yet. That’s okay – it isn’t unusual for a new Doctor to need a few stories before they discover themselves.

I like that she has quiet moments – watching Ryan trying to learn to ride a bike in The Woman Who Fell to Earth, and being in the background at Grace’s funeral in the same story, are welcome. Life is not all frantic running about. Some of the best bits in the original series were actually fairly quiet.

I like that they have kept the Doctor’s selfishness and ego, and I wouldn’t mind seeing more of it as the character progresses. Unlike previous Doctors, the 13^th seems to face some opposition to taking charge that she can’t just shout down. That isn’t necessarily a problem – there really are gender biases that the Doctor should be encountering – but she should be at least as capable as River Song or Romana in this regard. Or Yaz for that matter.  We see a little of that in The Woman Who Fell to Earth, and in The Ghost Monument, but the writing seems to be going more for “nurturing” than “strong”, and that is also a gender bias.

There are lots of nods to previous Doctors, going right back to the beginning of the classic series – four companions, humans kidnapped (albeit accidentally in this case), and the Hartnell-like appearance of the Capaldi outfit on Whittaker in The Woman Who Fell to Earth. Its rough appearance, having fallen from orbit, seems like a nod to Troughton to me. We’ve seen Venusian Akido from the Pertwee era, and the outfit seems rather Colin Baker-esque. The relationship to the companions seems to draw from Davison’s 5^th Doctor, but without the exasperation and friction.

Jodie Whittaker is not a virtuoso of looking like she is running from explosions or laser fire. This looks a bit unbelievable in The Ghost Monument, for instance, where the robots would have to be worse shots than Imperial Stormtroopers to have missed her. It was also not convincing in The Tsuranga Conundrum. I can live with that, but I also think that the writers should take it into account. The Gentle Reader may feel differently, of course.

So far, the Doctor seems to be stepping back, perhaps to find herself, except when she needs to deliver a lesson or give a team inspirational meeting. That is not the fault of the actor. I hope that this will change as the series continues. More on this below.

Otherwise, I am very happy with the 13^th Doctor. Jodie Whittaker is an accomplished actor, and, given opportunity, shines in the role.

The Companions

Graham, Yaz, and Ryan are all good. Let’s look at them individually, and then together as a group.

Graham: I wasn’t sure that I would like Graham, given the way the actor was presented at the San Diego Comic Con panel, but I find that he is fantastic to have on the TARDIS. He is an older man, with a sense of humor, who is open to new experiences. He misses his wife, Grace, and this is very well played out in particular in Arachnids in the UK.

Yaz: Rookie police officer who knows that she could do more. And she could. Her family drives her crazy, but is well-intentioned and likeable. The idea that she wants to do more, but is being held back, would have been stronger had she not been a rookie. The implication is that she should have been allowed to just jump the “gaining experience on the job” part of being a police officer, and that sorting domestic disputes isn’t actually valuable. The dispute we first see her resolving is a real dispute, and people with the ability to resolve conflicts of this nature are important.

Ryan: Quiet young man, largely defined so far by his unwillingness to call Graham “Grandfather”, his own father’s unreliability, and his dyspraxia. Although this makes Ryan the first Doctor Who companion with a known disability, it isn’t a known disability, and while it has made some things difficult for him, it hasn’t really prevented him from doing anything other than riding a bike. In many ways, it is treated like Sarah Jane Smith’s fear of heights or enclosed spaces – something for someone else to encourage him through successfully every time.

Together: The group functions well together, and there are great moments of support and humor among them, but there is very little tension between them, or between them and the Doctor. And there are actually some obvious ways to bring this tension about:

Graham demands that the Doctor use the TARDIS to go back and save Grace. If Krasko could make minor alterations to try to prevent the Civil Rights Movement in Rosa, why can’t the Doctor do something similar, but for good? We viewers may know that it won’t work, but Graham shouldn’t be so accepting until he learns it the hard way.

When Yaz goes back, eventually, she is still just a rookie cop. If she doesn’t go back, she misses her family. She gave them up a little too easily at the ending of Arachnids in the UK; that should come back to haunt her. Her wanting to do more, but sometimes having to do the menial things, should also be a point of tension, because sometimes the small things are what we have to do. I could see the Doctor getting quite angry about this when Yaz tells her that she came aboard the TARDIS to do more. The growth arc for Yaz should include realizing how important her job was, even if she never returns to it.

Ryan is on a 67^th Century medical ship, and not once does he ask whether or not they can cure his dyspraxia? Another obvious source of tension: Ryan blames himself after his dyspraxia prevents him from succeeding in something more important than riding a bike! What if someone dies as a result? What is someone is critically injured and might die? And when are we going to learn why he refuses to bond with Graham?

Those great moments of support between the characters would be more powerful if we first saw those characters divided by their own conflicts. The Tardis crew under Peter Davison or William Hartnell offer plenty of examples to draw from.

The Adversaries

The Woman Who Fell to Earth:  Tzim-Sha of the Stenza has an imposing first appearance, and a certain “ick” factor, but the Stenza themselves are not nearly as menacing as, say, the original Sontarans, the Cybermen, or the Daleks. They would need a lot of development to be a serious threat to the Doctor.

The DNA bombs, on the other hand, and the data-gathering coils, were excellent.

One benefit of Tzim-Sha was that it allowed the full sarcasm of the Doctor to shine through when she kept referring to him as “Tim Shaw”. OTOH, when she moralized about Karl kicking him off the crane? (1) There was nothing stopping Tzim-Shaw from grabbing Karl and teleporting away otherwise. (2) If Tzim-Shaw could teleport away (as he did), then Karl wasn’t actually necessarily harming him in any way.

That the Stenza keep their victim-trophies in stasis between life and death, and that this is the condition of a specific human girl in the plot of the episode, doesn’t even seem to register with the Doctor. I hope that we see some resolution to this in the future.

The Ghost Monument: We learn a little more about the Stenza in passing, suggesting that they may be the main baddies of this season.

The planet Desolation is said to have been made “cruel”, and the weapons developers on that world have tried to make it inimical to life. They really haven’t succeeded very well. In terms of a deadly environment, Desolation is put to shame by places the Doctor has encountered going back to Skaro…or even primitive Earth in An Unearthly Child. At least on Desolation, the problems nicely compartmentalize themselves, and are pretty easily defeated. Facing Remnants? Here is a handy pocket of gas to defeat them with!

Ilin is the guy who set up this version of The Amazing (Intergalactic) Race. Well acted, but compromises too quickly when the Doctor suggests a solution from The Hunger Games. The story would have been made far stronger had he refused to compromise. Nonetheless, he is a “villain” who is worthy of reprising his role.

The Desolation robots have the worst aim and tracking skills of any science fiction robots I have ever seen. Because they recover quickly from the Doctor’s EMP, her solution is only marginally better than Ryan’s.

The Remnants were a great idea, but I wish that they had been used to do more than provide exposition. This episode could really have used some “red shirts” to demonstrate how dangerous the threats really are. They seem to be location-specific, so unless Team TARDIS returns to Desolation, we are unlikely to see them again. The set-up for this monster, where it is seen on-screen several times before it is revealed to be an adversary, was effective.

Rosa: The main villain, Krasko, is pretty two-dimensional, and racist bus driver James Blake is like a character from the Mirror Universe version of The Andy Griffith Show. For actual menace, police officer Mason steals the show.

Arachnids in the UK: If the data coil from The Woman Who Fell to Earth is the best visual in the new series (and I think it is), the CGI spiders here come a close and creepy second. Sadly, there is no mention of Metebelis III (“I’ve met bigger”) and how the Doctor intended to kill them humanely isn’t explicated.

The queen spider dying at the end is a wasted opportunity. Imagine if the Doctor wanted to trap the spiders in the Panic Room so that she could materialize the TARDIS around them (in a holding cell of some sort) to transport to a world where they could survive. (Note: Not Metebelis III!) Then, when the queen is dying due to respiratory failure, she can realize that she cannot get the TARDIS there in time to save her. Robertson’s solution of shooting the spider becomes, in fact, the most humane thing she can do.

Robertson himself is smarter cartoon Trump.

The Tsuranga Conundrum: The P'Ting was kind of silly to look at, and, although people died as a result of its actions, it was cute enough that kids were happy it survived at the end, its tummy glowing from the energy of a bomb it absorbed. Because of that bomb, The Tsuranga itself was a kind of an adversary, and one with far more dramatic potential than we got to see on-screen.

Direction, Filming, and Sound

Visually, the new series is a real treat. Compared to the effects of, say, the Colin Baker years, we have come a long, long way in telling stories visually.

The sound is mostly good. Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor got to deal with the worst sound problems in the program’s long run, but there are bits of dialogue and exposition in The Tsuranga Conundrum that I found hard to make out.

The Writing

Here is where the new series really falls down, as far as I am concerned. Most of the stories fail to have the rising tension required to keep them from falling flat. The inter-companion dialogue is great, for what it is, but also lacks interpersonal tension.

The Woman Who Fell to Earth: As a regeneration story, this was pretty solid. The Doctor and companions had plenty to do. There was some actual light conflict between them. There were some excellent quiet moments. The Doctor uses what is at hand to solve the problems she faces – this was very, very welcome. Looking back at the series so far, this may be the best episode.

The Ghost Monument: The Doctor and companions have to seek out the TARDIS on a planet making lackluster attempts to kill them. They are in the company of fierce competitors who are actually only making lackluster attempts at competing with each other. One has a legendary ability to nap that is only used to introduce a monster.

This is easily the worst writing in the series to date. Sadly, it would have been very easy to fix:

• First off, make it two episodes, because you should be fitting a lot in here.
• Companions have just been kidnapped from Earth. There should be some conflict/tension as a result.
• Competitors are either going to get rich or die. There should be some real tension as a result. We should never be allowed to forget how this ends.
• Cigar-guy has more than one cigar. Almost kills them all in an acetylene field. This makes the resolution to the Remnants more believable.
• Someone almost dips into the water before the Doctor realizes it would kill them.
• Robots start as slow/poor shots, but get better over time. Never give up pursuit. The area requires more debris, things to hide behind, turns, etc., to make the characters’ survival believable.
• Ilin refuses to accept that both contestants win. One must believe that the other will share the prize. This gives cigar guy an opportunity to grow. When Ilin disappears with the winner, leaving cigar guy and Team TARDIS, the Remnants and robots are closing in. The TARDIS appears the run, and only then does the Doctor remember that she has no key. After a panicked moment, she clicks her fingers and the TARDIS door opens.
• The Doctor uses the TARDIS to trace back the teleporter, confronting Ilin and demanding that the other contestant keep her word. She does….if cigar guy will help her rescue her family from the Stenza-ruined world they are on.
• The Doctor admits to Graham that she got the sunglasses from the charity shop where she got her clothes. “My pockets were empty when I fell into your life, remember? Where else could they have come from?”

Rosa: Mostly positive. I am glad that the Doctor didn’t turn out to be the cause of history. Although it may seem like a wasted opportunity that the Doctor wasn’t the white woman Rosa Parks was supposed to give up her seat to, I am glad that wasn’t the case. The villain was one-dimensional, and the least effective part of the story. Ryan making coffee is a good parallel to early Doctor Who stories where Polly did the same.

This would have been a better story if it had been done as a true historical. The TARDIS breaks down, and the Doctor must seek repairs. Team TARDIS’s actions set up the potential break with history. The Doctor is devastated when she realizes that they have to set history back on track by increasing local suffering. Is there another way?

Arachnids in the UK: Mostly positive, although why the hell Yaz isn’t worried about her family in the apartment complex is beyond me. She gives up her established life at the end far too easily. That needs to come back to bite her. The companions accepting that they would have to interact with these creepy, creepy, and altogether creepy things was far too easily come by.

I’ve already mentioned, earlier, how the answer was too pat. Were all of the spiders in the hotel when the panic room was filled? Or were some of them ranging afield? How was the Doctor going to deal with them humanely? There was some indication (sealing them into the hotel, for instance) that the spiders had a form of intelligence. Exploring that would have been cool.

The Tsuranga Conundrum: Mostly positive. I liked Yoss. Again, the Doctor uses what is at hand (yes!) to solve the problem, but it is surprising that magnetic containment fields as a means of holding the P’ting didn’t even come up. The story would have been helped had the Tsuranga had more patients, even if we didn’t get to know them, or even if they were just implied – see Smith and Jones, The Empty Child, New Earth, or The Invisible Enemy for examples.

Also, if you can stun the P’Ting, wrap it up, and then punt it down the corridor, can’t you simply repeat these actions all the way to the airlock?

Conclusions

Very much looking forward to more Jodie Whittaker.

Very much liking the companions filling out the TARDIS crew.

Love the nods to earlier Doctors.

The visuals have been awesome; make sure that the sound is clear.

Hoping for improvements in the writing, especially tensions in Team TARDIS itself. Remember that resolving these tensions is the heart of the best episodes in Doctor Who, and that they have existed in the program since An Unearthly Child.

Glad to see new worlds, new adversaries, and things that the Doctor doesn’t know. The universe is a big place!

Riot: Narita

On the flip side of all these cool heavy metal/hard rock album covers I've been turning into DCC and MCC content, there are the albums whose covers just don't rock. In fact, they kind of suck.

And those can be fun to work with, too.

What happens when you give a red sumo wrestler the head of a giant lemming, a big axe, and a taste for human prey?

Enter the atiran, a species of crimson humanoids looking for some folks to snack on. They are impossible to trip, throw, push, or knock backwards due to their sumo stances. Otherwise, like the album cover, they are not very impressive.

Atiran: Init +1; Atk battleaxe +1 melee (1d10+1) or bite +0 melee (1d4+1) or unarmed strike +1 melee (1d3+1); AC 9; HD 1d8+2; MV 30’; Act 1d20; SP sumo stance; SV Fort +4, Ref +0, Will +0; AL C.

What about that airplane in the background? A bit of overkill considering what it is facing. You can find statistics for air vehicles in The Umerican Survival Guide or Crawling Under a Broken Moon #7. We can build some usable statistics from the ultralight entry in the zine.

Fighter plane: Init +5; Atk machine guns +3 missile (1d12, up to five targets); AC 20; HD d14; Speed Level cruise 4/ max 8/; Height cruise 4/ max 8; Act 1d20; SV Fort +3, Ref +4, Will NA; Fuel Tank 1d20; Guzzle 1.
Basic Traits: Bomb Rack, Bombing Sights, Good Instruments.

Machine guns have ranges of 120/240/360, and each comes with a clip of 100 rounds. Automatic fire does 3d12 damage to a single target (Reflex DC 10 for half; uses 10 rounds).

Just because the cover isn't the best, it doesn't mean that the album isn't good. You can listen to it here.