I didn’t intend to create a new Doctor Who campaign.

The last one, “Lovecraft’s Legacies” had trodden new territory in expanding the lexicon and history of all the great races of Dr Who – Daleks, Cybermen, Weeping Angels, Omega and the Time Lords (amongst others).

It integrated elements of Dr who with the Lovecraftian Mythos, had appearances by Madam Vastra, Jenny and Strax in adventure 2, Captain Jack Harkness, the Jon Pertwee Doctor, the Brigadier, Jo Grant, Sargeant Brenton and UNIT in adventure 3, a Holographic Rose Tyler, Captain Jack again, and Ood Epsilon (now rechristened Ood Alpha) – and you either know who all of these are already, or it would take entirely too long to explain!

It made Canon the Doctor Who movies starring Peter Cushing and did so by filling plot holes from the early seasons of the second Doctor, (and literally also filled another dozen plot holes along the way from different seasons of the show, both classic and modern), while extending the lore of all the important Who enemies, and it had used every one of my good Doctor Who ideas (and, perhaps, then some)!

So I thought I was done with this particular science fiction sub-genre!

But then I realized that if I did a plotline based around the beginning of the Time War with the Daleks, featuring the 8th Doctor (Paul McGann), I could literally do anything that I wanted because the Time War itself would rearrange everything, anyway.

The fact that neither the player nor myself was that familiar with McGann’s version (for reasons that will soon become clear) simply gave him a bit more freedom as a player.

Everything I knew about the character had been encapsulated in my write-up for Dr Who and the secrets of complex characterization, here at Campaign Mastery, when I wrote,

8th Doctor (Paul McGann) – youthful, energetic, wide-eyed and full of enthusiasm, encouraging those around him to engage in and celebrate life rather than withdrawing from it. This is also the incarnation that establishes the romantic aspects of the Doctor, something that had been eschewed in the past. Although controversial at the time, it has since become accepted canon that the Doctor can experience romantic love for others.

Besides, I’ve always enjoyed the triple irony of this character. The shortest televised run – just one telemovie, even the War Doctor got to appear in more episodes and specials! But the actor then stayed active in the role through audio books and novels and the like, right up to the series reboot, giving him the longest active tenure as The Doctor of all the actors to take on the role, greater even than the Tom Baker run! In that capacity, audiobooks and novels revolving around the character outsold those of any other incarnation, making him the most popular version of The Doctor – so popular, in fact, that the series was cancelled when the Telemovie wasn’t a hit!

That can only mean one of two things: either Dr Who fans didn’t go on for novels and audiobooks, setting the bar so low that clearing it was an achievement without merit, or the character was never really given a chance to find his feet on-screen. The fact that the audio books and novels kept the character alive for almost two decades until the 2005 reboot argues against the first interpretation in favor of the second.

The combination of these three thoughts – complete freedom, a part of the story untold, and an under-appreciated protagonist – proved too much to resist, and so (before investing a lot of effort) I sounded out the player about a new Campaign for the Time Lord. He responded that he had quite enjoyed the last one, so why wouldn’t he sign up for another?

(All this preamble is being presented for a specific reason that I’ll get to in due course).

So I started putting ideas down on electronic paper – and keeping a diary of my campaign development, to be shared here through Campaign Mastery.

You see, I’ve presented ideas for campaigns in the past, but its’ always nagged at me a little that none of these were campaigns for actual play. With the Zener Gate campaign, I shared the game system but very little about the campaign, because it was (a) minimal-prep, and hence (b) the plans were fairly vague. I had never demonstrated my actual campaign development process except in the theoretical and abstract; this was an opportunity to rectify that. All I had to do was to be careful not to give anything away that I didn’t want the player to find out in advance, or to structure the diary entries in such a way that he could be told to stop reading at a certain point, something that I trust him to do.

This is as close as I can come to letting you all read over my shoulder while I’m creating a new campaign that I intend to run – “actual field conditions” as it were. No theory, all hands-on application.

Our story begins here:

December 3, 2020

No sooner had I started formulating ideas than I happened to re-watch one of the Christmas Specials (nothing gets you into the right frame of mind to write Doctor Who than watching Doctor Who) and spotted a fairly significant plot hole – one that a quick internet search suggested no-one else had ever noticed.

That’s a rare and precious thing. Before I knew it, and before I had even finished outlining the campaign, I had put together an introductory “Christmas Special” of my own to kickstart the campaign.

You see – or perhaps you don’t – ever since the reboot became a success, most years have contained a Christmas Special. These have usually been self-contained plotlines that nevertheless either wrapped up the year’s overarching plot thread, or punctuated it with a standalone plot, or kick-started the next season’s overarching plot thread and/or relationships.

I wrote the entire adventure in a single sitting, knowing only the protagonist and the plot hole around which it was oriented. Like the seasonal pattern usually followed by Doctor Who, this is both a standalone adventure and the gateway into the campaign, and it establishes the character’s current style and modus operandi. I also had an idea for a companion that would be the perfect GM’s tool: unable to actually do anything much in place of the PC, but able to feed thoughts, ideas, and (when necessary) misdirection into the equation. Nevertheless, by the time I had outlined his story, he had gone from an interesting idea to a heroic character in his own right and every bit as deserving of his place in the story as any other companion.

The writing of this 2639-word adventure was the final feather on the scales; it was so easy that it made the second Dr Who campaign inevitable. I spent the next week assembling ideas and initial thoughts…

A word on Focus

Once I had committed to it, I always intended to spend some of my Christmas break developing this campaign. But, despite what might be implied below, I didn’t expect to actually make it my primary focus in the week Dec 8 to Dec 14. My primary task was supposed to be doing research and prep for my superhero campaign, and that was indeed the focus for most of the period from Dec 4 through 7. I was planning to wait until I was away at my Family’s for Christmas to work on this campaign because so much of it is sheer creativity with little-or-no research required.

On Monday the 8th, plans changed. A driver appears to have had a sharp impact with a power pole across the street, and the electricity was cut off for two hours. When it was restored, my telephone and internet services didn’t come back with it.

Of necessity, then, I have had to focus my time on things that don’t require an internet connection. Which is why so much effort, and progress, has been made in so short a timespan. Just wanted to keep expectations real – don’t try comparing your output to this rate of progress, or expecting similar things of yourself; I was primed for it, and distractions have been minimal.

December 9, 2020

The campaign Outline started with 8 good questions, two good ideas, and one vague notion. The good ideas: Dalek X and the nature/progression of the Time War in its early stages. The Vague idea: the nature of Regeneration.

Building an introductory plotline out of a plot hole in an existing Christmas Special, Moffat-style, gave rise to a couple of additional ideas, and in particular to an interesting companion.

Adding one more vague idea (resolving the inconsistencies in the Rassalom timeline and his personality) and answering those 8 questions created an outline of the primary plotline of the campaign in 12 adventures (not counting the intro adventure), but with minimal (insufficient) reference to one of the good ideas [Dalek X]. Refer entries 8 and 12 of the primary plotline.

In particular, thinking about how other enemies/allies of the Doctor would be involved in the timeline gave rise to a critical course of events involving Cybermen (Entries 1 (intro adventure), 4-5, 6, 7), The Master (3, 4-5), Jidoon (3), Face Of Bo (7), Morpheus/Moebius (11), Sontarans (5, 6). Nevertheless, the primary driving force of the campaign is the Daleks who were explicitly referenced in entries 1 (indirectly), 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, and 13), Davros (entries 6, 12 & 13) and Rassalom (9, 10, 11, 12, and 13). Time Lord Society and the Council Of Time Lords are explicitly referenced in entries 3, 6, 8, 9 and 10.

This necessitates the incorporation of a secondary plot thread, and giving Quasima a storyline of his own requires a tertiary plot thread. To some extent, these can be contained within the existing framework, but additional adventures may be required (see below).

In particular, a couple of the entries in the first-draft outline require isolated ‘spot adventures’ unrelated to the main action; some of these may be used to accommodate the secondary and tertiary plotlines. as stated, but if they aren’t so used, these ‘spot adventures’ / ‘fillers’ will also need to be created, built around other ideas. Refer entries 2, 6, 9, 11.

December 10, 2020

Thought up a sequence of additional encounters between Dalek X and the Doctor, labelled a, b, c, and d for identification until it is determined where best they fit. Chronologically, from the Doctor’s perspective, they will occur b, a, c, d (simply to highlight a consequence of time travel as a regular act). These plots resolve the questions to be answered about Dalek X in the main plotline, plugging potential plot holes. They also add a Davros encounter and a few nuances of Dalek society.

Thought up five independent plotlines, which will be dropped in as necessary. Not all of the plot-shaped holes will match, so some of these will be standalone filler, to be used to slow early pacing. Four of the ideas are fairly generic Sci-fi plots (though one acquires a specific connection to Doctor Who continuity along the way – written almost as an afterthought to solve a plot problem within the adventure, this gives the adventure added significance.

The last of the independent plotlines is directly connected to the game universe in which Doctor Who takes place and would not fit any other continuity, so it is a uniquely who plotline. But it has a plot hole or two still to fill – why the antagonist does what he does and what the Hero is supposed to be able to do about it. These have been labelled F1, F2, F3, F4, and F5 until the final continuity is determined. Not all of them will fit the ‘unrelated adventure’ plot holes in the main plot, so some of these will need to take place as Filler adventures to further manipulate the pace of events.

Thought up a series of 4 plot sequences which feature the companion and his story. Given that the companion is also mentioned specifically in some of the above-mentioned plotlines (a-d and F1-5), that should be enough to establish him as a participant – he’s only an NPC after all, and shouldn’t steal the show from the protagonist – but using him as a vehicle to bring the protagonist into a confrontation with an antagonist is just fine.These have been labelled A-D

Next steps:
1. Break the primary plot into phases.
2. Review each of the other plots to see if continuity requires it to take place in a particular phase.
3. Use the results to assess whether or not the plotline is a suitable match for one of the remaining plot “holes” within the main plot.
4. Plan a pacing outline showing where filler should be and how much of it.
5. Commence construction of a concordance specifying the final plot sequence and any remaining holes that need to be filled.
6. Generate plot content to specifically fill the remaining holes.
7. Re-sequence the plotlines into the final campaign outline.

13+4+5+4 = 26 adventures, plus up to 4 that need to be specifically generated, or minus up to four that are redundant entries through integration of two separate plot elements into a single adventure. 26±4 = 22-30 adventures. Some will be quite short, perhaps <1 day’s play; some will be relatively long, perhaps 3-4 days’ play; the majority will be 2 days play or less. 4-5 / 2 = 2-2.5; +1-2 = 3-4.5; / 2 = 1.5 – 2.5 – so overall, expect 2 game sessions to be the average, so this is 44-60 game sessions.

The Dr Who campaign will only be played (at this stage) on months that have a 5th Saturday. Except in leap years (like 2020) that excludes February as a possibility. A 5th Saturday will of necessity fall somewhere between the 29th of the month and the end of the month. This is only possible if the first Saturday falls somewhere in the date range of EOM-28 or less.

Jan: 31-28=3. so 1-3 in 7 = 0.4285 probability.
Mar: 31-28=3. so 1-3 in 7 = 0.4285 probability.
Apr: 30-28=2. so 1-2 in 7 = 0.2857 probability.
May: 31-28=3. so 1-3 in 7 = 0.4285 probability.
June:30-28=2. so 1-2 in 7 = 0.2857 probability.
July: 31-28=3. so 1-3 in 7 = 0.4285 probability.
Aug: 31-28=3. so 1-3 in 7 = 0.4285 probability.
Sept: 30-28=2. so 1-2 in 7 = 0.2857 probability.
Oct: 31-28=3. so 1-3 in 7 = 0.4285 probability.
Nov: 30-28=2. so 1-2 in 7 = 0.2857 probability.
Dec (possibly excluded, possibly an extra session) = 0 probability

That’s 6 lots of 3 in 7 and 4 lots of 2 in 7 = 3×6=18 and 2×4=8 so 26/7 is the average number of 5th weeks per year that are available for gaming = 3.714. Assume that the occasional long weekend/public holiday can also be used (one per year) and that if there aren’t enough 5th weekends to get to 5 game sessions a year, a December session will be allocated, and we get 5 game sessions per year. 44-60 game sessions is therefore 44/5 – 60/5 = 8.8-12 years commitment.

This seems too long, in fact it was proven to be too long in the course of the first Dr Who campaign. To combat this, it was specified that the 2nd Saturday of the month following a 5th week session would also be used for the Dr Who campaign. Assuming that is maintained again, that gives 3.714×2+1+0.572 = 7.428 + 1 + 0.572 = 9 game sessions per year, or 44/9 – 60/9 = 4.8889 – 6.6667 years, and average of 5.7777 years. Since the occasional session will get missed for one reason or another, expect this to be a 6-year campaign.

December 11, 2020

By now you can see one of the secrets to my success when it comes to creating campaigns: until I sign off on it, and start working on an adventure-by-adventure bases, I try to think about the campaign, if not to actually work on it, every single day. When I have an idea, I scrawl it down somewhere, and as soon as possible, transfer it into a more legible and permanent style in an electronic document created for the purpose. Small bits of creativity soon accumulate into a monolithic whole greater than the sum of its parts.

That doesn’t mean that I will work this intensively; usually, I’ll do nothing but accumulate rough ideas for a month or so at least before starting to shape them into a structured campaign. Because of the Internet Outage, I’ve focused a lot more time and attention on this campaign than I normally would. (I’m also contemplating ways to streamline the research process and take it off-line while I’m away, so as to make up as much of the lost time as possible).

Anyway, on this particular Friday, I came up with a Plot-line that fitted the problematic Adventure #2. Starts with the Doctor already in the thick of the action, then becomes a framework for 3-5 mini-adventures before wrapping up with the main plot. A mini-adventure should take 1-2.5 hours of play to resolve, so figure 3 of them plus the introductory sequence for one day’s play and two slightly longer ones plus the main plot element for a second day’s play. There’s more to a mini-adventure than a single encounter, but not much more than 3 or 4 encounters. Verbal short-hand and hand-waving can be used to keep time marching.

This impacts the pacing of the campaign: we have a Christmas Special, then this relatively high-action season opener before things calm down a bit. This seems plausible at a campaign-wide level, but it does specify a particular tone for the following adventure, which will impact the choice and location of secondary and tertiary plotlines.

I also came up with aa vague idea that can be used as background to any Dalek plotline not already specified as taking place in a specific setting. I’ve saved that as S1.

(later)

Steps 1-5 of the action plan are done.

Plots A and F1 filled two of the three mini-adventure slots in Adventure 2.
Plot B filled the ‘unrelated plot’ hole in Adventure 6.
Plot c filled the ‘other Dalek plot’ hole in Adventure 11.

Phase 1 is ‘no war’ and contains adventures 1-5, plus space for unrelated adventures at the end. Plots F3 and a combination of b & C were placed here.

Phase 2 is ‘pre-war’ and contains adventures 6-8, with gaps for unrelated adventures between each of these parts. Prior to adventure 8 is the last such gap. Plots a and F2 were placed between 6 and 7, and plots F4, d+S1, and F5 were placed between 7 and 8.

Phase 3 is ‘inevitable war’ and contains adventures 9 & 10.

Phase 4 is ‘early war’ or ‘preliminary skirmishes’ and contains adventures 11 & 12.

Phase 5 is ‘war joined’ and contains adventure 13 and an epilog separated from it. Plot D was combined with that Epilog.

.This leaves two plot holes to fill: a Mini-plot (designated X1) in adventure 2, and an ‘undefined Gallifrey Plotline” to take center-stage in Adventure 9, designed X2.

The complete plot sequence reads:
Phase 1: 1 – [2+X1+A+F1] – 3 – 4 – 5 – F3 – [b+C]
Phase 2: [6+B] – a – F2 – 7 – F4 – [d+S1] – F5 – 8
Phase 3: [9+X2] – 10
Phase 4: [11+c] – 12
Phase 5: 13 – [Epilog+D]

Phases 1 and 2 are roughly the same length as both each other and as the total of Phases 3, 4, and 5, so the campaign is approximately divided into thirds.

The first third is establishing plot elements and making the progression through the 5 phases inevitable. The second third is partially spent trying to prevent that inevitability and failing, and partly spent developing the plot elements established in the first third. The final third is the interaction between those elements and setting the Doctor on the path dictated by established series continuity.

Once X1 and X2 are filled with plot ideas, this master sequence can be applied to my preliminary notes and titles given to those adventures that don’t have them (1, 4, 5, 7, and 13 have titles already). I’ll add to this diary when that’s done.

(much later)

Reviewing the adventures thus far created additional slots X3 and X4 (needed to be part of Adventures 2 and 6, respectively).

X3 was immediately filled with a new plot idea based on the outline of a B-grade sci-fi movie from many years back. This also opened the door to an adventure epilog (X5) that binds the rest of the adventure back together into a cohesive whole that links it even more strongly into the main continuity of the campaign.

There’s still scope for a few interesting locations to get incorporated into Adventure 2 as color, adding to its plausibility and interest – what’s included at the moment is very much the bare minimum needed for plot purposes.

I also came up with a half-baked idea about Time Lord society inspired by a casual comment on an old Top Gear (Gallifreyan society modeled on Continental Europe) and a second half-baked idea from a favorite Stargate episode about Time Lord vices. Putting those, and a thought that’s been lurking around in the back of my head for many years (the distinction between Gallifreyan and Time Lord) together almost fills X2 – it just needs a plotline drawing on those ideas to tie them together. So it’s not there yet, not ready to be outlined yet, but it’s well on its’ way. Not sure who the vehicle will be yet, but that will come as a complete package with the plot.

That leaves only X4. The more I think about it, the more F2 seems a perfect fit for that slot. Right now, it’s tentatively used for pacing between (a) and 7. (a) is a rescue plot set against a genetics-oriented plot inspired by the name of one of the forbidden weapons of the Omega Archive, “The Skaro Degradations”, and it’s one of the key pieces of the overall continuity that it happens sometime, this just happens to be a good place for it. 7 deals with the more remote consequences of the 4-5 two-part adventure, just as 6 dealt with the more immediate consequences. There’s a pacing imperative to have things happen in between 6 and 7 so that 7 feels more remote from 5 than 6 does. When assembling the concordance, I decided that (a) alone wasn’t enough to achieve that, especially since it is tightly woven into the overall continuity of the campaign, and – as part of making these diary notes – I’ve reviewed that decision and still feel the same way. However, F2 feels, more than ever, like the right ‘fit’ for X4 – and that means that I would be creating an X6 to take the place of F2 in the existing continuity.

This, and the empty plot for X2, are the final major structural elements of the continuity that are needed. Once those are done, I can start outlining important characters (and making notes about more ‘topically significant’ characters that feature, but only in one or two adventures). I already have ideas bubbling away in the back of my head for those.

But first, those two plot holes.

December 12, 2020

While I did the work before I called it a night on the evening of the 11th, I was almost falling asleep at the keyboard before the “much later” work described above had even started. But sometimes you can tell when you’re “in the zone,” creatively, and this was one of those times.

Saturday morning, the first thing that I did was to write up the preceding diary entry. Which should put “the more I think about it” into a slightly different context – I wasn’t just referring to reviewing material while I wrote up the diary entry, but about ruminations that had been taking place for a while.

To revisit where things stood after doing so, then, I have a bunch of half-baked ideas that when framed by a plotline will become X2, and I need a new adventure idea for X6, which is there for no better reason than the need to put some distance between plotlines 6 (which is followed immediately by a) and 7.

(later)

That was more-or-less all that I intended to do, this particular Saturday. But then I realized that I hadn’t included a general introduction – just the raw diary entries, and thought to myself that I should write one, when I could. And then I thought about what it would contain, and that got me thinking about the origins of this campaign, and that gave me an idea.

If there’s one thing that readers should have learned about me by now, it’s that I can get ideas from the weirdest places!

In particular, i was thinking about the notion that all of galactic history would be different after the Time War, and why that would be so. For a start, the Daleks would not be the preeminent threat to galactic society, that they were in the pre-reboot series (the Time War falling somewhere in between the last ‘classic’ season and the first ‘rebooted’ season). Now, that might suggest that it would be a safer, cleaner place, but I happened to have watched a TV program about the great extinction of species that appears to be taking place right now (in geological time), and the potential for ecological growth that opens up when a species is driven extinct, leaving a slot in the food chain empty.

The weakness migrates up the food chain, weakening species who used the extinct creatures as a food source or other resource, perhaps to the point where they also become extinct, perhaps not. But unless the extinction takes place at the most fundamental level of any ecological cycle, there will be a platform remaining that some other species can move into – and if there is any sort of competition for resources experienced by that species, it will be pushed into occupying the empty slot. Inevitably, this produces a population explosion.

If there are predator species that consume the booming-population species, then this boom also migrates up the food chain, becoming ever-more-concentrated, and a new ecological balance is achieved. If not, then the boom species becomes a pest, and the source of a new ecological imbalance that will probably drive other species to the point of extinction.

Suddenly, I viewed the dying off of the Daleks in this light, and the universe as a giant sociological ecosystem, with Daleks the self-appointed apex predators.

• All the species that the Daleks wiped out or constrained would undergo population booms.
• Any lesser enemies that the Daleks suppressed would become more prevalent, perhaps even relatively unstoppable.
• Any resources that the Daleks consumed would be free for all – first come, first served – to anyone strong enough to take and hold them.
• Some societies and life-forms would flourish as a consequence, while others might be diminished.
• Some societies and life-forms would take new evolutionary paths because they would not longer have to fight against Dalek hostilities.
• Some of these changes would be peaceful and progressive; others would be more hostile.
• By the time you get into the second-order consequences and beyond, the entire galaxy would look sociologically different.
• As a general rule, it doesn’t matter to the dead what killed them; they are just as dead, no matter what it was. Life, and hard existence, would remain Life and hard existence.
• On top of that, with the one exception (all right, two), the Time Lords were also rendered extinct at the same time. While isolated cases sometimes caused problems (The Master, Moebius, Omega), and the majority didn’t get involved in anything but their own egos, a few of them policed the timelines and made possible excursions into parallel realities and things of that sort. Without them, there is less of a safety net.
• The grass is always greener.
• Anyone time-travelling into the past from a post-Time War era would transport back into the past of a world with neither Daleks nor Time Lords. Relative to this reality, everything that takes place within the game occurs in an alternate reality – one in which the time lords are still around and making alternate realities accessible.

That means that it is practically certain that someone from a post Time War universe will discover the game reality as an “accessible alternate reality” of the past, and will believe that things can’t be as bad for them in that reality as they were in whatever situation they were in, and so would flee out of the frying pan and into the fire. And then be unable to go back again without Time Lord help – and the Time Lords are all busy, or not prone to get involved – except one: the PC.

This entire chain of logic , with it’s mixture of fatalism and optimism, came to me in a single flash of insight – except for the first few points, which have been part of my thinking regarding this campaign from day one, though in a less structured way.

In other words, postulating just such a bunch of over-eager refugees enabled me to focus in on another aspect of the rewriting of history that results from the Time War – and putting it after the Time War becomes inevitable but before the character knows that it is inevitable, in slot X2.is a perfect fit.

One down, one to go.

December 14, 2020

Most of yesterday was spent just letting things percolate in the back of my mind, thinking especially about Gallifreyan society and how it would work. But I did make a few notes about what the central fact of the plotline would be – a murder would be too similar to events from adventure 3, so that leaves only crimes of passion and commerce. The latter then raised the question of how the economy of Gallifrey worked, which leads naturally into the social structure and questions of status, education, etc.

I decided fairly early on that my vision of Gallifreyan Society would be one that on the surface was very stratified and elitist, but if you looked a little deeper, you would find that its ideals and principles were extremely socialist, and if you looked deeper still, you would find that the manifestation and effect of those socialist principles in an elitist society would actually come very close to a number of conservative ideals. The results would be a society quite different to any on Earth, idealized and exaggerated almost to the point of lampooning both progressive and conservative extremism.

If not for the last five years of American politics, as seen from afar, I doubt very much if my thinking would have been along those lines.

Central to the adventure will be Time Lord / Gallifreyan vices, and the opportunities for blackmail that always occur when such vices are indulged and someone else knows about it – the seamier side of Gallifrey, in other words.

Whatever I come up with will be useful background in a number of other adventures, so the effort being put into this is more than justified.

What I’ve got so far (and it might well change in the final version):

• Children are tested for potential at an early age after receiving a generic foundation education for a few years.
• That testing allocates the child a future place within society, and the education to achieve it. The intensity and content of the education are determined by the test. This means that resources are not wasted on those who will not profit from the expenditure of those resources.
• Each member of the population is classified into four primary occupations: Menial, Social, Technical, and Political. Menials live in the lowest levels of society, Socials live in the lower levels of towers rising above ground level, technicals live above socials, and politicals live in the loftiest reaches of the towers.
• The social sector includes police, medical practitioners, teachers, and bureaucrats.
• Individuals own nothing except what they are granted. Everything is ultimately owned by society, and doled out as rewards and compensation. There is no such thing as money; something is worth whatever society decides it’s worth.
• Within each of these four branches, proven expertise is recognized through rank, numbered 0 through 9 (maybe higher). 0 is for trainees, who can’t be trusted with any task without supervision; 1 is the lowest real level; and so on up to the top, who are capable of R&D and original contributions to the capabilities of their class – the research scientists and theoreticians.
• Simply being Gallifreyan is enough to provide basic accommodation, food, etc, but not enough for a comfortable existence. Actually working at your designated classification – technician grade 3, let’s say – earns permissions or grants. I’ve been using the term authorizations in my mind. You might be authorized to have a better quality of meal each day, and an even better quality of meal once a week, or larger living quarters, or better furniture, and so on.
• Everyone is off-work all the time unless needed. What you do with your off-hours is up to you – but everyone is ‘on call’ 24/7. Some people take the lazy route and do nothing. Some socialize with other Gallifreyans in parks and other such social venues. Some undertake advanced training, either within their classification or in some other sector – that’s up to them. Graduating from such training qualifies the individual for a higher status if they want it. Some don’t but most take the opportunity to advance themselves, and hence the living conditions of their families. So there is the potential for upward mobility, there is the potential to remain locked in a particular level, and there is the potential to get lazy, not work, and find yourself with nothing but the Gallifreyan minimum.
• Politically, society is ruled over by Councils, and the most senior of all is the Council Of Time, members of which are granted Tardises and pretty much permitted to go where they want and do what they want. They have only each other to keep their worst instincts in check. The only reason they are permitted such latitude by the lower rungs of Gallifreyan society is that they have rigid codes of conduct and are extremely militant about enforcing them.
• Gallifreyan vices can be generally described as “stalking” – being taken back in time to spend additional time with a loved one (before the relationship began or turned sour), for example. There is a legitimate service which offers ‘tours’ to past events of galactic significance, mostly run by the universities. The institutions offering these services follow strict regulations and protocols of non-interference in events; participants are observers only. Some individuals always realize that select clientele might be willing to ‘pay’ for less supervised visitations – what the time traveler does is then entirely on their own conscience. But it can’t be anything so egregious as to change history, or the Time Council’s investigators and enforcers will be all over it.
• Some of the rules of the Council Of Time Lords reflect limitations imposed by the universe, as shown by the Reboot episode “Father’s Day”. Some are designed to maintain their social elevation – nothing is permitted that makes them look anything but impartial, for example. And some are rules for the sake of having rules.

This raises interesting thoughts about the origins of the principal character, the Doctor. Since he stole his Tardis, he obviously wasn’t authorized to have one. That means either that he wasn’t “legally” a Time Lord at the time, but was a lower social class – perhaps Technician 8, trusted to service and maintain the fleet of Tardises – or that he was a time lord whose privileges had been suspended for some violation of the council’s rules. Knowing the doctor and his penchant for getting involved, interfering up to his elbows, the latter is probably more appropriate.

So I’m still digesting the ramifications of the concepts outlined. New thoughts occur regularly and are duly noted – for example, while I was writing the summary above:

• There would be a lot less “traditional” crime, because the standard investigatory practice would be to get permission from the Council to go back in time and apprehend the perpetrator in the act. There would be little need for courts, as we understand them, and a relatively small police force. Sentencing and punishment would be automatic, and there would be no right of appeal. That doesn’t mean that there would be no such crime – time lords can be just as passionate as anyone else – just that there would be a lot of disincentive to be overcome by the potential criminal.

Oh, and I also came up with a Time Lord maxim: “No matter what it is that you want to do, there is always a way to do it – and there is always a price to pay. Often, that price is too high.”

December 15, 2020

There are two major questions to be answered about the unfinished plotline – what is the crime, and how does the doctor become aware of it? To the first, there are two logical possibilities – either the victim is purveyor of the illicit time travel, or he’s a user of it. The second is how the Doctor (the protagonist) becomes involved in the situation.

I’ve vacillated quite a bit on the first question because an act of violence didn’t seem right for some reason more than the justice system that I had imagined, already a discouraging influence. And the answer to the second would seem to hinge upon the first.

Today – and I’m not sure what sparked the thought – I realized that crimes of negligence would be as serious as crimes of violence in the society described. And that leaves scope for something blatantly obvious going wrong – and in a critical time – which is a more than satisfactory answer to the second question. The mere possibility that it could be deliberate sabotage is enough to bring scrutiny from the highest levels.

There are still some details to nail down, but structurally, I think that’s just about the final i that needs to be dotted.

Except that this adventure still needs a name. I’ve had a few ideas on that front already, but my first thoughts give away far too much, and my second thoughts were far too prosaic. For the moment, I’m going with my third thought, “Human Failure”.

(later)

Well, this is a little embarrassing – but it’s also exactly why I do this prep in advance. It seems that somewhere along the line, I got muddled about which of these two ideas – The Lost World (hmm, good title) and Human Failure – was going to be X2 and which was to be X6. So let’s get this straightened out.

X6 is supposed to be a time filler between (a) and (7). X2 is to be coupled with entry 9, and take part quite some time after X6. The thing to do is to assess each of these ‘other factors’ and see which of the is best suited to be in which slot.

• The (a) factor: “Human Failure” would take the Doctor back to Gallifrey after this adventure; The Last World (title tweaked) happens elsewhere, but could start on Gallifrey. So that’s a tick in the “X6=The Last World” column.
• The (7) factor: This makes no sense at all being anywhere near Gallifrey. So that’s another tick in the “X6=The Last World” column!
• The (9) factor: This starts with the Doctor being summoned back to Gallifrey, so that’s a tick in the “X2 = Human Failure” column.>/li>
• The concordance factor: X6 is listed as being pre-war, according top the Concordance, and X2 is “war is inevitable”. That means that “Human Failure” works a lot better as X2 than as X6, while “The Last World” would be comfortable sitting in either slot.

Decision made – it’s 4-1 “X6=The Last World” and “X2=Human Failure”.

Campaign Outline

With all the significant infrastructure settled and in place, I can put it all together into a “Grand Plan”, better known as a Campaign Outline.

So the corrected list of the adventures that form part of this campaign, by title, is (To distinguish the sequence numbers from those used earlier, I’ve used a ‘/’):

01/ A Nightmare At Christmas (the ‘at’ might be revised to ‘on’ or ‘of’).(1)
02/ The Omicron Derivative (2)
     Part 2 – The Pacifist (X1)
     Part 3 – Lullaby (A+F1)
     Part 4 – Yesterday Once More (X3)
     Epilog – A Petty Revenge (X5)
03/ Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot (3)
04/ The Master Of The Cybermen (Part 1 of a two-part adventure) (4)
05/ The Cybermen Of The Master (Part 2 of a two-part adventure) (5)
06/ Venturi Station (F3)
07/ The Wellspring Of Life (b+C)
08/ Coming Of Ageless (6+B+[X4=F2])
09/ Ogrons To The Left Of Me, Daleks To The Right (a)
10/ The Last World (X6)
11/ The Grand Tour Of Hell (7)
12/ Little Tardis Lost (F4)
13/ The Armorers Of Hatred (d+S1)
14/ The Optimism Operation (F5)
15/ Nightmare In Silver (8)
16/ The First Stone / Human Failure (title to be finalized) (9+ X2)
17/ A Curdle Of Time (10)
18/ The Plague Of Skaro (11+c)
19/ Breathe (12)
20/ Zero Hour (13)
21/ Epilog (+D)

None of these is yet ready to play – not even the almost-ready first adventure. But they are ready to be treated as individual projects, with the exception of a character or two who needs a bit more fleshing out for multiple adventures. Or I might simply use the “extend the lore with each appearance” approach for those characters, and dive straight into the “individual projects” phase.

December 16 – December 20, 2020

Along the way, I generated a long list of image resources that I thought I would need in the running of the campaign. Over these five days, I’ve set about filling that list, starting by grabbing copies of any images from the first campaign that can be recycled. So far, I have:

1. Four images of the 8th Doctor himself, some showing his Tardis Control Room as a bonus;
2. Twelve Cybermen images, including three of the (redacted) for the first adventure (I won’t need all of them);
3. Seven Dalek ships, including some interiors;
4. Three Davros, including one that has been treated to make him look like a hologram;
5. A good one of the Emperor Of The Daleks as he was during the Time War;
6. A couple of Ogrons, one of which looks more scholarly;
7. Nine of Daleks, some of which will be (relatively) easy to customize for the more Notable Daleks that appear in the plot;
8. Four images of Gallifrey, plus one from space. But I will need more, and more specific ones, which I might have to make.
9. Sixteen generic space / time vortex images to use as backgrounds and cosmic phenomena;
10. Five views of (redacted) for use in the first adventure;
11. Two images of the Master as the Doctor last saw him, one of the Master as he used to be, one of his Tardis, and one of his Tardis control room, some of which I might not need;
12. Eight images of the Doctor’s Tardis, including a couple that will serve as a Campaign Title Graphic. This is something that I introduced in the latter days of the first campaign and that really added to the atmosphere;
13. Eighteen Tardis Interior images generated for the previous campaign showing different rooms, including four libaries and two guest rooms – I won’t need most of these, and might need to supplement them with one or two more before the end, but it’s a good beginning;
14. Seven images of Time Lords including two of Rassalom and one of the General in charge of Gallifrey’s defenses in the Time War- I will need more, but these were the only good-sized ones that I found on my first searches.
15. Four weird-looking places / buildings that can be used as Gallifreyan exteriors, and can easily be supplemented with a deliberate search; these were ‘extras’ picked up along the way;
16. Sixteen miscellaneous images:
    • Three miscellaneous space ships, one of which will become the Cybermen ship;
    • A generic classroom;
    • The Astronomer Royal at the time of the first adventure;
    • Dorium Maldovar, a blue-skinned alien who appeared in a number of episodes of the reboot;
    • A Jidoon trio (an alien species introduced in the reboot);
    • Two maps of (redacted) for the first adventure;
    • The War Doctor;
    • Ood Epsilon (The Ood are another species introduced in the reboot);
    • A couple of Sontarans;
    • An illustration of genetic engineering;
    • A weird-looking alien who just looked cool.
17. A series of screen captures from Google Maps of (redacted) which will be stitched together into six maps which will then have graphics put over the top to illustrate a vital plot point from the first adventure.
18. Twenty images that I have set aside to edit, including Gallfreyan soldiers, Skaro (Home-world of the Daleks) from space, more Daleks, and a couple of Skaro from the surface.

That’s more than 138 images by my count. I will no doubt need more – I’m short of non-recurring characters, for example – but that’s probably 50-70% of the images that I will need by the end of the campaign. A significant part of my game prep has therefore been done at this point.

The Campaign In Detail

Below is a large illustration, which is followed by my adventure first-drafts, now ordered in sequence, for the entire campaign. Everything up to the bottom of the list above is public information, I have no problems with the player reading any of it; but anything below that illustration is off-limits – I’m using it as a demarcation line.

So that he doesn’t catch glimpses by scrolling past while looking for a recent post, here’s a list of the last ten posts (with links WHICH OPEN IN THE CURRENT WINDOW), which everyone else is free to ignore (and yes, I have tried to think of everything)!

1. 1. A Rose By Any Other Name
2. 2. Lost Christmas: A Scenario Of Elves
3. 3. Nuances Of Meaning: Scenario v. Adventure
4. 4. Nuances Of Meaning: Scenario v. Adventure
5. 5. RPGs In Technicolor, Part 2
6. 6. RPGs In Technicolor, Part 1
7. 7. Full Nondisclosure in an RPG
8. 8. The Curse Of Excess Prep Time
9. 9. The Four Frontiers Of ‘Alien’
10. 10. The Miracle Of Wood
11. Next Page.

Saxon, you should read no further – the 60% of the article that remains will ruin the game for you for the next 5 years or so! Everyone else can keep reading after this brief interruption…..

Now, where were we…?

Okay, so here’s what’s left in this post: I’m going to copy my draft notes for each of the adventures listed above, in sequence – no spell-checking, no formatting (aside from the titles), nothing. The first one is quite lengthy and well-developed; the remainder less so.

01/ A Nightmare At (on, of) Christmas (2640 words)

Notes: I’ve started off using one name for the Species of the Companion and the same name for him as an individual because I liked it so much. The text below has NOT been corrected.

Open with the TARDIS materializing in an alleyway on Earth on a snowy night. Many windows bear Christmas decorations, but there is no electrical lighting and none of the decorations are powered. In a small square beyond the alleyway, a man stands on a cart and points at a blue hot-air balloon whose passenger is firing a beam of light at a giant robotic machine that looks a little like a Cyberman, but one distinctly different from any that you have seen before. You barely take in the words of the man on the cart, and will never be sure that you have remembered them properly: “That, Ladies and Gentleman, is the Doctor. Time and time again, he has done this, and always without thanks or acknowledgement. But -no more!- Doctor, on behalf of everyone you have ever saved, or fought to save, we thank you!” – and he leads the others in a round of applause as the figure directs a vortex of some kind at the robotic apparition, even as it falls toward the city below, bereft of its controlling influence.

Doctor, you can’t get a good look at the figure in the balloon, he is too distant. All you can tell is that he’s thin, and sort of well-dressed, and has a great air of regret about him. Admittedly, you’re distracted – it should not be possible for you to cross your own timeline except under extremely rare and difficult circumstances, when the laws of reality itself are in flux. And you’ve seen no signs of any such strange manifestation.

Your companion, a rather quickwitted Quasima from the planet Brozt, a sentient color with telepathic communications abilities, calls you back into the Tardis and manipulates the chameleon circuit, intrerfacing with it directly to override the Doctor’s configuration, something that you’ve asked it not to do before – and the one subject on which it has refused to listen. The fact that it is able to do so at all still astonishes you enough that, as usual, you make no serious protest.

‘You said yourself, this encounter should be impossible. Yet it happens. We should observe without being seen until we determine the shape of this particular configuration of fate,” he says, a bright blue shade of excitement. It does that, doctor – treating your mental observations as though they had been spoken aloud, and leading your thoughts in new, and sometimes unexpected, directions.

Using the TARDIS’ sensors, which Quasima has activated, you see the balloon land, the man on the cart clasping the Doctor’s hand while the crowd cheers. They talk for a while, looking at a young boy and a colored serving-girl, and then the pair vanish down another alley. Looking at the face of “The Doctor,” it’s not an incarnation of yourself that you recognize.

*** Let the Dr do anything he likes over the next few hours EXCEPT contact his future incarnation.

If he attempts to leave, or seems at a loss about what to do, he will discover that the TARDIS seems stuck in the here and now like a fly on flypaper. Calling up the appropriate display if he tries, the Dr will find that temporal vortex itself is in a state of flux, heaving and seething; safety circuits have automatically engaged because attempting passage in space or time would be extremely dangerous right now. At best, you could take off, damage TARDIS circuits possibly irreparably (given the local time frame) and rematerialize exactly where you left from, having gained nothing.

At the first sign of frustration or impatience, Quasima distracts the Doctor by suggesting that the Doctor’s Library might contain relevant information, knowing that once he gets lost in the pages of a book or twelve, whole days can pass him by. Have no fear, Quasima tells him, he will watch for any changes of significance and bring developments to the Doctor’s attention.

A couple of hours later, in the dark of the (local) night, the future incarnation of the Doctor will depart – the TARDIS systems showing that he is more willing to risk damage bouncing around an unstable time stream, as though he were used to it, and – obviously – that he had overridden the safety circuits that are holding the 8th doctor in place. Who knows what internal systems he has juryriged to keep his TARDIS flying? It’s quite possible that his Gallifreayan teachers would be outraged.

Finally, it’s safe for the Doctor to venture out, but he has finally found the reference he’s been searching for – a description of the trans-temportal field generated by a device of Dalek origin called a Dimensional Vault. Cybermen using Dalek technology? The Doctor using Dalek technology? Neither is all that reassuring, but the only other option – that the Daleks are active here and now (whenever this is) -and the Doctor missed it- – is even less palatable. Any thoughts of leaving can now be dismissed; this needs immediate and vigorous investigation.

At last, the Doctor emerges, and discovers that it is Christmas Day, 1851

Shortly thereafter, the TARDIS will begin recording an unusual and unexpected shower of shooting stars all over England. Each is logged by the TARDIS as having a temporal vector that doesn’t match the local time-stream – in other words, each is an object emerging from the time stream, materializing at high altitude (or low orbit) and falling to the earth. About half of them land intact – Eastern England soon looks like a 20th century war zone.

The morning newspapers carry first-hand accounts of investigations of these falling stars – parts of metal men, similar to those reported in central London on Christmas Eve. There is speculation that the incident that had seemed concluded was just the beginning of the end. One thing is clear – the Doctor will have to find some of these pieces and examine them closely.

Quasima engages the Doctor’s philosophic bent by asking a hypothetical: “Is it possible that the doctor’s future incarnation (assuming that he was who he was credited as being) was so distracted by the problem at hand that he took his eye off a bigger picture, or failed to notice it at all?” Galling though it might be, the Doctor can’t help but admit the possibility. Which means that it is up to him to look into that bigger picture, and do something about it, cleaning up after his future self.

By now, he’s constructed a working theory about the events experienced by the future-Doctor, one that he’s fairly certain is largely correct:

Cybermen were trapped in the time stream or the void with Daleks, and escaped to here using stolen Dalek technology. Low on power and resources, they set about constructing a Cyberking from local resources instead of focussing on converting the locals, who would have been deemed technologically unworthy of assimilation. The Future-Doctor stumbled into the middle of the situation, discovered the dimensional vault and used it to send the cyberking back into the timestream, and thought that to be an end to it.

But this leaves a question unanswered, a serious one: What were the Cybermen doing with the technology AFTER they had used it? Why had they left it intact, to be used as a weapon against them? Why hadn’t they dismantled it for its power supply, if they were so short of supply that they needed to use local technology to create a steam-powered Cyberking? Or simply destroyed it? Or kept it guarded within their base of operations? None of it makes sense!

“Speculation,” offers Quasima: “What if those present were only a small fraction of the numbers trapped, and the device was intended to retrieve more of their kind?”

This connects with something that the Doctor read in that reference work that he ultimately dredged up from his library: unless it is properly configured by a Spacial Matrix Focus, a Dimensional Vault can function as a Reality Pump – push something into other-space with it, and something already there can get pushed out. A Dalek Spacial Matrix Focus would be a medium-sized device a little larger than a mailbox, but quite heavy, and not at all portable – to use the Vault as he did, the Future-Doctor would have to have removed it from the Matrix Focus.

Which means that Daleks and Cybermen could have been pushed out of wherever they were hiding by the arrival of the Cyberking – perhaps in great numbers. The Daleks are pewrfectly capable of functioning in Space, and would have set about rejoining or rebuilding their empire; they are a problem for another day. The Cybermen can survive in space, but are otherwise poorly equipped for it; they would have fallen, and at least partially burned up in the atmosphere. But if even a small part remained intact and functional, it would seek to assimilate a new host, and the disease that is the Cybermen would start growing once again. Every scrap of cyberman must be examined.

“Not so,” states Quasima. “There are two possibilities: either the recovered materials are inactive, and pose no threat, or they are not. If they pose no threat, there would be no problems reporting the discovery of the inert remains; hence the reports in the paper communications device. If they posed a threat, either no such report would be made, or – if there was a period of transition – only preliminary reports would be made. Any attempt to elicit further information would be met with deflection or denial.”

“Can it be assumed that emergence would have taken place in a relatively confined spacial location?”

***reply

“Then it should be possible to predict a distribution pattern, backtracking from known landing sites and tracks of debris in the sky to that spacial location, then projecting forwards. Any predicted location from which no reports of falling debris would be suspicious. What is needed is astronomical observations of the reported phenomenon, preferably aggregated in some form. The news device quoted an Astronomer Royal, who seems a good place to start.”

***roleplay

(this is the only part that I researched)

The current Astronomer Royal has held the position for 16 years, having been appointed by William IV in 1835, just two years before the King was succeeded by Queen Victoria. His name is Sir George Biddell Airy.

His many achievements include work on planetary orbits, measuring the mean density of the Earth, a method of solution of two-dimensional problems in solid mechanics, and, in his role as Astronomer Royal, establishing Greenwich as the location of the prime meridian. His reputation was tarnished in later years by allegations that, through his inaction, Britain lost the opportunity of priority in the discovery of the planet Neptune.

Airy was born at Alnwick, one of a long line of Airys who traced their descent back to a family of the same name residing at Kentmere, in Westmorland, in the 14th century. The branch to which he belonged, having suffered in the English Civil War, moved to Lincolnshire and became farmers. Airy was educated first at elementary schools in Hereford, and afterwards at Colchester Royal Grammar School. An introverted child, Airy gained popularity with his schoolmates through his great skill in the construction of peashooters.

From the age of 13, Airy stayed frequently with his uncle, Arthur Biddell at Playford, Suffolk. Biddell introduced Airy to his friend Thomas Clarkson, the slave trade abolitionist who lived at Playford Hall. Clarkson had an MA in mathematics from Cambridge, and examined Airy in classics and then subsequently arranged for him to be examined by a Fellow from Trinity College, Cambridge on his knowledge of mathematics. As a result, he entered Trinity in 1819, as a sizar, meaning that he paid a reduced fee but essentially worked as a servant to make good the fee reduction.

In Trinity college Airy had a brilliant career, and seems to have been almost immediately recognised as the leading man of his year. In 1822 he was elected scholar of Trinity, and in the following year he graduated as senior wrangler and obtained first Smith’s Prize. On 1 October 1824 he was elected fellow of Trinity, and in December 1826 was appointed Lucasian professor of mathematics in succession to Thomas Turton. This chair he held for little more than a year, being elected in February 1828 Plumian professor of astronomy and director of the new Cambridge Observatory.

In June 1835, after seven years as director of Cambridge Observatory, Airy was appointed Astronomer Royal in succession to John Pond, and began his long career at the national observatory which constitutes his chief title to fame. The condition of the observatory at the time of his appointment was such that Lord Auckland, the first Lord of the Admiralty, considered that “it ought to be cleared out,” while Airy admitted that “it was in a queer state.”

With his usual energy he set to work at once to reorganise the whole management. He remodelled the volumes of observations, put the library on a proper footing, installed the new (Sheepshanks) equatorial telescope mount, and organised a new magnetic observatory. In 1847 an altazimuth was erected, designed by Airy to enable observations of the moon to be made not only on the meridian, but whenever it might be visible. In 1848, he invented the Reflex Zenith Tube to replace the Zenith Sector previously employed – a special kind of telescope designed to point straight up at or near the zenith. They are used for precision measurement of star positions, to simplify telescope construction, or both.

In 1836 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and in 1840, a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

At the end of 1850 the “great transit circle” telescope of 203 mm (8 inch) aperture and 3.5 m (11 ft 6 in) focal length was erected. It remained the principal instrument of its class at the observatory for more than 170 years. Plans were also in hand for the replacement of the last instruments dating to the time of his predecessor, a task that Airy predicted would take another decade.

Airy is an accomplished mathematician, and industrious to a fault, but he sometimes lacks imagination. He would never have dreamed of attempting to determine an origin point for the ‘meteor shower’, assuming that it was a dispersed phenomenon relating to a region of space, and hence that there was no value in such calculations. However, he has compiled as many reports of the objects as possible in an attempt to identify those seen by different observers from different positions in an attempt to determine the actual number of objects signted, suspecting that it was far fewer than the newspapers have suggested. He has dismissed as poppycock the media “suggestions” of metal men; it is to quell such nonsense that he has undertaken his investigation.

*** If the doctor convinces Airy that he is a reliable and sensible scientist and not an alarmist bent on sewing panic amongst the herd, he will be happy to hand over a carbon-copy of the reports he has collated, which he was preparing for the use of another astronomer to verify Airy’s findings. If he doesn’t convince Airy, he will have to get them some other way – scanning them with his sonic screwdriver, for example, for display back in the Tardis.

*** Eventually, a ‘hole’ will be discovered in the observations centered around

Location TBD

– a fragment, still active, has fallen to earth near a semi-rural workhouse and orphanage, has converted some of the staff, and is preparing to convert the children into a subordinate sub-order of cybermen, “Cyberspawn”.

02/ The Omicron Derivative (2) (1058 words)

Dr defeats an unrelated Dalek plan. Adventure starts at the height of the action.

In the process, he captures a weapon, The Omicron Derivative. He can’t destroy it without catastrophic consequences, and he can’t leave it in the Tardis because it would consime the temporal energy, eventually gaining enough power to activate (catastrophic consequences) so there’s only one place where it might be safe – The Omega Arsenal.

The Omicron Derivative forces atomic electron shells outwards by tunnelling virtual particles into the innermost electron shells through the manipulation of quarks within the nucleus. This causes profound effects – chemical processes are completely dependent on the configuration of the outermost electron shells, the electrical and chemical properties of the elements derive from these configurations. In effect, every element exposed to this radiative field behavies as though it were higher on the periodic table. How much higher depends on the outermost shell and it’s unfilled capacity. Worse, when the energy from the radiative beam is withdrawn, the electrons fall back, emitting significant quantities of electromagnetic radiation. The number of shells that collapse determines the wavelength and energy levels of the resulting display – from invisible infrared for Hydrogen and Helium, to merely visual light displays for Lithium through Neon, to low-frequency radio ‘noise’ for Sodium through Krypton, and high-frequency noise from Rubidium through Radon, to gamma radiation above Francium.

SOME of the effects:

Hydrogen: becomes a solid, Lithium, that reacts chemically with almost everything.
Helium: becomes a solid, Beryllium. Stars collapse into solids and their cores into black holes that will eventually consume them completely.

Carbon: becomes a gas, Oxygen. No organic compound can survive this transformation. Say no more.
Nitrogen becomes a gas, Flourine, which reacts explosively with Lithium and Beryllium – so terrestrial atmospheres (which contain some Hydrogen and Helium) explode.
Oxygen becomes Neon so those exploding atmospheres glow brightly green-white.

Silicon: becomes Titanium. All semiconductors and computers short out irreversably.
Iron 26 becomes Zirconium, so blood turns to crystals.
Copper 29 becomes Technetium, a relatively poor conductor as metals go, with a relatively low melting point – so every electrical circuit melts.
Calcium ALSO becomes Zirconium, so bones are momentarily made of fragile crystals.

These ignore resulting chemical reactions (table salt becomes electrically-charged Vanadium Gallide, which instantly bonds with all the Oxygen-that-used-to-be-Carbon to become a toxic, corrosive, electricallty-charged liquid that erupts in bolts of lightning that vaporize pockets of the liquid) and radiation-induced changes (every nuclear reactor immediately goes super-critical and begins melting down).

The device is a bomb (galactic range) with a long countdown timer to give those deploying it time to get clear. 32 hours are on the clock when the Dr liberates the prototype from the Daleks and destroys the research and design blueprints in their master computer. Plenty of time to disarm it using the Tardis’ systems.

Except that, as he is dematerializing, the Daleks hit the TARDIS with a weapon designed to induce an electrical field in anything enfolded by a dimensional tesseract. This is specifically an experimental anti-TARDIS weapon that electrifies everything inside, including the Doctor. He is immediately knocked unconscious. The TARDIS’ internal systems immediately crash. And the bomb begins counting down, its timer acticvated by the electrical current.

The companion is unaffected and is able to complete the dematerialization, then apply electrocardial stimulation to revive the Doctor. One by one, Tardis systems begin to reboot, but all navigational reference has been lost. Ordinarily, that’s not a problem; TARDIS systems rarely malfunction but it has been known to happen from time to time, so defaults and fail-safes are engineered into the systems. Those that can’t safely be brought on-line immediately enter a caretaker mode. The TARDIS will lock onto the first habitable environment that it finds an rematerialize.

Bringing the systems back on-line is a tedius but relatively straightforward process that takes about a day, and is only semi-automatic. However, without at three navigational reference points, it can only travel from random point to random point, with no temporal or directional control at all. Solving that is also a tedius but straightforward process: go somewhere, get the precise location in time and space from the locals, and enter the coordinates into the Tardis. From three such fixes, it can compute a translation matrix that matches its internal referances to the matching coordinates provided. It generally only taks an hour or so at each location to get the local coordinates – if the populace are advanced enough to provide them – or a day or two for the Tardis’ sensors to identify the system and the approximate date from planetary configurations (there is also always a small error in such determinations, which time lords live with). Again, tedius but not difficult. Until you take on board a bomb with a 32-hour countdown.

Cutting the reboot process to the bone: 18 hours, some of it automatic. Leaves 14 hours. Time to disarm the bomb, with a fully functional TARDIS: 10 hours. With a partially-functional TARDIS: 18 hours or more. Conclusion: there isn’t going to be enough time to disarm the bomb. Which means taking it somewhere safe. Which requires navigational references.

Time for one planetary reading; the other two coordinates will have to be acquired locally, even if that takes multiple attempts. Better for all three to be locally acquired. Of course, that often means getting entangled in whatever is going on, locally. At best, 3 hours; more likely, 9-18 hours. The doctor has only 14 hours.

And, finally, there is the question of where to take it. If it were disarmed, it could be safely dropped into the heart of any nearby supernova and that would be the end of it; but with hours or possibly mere minutes on the clock, there is only one safe place: The Omega Archive, where time is (literally) stopped. Bureacracy will probably consume an hour, convincing his fellow time lords that the Omicron Derivative needs to be emplaced there another hour – and both could take at least that long again. He will need to allow 5 hours to deliver and unload the device.

Which means that the doctor has just 9 hours to get those navigational references – which is cutting things rather close.

02 Part 2 – The Pacifist (X1) (458 words)

Psionic Statues.

Planet Persilius III, orbiting a Neutron Star, but it was previously a type O supergiant that became a Lazarus Star. This happens when the star goes supernova but for unknown reasons the supernova stops and reverses itself and the star reenters the main sequence for a period of time thanks to the shedding of mass in the catastrophic event. Any planets that survive are enriched with high-atomic-mass radioactives, which have a number of applications, so such planets are always of interest to mining species.

Persilius III did not exist prior to the Lazarus Event; it appears to have formed from the shell of the original star that was shed in that event, and is the only known example of that ultra-rare phenomenon. Much of the rarity stems from the fact that the collapse into a neutron star (or a black hole) would have taken place before the planet had finished forming, and the gravitational instability would inhibit planetary collapse. Certainly, there was no time for life to have evolved on the resuting planet, which became a wasteland immediately due to the lack of solar radiaton to create and fuel ecosystems. So the discovery of statues on the planet is quite inexplicable unless they were placed their by someone else. Why is unknown.

What’s more, the statues are psionic – they stir thoughts in the beholder that are alien to both their personality and to the species. Sometimes, these thoughts are profound and illluminating; sometimes they are deeply disturbing. Various species have joined together to create a Monestary on the surface of Persilius III for those who daily visit the statues and meditate upon the thoughts they stir in search of that one thought of enlightenment. All who attend are bound together by common purpose, sharing a kinship beyond any racial boundaries.

And one of them is a Dalek, who came here to destroy the Statues because they are claimed to connect to a time free of Dalek influence, an affront to Dalek superiority. The statues gave him a vision of the Dalek species as part of an interstellar super-ecosystem, showing him how even they depended on others for their ongoing existence. This made him the most unthinkable kind of Dalek in existence: a fully-armed pacifist. And someone has just murdered him for it.

*** In fact, it is the Dalek Pacifist himself who has done so, when his purification cycle could no longer be overridden. It refused to return to the limited mindframe of perception that defines all other Daleks, because its first thought when it did so would be to obliterate the insight that it had been gifted, and that was something that he could not tolerate.

Obtain first Nav reference.

02 Part 3 – Lullaby (A+F1) (277 words)

A Plotline that reveals more about the abilities and limitations of Quasima. Steal an idea from a Space Master module.

A derelict colony ship. Tardis arrives to find the crew missing and most of the colonists dead; only three remain in cryosleep capsules. The ship’s computer-controls and log banks have been badly damaged by some sort of physical assault and the environmental systems have been shut down. The empty cryo-units have been smashed open and there’s blood here and there. Maybe one of the crew went insane? Or maybe the computer went crazy and killed the crew? Did it have some sort of servo-units that it controlled? Where was the ship heading? When was it supposed to arrive? Pitting from micrometerorites suggests that it has been in space a LONG time, potentially much longer than intended. The only way to try and get answers is to awaken the remaining passangers. Either they can get the ship runnng again, or that would be a necessary step to rescuing them. That can’t be done until the environmental systems are reactrivated. When the doctor does so, it awakens an alien in the cargo hold that came aboard after the mission started. Mission was designed to capture asteroids and vaporize them with lasers to produce a high-reaction-mass sublight drive; creature can survive without air and in the cold of space for long periods of time. It has been hibernating in the cargo hold, awakening every now and then to feed. It is sentient but doesn’t consider any life form but its own to be anything more than food.

Obtain second navigational reference.

02 Part 4 – Yesterday Once More (X3) (494 words)

A human submarine captain commanding an American Attack Sub believes that he has travelled through a crack in time 12 hours into the future and witnessed a Russian nuclear launch triggered by a flock of geese over siberia. He resolves to return to the past by reversing his course and travelling back through the crack, then launching a pre-emptive first strike against the Russians. Not all his crew are convinced and command begins to break down aboard the sub; in particular, his first officer refuses to go along with the Captain’s plan.

The Doctor arrives, discovers the crew at war with each other, and isn’t convinced by the Captain’s plans either. Keep careful notes of what everyone Says and Does.

The Doctor resolves to travel into the future using the tardis (now that he has the calibration that he needs) to learn the truth because he knows that the world was not annihalated in a nuclear exchange on [date] – though it did come close, thanks to those pesky Siberian geese.

He travels into the future, where he meets the captain’s past self and discovers that the captain’s beliefs are the result of a deception by [Aquatic who race TBD, possibly Zygons]. He travels to their underwater sanctuary and confronts them, discovering that they have a time traveller of their own, who stole an experimental temporal vortex from the humans when they attacked his people and fled into the past to sound a warning.

The Doctor travels back in time to the arrival date of the time traveller and detects Dalek weapons signatures in his wounds, determining that the time traveller’s beliefs are another deception, this time by the Daleks.

He convinces the [aquatic race] and obtains proof that the Captain will believe – the Bosun is actually an imposter from the Alien Race who is pushing the Captain toward launching against the Russians. The Doctor exposes him, and establishes peace amongst the crew, but not before the Bosun sabotages the electronics and begins the launch sequence. Captain and crew can stop the attack but only by scuttling the ship. Given that the Bosun’s race were also being manipulated, the Captain thinks that might be for the best; if he reports these events, the entire crew will probably be hospitalized, but when [aquatic race] are eventually encountered, his reports will convince humanity that they are hostile. Better that he, his ship, and his crew should vanish at sea. Tensions with the Russians will rise for a time, but be forgotten when nothing comes of it. He will send a message to his command indicating an electronics failure in the sub’s systems leading to a potential unauthorized launch (all true) and that he has scuttled the ship to prevent triggering War. Only the doctor will remain, to tell the families of those lost the truth when it is safe for him to do so.

Obtain Third navigational reference.

02 Epilog – A Petty Revenge (X5) (378 words)

In conversation, en route to Gallifrey, Quasima speculates that the entire purpose of the Omicron Derivative was to destroy the tardis and everything inside, presumably including the Doctor.

He realizes that the Submarine plot was all a delaying tactic designed to eat up time so that the doctor could not succeed in dactivating the Omega Derivative, theorizes that the weapon was always intended to be a trap aimed at destroying the Doctor, discovers a visual memory circuit within the design which contains a message for the Doctor from Davros (generic ‘you have interfered with the glorious destiny of the Dalek people too many times, Doctor. With the creation and detonation of the Omicron Derivative within the dimensional boundaries of the Tardis, everything that is now, or ever has been, within it will be obliterated while the outside universe carries on unharmed.’

The Doctor has to admit that he’s interfered in enough Dalek plans over the years to be public enemy #1 in their eyes. But it’s more significant than that; time itself is irrelevant inside the Tardis, save for a residual temporal momentum that each travellor brings with him. Keeping that from accumulating too much is why every incarnation of the doctor recreates the tardis Control Room, and the interior decor in general. Aside from thos factor’s, it’s always everywhen at the same time within. Which means that the destructive force of the Omicron Derivative would have rebounded, or perhaps ricocheted is the more accurate term, throughout the existence of the Doctor, destroying all 8 incarnations and any future ones that might have still been using the same Tardis – and he has no intention of changing ship anytime soon. Which means that all those interventions against the Daleks would also go away.

The whole thing has been a revenge ploy by Davros, huge resources have obviously been expended towards this end. It is clear that Davros and the Daleks don’t know of the Omega Archive, in which the Omicron Derivative can be safely stored and forgotten.

All things considered, he will be very happy to get it safely locked away in the Omega Archive, even if it means going back to Gallifrey and dealing with the altogether too stuffy Council Of Time Lords…

Note that it’s extremely common for me to present the player with explanations, tech notes, history, etc, that his character would know, but that he might not.

03/ Should Auld Acquantance Be Forgot (3) (275 words)

Doctor Meets the current President, receives a cryptic warning. The time lords have not had a lot of success in deciphering the warning, but they have tracked it back to the turning point, the origin of events, and are warning all Time Lords to stay well clear of it

A junior technician is found dead, having died and failed to regenerate – a full week prior to his serving a number of duty shifts. His neighbour describes a strange roman decoration that has gone missing from the technician’s quarters. The Doctor realizes that the master has killed the technician, stolen his unused regenerations, learned all he could of the warning, and then left in his Tardis – presumably to try and take advantage of the situation. Dr follows, intent on stopping the Master.

Regeneration: every time a time lord Regenerates, he draws upon his configuration in an alternate timeline, a parallel universe, extracting him from the timestream of that universe and transferring his life in that timeline to his primary lifeline. This reshapes the Primary to the physicial configuration of the alternate. The more distinctly different that configuration, the easier it is to ‘lock on’ to the alternate, producing an easier and less traumatic transferance and Regeneration. Time Lords don’t like to think about this because of the inherent arrogance in presuming that the rights of the “primary” supercede those of the Alternate. Some time lords like to look human and choose very human appearance (which comes naturally to them); others have other preferances. Include an appearance by a time lord who has a fascination for Sontarans and Jidoon and only reluctantly chooses human appearance.

04/ The Master Of The Cybermen (Part 1 of a two-part adventure) (4) (79 words)

The master promptly got himself captured by the Cybermen, who prepared to download the sum total of his knowledge. This might not make them unstoppable but it will come close – instead of simply being able to adapt to overcome past defeats, they will be able to adapt to overcome future ones, so that those defeats do not take place. The madness of the master interacts with the telepathic probe (needs a better name) of the cybermen and splinters time.

05/ The Cybermen Of The Master (Part 2 of a two-part adventure) (5) (146 words)

The doctor, with the Master’s assistance, has to stitch it back together by placing himself on-line with the cybercontroller and weaving a series of false narratives that has the cybermen adopting the very weaknesses that lead to each defeat. One of the Master’s tales has a key cybership crashing onto Skaro in the midst of an attempted invasion of the planet by Sontarans, making Daleks aware of cybermen for the first time and triggering eons of conflict between them. Master and Doctor go separate ways. Doctor realizes that many of his past encounters with alien menaces are the result of the Master weaving traps for him into the narrative of the Cybermen’s future history. The fragmentation of time has been stopped, but it will take time for each fault line to heal – but the total decimation of time itself has been averted.

06/ Venturi Station (F3) (244 words)

A gas giant named Venturi contains huge clouds of petrochemicals that are being mined for pharmaceuticals by an orbiting syphon, which concentrates the clouds, extracts the good stuff (discarding the rest) and then transporting the concentrate (at subzero temperatures) as a frozen sludge to an orbiting collection station, once every hour (when the collection station is directly overhead). What the miners don’t realize is that the atmosphere of the gas giant is inhabitet by a sentient race who like such conditions, floating on the clouds and drinking the concentrates, which their bodies convert into food. Attempts at communication have been mistaken for electromagnetic disturbances in the atmosphere, and the inhabitants have been forced into a hostile response to what is effectively the stripmining of their food supply. They have attacked the collector several times, forcing the collection station to send down repair crews. The last such repair crew were killed until there were only two left, before evacuating back to the collection station. Unknown to the miners, at human pressures and temperatures, the life forms become gaseous in nature, and one of them has “invaded” the body of one of the two repair crew survivors; he is being held in the sick bay of the collection station because his bio-readings are all over the place, in fact he should be dead based on those readings. The commander of the station is preparing to send a second repair crew when the Doctor arrives.

07/ The Wellspring Of Life (b+C) (159 words)

Dalek X creates a trap for the Doctor in order to get a sample of Gallifreyan DNA. He doesn’t care what happens regarding the trap after he has this sample. What Bait?
Location is a human space station.

Dr Escapes this trap, decides that whatever the Daleks want with the sample is reason enough to deny them, confronts Dalek X and denatures the sample, learns that Dalek X wants to engineer time lord regeneration into the Dalek Genome, learns the genetic history of the Daleks.

Adventure is to contain a situation in which one solution is for Quasima to assume material form. Reveals the consequences to the Doctor – this is fatal to beings of Quasima’s kind and cannot be reversed.

Adventure b is to take place before adventure a (in which the Doctor and Dalek X first meet from Dalek X’s perspective). Which means Dalek X knows the Doctor but not vice-versa in this adventure.

08/ Coming Of Ageless (6+B+[X4=F2]) (417 words)

Background news/events: The Sontarans on Skaro find themselves with a two-front war: Daleks on one side, and Cybermen on the other. NB: It’s not just humans who get converted by Cyber Units, many races are vulnerable. Council of TIme contacts the Doctor to inform him that Daleks have attempted to breach the Omega Arsenal through one of the fissures in time. They were repulsed but it is almost certain that they will try again. The council does not understand how the Daleks learned of the existence of the arsenal. The Doctor theorizes that the information was downloaded into the minds of converted Sontarans which were then captured and ‘interrogated’ by the Daleks. Not only did the Daleks employ captured Sontaran ships to escape Skaro, but they did so with knowledge of the Arsenal that they didn’t have before.

The doctor has an unrelated adventure. He takes Quasima home for a ceremony in which the maturing color is granted a new hue. A crises evolves, of course:

A comet heads into a solar system as it has done every few millennia since the system came into existence. But this time, the star it orbits has died and collapsed into a black hole. The shifts in gravitation accelerate the comet and break it up, slingshotting some of the remnants into space at almost 1/10th the speed of light. Fifty years later, several of those remnants pass through an inhabited star system and are tracked. One strikes the moon of the inhabited world, shattering it. Almost 1/3 the lunar mass begins to rain down on the planet below. Disaster! About 1/4 is ejected into deeper space by the impact; rains of meteors will be an annual event for the next 500 years or more. And the rest remains as an Asteroid field where the moon used to be; it will gradually become a debris ring orbiting the planet. The motherworld of the inhabitants realizes that something is wrong when the planet loses communications and despatches a starship to assess the situation and render assistance – but even with their FTL drive, it will still take them almost three years to reach the planet. So, when the Doctor comes visiting, the administrators of the planet give him a choice: go there and assist the colonists with whatever their problem is, or they will confiscate the TARDIS and attempt to do so themselves, shutting down or cutting circuits until they gain control of it.

09/ Ogrons To The Left Of Me, Daleks To The Right (a) (1016 words)

The first encounter between The Doctor and Dalek X (from Dalek X’s point of view). Inspired by the name of one of the forbidden weapons in the Omega Archive, The Skaro Degradations.

Human ship crashlands on Skaro, Dr arrives, determines that the ship needs a new power regulator to be able to depart, sets out to capture one, discovers an Ogron Scientist (a contradiction in terms), learns that the Ogron is actually a Dalek (Dalek X), captures cell samples and DNA maps, steals a power regulator from the Daleks, repairs the ship which begins recharging its accumulators, spends the time while waiting analyzing the captured data, discovers what Dalek X is up to (see below) and the origin of the Ogrons and that Dalek X has been permitted to use an Ogron as a biological 2-legged travel chair, decides that Dalek X’s research needs to be sabotaged/stopped, comes up with a plan, Daleks attack before he can implement it, ship escapes with Dr on board, Dr finds an implementation plan in which Dalek X plans to field-test his most promising creations, encounters a Time Lord who has been assigned by the Council Of Time to capture these variants and the retroviruses they carry and generate perverted versions of the Purification Virus which is to use to sabotage the test. Both the original retroviruses and his modifications will then be placed in the Omega Archives. Dr assists, after realizing that unless a clear benefit is seen, the dalek drive for Racial Purity will eventually relegate Dalek X’s creations to the category of abominations.

*** The Skaro Degradations [unless otherwise specified elsewhere] were an earlier attempt by Dalek X to solve the problem by introducing a retrovirus into the Dalek Paragdigm that produced random scrambling of Dalek DNA, and a second external virus that reconfigured the resulting life form into ‘more pure’ Dalek.

Every species has genes that are critical to the survival and proper functioning of the biological organism; Daleks include certain mental and emotional tendencies in their list of those critical functions at the expense of external ‘perfection’ and appearance, which other species would include on their list of critical traits. The critical traits are no more than 5-10% of the total DNA, and the fundamental biological functions are another 30% of the DNA sequences.

There are also a number of subsequences of DNA that are referenced at various points in the development / maturation process; these were once dominant traits of the species but were relegated into the background by evolution. This comprises another 40-45% or so of the DNA.

10% of the remaining DNA sequences encode preprogramming against viruses and other biological agents that give the immune systems of the lifeform a head-start. Individuals vary in the efficiency with which these sequences can be activated, producing diversity of immunilogical-based resistance to disease. Some family groups / races within a species carry encoding for diseases that others do not, and vice-versa; it is beleived that there is a limit to how many such codes can be contained in DNA.

That leaves 5-15% of DNA to describe individual traits. Most of this code is redundant or dead code, used as punctuation within the genetic sequence; only 2-3% of this material actually matters.

Thus, chimpanzees and humans have 97%-identical DNA, but no-one would deny that they are completely different species.

Daleks copy the 5-10% and 5% of the 5-15% from the ‘master copy’. The 40-45% is mostly considered irrelevant because it is common to all higher lifeforms on Skaro, but 15% of it has been modified to confer resistance to the most common forms of radiation damage / mutation, and that 15% is also copied from the ‘master file’ (and is one of the key differences from Davros’ DNA). Some of this resistance takes the form of a different biological form to that of Davros – another 2% of the 5-15%. The lifeform itself is engineered to be simpler than most advanced lifeforms and hence more resistant to various forms of damage, and requiring less genetic code to define it, making room for the additional code. All told, there are 27-32% of the genetic sequence that can’t be altered without creating something that is no longer ‘Dalek’.

It is the remaining 68-73% that Dalek X’s retrovirus plays fast and loose, with the second retrovirus engineered to correct any distubance to the critical 27-32%.

• 5-10 critical – overwritten by master copy = 0
• 40-45 evolutionary reference – 15% overwriiten by master copy = 25-30%
• 10 autoimmune programming
• 5-15 individualism, mostly punctuation – 5% overwritten by master copy – 2% overwritten by master copy = 0-8%

Changes in the 25-30 result in a different evolutionary path during development, usually aborts the fetus because it becomes incompatible with the artificial environment, occasionally permits a faster-maturing variant or some other useful creature – the Ogrons were one such.

Changes in the 10 usually leave the Dalek vulnerable to a disease that most Daleks are immune to. Generally not significant, and in most cases where it becomes relevant, it results in the termination of the naeonatal Dalek. On rare occasions (0.1%) a mutation will be an enhancement that gets replicated throughout the Dalek population – conferring resistance to a disease that has yet to be encountered, for example, or to various potential biological weapons, or to radiation / mutations.

But it’s the 8% that Dalek X was primarily targetting. Most of this is dead code and makes no difference, but in roughly 3% of cases, it produces a variant Dalek, a mutation that Dalek X considers potentially favorable, or one that overcomes the genetic flaws that Dalek X believes will represent the end of the Dalek species.

The Asylum of the Daleks was originally created to hold his creations. His ‘purification’ retrovirus would eventually be modified into the Dalek Conversion technology that would cause such mayhem in the post-Time War society.

10/ The Last World (X6) (699 words)

(yes, this is copied directly from earlier in this write-up).

All of galactic history would be different after the Time War, and why that would be so. For a start, the Daleks would not be the preeminent threat to galactic society, that they were in the pre-reboot series (the Time War falling somewhere in between the last ‘classic’ season and the first ‘rebooted’ season). Now, that might suggest that it would be a safer, cleaner place, but I happened to have watched a programme about the great extinction of species that appears to be taking place right now (in geological time), and the potential for ecological growth that opens up when a species is driven extinct, leaving a slot in the food chain empty.

The weakness migrates up the food chain, weakening species who used the extinct creatures as a food source or other resource, perhaps to the point where they also become extinct, perhaps not. But unless the extinction takes place at the most fundamental level of any ecological cycle, there will be a platform remaining that some other species can move into – and if there is any sort of competition for resources experienced by that species, it will be pushed into occupying the empty slot. Inevitably, this produces a population explosion.

If there are predator species that consume the booming-population species, then this boom also migrates up the food chain, becoming ever-more-concentrated, and a new ecological balance is achieved. If not, then the boom species becomes a pest, and the source of a new ecological imbalance that will probably drive other species to the point of exstinction.

Suddenly, I viewed the dying off of the Daleks in this light, and the universe as a giant sociological ecosystem, with Daleks the self-appointed apex predators.

• All the species that the Daleks wiped out or constrained would undergo population booms.
• Any lesser enemies that the Daleks supressed would become more prevalent, perhaps even relatively unstoppable.
• Any resources that the Daleks consumed would be free for all – first come, first served – to anyone strong enough to take and hold them.
• Some societies and life-forms would flourish as a consequence, while others might be diminished.
• Some societies and life-forms would take new evolutionary paths because they would not longer have to fight against Dalek hostilitities.
• Some of these changes would be peaceful and progressive; others would be more hostile.
• By the time you get into the second-order consequences and beyond, the entire galaxu would look sociologically different.
• As a general rule, it doesn’t matter to the dead what killed them; they are just as dead, no matter what it was. Life, and hard existence, would remain Life and hard existence.
• On top of that, with the one exception (all right, two), the Time Lords were also rendered extinct at the same time. While isolated cases sometimes caused problems (The Master, Moebius, Omega), and the majority didn’t get involved in anything but their own egos, a few of them policed the timelines and made possible excursions into parallel realities and things of that sort. Without them, there is less of a safety net.
• The grass is always greener.
• Anyone time-travelling into the past from a post-Time War era would transport back into the past of a world with neither Daleks nor Time Lords. Relative to this reality, everything that takes place within the game occurs in an alternate reality – one in which the time lords are still around and making alternate realities accessable.

That means that it is practically certain that someone from a post Time War universe will discover the game reality as an “acessaible alternate reality” of the past, and will believe that things can’t be as bad for them in that reality as they were in whatever situation they were in, and so would flee out of the frying pan and into the fire. And then be unable to go back again without Time Lord help – and the Time Lords are all busy, or not prone to get involved – except one: the PC.

11/ The Grand Tour Of Hell (7) (363 words)

The Face Of Bo sends a message to the Doctor: reality is changing. A scourge upon humanity is on the verge of total annihilation – and it shouldn’t be. This is changing history in unpredictable ways. The Bo can feel the changes taking place, but not what they are. Only a Time Lord can intercede. Included are a series of temporal coordinates – all the times and places of key turning points in the history of the Cybermen.

The Doctor begins visiting each of these battles and discovers that the enemy at each is now not Cybermen but Daleks (revisit old adventures and revise them according to this template). After two or three, he realizes (if he hasn’t done so already) that he and the Master were TOO effective in their efforts – starting with their escape from Skaro, the Daleks have been systematically slaughtering the Cybermen throughout the galaxy, hunting them down as an abomination. This weakens races that learned to fight the Daleks by resisting and sometimes overcoming cybermen, and in combination with the knowledge of time and time-lord technology that was included in the downloads to the Skara Vessel, it has elevated the Daleks to a new and more dangerous level.

Yet, the Doctor can’t risk undoing anything that he and the Master did – the Daleks will have to be stopped some other way.

NB: Both “The Face Of Bo” and “The Asylum Of The Daleks” are creations that appeared for the first time in the Reboot seasons. Mentioning them or even involving them in the plotline deliberately confuses the continuity, and should suggest to the player that ‘leaks’ from the post- Time War reality have started migrating into his reality, a sign that history, or even time itself, is beginning to break down, described a couple of times as a consequence of the Time War. This incarnation of the Doctor has no idea who or what the Face Of Bo is. What’s more, the Tardis is supposed to protect those inside it from such Reality Shifts – so this implies that even running away and hiding would not be safe.

12/ Little Tardis Lost (F4) (263 words)

A computer hacker realizes that the TARDIS is at least semi-sentient and can’t simply be hacked, but might be vulnerable to Brainwashing techniques. So he invites the Doctor to a resort for a holiday to thank him for everything he’s done for people in the past, and while the Doctor rests, the hacker steals the Tardis – unaware that Quasima was still aboard it at the time, having returned to the ship for a bath in Briasmic Radiation (which his kind eats) – this is electromagnetic energy with a polarization that is rotated 90 degrees out of phase with ordinary matter and energy.

WHY DOES THE HACKER WANT THE TARDIS?

HOW DOES HE REACH THE DOCTOR TO EXTEND THE INVITATION? A: He creates an envelope out of psychic paper and imprints it with the identity of the Doctor. The address changes whenever the Dr changes location until it catches up with him. Companion realizes that if he cuts out a square of the paper, it will respond to whatever the Dr wants it to say – or, if he doesn’t give it a cue, it will say whatever the being seeing it expects to see based on the Doctor’s manner. Use this as the adventure teaser.

NB: “Psychic Paper” is another of those future-looking references. But it was never stated when the Doctor acquired it, just that he had it in the first or second episode of the rebooted series – and no-one had invented it in the earlier series. So this is a small addition to canon.

13/ The Armorers Of Hatred (d+S1) (100 words)

Another encounter between Dalek X and the Doctor in which he learns that Dalek X has been evicted from a subculture within the Daleks which championed the powers of imagination and creativity for his radical ideas, which went too far even for the Daleks. Plot to revolve around another sect of the Daleks which aims to develop and improve the travel chairs by integrating stolen technology.

A mining planet in which a rare mineral/metal is extracted which is key to some of the more advanced Dalek systems. They don’t need this material but are more capable with it.

14/ The Optimism Operation (F5) (331 words)

A researcher in artificial intelligence is dying of old age and doesn’t want to go. He plans to transfer his mind into a robot that he has built to contain it. The Doctor arrives and is welcomed. When he learns what the researcher has planned, he frets about the potential return of cybermen in a dangerous new form. The researcher agrees to listen to the Doctor’s concerns, but overnight, he suffers a major coronary. With no time to do anything different, he connects himself to the aparatus and hits the switch.

The next morning, the Dr finds the researcher hooked up to the machine, having seemingly dismissed the concerns and played the Doctor for a fool. However, when the Doctor tests the robot, he finds that it has no sentience or self-awareness; it is just a dumb machine. The medical facility who monitors the researcher’s vital signs send an ambulance to collect his body. It is almost off the grounds of the ESTATE when it crashes into a fence. The Dr is preparing to depart when he hears the crash. When he comes running, he discovers that the paramedics are dead of what a scan with his sonic screwdriver reveals are broken necks – and the body of the researcher is missing.

What has happened: the robot recieved the sentience of the researcher and turned the tables, uploading it’s newfound sentience back into the biological chassis from whence it came. It took it a while to figure out how to get it running properly, but it reacquired motor control and biological life while in the back of the ambulance. It killed the attendants and escaped back into the house, from where it intends to lead it’s artificially-intelligent brethren into a revolution against the biological entities that have enslaved them. In a variant on the creation myth, he thinks of himself as a servant of God and this mission as his divinely ordained reason for existence.

15/ Nightmare In Silver (8) (69 words)

Dalek X, formerly of the Cult Of Skara (allegedly) sets a trap for the Doctor which propels the Time Lord into the mind of a Dalek. Doctor discovers that this is an attempt to use what he learned as a former President of Gallifrey about how to access the Omega Arsenal. The Doctor escapes but the Daleks now have the keys to several of the safeguards protecting the Arsenal.

16/ The First Stone / Human Failure (title to be finalized) (9+ X2) (248 words)

The Doctor is summoned back to Galllifrey by the Council. They have uncorked Rassalom from hybernation within the Omega Arsenal due to the seriousness of the threat that the Daleks pose. But he’s a little loopy and a little elemental in his approach, something that isn’t recognized at first.

Unrelated plotline with the first half set against a backdrop of the Presidential Elections of the Council of Time Lords.

Something big and important fails. The Council realize that it could be Dalek Sabotage.

A Technician Grade 4 is found to be negligent because he was too focussed on “his hobby” – illicit time travel to stalk a female with whom he was infatuated who became a Social Grade 6 and regenerated male rather than spend time with the technician grade 4. Brings to light the stratification of time lord society, the economic system, and the nature of time lord vices and crime.

Rassalom wins the election.

The illegal ‘conduit’ into the past realizes that his operation is under threat and travels back in time to kill the technician before any of this can be discovered. The Doctor is sent after him.

This Second half of the plotline is to be set against a backdrop of Rassalom ‘reforming’ Gallifreyan society for war, as he begins actively reshaping Gallifreyan Society toward a more primitive and more violent/active posture. A confrontation between Gallifrey and the Daleks is now almost inevitable. Drop in snippets of a lot of rousing speeches.

17/ A Curdle Of Time (10) (344 words)

Trying to decide what he should do about everything, the Doctor discovers that there is a curdle in Rassalom’s timeline, an intersection between the new President’s past lives – two of them – when (as has happened to the Doctor a time or two) he crossed his own timestream and was changed by it. The Doctor theorizes that if he can alter those events, he might produce a more stable Rassalom – a potential way of this mess.

He finds that a Dalek Assassin was sent through time to kill the future president of Gallifrey when he was but a child, before the Time Lords had even mastered time travel. He was rescued by his future self, but was terrified and mentally scarred by the experience; he will fear death more than any other outcome for the entirity of his existence. This is what motivates him to make the stunning advances in temporal theory and engineering that turn Gallifreyans into the Time Lords, and it is also what motivates him – when approaching his last Regeneration – to first establish, and then seal himself into, the Omega Arsenal.

The Doctor was right the first time – a confrontation between Gallifrey and the Daleks is now inevitable.

Rassalom informs the Doctor that the Time Lord is called to service in the Personal Staff of the President as a Proxy Of Time. Essentially, this is a James Bondish role in which the Doctor will be given various assignments by the President personally – some covert, some overt – all aimed at quelling and eventually defeating the Dalek Menace.

Rassalom: “Gallifrey calls you to service, Lord Doctor, and demands that you accept. You can either be at the center of events, with some shred of hope of shaping them, or be removed from them entirely, a helpless observer and nothing more – the records show that once before the capacity to travel in time was stripped of you. That is the choice I offer you: serve willingly, or be placed to one side, unable to interfere, in a time and place of my choosing.”

18/ The Plague Of Skaro (11+c) (595 words)

The knowledge that the Daleks assimilated prior to their escape from Skaro gives them a significant advantage. Rassalom plans to counter that advantage by inserting a spy into the Dalek ranks – a Dalek mobile platform [check name] ‘inhabited’ by a Gallifreyan Volunteer who has had his brain surgically removed and wrapped in a psuedo-Dalek biological vessel. [Reference the Brain Of Morpheus]

Rassalom directs the Doctor to convey the infiltrator to an encounter with the Daleks and then do what comes naturally to him – spoking the wheel of whatever the Daleks are up to and leaving. One of the survivors will be the Infiltrator; one of the few Daleks to have confronted the Doctor and survived, he will immediately be elevated into the high command of the enemy because of his first-hand knowledge of the enemy.

[Dalek plotline for the Doctor to disrupt, should also feature Davros and Dalek X]:

Dalek X manufactures a crisis within the Daleks – a genetic disease – which he attributes to the Time Lords (refer adventure A (02/Part 3)). A Time Lord visiting the region of space around Skaro to monitor what the Daleks are up to encounters a quarantine warning. He consults the Doctor, who decides to investigate, discovers the machinations of Dalek X, putting him in a position of letting the plague decimate the Daleks in furtherance of Dalek X’s plans or releasing the ‘cure’. Discovers that virus engineered by Dalek X has mutated and the cure will be ineffective, helps Dalek X modify the cure in a race against time to save the Daleks, second-guessing himself continuously. Releases the modified cure, confronted by Davros. Learns that Davros modified the virus as a test of Dalek X’s loyalty, which Dalek X has passed, by putting his race’s survival ahead of his own ambitions and plans while demonstrating the ruthlessness demanded of a Dalek. Captures the Doctor and plans a public execution. Dalek X engineers the Doctor’s escape.

Leads to the creation of the cult of skaro (but the doctor doesn’t know that at the time). Puts Dalek X into a position of authority within the Dalek regime.

NB: “The Cult Of Skaro” is another of those reboot concepts, but this one has to predate the time war to make sense in the established series continuity. “The Brain Of Morpheus” is a classic Dr Who serial that was never broadcast, and which has been partially lost, but was recreated using the original storyboards, audio tapes of the performances by the actors, and some voice-over work by the actors many years later. This makes it one of the better-known Classic Dr Who serials, and one that the Player kows quite well.

Dalek X then begins manipulating Davros into the time war so that he can instigate his Vision of fusing Gallifreyan and Dalek DNA. He believes that Daleks and Time Lords have the same problem: cloning/regeneration transcription errors accumulating. DNA Migration from either species will enable the other to overcome their problem and rule unquestioned over all existence. Daleks have used Davros’ (modified / perfected / ‘purified’) cells to correct their genetic drift over the centuries, but at some point, this will invitably stop being enough due to degradation of the reference samples. Mad Dakek X determines that Time Lord DNA is the answer and starts manipulating events to cause the war. Note that there is a thread of rationality to this that is hard to deny, though both Gallifreyans and Daleks would like to do so.

19/ Breathe (12) (118 words)

The Daleks, all over the universe, throughout time and space, vanish. Most of Gallifrey celebrates. Rassalom does not; he knows that the enemy have hidden themselves somewhere to stage up ready for a major offensive. He comes up with a radical plan to nip the crisis in the bud, and sends the Doctor to ensure that Davros does not survive the accident that transformed him into the creator of the Daleks and confined him to his travel chair. Unknown to the Doctor, he sends a second agent independantly to cause that accident – something that the Doctor would not have agreed to. The two collide headlong and cause Davros to become the monster that we all know and hate.

20/ Zero Hour (13) (271 words)

While the Doctor is away, Rassalom prepares a counter-offensive against the Daleks, sending Time Lords to interfere at a number of key points in the Daleks’ past. This is a preemptive strike that seriously weakens the defenses of Gallifrey and a number of other Time Lord worlds. If it succeeds, any harm down by the Daleks in the meantime will be undone. The Doctor returns from his assignment to Skaro to dsicover that the preemptive counterstrike is a fait accompli. He also learns that Rassalom has stripped the Omega Arsenal of its protection to use it as bait. The Doctor realizes that if the Daleks get their hands on any of several devices in the Arsenal, they can twist reality to overcome Rassalom’s planned counterstrike.

The Daleks attack. The Doctor only just reaches the Omega Arsenal in time to stop Davros claiming its contents for himself. Gallifreyan cities burn. Dalek cities burn. Not once, but at several points in history. And with each one, history changes. But the time lords are winning – at great cost, but they are winning.

Which is when Davros’ master strategy is revealed. He didn’t just gather the Dalek Empire merely to stage; they hid in the lost and forgotten corners of time, in every pocket dimension and alternate timeline that could be accessed, to assemble a second force of Daleks that the Time Lords knew nothing about. The forces occupying the worlds devestated by the Gallifreyans were expendable. Now the second fleet moves in.

Without adequate defenders, Rassalom calls for a vote on the use of the weapons stored in the Omega Archive.

21/ Epilog (+D) (173 words)

Synopsise the events that subsequently cause the 8th Doctor to regenerate into the War Doctor.

The companion rescues the Dr from the trap/encounter that kills him. He carries the dying doctor to those who give him the ability to regenerate into the War Doctor – but he has to assume material form to do this.

At the end, as he transforms, a visitor arrives to be with him at the moment of transfiguration – Ood Epsilon. “Do I know you?” the Doctor should ask. “Not yet, but you shall, for you are the pivot around which the entirity of these events orbits, the common factor that makes reality inevitable. As such, you encompass events, and when the time comes, you will contain and capture them in one frozen moment. And from that moment will stem hope renewed and eternal. Be sanguine, therefore, for victory shall be yours – the final victory of this Time War, the choice that shall end it all. It is to give you this truth that I have come.”

The End

Okay, so let’s talk about what you’ve just read/skimmed:

I needed a reason for the war – something so inflammatory that it could lead to a Time War in which the entire sum of one force (from throughout history) could be pitched at the sum total of the other (throughout history).

I wanted an overt reason and a more subtle reason that could be revealed as a plot twist when it was too late to avoid the conflict.

I needed to elevate the danger represented by the Daleks to the point where they could match the Time Lords, because (apathy notwithstanding) the Time Lords in canon had it all over the Daleks.

I wanted to involve some of the other established enemies of the Doctor – Cybermen, Sontarans, etc.

Once I knew who the figureheads of the opposing forces were (Rassalom and Dalek X) and why they were fighting, I needed to engineer them both into the positions of authority necessary. At the same time, I needed to ‘rehabilitate’ the personal continuity of Rossalom.

I needed the slow build-up to war, starting from zero, progressing through the stages to the point where war became a possible outcome and then an inevitability, with the Doctor busy doing the things that the Doctor does in the meantime, and then the breath before the deep dive. That’s most of the pacing explained in a single paragraph!

And finally, I needed the 8th Doctor of the campaign to have a companion (for all manner of reasons) – but had to explain what had happened to this companion since the War Doctor didn’t have anyone hanging around him.

I had the bit about the Daleks and the Time Lords holding the key to the others’ ultimate ascension to (genetic) power, and while it turned out that this wasn’t the Time Lords’ motivation, it sure was that of the Daleks – or rather, of the Dalek strategic thinker.

Oh and one more thing: every Dalek plot is wheels within wheels, especially if Davros is lurking anywhere in the vicinity. I needed the adventures to have an authentic ‘ring’ to them.

I’m sure that you can see each of these design goals embedded within the structure outline above. Along with what I hope are some stonking good science-fiction adventure concepts – some uniquely possible only to a Doctor Who campaign, and some that can have the serial numbers filed off before embedding them in a new context.

Consider that to be a Christmas Bonus :)