So, one of my group members is going to start trading the GM reigns with me (first time I’ll get to play in about 8 years) and he decided to run the new Dr. Who game by Cubicle 7.

We were playing with who might play the Doctor, and I spitballed an idea for a new Time Lord: the Engineer.  Originally, I was seeing a Robbie Coltraine-esque figure for this character, with a penchant for steampunk and streamline moderne, but started to play with the idea over a few days.  I’m not a huge Whovian (or whatever they call themselves) and don’t know much about the universe:  I loved Eccelston’s season, I liked Tennant most of the time, the Matt Smith guy seems quite good in the two eps I’ve seen.  I’m not a fan of the old stuff which was just too campy for my tastes when I was a kid.

THE ENGINEER

ATTRIBUTES:  Awareness 4, Coordination 3, Ingenuity 7, Presence 3, Resolve 3, Strength 2

SKILLS:  Athletics 1, Convince 1, Craft (Building) 3, Fighting 0, Knowledge (Alien Cultures) 3, Marksman 1, Medicine 0, Science (Quantum Physics) 5, Subterfuge 1, Survival 1, Technology (Gadgetry, Repair) 5[+2], Transport (TARDIS) 3

TRAITS:  Attractive, Boffin, Psychic (Mildly so), Resourceful Pockets, Technically Adept, Time Lord, Experienced

FLAWS:  Adversary, Code of Conduct (Will attempt to help others), Dark Secret (Coward?), Eccentric (Thrillseeker), Impulsive, Last of Her Kind

Technology Levels: 4, 6, 10

The Engineer is one of the last Time Lords, who survived the Time War in an undisclosed manner — but one that involved being trapped outside of space and time (or turned into another race to escape the timelock, using a fob watch — leaving this up to the GM.)  He had opposed the Council’s final plan for victory, and for that was hunted by his own people, the form of the Horde of Travesties (I picked that because it sounded cool…)  He was either imprisoned or hid in his pocket universe, and to escape the refuge or prison, he had to die.  Regenerated, he was surprised to find himself not 6’8″ and 300 lbs, but 5’9″, slim…and female with a Scottish accent.

Guilty over her cowardice or inability to stop the destruction of Gallifrey, she has begun to do “good works” to attone.  This isn’t to do good; it’s to bolster her own image of self.  She is traveling in her Type 52 TARDIS — one of two left in the universe.  She tends to disguise it as a vehicle of the period she is in, or something whimsically similar — a train engine, a plane, a car…

Berin (the GM) decided she was the inventor of the fob watches that were in the Tennant tenure — where the mind and physiology of the Time Lord can be stored — and I am positing that they were created specifically to avoid detection by other Time Lords.

She is fascinated with technology — from simple devices to mechanical lifeforms, and has very peculiar tastes in aesthetics (“All cultures have two shared art periods — a kind of art deco/streamline moderne, and postmodernism.  One celebrates speed, enthusiasm, and adventure…the other sucks.”)

UPDATE: Onto my impressions of the Dr. Who character creation:  I’ve done up a character myself (above) and one of the other players — a human thief who will be introduced trying to steal the TARDIS in its 1959 DeSoto Fireflite convertible “disguise”.

Character creation is dead stupid simple:  24 point to spread across the attributes and traits (negative traits add back), and left overs can go to skills.  Skill points, you get 18 unless you have certain traits like Experienced of Time Lord, to put in the skills above (that’s it, folks!) and if you have a 33 or higher, you get a specialization.  You can also buy a specialization for a point and it gives you +2.  You have 12 Story Points (like plot points, hero points, etc.) that you use to manipulate the story, die rolls, etc.  It’s your maximum number of points you can have, but it can be reduced at character creation with traits like…Experienced, Time Lord, etc.

It took me ten minutes to build the Time Lord above, my first go.  The human thief, two or three…

(A public apology — I have been informed my name does appear on a few of the products that I have worked on for Cubicle 7, so to all and sundry…I’m a dick and I’m sorry for any heartburn I might have caused.  If you’re in Edinburgh from Aug 3-6, or the Galsgow area from Aug 7-15 (excluding the 8th — that’s birthday with the family — I will gladly buy you a pint as a “sorry”!)