10 Elseworld Campaign Settings for Your Supers-Adjacent Games

An RPG article requested by SBG reader Loki, I just pulled it out of my RPG topics hat (don't be afraid to refill, guys). The supers genre is generally understood to take place in a contemporary urban setting, much like the majority of super-hero comics do. Sometimes, you'll get a sourcebook that details WWII or the 30th century, but usually, it's the world of Today+. With licensed comic book universes, like DC's and Marvel's, the comics themselves become a sort of sourcebook, keeping you up to date on the "meta-arc" and providing adventure ideas aplenty. You just have to make up the stats yourself. With the DC Universe (whether catered to be DC Heroes, DC Universe or the current DC Adventures), the comics can also serve as a collection of campaign settings. What continuity will insert your characters into, for example? More than that, if you'd like a change of pace from the same old four-color campaigns, DC has published a vast number of Elseworld stories, taking familiar superhero concepts and putting them through the filter of genre, era or some other conceit. These make nice self-contained "sourcebooks" for off-beat campaigns. Here then are 10 strong choices for your askew DCU campaign...

Batman: Holy Terror. It was the first book labeled as an Elseworld (though technically not the first in spirit), so let's start there. One of the difficulties in coming up with this list is that a lot of Elseworlds are character-centric. Though they make a nice spin on Batman or Superman, they don't really open a universe up to other characters. Holy Terror is an early attempt at including the entire DCU, so I find it worthy. It's really an alternate history riff, a world where Oliver Cromwell lived ten years longer than he did in our world, and America is a commonwealth nation run by a corrupt theocratic government. This puts your characters - based on DC faves or your original creations - in a position to act as rebels against the State. And it's a state always after superhuman "abominations" to dissect and purge of sin. The stakes are high, the enemy is bigger than life, and the themes possibly more adult than standard four-color fare.

Justice Riders. Another easy way to create the Elseworld feel is to take the Heroic Age to another place and time. Historical role-playing being what it is (a smaller niche even than Supers), it may be better to concentrate on genre more than era. Justice Riders is one of my favorite Elseworlds because it deftly transposes the JLA into the wild, wild West using a combination of superhero and western tropes. Indian magic, steam tech and the unabashed use of alien visitors pushes the archetypical heroism of marshals, gamblers and gunslingers up a notch. Players can take on the roles of their own extreme western types, westernized versions of their favorite DC characters, or even their favorite DC western stars, straight up.

JLA: Riddle of the Beast. Fantasy, by which I mean sword&sorcery, remains the most popular role-playing genre, so why not tap into that. DC's Elseworlds offers a number of possibilities (League of Justice, The Wild, etc.) but my favorite is Riddle of the Beast. There's just so much of it to explore (check out the map I posted this week at Your Daily Splash Page)! The book itself offers a tour of this Tolkienesque universe, but leaves a lot of background detail left to explore. Fight Starro's outlaws in the City of the Center with your winged Hawkman, or explore the dreaded Darkseid Marshes with your Kryptonian archer. Traverse the waters in the company of Aquan, score a moniker like the Fast Man, Wee Man or Green Man, or brave the haunted Gotham Crags. The entire DCU is there on a single flat map, easy to delve into.

Conjurors. Another way to do fantasy is to simply introduce magic in the recognizable world of today, which is what this mini-series did, putting DC's usually marginal magic-based characters center stage. Will you play one of DC's mystical heroes, tapping into everyday magic in an unusually powerful way? Or will you rather go against the grain and play an inventor like Ted Kord, one of the sole masters of this misunderstood thing we call science? The DCU is very much a Science Hero's realm, but what if Felix Faust worked for the president, and the top heroes were Zatanna, Deadman, Brother Power and Stanley and his Monster? The challenge might be reimagining some of those more obscure characters into a top tier operative.

Superman: Distant Fires. Postapocalyptic gamers might have fun with a destroyed DCU where practically the only survivors are superhumans. In addition to the usual scenarios concerned with survival, fighting mutated animals and people, etc., there's also a political element as you take part in building a new society. In the book, superhumans split off into Superman's camp - dedicated to finding a peaceful solution to the growing mutant problem - and Captain Marvel's - willing to kill to put a stop to mutant raids. With whom does your hero side? Will you introduce your own hero, or play an established DC character, even a former villain (we're all in this together!), instead?

Titans: Scissors, Paper, Stone. This Elseworlds special presents a far future (in fact, I think it was going to be a Legend of the Dead Earth) that's a great template for anime-style supers role-playing. Giant mutated monsters? Check. Spaceships? Check. Nanoteched cyberpunk? Sure. And pretty much any crazy science explanation can be used to create your characters' powers. The book only feature a few Titans, but should provide enough of a world and aesthetic to allow players to create their own Manga techno-future versions of DC characters and concepts. Imagine the Blue Beetle as a giant mechwarrior, or telepathic J'onn J'onzz as a sentient computer program patched into the Collective Internet Consciousness(TM). Sky's the limit.

Superman's Metropolis/Batman: Nosferatu/Wonder Woman: Blue Amazon. Another way Elseworlds are commonly built is by amalgamating the DCU and some other work of fiction. Batman and The Phantom of the Opera, or Superman and War of the Worlds, for example, or either in Frankenstein. Lofficier and McKeever provided an interesting take on this method in Superman's Metropolis when they redid Superman's story in Fritz Lang's Metropolis, and then went on to add to that universe with a Batman story based on The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu, and then a Wonder Woman tale based on The Blue Angel. Each story took place in the vast "futurist" city of Metropolis, using the same continuity. The conceit, of course, is that each character was reimagined through the lens of a different German expressionist film, and silent cinema buffs could surely add to it. Or you could use the project as a template for your own Elseworld perhaps based on another film era or literary movement. The DCU seen through the eyes of kung fu cinema, or Borges' short stories, or 80s sf/fantasy movies like Mannequin, Ghost, Weird Science and The Last Starfighter, could all yield results!

JLA: Act of God. Here's a change of pace you could even introduce in a continuing campaign. In Act of God, a strange "event" suddenly robs all superhumans of their abilities, forever. Technology still works (guys like Metallo or Cyborg are unaffected), though more exotic weapons, like the Green Lantern rings are rendered inert. What does your character do? Retire, or continue to fight the good fight by whatever means necessary? In the book, a number of heroes did just that, turning to gear and their martial abilities. And how do even veteran non-powered heroes suddenly deal with the overflow of villains that used to be handled by Superman-class heroes? You might even start a campaign in this world, carefully creating formerly powered heroes, and how they've adapted their unique skill sets (or bounced back from losing powers they've had all their lives) to continue the war on crime.

Kingdom Come. Open up Kingdom Come and you'll find a huge variety of cool designs by Alex Ross, many of which are just begging for a story of their own. The Kingdom Come campaign comes with a classic superhero vs. anti-hero premise, but the fun will be taking (or being inspired by) a character from the book and making it one's own. You can play aging heroes, their children/legacy, or a badass 90s hero who don't care none. Obviously, you want to play it before Captain Marvel blows the whole thing, well, to the campaign setting's title (if you know what I mean). Or maybe you want to use it, run past it, and participate in the largely untold reconstruction phase of the story.

Superman & Batman: Generations. The three volumes of this John Byrne series (but the first two especially) serve as a nice sourcebook for describing the feel of each era of DC Comics, illustrating effectively the flavor of each decade from the 40s on up. Obviously, you can use it just for that, but go further and use it as a template for creating your own legacy heroes. Just imagine your favorite DC character actually started operating the year he or she was first introduced. How long has it been and how old would that character be now? If that character is long-lived enough (and considering a relative newbie like Booster Gold premiered 25 years ago, that should be nearly everyone), create a son, daughter, descendant or pupil, or perhaps even a now adult sidekick. You'll follow in your favorite character's tradition without having to advance to calendar the extra 20 years into flying car territory. Generations gives you enough of a backbone for that world to make sense, without using TOO many characters you'd like to claim as yours.

Obviously, starting an off-beat campaign is a major investment, but you could also use these Elseworlds as cross-dimensional destinations for your contemporary heroes. And if you don't use any of these ideas, it's ok. There's a version of you somewhere who will. Any other favorites?

5 Timey-Whimey Films to Slide Your TARDIS Into

Consisting of five more ideas for Doctor Who role-playing games (or simple daydreaming) taking very simple inspiration from the world of cinema.

Last week, I dropped the TARDIS into five "sideways" stories to take the edge off the monotony of, you know, the past and the future (lame!), and I return to those kinds of stories this week with a promised chapter on timey-whimey scenario ideas. Now sure, I could have gone for time travel movies like 12 Monkeys or Primer or even Terminator 2, but maybe those were too obvious? Instead, I'm going with films that play with time in unusual ways. So what if most of them have some kind of narrative or fantastical rationale? Temporal anomalies of all kinds can McGuffin your players into the right circumstances.Groundhog Day. A classic timey-whimey movie and one of the first, Groundhog Day presents a world where time is limited to a single day, which repeats over and over again until the heroes "get it right". Whatever the reason for this recursive temporal bubble, the TARDIS crew could only escape it by fixing, well, how about EVERYTHING? RPG players are probably gamers too, and should have all the necessary tools to play the same "level" over again, getting all the details right so they can move on. And any massive screw-up will be reset so... have fun!
Sliding Doors. In this Gwyneth Paltrow romance set in London (we're halfway to Doctor Who already), a woman both gets on and misses a train. Somehow, both her stories continue from there and eventually cross paths. There's no reason for it in the movie, except that fate is trying to get Gwyneth with the right guy, but that shouldn't matter to brave TARDISeers. It's Schrödinger's train/lift/door and bam! Split time streams. The twist is that the players get to play both versions of their characters as they take two separate paths to adventure. The ultimate goal is to get to a single track, hopefully the best of the two, so don't make it easy on them. You might be tempted to pull a Girl Who Waited at the end and require a sacrifice. Dude, don't. It made me cry, that thing.
Memento. I try to throw in a challenge when I can. How about a story that proceeds IN REVERSE, like Memento? Doable? There's a 10th Doctor comic that features aliens living in reverse, and the Doctor must navigate the adventure as best he can with effect preceding cause. Or you can have the TARDIS keep materializing in the recent past. Then an hour before that. And an hour before that. Going back into an event, revealing more and more. Can the players (and frankly, the GM) improvise their way into a victory in reverse? For advanced players, surely, but could be one you'll talk about for a long time. Memento is key inspiration for something like this. Make sure to leave clues the players will then have to manufacture (or have to pay for with Story Points - "Did I leave myself a clue?").
Source Code. Here's one that's part time travel, part brain puzzle, part Schrödinger's cat. Have the TARDIS crew hooked up to the McGuffin in Source Code and they can enter a certain past event using someone else's body. Can they find out who caused the event so they can be apprehended? Or does going into the "source code" create a parallel universe where the event can be prevented? That's up to you, but either way, a fun recursive set-up that is all at once Groundhog Day, Quantum Leap and your favorite disaster movie.
Melinda and Melinda. Ok, here's an odd one, but gear with me. This Woody Allen movie features a couple of writers discussing the merits of tragedy and comedy. Starting from the same ingredients, they each tell (going back and forth) Melinda's story, one tragic, the other comic. It's a conceit that could be used in Doctor Who as well! Remove the raconteurs, and instead have the TARDIS keep shifting back and forth between two realities. Some of the same characters are in both, and both worlds need help. If you give each world its distinct feel (one a thriller, the other a romp, for example), and perhaps make the TARDIS wheeze periodically (jump aboard before you lose your ride!), you can switch between genres within the same story. Or will the players do the unthinkable, and 'port characters from one world onto the other so the guest-stars can help their other selves fix their problems? It's up to you, but parallel time streams can be a fun new wrinkle to your game.

So that's my lot for today. What about you? What timey-whimey movies would you send the TARDIS to?

5 Sideways Films to Slide Your TARDIS Into

Consisting of five more ideas for Doctor Who role-playing games (or simple daydreaming) taking very simple inspiration from the world of cinema.

So I've dropped the TARDIS into 5 SF films, and then into 5 more, and into 5 historical films, and then blogging buddy Craig Oxbrow dropped it into 5 horror flicks. Why? 1) Because it's fun. 2) Because movies make cheap ready-made worlds/adventure scenarios for your Doctor Who role-playing needs. I thought all the appropriate genres had been covered, but I was wrong. The original Doctor Who bible split the adventures into three: Historical stories that took place in the past, SF stories that took place in the future (or during a current day alien incursion, as it turned out), and SIDEWAYS stories that took place... "elsewhere". The first of these was The Edge of Destruction, in which the TARDIS hurdles towards the Big Bang, affecting its crew in disturbing ways. The most recent was, well, The Wedding of River Song! Both of those have a temporal element, but I'll cover the more timey-whimey aspect of such stories next week. In between, the Doctor went to other dimensions, the Land of Fiction, and Amy Pond's dreams. Today, we look at films that take that kind of sideways approach to TARDIS travel.Dark City. In my opinion, an underrated film, that may prove to be a boon to GameMasters with less cinematically cultured players. Dark City features a noir city controlled by aliens in human guise, a city that reconfigures itself at night. More interestingly still, so do its citizens, with memories and roles being shared by the collective without their knowing. A fun twist on the Doctor Who adventure begins in medias res, with the players waking up as one of the other characters! How would Companion Rory handle being the Time Lord? And the Time Lord has to play the plucky assistant! Can they discover the secret of Dark City and regain their true identities?
The Matrix. Obviously, this is the seminal sideways film. I thought about excluding it as too obvious, but I can't get away from it. In the far future (perhaps on a colony world), the machines have taken over and plugged humanity into a computer-generated reality. Insert TARDIS. I'd have the machines plug in not only the crew, but the TARDIS itself. Hilarity ensues. Remember, the Matrix is actually a Doctor Who idea (from The Deadly Assassin), so the Gallifreyans might have a stake, or their Matrix may start affecting the machines'. Half the fun is allowing the characters to download abilities they never had before, and though the main story is well known, GMs might look to the Animatrix for other ideas (Beyond, with the "haunted" (glitchy) house is a particularly good adventure hook).
Spirited Away. Speaking of anime, here's a shift to another dimension that might fit well into the current series if it had an unlimited budget (as RPGs do). The magical world of Japan's nature spirits would make for an unusual environment that could definitely be explained with bafflegab. If the ancient Egyptians were in contact with alien Osirans, there's nothing that says ancient Japan wasn't visited by creatures from beyond an interdimensional rift. You get the cultural benefits of a historical, with the storybook logic of The Mind Robber.
Inception. Amy's Choice already did Inception, in a way, but your gaming group could use the film's spin on the concept to do something similar, visiting the worlds of THEIR dreams. Inception offers working rules for dream layers that could work really well in a trippy Doctor Who adventure.
Stranger Than Fiction. One morning, a man wakes up and finds he can hear his story's narrator. Tragedy or comedy ensues, depending on what kind of story it is. With all the omniscient beings in the Whoniverse, this premise might be turned into an interesting battle between the TARDIS crew and some Guardian or other. Somehow, they've tapped into fate's narrative thread, and the whole world goes meta. Or perhaps, it's a game or manipulation. What clues can they glean from the words to avoid a fate written in stone? As in the film, the inevitable meeting with their "creator" occurs in Part 4. How's that gonna go?

Set the coordinates for Head Trip, USA! Next week, sideways films that have a temporal element, but for now, I'll ask: What sideways movies would YOU like to see the TARDIS materialize into?

What Are We Gonna Do With All These Orcs?

RPG topic pulled from my Hat of Suggestions... Ogrebear wants me to talk about non-stereotypical Orc cultures. Well obviously, you could just shuffle the various races' roles in your campaign role and get an interesting result. Give the Orcs the role usually reserved for Elves, while the Elves act like Halflings and the Halflings like Dwarves, and so on. I've though of something a little more interesting though.Orcs have been around since the dawn of the role-playing game, and someone, somewhere, has probably already done what I'm about to suggest. Probably even published it. Still, if it's new to me, and new to you... The idea is to pull a Star Trek VI/TNG on their collective asses, and they're the Klingons. This is the Orc AFTER the Battle of Mordor (or its equivalent in your game world). Your Player Characters may have experienced it, and will have to adapt to the change, or it may be part of history and they've known nothing but this status quo. The Orcs are now refugees. Their world has been destroyed by the forces of good causing an influx of Orcish civilians in any land that will take them. Orc warriors have become dangerous mercenaries for hire or brigands/pirates, certainly not helping their people's reputation abroad.

Are they evil?
That's up to you. In the past, the PCs may only have dealt with official representatives of the Orcish government or religion and their warriors. These may well all have been evil. What the present crisis may reveal is that Orc civilians come in all colors and creeds, some good, some bad. Or it may be that while some are friendly and fun, even good-natured, their religion and/or customs are considered "evil". My Klingon analogy remains a good one. Even a "good" Klingon like Worf needs to satisfy his bloodlust, murders his wife's killer, etc., things ethically wrong in the Federation mindset. In the culture itself, "good" Klingons like Kurn, Martok and Kor have participated in massacres and the like. What they've done seems evil, but it isn't to them (they find deception and cowardice to be "evil", so to each his own).

If your PCs are living through the transition
There's certainly a lot of fodder for plots and subplots there. During the transition period, PCs may have to help Orcs settle in harsh desert plains or rocky mountains where no one wants to live, or bring peaceful resolutions in conflicts between refugee settlements too close to human(oid) habitation, or even help the "good" folk oust those pesky Orcs from their territory. The GM should make this process reveal shades of gray to the age-old conflict between Orcs and others, showing the "enemy" in a new light, and asking some important questions about the xenophobia exhibited by the PCs and their allies. Culture clashes abound.

As things settle down
A few decades later, Orc culture will have deviated in different ways depending on what niches the Orcs managed to fill...
-Nomads: Some will have embraced banditry or piracy as a way of life, while more peaceful Orcs living in isolated but harsh corners of the world will be forced to migrate seasonally to survive, living in tents or a string of outposts.
-Slaves: Evil (or unethical) empires will find a desperate worker force in the refugees massing at their borders, and Orcs in those regions could be enslaved easily. If the Orc leadership used to tread on its civilians this way, they may not register a change in lifestyle.
-Underclass: Even if they don't wind up as slaves, Orcs are likely to become the underclass, especially in city settings. Begging and stealing, filling their ghettos with violence, and being employed for only the most menial of tasks, the GM might use them to explore some topical concepts like gang violence, drugs and racial equality. Because there are still first-generation refugees around, the wound is quite fresh. These Orcs are not likely to have equal rights or access to good jobs. They are probably segregated.
-Terrorists and freedom fighters: Some regions might spawn faux-Middle East politics, with enemy groups within a stone's throw of each other. Many Orcs may feel that the other races are keeping them down, have stolen/destroyed their rightful lands, etc. and wish to retaliate. Terrorist cells would be a constant danger even in the most peaceful of areas. Extremism would thrive in the post-Mordor climate.
-Genocide or deportation: If they settled in an evil empire, this might very well happen, especially after a change in the leadership, causing a new wave of refugees (if the Orcs are lucky).
-Lawful co-habitation: If your campaign world has a strict "Lawful Good" civilization, it may embrace the Orc refugees completely, give them arable lands or even space in the cities. As long as Orc citizens obeyed the law, there would be no problem, and these Orcs would enjoy a certain tolerance for their way of life.
-Mini-empires: Some Orcs would get out of Mordor and immediately jump on border towns, creating a small closed-off city-state mirroring the mother culture. The warlords in charge would likely name themselves emperors or gods on Earth (think North Korea) and cause trouble for their neighbors. This might lead to a dangerous rise in Orcish power and ultimately, war. Or these states might be contained by the surrounding powers, yet remain impregnable, an irritant they must always keep careful watch of.

Orcs integrated into other cultures will tend towards assimilation, leaving some of their ways behind and embracing their adopted culture. Or they might go the voodoo route and combine elements from both cultures, creating an interesting hybrid. Some (like slaves) might have their culture forcibly bred out of them, leading to more secret or subtle practices. Orcs NOT integrated into their new culture (either by their own choice or because of segregation) will continue to behave in more Orcish ways, while newer generations may lose their native culture entirely and try to imitate or reject either culture as filtered through their own point of view. Gang culture, Orc Punk, an Orcish Revival, it could manifest in a number of ways. Meanwhile, Orcs that have remained isolated from other humanoid cultures may evolve in various ways away from the mother culture. Nomadic cultures will create traditions based on the needs of the tribe, while despotic city-states will embrace whatever crazed dogma their leader chooses.

There are a lot of avenues to explore, and Orcs from one region to the next may be entirely different. Just like people, which is what they are. As you can see, a lot of ideas can be mined directly from human history or current affairs, indeed, anywhere cultures are living side-by-side, peacefully or not.

Doctor Who RPG: The Retread Campaign

Being a Doctor Who campaign for DWAITAS or the system of your choice, for GameMasters who know their Classic Who and players who don't.

Recent announcements that IDW's Star Trek comics would retell the original episodes with the new cast/paradigm of the J.J. Abrams film - as retrograde and redundant as that might seem (looks like no one wants to do a real reboot anymore) - got me thinking about the idea's potential for the Doctor Who RPG. My players know the new series alright, but next to nothing about the original (though a few did borrow some DVDs to sample the various Doctors at one point). My guess is that while many GMs will be hardcore fans of the classic series (leading them to get the game and pushing to run it), the players they attract might only have sampled the new series. Perhaps I'm projecting my own experience on others here, but it fits the model of the GM collector that has to know everything about anything, and players who are content to let the GM do all the research. At times, I've found the gap between my knowledge and that of my players (not just in Doctor Who, but in the comics some of my superhero games were set in) a bit of an annoyance. But here's a campaign idea to at once make use of players' ignorance AND bring them closer to sharing your interest in the classic series. I call it the Retread (don't call it a Reboot!).

The premise
Basically, whether using their own Time Lord and Companions or the characters from the show, the players experience the same adventures the real TARDIS crew did, and in the same order. They'll get to know each other in 100,000 BC, then face the Daleks for the first time, do some weird stuff in the TARDIS and follow Marco Polo to Cathay. All you have to do is write up each adventure as plot points and define each character's stats. No doubt, the players will go in directions the show didn't, and in DWAITAS at least, the system is easy enough to improvise around the episode you're re-telling. The only thing you need to keep to make this work is an uncontrollable TARDIS so that the players can't set their own destinations. You can skip episodes you don't like, or can start with a different regeneration (trapped on Earth with UNIT? doing chores of Time Lords and Guardians?), it's up to you. If some of your players have cursory knowledge of the program's classic era, you might change some of the details (the James Bond 007 RPG's published scenarios do this very well, if you're looking for an example). Bottom line, you're using the classic series as a huge sourcebook and campaign tool.

Characters
If players use their own characters, it's sure to change the way the story unfolds. They could also use a mix of the show's characters and their own (say, the Doctor and completely new companions). Or a player with some knowledge of the show could opt to play Ian, even if the rest of the cast is different. Finally, and this may be the funnest of all, the GM could give the players a brief on who the PCs are: The Doctor, Ian a science teacher, Barabara a history teacher and the Doctor's teenage granddaughter Susan, and let the players re-invent them. The new Susan will be as related to the old as the Abrams Jim Kirk is related to Shatner's. Same character, different take.

Debriefing
Now, this is something I've had success with the aforementioned James Bond 007 RPG. Once you're done with an adventure, you can invite your group to watch the same adventure on DVD. How did they do compared to the original TARDIS crew? Where did they go in a different direction? Where were they (amazingly!) on the same page as Doctor Who's writers? Soon, you'll have players reenacting their own moments, heckling at the screen and either admiring or lampooning how the tv characters got out of their cliffhangers. Plus, you might just get those New Who fans to stop snubbing the classics!

But don't do too good a job... they'll get ahead of you and make your Retread campaign collapse! ;-)

5 More Sci-Fi Films to Drop the TARDIS Into

Consisting of five further ideas for Doctor Who role-playing games (or simple daydreaming) taking very simple inspiration from the world of cinema. One cherry picked from reader suggestions, the rest not.

I had fun last week putting the TARDIS into various films - and I wasn't alone, check out DWAITAS guru Craig Oxbrow's 5 Horror films to drop the TARDIS into - that I just had to do it again. My 5 SF suggestions last Tuesday felt pretty obvious, so I put a little more thought into my spacetime locations this time around:
The Planet of the Apes. In the Whoniverse's convoluted human timeline, there's got to be room for a far future in which apes have enslaved humanity. The Doctor and companions (or Your Own Time LordTM) will find there a good healthy mix of horse action, trying to convince the apes that they are intelligent beings, and discovering the awful truth they knew all along. It's a planet ripe for revolution, which seems to attract the TARDIS like the floor does buttered bread. And because it's a franchise, you can easily use elements from the other films to squeeze a few more episodes out of it. Cultists worshiping the atom bomb is very Doctor Who already. And then go back in time to the prequel to stop it from ever happening!
Solaris. A strange planet. Scientists on a space station in orbit. Hallucinations and identity theft. A first contact scenario. Existential "hard SF" questions. If that doesn't sound like a Doctor Who script, then you're not looking hard enough. You even have a choice of era/feel. The slow, long Russian version would work in the black & white era (do gamers sometimes simulate these shows, or is everyone doing New Who?), and the Soderbergh/Clooney version can play in your normal game.
The Fifth Element. It's the suggestion by Jeff R. that made so much sense, I was kicking myself for not including it in the first place. The colorful world of The Fifth Element is almost perfect for Doctor Who (I'd remove a few gun fights is all). The Moebius designs. The open satire. A quest that's part archaeology, part fighting an ancient evil, part alien opera singers. It's got a good OTT villain too. And hey, I just want to see a scene in which the Doctor shows his psychic moolti-pass.
Sunshine. The TARDIS lands on a spaceship bound for the sun. And people are mysteriously dying. A perfect blend of hard SF concepts, desperate "Apollo 13"-type crises, and a whodunit that provides an 11th hour climax. Danny Boyle isn't considered a genre director, but he could be. He definitely could be. Heck, I'd probably stick the TARDIS in his non-genre pictures too, like Millions and Slumdog. Maybe not Trainspotting though.
Westworld. What's got silliness (robot amusement park), a history/SF twist (the characters think they're in the Old West, but they're in the future) and YUL BRYNNER AS AN OUT OF CONTROL KILLER ROBOT COWBOY?! Only Westworld, that's what. I've never seen Futureworld or the TV series Beyond Westworld though. Could provide more story fodder if found? Warners says a remake is in the works, so it's time to strike while the iron is fresh!

Time rotors are go! Where are you setting the dial?

5 Historical Films to Drop the TARDIS Into

Consisting of five more ideas for Doctor Who role-playing games (or simple daydreaming) taking very simple inspiration from the world of cinema.

This time around, we're sending the TARDIS into the past, whether that's the Doctor's or "Your Own Time Lord's"(TM), and that's the past as seen through the eyes of cinema. Naturally, these will provide a number of opportunities for historical celebrities to show up, but should act as unusual and interesting canvases, much like, say, Th Reign of Terror (Happy Bastille Day!), which I'm listening on audio this week. In that story, Robespierre shows up, but it's really more about enjoying the tropes and atmosphere of the French Revolution. Hopefully these ideas will write themselves, the films acting as easy and entertaining research.Elizabeth. Despite the Doctor's claims to have married Elizabeth I, and her apparent ire at all this, we haven't actually seen a proper Elizabeth I story. The early days of her rule seems rife with possibilities for any time traveling crew, from preventing her assassination to vetting candidates for marriage. Action and romp both possible. (And maybe I've got a thing for naming a Christopher Eccleston movie in each of the articles, I dunno.)
Kafka. New Who has a strong tradition of using famous writers in celebrity historicals, and I can't believe they haven't thought of creepy Franz Kafka yet. The movie is built just like a Doctor Who episode too, with biopic dovetailing into the writer's fictional worlds. The TARDIS crew should be accompanying ol' Franz into the full-color Castle is what I'm saying.
Titanic. A favorite of any time travel RPG or series (GURPS Time Travel and Time Tunnel both make use of it right away, for example), there are many story opportunities in the sinking of the Titanic. The film itself turned the event into a canvas for melodrama, and you could do that too. Or it could just turn into a race against the clock as the fateful hour approaches and the TARDIS is for some reason (as was often the case in Hartnell historicals) off limits. Cut the Jack&Rose stuff and you've got a very detailed retelling of the event for research purposes. Definitely one for people who felt cheated by Voyage of the Damned and its fake space Titanic.
Cleopatra. Whether or not the crew meets the famous monarch, this historical era would be a nice change from all the Roman Empire stories we've gotten anything the TARDIS has gone Antiquity's way. Ancient Egypt is a really neglected part of history, y'know? And Rory could still wear his Centurion costume and be bossed about by Marc-Anthony or Caesar or something. The best of two worlds.
Red Cliff. Or in fact, any "Three Kingdoms" era film. We haven't been to the Whoniverse's China since, what, Marco Polo in 1964?! The wars of the Three Kingdoms are rife with possibilities for rescues, tactics or just plain tourism in an era and location that, to many Western minds, seems as alien as the aliennest planet ever seen in Who.

Take the blue tunnel into the past and do what a time machine was designed to do. Relive the past! But don't change history, not a single line!) Perhaps you have other historical ideas mined from the world of cinema. Don't be shy!

5 Sci-Fi Films to Drop the TARDIS Into

Consisting of five ideas for Doctor Who role-playing games (or simple daydreaming) taking very simple inspiration from the world of cinema.

Call it lazy scenario writing, or just a fun game to play in your head. But don't you sometimes fantasize about the TARDIS dropping into a favorite movie and the Doctor popping out to play with the completely wrong cast? Well, I do. Here then are five SF films that would work reasonably well as Doctor Who stories, with an attention to variety of era and style. Do you hear that wheezing, groaning sound? It looks like we're landing...The Thing. Doctor Who has almost already done this in Seeds of Doom. A base under siege in the isolated Antarctic. A truly creepy alien monster that tries to take on people's identities. It's right up the Doctor's alley! Can the Thing mimic Time Lord DNA? And if so, with what results? At the very least, it's Kurt Russell's chance to guest-star on Doctor Who. Maybe there'll be survivors, this time.
28 Days Later. Never mind that Christopher Eccleston stars in it, the rage zombie subgenre has yet to be done on Doctor Who. Empty London streets are a great setting for the world of tomorrow (in which Torchwood apparently screwed up) and then, well, RAGE ZOMBIES! The Doctor must race to find Patient Zero, and you know how he loves to run. And there's a LOT of running in this film. Also: The army gone bad. Totally Doctor Who.
Gojira. The original Godzilla avoids the rubber-suited wrestler moves in favor of an allegory about Hiroshima, and I could very much see the Doctor and his companions offering help both to the victims (as Raymond Burr sorta kinda does in the American version) and to the Japanese government. This is a Godzilla movie where the monster is defeated (spoiler from 1954) thanks to anti-oxygen, so don't tell me the TARDIS doesn't fit the genre. I guess it's up to Ian Chesterton to put the diving gear on and blow Godzilla up. (If you're playing a Doctor Who RPG, don't tell me this doesn't light your radioactive fire.)
The Abyss. Take Warriors of the Deep and make it scientifically viable, make the aliens as ready to negotiate as the Doctor and give it a real sense of wonder. Michael Biehn is the real villain here. It's an alien world right here on Earth, and it all ends special edition-style with the Doctor and his friends trying to convince the aliens humanity deserves to survive. Gotta stop that giant tsunami before it's too late!
Alien. I realize all my choices were based on Earth, though I hope the environments have been unique. If I've got to go off-world, then I've got to hand it to the original Alien. You've got psychotic androids, face-huggers laying their alien eggs inside their victims, a monster the Doctor will probably think is "beautiful", and a high body count. The TARDIS materializes inside the Nostromo and immediately get captured by the crew, so it's the perfect story for him. Really, it's The Ark in Space in the dark. As it should have been (and perhaps might have if Ridley Scott had, as was for a time scheduled, done the art direction for it).

Set the time rotor for fun (well, by fun I seem to mean TERROR!) and I'll be back in a couple days for some historical destinations. In the meantime, any SF films YOU'D like the TARDIS to visit?

5 Maps to Inspire Your Role-Playing Games

I remember when I was a young pup of a GM, piecing together a campaign world with maps ripped out of a variety of fantasy novels. It didn't matter if I'd read them or not. The names of towns and mountain ranges alone evoked the magic of some faraway place where life is violent and coin was plentiful. I haven't worked like that in a while, but I really should. I thought I'd post five evocative maps that could be turned into an entire rpg setting, all taken from Strange Maps, a favorite blog of mine, dedicated to old maps, map art, map science and even fictional places. There, you'll find perennial favorites like the Nazis' win scenario, the Hollow Earth and Tatooine, but also these intriguing places...

The Inverted WorldOur own planet is a great place to start when designing a world. Take a less known country, flip it around, and nobody's the wiser. The Inverted World, designed by Vlad Gerasimov, is a thing of beauty in that vein. What would our world be like if it was 70% land mass? Water would be more scarce in this fantasy world and might be a strong driving force for economies and ecosystems. I don't know about you, but I want to live in Easter City.

Starvania
Some places are complete invention, of course, and there's nothing wrong with doing as my teenage self did and taking them for your own. The Three Stooges' version of the Middle East, from 1949's Malice in the Palace, might be a fun place to set a slapstick comedy campaign, whether picaresque fantasy or Mission Impossible cold war shenanigans.

Map of Online Communities (circa 2007)
Here's an old favorite. Imagine a Tron-like campaign world where characters inhabit the Wide Web World. Visit the great libraries of Wikipedia. Defend MySpace against the Facebook invasion. Investigate the lost civilization of AOL. Recover an artifact before an IRC island sinks beneath the waves. The sky's the limit for the computer savvy gamer.

Titan's Methane Sea
Lest you think Strange Maps is only good for fantasy, steampunk and pulp games, let me throw some science fiction at you. Jump ahead a few centuries and Saturn's moon of Titan will have been terraformed. Towns could pop up around this particular sea, a true blank slate as it's one of the few features as yet unnamed in the known universe. Print and start drawing roads!

Where Broadcasts Are
Here's a fun idea for a space opera campaign that takes place in the here and now. Maybe we have "cousins" out there, or PCs could all be aliens. With this map, you can use old Earth broadcasts to determine just how far you are from the blue planet. Make it an essential part of navigation. Or perhaps these radio and television waves have shaped alien cultures all through the galaxy. With many GMs having a computer at the table these days, grabbing the proper images and sounds as living props isn't as hard as it sounds. Remember: If Night Court is playing, we must be at Vega.

I hope you'll visit Strange Maps. It might just inspire your next setting!

Folding Other Games into the Doctor Who RPG

Still harping on that Doctor Who RPG? Of course! I love it! It occurs to me that I could easily fold in material from other games into DW:AITAS if I were looking places and events to send the TARDIS to. Fantasy is pretty much out, though modern fantasy isn't impossible (there are vampires and werewolves in the Whoniverse, for example), and of course, superheroes shouldn't exist, but almost any kind of SF game can fit into the Whoniverse's future. Here then are the top 3 games I own that I could most easily fold into my DW:AITAS games and probably will.

Call of Cthulhu
The New Adventures and later book and audio series have already integrated the Lovecraftian Mythos into the Whoniverse. Who am I to argue? The only difference between CoC and Who scenarios is that the latter end with the heroes WINNING and probably banishing the Great OId Ones back to the depths of irreality. I'd love to do Time Lords versus Nyarlathotep stuff, but CoC also has some non-Mythos products (like Blood Brothers) that feature riffs on tons of horror movies (sound familiar?). CoC has the pulp, Edwardian feel of many Doctor Who episodes, alien-driven horror, investigation aplenty, people going insane, etc. It's a natural.
Key episodes: The Daemons, Image of the Fendhal, The Satan Pit.

Over the Edge
I may or may not ditch Al Amarja as a setting, but OTE is replete with mad science, weird characters, parasitic aliens, postmodern conspiracies and odd magics (no different than the Carrionites as far as I'm concerned). Mining it for ideas would be fun. Perhaps not too often because OTE tends to get disturbing in a Naked Lunch sort of way, but while I haven't read any OTE stuff in years, some of its images still stick with me. And I'm pretty sure I can 'port those memorable ideas to any kind of past or future setting for variety. I'd probably throw in some Unknown Armies stuff in there as well.
Key episodes: The Greatest Show in the Galaxy, Ghost Light, Midnight.

GURPS
Well OF COURSE I was gonna say that. Not only because I'm a notorious GURPS head, but because of all those sourcebooks so compatible with time travel games! Want to go into the past? I'll recommend GURPS Vikings, Imperial Rome, Japan, Ice Age, Age of Napoleon, etc. Would rather travel to the future? GURPS Cyberpunk, Space, Age of Steel, Uplift, etc. all have interesting worlds to play with. The Horror books have an incredible amount of useful material suited to a Who campaign as well: Atomic Horror, Monsters, Cabal, Creatures of the Night, Weird War II... And who can't find good bits for a Who campaign in Place of Mystery, Cliffhangers, Villains, Warehouse 23, Timeline (in all the Time Travel stuff, actually), and plenty more. The great thing is, all the books are related, so each gives adventure seeds full of crossover potential. And in Doctor Who, you want an easy in to stick your peanut butter (alien monsters) into my chocolate (Dynastic China).
Key episodes: Practically all of them, but I'll name The Aztecs, Invasion of the Dinosaurs and The Unquiet Dead.

I feel all inspired now. What games would YOU fold into Who continuity?

Doctor Who RPG: Suicide Squad Campaign

I was looking at a paragraph in the DWAITAS rule books about playing aliens and that you can't play a "good" Dalek, but what about an evil one? Then it hit me: Doctor Who Suicide Squad!In this new campaign idea for the Doctor Who role-playing game, your players take on the roles of various criminals and rogues from the Doctor Who universe, forced to take part in missions by their wardens. These bosses could be anything from pre-Time War Time Lords or the Shadow Proclamation (someone can play the hardass Judoon captain in charge of the sorry lot), and part of the fun, just like in the Suicide Squad comics, would be trying to get the better of them. How can your manipulative Sabalom Glitz further his own agenda while also surviving the bosses' mission?

Doctor Who has lots of established villains you could pull out of history to serve a sentence as a Player Character, but I can hear you asking: Aren't most of them dead? It's the Whoniverse, so time travel has got to be a part of the equation. Have the Celestial Intervention Agency or whoever pull them out of time just before they are killed, and then return them (or a facsimile body) a frame later! Or create Your Own Characters(TM) thanks to the many evil, nameless, faceless creatures from across space and time. A dalek is a dalek is a dalek, and the same can be said of Cybermen, Sontarans, Zygons, et al. And it's not like their personalities differ much anyway.

An example Whovian Suicide Squad? How about...
A Judoon captain to keep the others in line (let's call him Ro Flo in honor of Rick Flag)
Count Grendel
Eldrad (must live)
Sharaz Jek (we need a loony)
And a Dalek (you know, for the diplomacy stuff...)

What would be your team of Whovian villains?

Doc11's First Three (& an AITAS Campaign Idea)

Thanks to Doctor Who Magazine, we now know the titles of the next season of Doctor Who's first three episodes (mild spoilers below):
The 11th Hour (by Steven Moffat): A clever title, and wide open as far as what the story could be. We know it'll introduce the 11th Doctor properly, and Amy Pond entirely. So it has to be in 21st century England (probably London). The corresponding scenes in the trailer will be those with Amy in her police uniform. The stuff with the starter pistol(?) and the flickering light. It's Moffat, I trust him.The Beast Below (by Steven Moffat): This could be one of a number of things. The vampire-looking stuff in the trailer? The Weeping Angels? (Nope, they're scheduled later in the series.) The reptilians? Probably not the former because it's all broad daylight (which doesn't inspire "below"), and IMDB's list of characters don't sound like they could be those reptilians, (who, from the look of their weapons, I'm hoping are redesigned Silurians or Sea Devils). Back to the trailer for clues... Is that Sophie Okonedo as the assassin with two guns?
Victory of the Daleks (by Mark Gatiss): The first Dalek one-parter since "Dalek" in Series 1. The trailer shows the Doctor beating down a Dalek (in camo gear?) with its own suction cup arm. If any of the other scenes fit in with this episode, I can't really tell. Apparently, it takes place during World War II (do the Daleks change history and win it, fulfilling their destiny as space Nazis?) and the Doctor meets Winston Churchill (Ian McNeice).
After that... A two-parter with River Song and the Weeping Angels, but that's another story...

And now some Doctor Who RPG content!
Every time I start thinking about Doctor Who too hard lately, I invariably come back to the Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space RPG. The spoiling of those episode titles has given yet another idea for an AITAS campaign. Imagine an alternative Season 32 game using the 11th Doctor or your own Time Lord in which your episodes are the same as Season 32's, and any spoiled details are the same, but YOU HAVEN'T SEEN SEASON 32! In other words, the game for GameMasters is to make their best educated guess as to what will happen in the forthcoming series and run their players through it. Half the fun is seeing how the 11th Doctor's series actually unfolds. Did you guess right? Did you take off in a completely different direction? Anything's possible!

So based on the three episode titles...
-My 11th Hour would be based around some kind of temporal anomaly that kept the last moments of a person's life in stasis. Can the Time Lord and his/her newly minted companions save those lives before time collapses and they are lost forever? And do the players even dare change preordained events?
-My Beast Below would feature the return (or prequel) of the Beast in The Satan Pit, corrupting a young woman and turning her into a living weapon.
-My Victory of the Daleks would feature an alternate timeline created by a single Dalek escaping the Void to turn England into a wasteland. The players will help an underground cell led by Churchill himself defeat it so they can get back to the TARDIS and prevent the timeline from occuring in the first place.

Then it's off to the future, with Weeping Angels and River Song. Vampires, Silurians, Van Gogh and other threats down the line. But that's me. How would you prewrite the series? Be quick! Once season 32 starts, it'll be too late to start this campaign!