It’s my goal to draw 26 monsters from the original D&D Monster Manual, each with a 20 minute time limit. I have recorded my twitch livestream which you can find here:Â https://www.twitch.tv/torenatkinson
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In which I learn the British pronounce catacombs ‘catacoombs.’
This story introduces the new companion Romana, a recently graduated Time Lord, and the White Guardian, who sends the Doctor on a season long quest to find the 6 hidden segments of the Key to Time, which are disguised as other objects. In this case the key segment is disguised as a hunk of the rare and powerful element jethrik in a museum on the planet Ribos. The Doctor, K9 and Romana have to compete with a pair of other thieves who are likewise trying to break into the museum. The lead thief, Garron is also trying to swindle an exiled tyrant to buy the planet itself. It all leads to a deadly game of cat and mouse in the catacombs with a fanged lizard-like monster and a melodramatic witch.
The characters in this story are great across the board, including the doom-yelling witch and an elderly hobo who was a would-be scientist exiled for heresy. Quite a fun watch for the acting and dialogue.
Shimmering, mind-reading, non-corporeal aliens are too powerful for the Time Lords to thwart, so The Doctor has to trick everyone by becoming Time Lord President and de-activating the forcefield that protects Gallifrey. Only then will the mysterious Vardans reveal their true form – white dudes in jumpsuits. The Doctor institutes a ‘time lock’ which nullifies the Vardans in some hand-wavey fashion, but the lack of forcefield allows the warlike Sontarans to invade Gallifrey, with the full force of maybe four or five of them. The Doctor leads them on a merry chase through the bowels of the TARDIS and then shoots them with a space gun.
Overall a pretty embarrassing story that’s tough to slog through, punctuated with a few gags from Tom Baker.
The last story with Leela, I will miss her feisty penchant for knifing people.
Communicate often with your players. Do this both as a group and one-on-one. Converse with them, not to them. Tell them what your expectations are of your players and ask what they expect out of their DM. If you see conflicts, address them. Understand that what works for some of your players may not work for others, and you may have to make some hard choices to play the game you want to play. But above all – communicate.
TOREN’S TIP: You are the game referee, but you are not your player’s conflict mediator outside of the game. Set healthy boundaries. Seth Skorkowsky has an excellent video on his channel about this.
2. People these days talk a lot about ‘Session Zero’ – this is basically a subset of point 1. It could be in person or it could be virtual, or even just an email. It’s a communication of what the tone, gaming style, rules restrictions, setting, and everything else about your game will be, including what you will allow and what you won’t allow. This happens before the first adventuring session and it’s a great time to find out what your players are comfortable with (remembering that many of your friends have deep traumas that you might now know about including sexual assault, death of close relatives at young age, etc.).
Is alcohol allowed at the table? How about cell phones? Will characters level up via XP or milestones? What’s the balance between crunchy combat and roleplay-heavy social encounters?
TOREN’S TIP: Ask each character to have a connection or bond to any 1 or 2 other player characters (the fighter and I escaped the slave mines together; I follow the cleric’s god and look to her for advice; the druid is my adopted sister!)
There are lots of articles and youtube videos about what you should cover in a session zero. Here is a good one:
3. Watch your Group Size. It’s legendarily difficult to find a good, stable gaming group (congrats if you have one) and there are different philosophies as to the perfect size. You can absolutely have a game with 1 player and 1 DM. Typically the magic number is 4 players and 1 DM. With smaller groups, you risk having to cancel the entire session if 1 or 2 players has to cancel, whereas if you have a larger group of 5 or more, the danger becomes when everyone shows up and you get very little done in the session because there is more time used up between players’ turns. It really depends the reliability of your players so all I can say is good luck!
4a. Set reasonable standards for yourself. Everyone wants to be the greatest DM/GM in the world, and many feel like podcasters and youtuber like Matt Mercer are the gold standard to aspire to. Keep in mind these are professional actors and what you are watching are performances for a medium, rather than a casual gaming group of friends. Look to them for inspiration and ideas, but remember you will never be Matt Mercer, and you shouldn’t. Just be a good you.
4b. Don’t burn yourself out! I find preparing for my RPG sessions very therapeutic, but manage your expectations. The players will inevitably thwart or avoid many of your lovingly crafted encounters, so just try to roll with it (pun). Also, find a balance for how often you play. Most people try to have a weekly game, but if that seems to be too much for you, adjust the schedule. See if anyone in your group is interested in running a separate game (even a different system) and you can alternate weeks as a GM and a player. Also, consider the idea of a co-DM, if you have a friend that you have a good relationship to work with, having two DMs can ‘share the load’ as Samwise Gamgee once said.
5. Is Everyone Having Fun? If they are, then you are doing it right! This might be the most important tip, perhaps tied with #1. And if you are not having fun. Ask yourself why and what you might want to change.
Leela and K9 materialize with the doctor on a Minyan ship questing to find a DIFFERENT Minyan ship carrying their ‘race bank’ to populate a new homeworld. They find it at the center of a planet where as usual society has developed into a slave class and a ruler class, plus the supercomputer ruling them all. A very boring story with jarring chroma key/blue screen of the various characters running through the ‘underworld’ of caves.
The best part of this story is the pacifier guns which make angry people docile and dopey for a while.
Various sold individually. If something doesn’t have a price please ask. Please keep in mind all photos may not be 100% up to date, let me know what you’re interested in and I’ll visually confirm them for you.
Chainmail Gnolls – $10 each
Servitors of the Outer GodsSerpent Men FolkDeep Ones of Innsmouth
An evil corporation on Pluto has a stranglehold on the economy and freedoms of mankind. But The Doctor, Leela and K-9 foment rebellion! Surprise, the creep in charge is an alien!
This is a less gonzo episode than the past few and that’s welcome. It’s perfectly serviceable and apart from K-9’s errant laser beam there’s not much groanworthy special effects. The characters are standard but fun, especially the smug tax collector who reminds me of a greedy pompous Fred Willard who really loves his job. Apparently the writer of this episode really had a grudge with taxation.
You’d think an episode called the Sun Makers would have more focus on the artificial suns around Pluto. But really it seems just a way to justify the typical English grey skies when the characters are outdoors.
Some unethical scientists do some kind of sciencey-scan on an unusual, possibly alien, skull. This ‘activates’ the skull which slowly transforms the lady scientist into a gold, gorgon-like woman and summons beasties reminiscent of H.P. Lovecraft’s From Beyond…I think so that it can manifest into it’s previous gestalt form and do some bad things to the universe. Luckily, old local Mrs. Tyler is a disciple of the ‘old religion’ AKA witchcraft and knows some tricks, and she teams up with our heroes.
This is one that probably could have been done in 2 episodes, especially considering The Doctor and Leela don’t do much until the climax. As usual it’s a mix of occult and space/time gobbledygook. The most mad of the mad doctors has a bad accent but the other doctors are less hammy. Overall, another germ of an interesting concept, left out so long that it becomes stale, and tentatively kicked down the hall a bit.
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