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 Building a Sky-Ship (or Sky-Galley) using Warriors of the Red Planet (WotRP) within the framework of ACKS II turns a simple vehicular purchase into a major logistical, engineering, and financial project. This blog post picks up right from Building The Red Planet Empire - Mixing Warriors of the Red Planet (WotRP) with the Domain-level Architecture of ACKS II RpgIn ACKS II, large Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

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By David Hay
Third Castle Games
OSE
Levels 1-3

Travel from sun-drenched beaches to dense jungle trails, over vine-rope bridges and up volcanic cliffs. Encounter lizardmen, the living dead, diabolical cultists and worse. Find magical items, gold and perhaps some glory too. Or at least a good tale to tell, should you make it to the taverns of Hardwind Harbour. But don’t tarry too long – for dark smoke belches from the volcano and the earth trembles. Where will your party be when it erupts?

This 74 page adventure uses about 55 pages to describe sixteen points of interest, and some of their dungeons, on a tropical island you are shipwrecked on. It’s pretty good for what it is, combining some ok formatting and a more situational approach to the adventure. I wish the overall situation on the island, how it works together, was addressed just a little more.

Oh no! You’re shipwrecked on a topical island! You probably find your way to the pirate town and there you probably find out it’s a lot harder to join a pirate crew than I thought. The island, while it has a map, is laid out like a pointcrawl. Each location is either self-contained or has a small complex/’dungeon’ attached to it. A couple of caves, a town, a necropolis, ye olde volcano temple, and so on, each with between eight to, say, eighteen locations in them. 

Ostensibly you are trying to get off the island, and many of the paths/leads go to the pirate town where you can bargain with the pirates. There’s pirate intrigue in the town, of course, and everyone wants something in order to help you out. But, also, there are other things about. You can find a small rowboat at one beach, and you see a much smaller island offshore, and it has a ship on it. A cursed ship, as it turns out. Do you know how to sail? Do you know how to recruit sailors to man a cursed ship? 

And, thus, we see a larger kind of more traditional hex crawl sort of thing going on in this adventure. In those more traditional hex crawls there are generally resources and wants/needs from others that the party exploits to fulfill their needs. They are generally not explicitly noted, with perhaps a few linkages explicit but in most other cases the party comes up with some crazy thing to do to exploit hex Y to do something in hex X. And this adventure, while a pointcrawl, does much the same thing. There ARE explicit linkages between the sites, Bob wants you to deal with the cult or Frank needs their crew found before they can do THE THING. But there are more than enough resources, and weirdo things going on, that the party can exploit things of their own design as well. This is good. The designer has written the adventure to present situations, expanding that to also present some more traditional crawls, and that situation-forward writing is what enables the more free-form non-linear gameplay. And, as the adventure reiterates a couple of times: “oh, and don’t forget to make the volcano explode!” 

The more traditional “dungeons” are decent, as well. Underground passages to swim to are a great example of a kind of hidden area of a dungeon that a party paying attention to can discover to get a reward/danger. A bridge over a chasm … and exploring the BOTTOM of the chasm is another example of that. Something a little oblique but obviously present, that the party can poke their noses in to. It’s the ol “cave behind the waterfall’ thing that I love so much. There are also rope bridges over a valley, complete with a corpse hanging from it and wild baboons on it. Or crack in a sea cave floor with an old rowboat, rickety, spanning it. The old “sarcophagus with something inside banging on it to get out’ thing. The rooms, much like the hexes, generally have more than one thing going on in it and many times the dangers are telegraphed well. A pool with luminescent seaweed, and when you go fucking around inthe pool you find out its strangleweed. Well, the DM told you the fucking seaweed glowed, did you think it was just window dressing. For that room, in particular, there’s a sandy floor with footprints, a pool of water, with the underground passage, a howling sound coming from somewhere and then that seaweed, and it’s all handled in one column rather than droning on and on. 

As that column note implies, formatting and word count here is pretty spot on. There’s a little sections at the top of an entry that could be read-aloud or inspiration, with some bolded words that reference bullets deeper in the description. A couple of sentences for each bullet, and two to three for the read-aloud/summary. It’s easy to scan and easy to locate information. There is a case of three of information being presented a little late, with something more critical to the action being presented later in the description/bullets. If there’s an ancient red dragon in the room then maybe get to that part sooner rather than later, yes?

I do want to call out something I rarely do: the art. More than once in this I thought some associated art pieces did a GREAT job of bringing the room better to life, which is what I think ALL art in an adventure should do. I understand this is subjective to some degree, but I know it when I see it. Tommaso Devitofrancesco and Gary Trow are credited with the interior art and one/both of them did a good job. “This large room is filled with magnificently sculpted statues standing in rows. At one end of the room war relics are displayed – trophies taken from the Old Empire’s defeated foes. Mosaics depicting famous victories festoon the walls.” This is accompanied by an art piece of greek-style warrior statues on plinths that really brings home the scale of the room. It’s one of the few times that good art in an adventure made me want MORE art pieces to do the same for EVERY encounter. (Which I’d probably then bitch about, but, whatever.)

There’s not a lot of padding in this thing. A few pages of pre-gens and one page of magic items at the end. The preamble before the keys are focused on wanderers and other pertinent information. Still, I wish perhaps the ‘summary’ information was just a little more in depth. A better overview of the various linkages between sites and perhaps a bit more about … campaigning? Hiring a ship, living in town, a sentence on expeditions … this is an expansive adventure and the support for that part of the play could have been better. The whole “jungle vibe” thing doesn’t really come through much at all. I think this is related to the pointcrawl nature; the immersive jungle setting doesn’t come through because the journey to the next time is essentially abstracted in a point crawl. That doesn’t have to be bad, but it needs a little attention, I think, to bring the journey part to life. The sites feel weirdly disconnected, which I guess makes sense give the pointcrawl nature. But, as I said, the designer must then remedy this. And the lack of travel time issues almost certainly strengths this abstraction and minimizes the jungle vibe. 

Still, a pretty decent adventure. I’m happy I found it and happy to see what the publisher does next.

This is $16 at DriveThru. The preview is nine pages and shows you the entirety of the starting point/cave complex. It’s a good representation of the encounters to be found, and shows off the nice Glynn Seal maps. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/552809/escape-the-devil-s-eye?1892600

Only seldom is the summit not shrouded in clouds, but on that rare day when it is visible, it's easy to see how the mining town in the high valley below gets the name Silver Peak. The pinnacle is forever sheathed in ice and snow that doesn't retreat with the change in season thanks to maddened elemental fae, forever enraged at some ancient insult.
In the glaciers that run like deep, blue veins from summit there is para-elemental ice that resists melting for long periods. If another reason to mine the Dagards beside rich stories of thaumatite and occasional manastones was needed, the arcane ice provides it. The ice is the simplest and most widespread means of refrigeration and cooling in Parsulan, and until magitechnologists rediscovered the means to make it, the Ice Barons of Silver Peak were the supplier of that ice.
Each of the ice magnate families controlled territory around Silver Peak, which was mostly neutral ground as it was a necessary resource exploited by all. Their workers lived there, and it was everyone's haven from the periodic assaults by monsters and Fomori. 
In addition to periodic attacks by hostile creatures and thunderstone eruptions that can blast a miner (or part of them) high into the sky, ice mining carries unique hazards. When they take notice of intruders (which is only occasionally but often enough to be a risk), the fae turn their anger on them. Miners have had their blood frozen in their veins or had the ice winds of a blizzard blasted into their lungs. Sometimes the fae animated crude physical forms to attack. 
These assaults have only gotten worse, perhaps, since the Ice Castle was uncovered. In the last century, the miners delved too deep and stripped a layer of ice so that the structure encased within it came into view: a castle of soaring towers and fanciful battlements. No one knows who built the castle or what became of its inhabitants.

Since the Castle was revealed, the fae have become more active. Now they howl down from their usual haunts into the valley in the winter, creating unnatural cold. They are also more aggressive toward miners.
There are other strange things. People swear they see inexplicable tracks leading down form the castle, and then there is the weird music that sometimes drifts over Silver Peak.
Fewer miners are willing now to take the risk, and then there was the miners' union and demand for fairer wages and better protections. The ice barons have dwindled in number and influence, but the most tenacious of them have over time joined by intermarriage into one clan, the Stonehearts.

 Here is a d100 encounter table tailored for classic B/X Dungeons & Dragons (and compatible Old School Renaissance systems).Yes I totally stole this photo from Wayne's Books from here. To keep this highly functional for a standard B/X campaign, the table is structured around the classic dungeon tier logic: Levels 1 to 3. It balances standard low-level fantasy staples with faction Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

The post Video of the Day – Doctor Who: Circuit Breaker, 2026 appeared first on Blogtor Who.

 In ACKS II, Level 2 of Quasqueton transitions from a military fortification to a hostile subterranean wilderness. Wandering encounters here are not just combatants—they are environmental pressures that test the party’s resource management (light, rations, sanity) in a damp, enclosed ecosystem. This post  picks right up from Meditations on the classic In Search of the Unknown (Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

You see, I do all this stuff for fun, not for a living. I admire and respect my friends and cohorts who make a living at it. I do not.

I also never look at my DTRPG earnings. I'm terrible. I even neglect comments so that I see questions asked a year later. I'm terrible.

Anyway, I did run some quick numbers just out of curiosity. I predicted that the Black Pudding Heavy Helping books would be the ones that sold the most, and it's true. By a country mile. But I was pleasantly surprised that GOZR came in second to them. I had this feeling that while GOZR was the most labor intensive thing I'd ever done, it was a big fat super unknown. And it is... in the grand scheme who the hell knows about GOZR?

In terms of pure downloads, the Black Pudding zines are far and away the highest (5,678 "sold" for BP 1, for example). But they are also free (pay what you want), so that makes sense.

All told, if I had to live off what I'm earning on DTRPG, me and my family would have died a decade ago. But I kinda knew that already. I'm just stoked when anyone buys a copy of anything I do. I appreciate it! You help me keep going.

In August 2016 I published Rabbits & Rangers. That's ten years ago! Time flies.

I thought I'd look back on the book since I haven't touched it in many years.

First, I went with a traditional digest format, which is nice. The POD print book is compact, cool. Good job, me.

Layout was done by Matt Hildebrand and I have to hand it to Matt... this thing still looks cool to me. Thanks Matt!

Speaking of thanks, flipping through it this morning I didn't spot any errors. Oh I'm sure there are some that slipped through, but Andy Solberg lent his meticulous editorial eyes to this thing and I'm forever in his debt. Thanks Andy!

The Monday Doomslakers RPG group played this game. I ran an adventure called Sheep on the Borderlands... get it? So thanks to them for enduring it. We started gaming in 2014 and, with a few changes in membership, we're still going strong today (currently playing Boot Hill 3e!).

Ok, so anyway... here are some things about the book I had forgotten that I believe are quite good.

1. Size differential table. I kept it simple. Sizes are small, medium, and large. You get +1 or -1 based on where you fall on that scale compared to your opponent in a fight. Small vs. small +0, small vs. med the small guy gets +1. Small vs. large, small fry gets +2. I think that's elegant and simple.

2. Natures. Inspired by the exaggerated personalities of old cartoons, you pick or roll for a Nature. If you're a Bully, then you act like a Bully. If you're Rascally then you're always one step ahead. And so forth. I think this reinforces the cartoon inspirations, but isn't too intrusive.

3. Death options. This has become something of a theme in my games. GOZR certainly has this. In R&R, you get to decide if your character dies at zero HP or not. The choice comes with cost, of course. If you die, you get a benefit to your next PC. If you live, you're knocked down a few levels until you earn 1,000 XP. I'm not sure why I did it that way, honestly. If I wrote this today I'd just say you're knocked out for a few rounds and get back up with 1 HP. But that was 10 years ago and I was firmly entrenched in OSR thinking... the idea of letting a PC live after the dice called for death?? Preposterous!

4. HD limits and XP mods. I put a lot of thought into this book. Looking at it now, I see hundreds of files of revisions and ideas. I spent a long, long time on this bastard. The tone and logic had to work. So it mattered to me that a mouse Fighter and a moose Fighter would have the same HD and stuff. It doesn't make sense. So I put limits on them. The mouse has a d4 HD limit, even as a Fighter. But they get a beefy +20% XP bonus. I also applied ability score modifiers quite liberally, but with balance. The mouse, for example, gets +3 to Dex but -3 to Str. They also get +1 to Cha (cute mice!) and a bump to AC for being small and quick. All animals get similar considerations for their size, speed, and traditional characteristics.

5. 21 new spells, 18 new magic items, 14 new creatures*. Notes and advice about armor and weapons that work for the vast array of animal shapes. Like... you find some plate mail in a dungeon. You're a polar bear and your companion is a bat. What are the odds this armor fits either of you? Well, unless the LL already knows the answer, you roll 1d6 to see what size it is. Then maybe you roll a percentile to see if it's specialty. Maybe you'll get lucky and find a rare All-Fitting Armor, which is described in the book.

Some of my favorite little bits:

StoatThe first level spell Ahkme's Catalog. The mage sends gold and a request by way of a magic bird to the laboratories of the geniuses at Ahkme. Within the hour, the bird returns with a package delivery containing an item that may help in their situation. You roll on a table to see if the thing explodes in your face or works like a charm. There's also a magic ring of Ahkme you can find.

Spells that target certain types, such as Down to Earth, a spell that grounds avian creatures.

The cute little animal portraits! I did one for each of the 50 animal types and I adore them, even if I drew them. I'm not above loving my own work. And it's so rare that I adore my own work from so long ago.

 

I'm waxing nostalgic now, but I have a hankering to run this again. What's more... there exists an expanded edition that started as a sequel. I did all the work of adding 50 more animals, some new spells, etc. I just didn't finish the work. It's something I'd like to do... but I would have to put myself back into a full on Labyrinth Lord mode and beg Matt to do an updated layout for the expanded edition. It would be worth it, though. Hopefully I would hold firm and keep to the classic LL format... complete with descending AC.

But there's also the strong possibility I'd want to change the whole thing to mesh with Black Pudding Play Book... and that would be awesome too.

The PDF is free to download. 

*Fun fact: the zard makes its first appearance here! I ported them over to GOZR later and I don't even know if I remembered they came from this book originally. 

 

As I mentioned last week, the community that has grown around Puerto Rico Role Players is wonderful. This series of interviews has allowed me to connect with creators from Puerto Rico who channel their imagination into games, art, and other endeavors related to TTRPGs, fantasy, and beyond—from artists publishing their own books to aspiring designers building their own role-playing systems.

I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Julio for a few years through the Puerto Rico Role Players group, our Geeknic events, and social media. He first told me about the game he’s developing a few months ago, we caught up about it at the latest Geeknic, and he’s been sharing some of his progress in the Tabletop Game Designers Puerto Rico group.

He was kind enough to answer my questions and participate in this interview!

Introduce yourself! Who are you, and what are you creating?

My name is Julio, and I specialize in Worldbuilding.

How would you describe your art or creative work?

Well, I try to be as descriptive as possible, so I would say it’s highly detailed.

How did you discover TTRPGs (tabletop or pen-and-paper role-playing games)?

In high school, some friends invited me to play Dungeons & Dragons. I really liked the game’s concept and saw its creative potential. Unfortunately, the DM got tired of it and killed us all with an Ancient Wyrm that left the city looking like a lake of lava.

Are you playing actively? What are you playing right now?

At the moment, I’m not playing anything. I want to focus on my personal and professional goals, but as soon as I have the time, I would like to play my own TTRPG.

What is the next thing you want to play?

I would like to play my own game, but I’d definitely get back into D&D—it has always been my favorite.

What projects do you have available, and what are you working on right now?

I am creating my new TTRPG world called “RE//in Eden-01”, which is what I am dedicating myself to at the moment.

It is a mysterious world where the player lacks a physical body, as they are a digitized soul in a crystal container. However, that crystal can be installed in a synthetic body tailored to the character’s needs (representing different character classes).

The player can have more than one body to use, depending on what they need to do. Bodies are created in two ways: Cybernetic or Biological. The player can create a cybernetic body with a human appearance or a fully robotic humanoid. They can also choose to create a “chimera,” where they can make anything from a demi-human to a tentacled aberration.

The world is in danger of being consumed by different factions seeking to gain control, exploit resources, and enslave and strip the inhabitants. The player is “isekai’d” into this world after their death because their soul was copied by an ancient system of unknown origin that saw potential in them. Will the players help restore the world, or will they use their power to eliminate the competition for domination?

Art by Julio

Where can people find your projects?

I still have a lot to write, but I plan to set up a public access site soon so people can check it out.

Any final comments?

I hope you all like it once it’s ready!

Julio, thank you very much for your time. I wish you much success in your work, and I’ll be sure to share any news about the game here on the blog and across my socials as it develops!

 Here is a d100 random encounter and lore table tailored for a high-lethality Sword & Sorcery campaign. In classic pulp style, these entities aren't just blocks of hit points; they are reality-warping terrors that twist the landscape, corrupt the mind, and demand heavy logistics or clever tactical thinking to survive. This blog post picks right up from D100 Sword & Sorcery Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

The post Video of the Day – BUILD Series, 2019 appeared first on Blogtor Who.

By Greg Gawron
Advanced Fantasy Games
OSRIC
Levels 2-4

Hidden within a long-forgotten cemetery stands an abandoned mausoleum, once a place of grand splendor and solemn reverence. Now it lies broken and rotting — its roof collapsed, headstones shattered, and its glory buried beneath decades of neglect. But decay has not left this place empty. A new evil has claimed the ruin as its lair, and by fate or folly, you have found its resting place… and it now awaits your party of adventurers in The Lost Tomb of Kazcuk Mot the Undying.

This 28 page adventure presents a small tomb with fourteen rooms that is primarily aimed at tournament play. There is a certain, physicality? to it that I find interesting, however, it’s a bad tournament adventure, with mucho read-aloud and padded out DM text with rather simplistic challenges. 

It’s not every day you see someone thanking both Finch AND Taormino in the same breathe, like the credits page to this one does. I assume he went to a con and they both said some kind of Gandhi shit to inspire him to publish? I hope that’s the case. I don’t know, Taormina cranks his shit piles out so maybe it was publishing tips? Anyway, this is a tournament adventure. Tournament adventures need a few things special going on so you can judge them similarly, fairly, amongst different tables. I think that’s all bullshit and it’s like comparing a Rothko to a Picasso. “You get a prize!” Fuck that shit. 

And, therein, is the issue, at least with regards to the tournament aspect to this. Let us consider two different scoring systems for a dungeon. In the first, I give you one point for each room you enter. In the second I roll a d6 for every room you enter and if it comes up a ‘1’ then I give you a point. IE: what are we measuring? The ability to penetrate the dungeon by any means possible or are we measuring how lucky the dice are for the party? Further, we must be up front with the players on what we are measuring. SHould they be tearing the place apart looking for treasure, or defeating monsters, or “winning” the plot, or trying to roll as high as they can on their dice? This adventure, of course, does not disclose the scoring to the party other than to say you get a point for accomplishments and lose a point for mishaps. And then it does things like “if you search the room then roll a d6. If you roll a 1 then the party finds a pearl necklace. They get a point.”  I seem to recall that some tourney adventures went so far as to have die rolls prepared for the DM in order to make things as fair as possible across tables. Rothko does not approve. So, as a tournament adventure I think this fails to do a decent job with the scoring. The answer is not more prepared die roll and less randomness, but a different axis of scoring, I think.

Ok, so, the adventure intro also says we can use this as a stand-along adventure. How was the play Mrs Lincoln? Not as bad as one might think, given the murder of the president.

I’m not happy with the adventure, or the interactivity as a whole, but there is a certain physicality to the interactivity that I think works well. One of the entry rooms has a door under a sarcophagus that flips up. There’s a grate in the floor to go down. There’s a portcullis to lift. There’s a decent amount of this kind of physical interactivity in the adventure. Or, maybe, environmental? Whatever. There are other classic elements as well, such as yellow mold, the old water monster in a pool of water thing, and so on. They don’t feel tired in this, but I’m also open to this being because the amount of text that surrounds them. Interactivity, beyond that physicality, is generally limited to stabbing. And, even that is a bit iffy. The wanderers are bats, rats, and centipedes and they show up a decent amount. One wonders at the boredom of it all. 

Otherwise, the adventure has some of the long standing usual problems with the untrained. The read-aloud can be quite long. And, of course, players don’t listen to long read aloud. It’s not a new thing. You’re boring them with read-aloud. Keep it short. It’s the designers job to figure out how. Further, the read-aloud over-reveals the rooms contents. You want the read-aloud to hint at things for the players to have their characters follow up on, not to just expo dump every little detail. at the party. You want the back and forth. 

EVerything here is padded out. Every read-aloud ends with “WHAT DO YOU DO” and then immediately we get a “DM NOTES” heading. Yeah, got it man. It’s not read-aloud so it’s DM notes. Yeah, got it, the read-aloud is over so now the party and do things. The first trap takes like three paragraphs to describe, and it’s a simple stair foot pit. Ok, so, I take it back. Four paragraphs. This is a quarter of a page. For a simple trap. It’s not complex. It’s just padded out. The wanderer text is padded out. “Inside the mausoleum the characters will find ample space to move about and it may appear to be a safe place to rest and take shelter. It is not.” Jesus man, that did nothing for the adventure. It is just worthless text. You didn’t actually say anything. All you’re doing is adding words to the adventure. And these filler words and paragraphs get in the way of the ACTUAL meaningful text that the DM needs to locate in order to run it at the table. The DM needs to be able to quickly scan the text, and right now they have to dig through shit like that in order to get to the stuff that matters. 

It’s just relentless. The editor is the designer, which is either magnificent, if the designer knows what the fuck they are doing, or a disaster is they do not. The designer was not born with some a priori knowledge of how to write an adventure and do layout and what makes it fun and so on. Ideally, an editor, a decent one anyway, can help with some of that. YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING. You might be a decent DM. You are probably an ok guy But YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING. Seek help. Seek an editor. Learn what makes an adventure a good adventure and also an easy to run adventure. 

This is $20 at DriveThru. I think that’s because it was kickstarted. I’m going to, rather generously for me, NOT say this is a fucking cash grab, even though the first thing published was kickstarted at $20. That advice above? Learning what makes a good adventure, getting an editor, etc? You can ignore that. You can go down the path of filthy lucre. Just crank shit out on kickstarter the most efficiently possible and build your market. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/562629/the-lost-tomb-of-kazcuk-mot-the-undying-osric?1892600

 Yes, absolutely. In fact, B2: The Keep on the Borderlands aligns surprisingly well with the mechanics of the Wretched system. Because the Wretched system (including Wretched Époque) is built on an OSR (Old School Renaissance) d20 foundation heavily inspired by classic B/X D&D, the core math, monster stats, and dungeon-crawling loops require almost zero heavy mechanical conversion. This Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

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The BBC have announced that they are opening Doctor Who to tender by new showrunners, as Russell T Davies and Bad Wolf exit the Whoniverse

 

This week’s BBC statement on the future of Doctor Who was paradoxically both a shock and not entirely unexpected. Ever since the original announcement of a 2026 Christmas Special, the language of Russell T Davies “agreeing” to make it, made it seem like it was intended as a bridge to a new era and a new production team. Since then, there had been no sign of production starting as the months crept by. Either filming was taking place entirely on set at Wolf Studios in an unprecedentedly low key way, or it hadn’t even started by almost halfway through the year.

All things considered, then, the news that there actually wouldn’t be an episode this year, and that Davies had already stepped away from the show, is somewhat unsurprising. Still, it’s shaken the world of Doctor Who like an earthquake. Some fans are rejoicing the end of an era they personally didn’t enjoy, even though many others did. Some are giving in to despair that Doctor Who is ‘dead.’ Still other old hands have plenty of wry comments to make about waking them up in 15 years when The Wilderness Years II: Wilder Than Ever is over.

 

For the first time since 2003, not only is there no new Doctor Who in production, but no timeline for production to begin

In many ways it’s understandable. This is the first time since 2003 that not only isn’t the show actively in production, but there’s no planning in place for it to go into production. This new hiatus will definitely last longer than the gap between the Chibnall and Bad Wolf runs. However, it’s unlikely to endure as long as the 1989-2005 hiatus. Or even the gap between the end of the show’s original run and the TV Movie. The BBC announcement included notice of a new tendering process: essentially an invitation to production companies to pitch for the job.

That process could take a year or more to even identify a new showrunning team. There’s also no absolute guarantee the BBC will find any of the pitches suitable for moving ahead to the next phase. Yet, it indicates the broadcaster is serious about making new Doctor Who, and making it sooner rather than later. Even if they doesn’t feel nearly soon enough right now.

In a way Doctor Who has been extremely fortunate to have a clear line of succession up until now. Russell T Davies had been lobbying for the show’s return for years before the BBC decided to give him what he wanted. Steven Moffat was hand picked by Davies as his successor. Chibnall was the only candidate for the job in 2018 thanks to both Davies’ and Moffat’s recommendations. Then Davies again put himself forward to return. This is essentially the very first time this century the BBC have even had to ask themselves the question – “who do we want to run Doctor Who?”

It’s perfectly natural if it takes them awhile to come up with an answer.

 

Happier times at the premiere of The Church on Ruby Roady BBC STUDIOS 2023, Photo by Jonathan Birch Disney’s long delay in deciding not to renew their deal seems to have been a major contributor to the muddled end of the Bad Wolf era

There will be as many theories about how we came to this point as there are fans. In reality, it will be many years before we know, if ever. During the Bad Wolf era, Doctor Who rarely left the BARB Top 20 chart, and regularly landed in the Top 10. The last report by the BBC on their commercial activities detailed a £2.2 billion profit. That same report singled out Doctor Who as one of the main contributors to that number, along with Bluey. That explains why the broadcaster is keen to find new showrunners and make more. But it doesn’t account for why the show’s on hiatus in the first place. It seems only yesterday Ncuti Gatwa was on Graham Norton’s couch confidently talking about plans to film Season 3 in 2025.

The show’s entry into the world of international streaming may have been the dawn of a bold new era. Yet it was perhaps doomed to self-destruction from the start. Streamers such as Netflix, Amazon, and Doctor Who’s new partner, Disney+, frequently make only two seasons of a show before moving on. And if they do continue, viewers have to expect multiple years between seasons.

This proved a huge difficulty for a show which thrived on constant forward movement and change. Disney teased out their decision on whether to renew the Whoniverse deal for so long a clear tension between themselves and the BBC emerged over it. The BBC couldn’t seek a new partner until Disney’s position was official. That created uncertainty about when and how the show would continue, even before Season Two aired.

 

Doctor Who will be back

The first major impact of this was that lead actor Ncuti Gatwa felt he had to withdraw, unable to sit in limbo waiting for a call back to set at some unknowable point in the future. This also led to hurried rewrites and reshoots for his final episode. The result, it has to be said, was messy and unsatisfying, not only with Gatwa’s exit, but in the cobbled together ending for Varada Sethu’s Belinda. Both would probably have been better served by last being seen dancing into the night together. (And let’s hope that original version winds up on a Collection box set some day.) As it is, the bizarre regeneration into Billie Piper will now almost certainly be a bridge to nowhere.

Doctor Who is not cancelled. It will be back. However, it likely won’t be on screens until 2030 at the earliest, and when it does return it will almost certainly be a fresh new start. Right now that might be a source of anxiety as he head into the unknown. But as the pieces come together, we may – just may – be in for the most exciting and thrilling time to be a fan since 2005.

Yes, Doctor Who will be back. Even if those plans falter. Even if it takes a generation. Fans who grew up with Eccleston and Tennant, are already making their way up the ladder of the entertainment industry. For them, bringing back that battered blue box will be an irresistible idea.

So in the meantime, go forward in all your beliefs you learned from Doctor Who. Never cruel, never cowardly. Never give in, never give up. Be kind. And prove to Doctor Who it was not mistaken in them…

 

 

The post The Bad Wolf Era of Doctor Who is Over… appeared first on Blogtor Who.

 Bringing the 80s Saturday-morning post-apocalyptic swagger of Thundarr the Barbarian into the gritty, OSR-style mechanics of Sword of Cepheus 2nd Edition is an awesome cross-genre mix.Gemini is the ultimate Thundarr antagonist: an evil, ancient-tech-wielding cyborg sorcerer with a literal split-personality. His head rotates 180° beneath his visor to switch between a short-tempered, Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

Photo by Paul Glazzard

The head of Vorlas is on display in the Revolutionary Museum in Kingshead, shielded from the ravages of time by magic so that it may be a near-permanent reminder of the revolution's resolve. One of the last of the great Wizard-Kings, Vorlas's rule was particularly despotic and draconian, but his security forces and even inhuman soldiers transformed by magic proved unequal to the defense of his kingdom during the Demon War and even less effective in dealing with the crises of displacement of people and food shortages that followed.

Vorlas was dragged to central square of Kingsforge, his capital, by the rebel army and beheaded by a new apparatus designed for that purpose, the machine now called "The Nemesis." The city was renamed in commemoration of this event and the head has resided there since.

There is another, newer head in Kingshead. That one is made from steel, thaumatite, manastone, and more than a little spellcraft. The dwarven theorists and magitechnologists behind its creation convinced the Council for Progress, a conclave formed of the various business groups that have become the true rulers of the Durendine Confederation, that the magitech mind could run the nation more efficiently than any mortal, anticipating problems before they arose, and maximizing their profits. So far, the head remains a work in progress, but the Council is still captivated by the possibilities. 

The dwarves who built it have an even grander vision. While they promise their device will far exceed the computational and planning capabilities of mortals, they hope for it to one day to be greater than either god or titan, at least in the sense that it would be free of their passions and weaknesses. 

 Blending the transgressive, Cronenbergian biopunk of New Flesh (The Red Room) with the gritty, 90s-cartoon-inspired sandbox of SURVIVE THIS!! Vigilante City (Bloat Games) yields a highly distinct tabletop experience. It transforms a street-level superhero aesthetic into a dark, visceral "splatterpunk-noir" setting. This blog post picks up right from Survive This!! Vigilante City & Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0