TIME
LORD is an unusual book. It is neither a story nor a game: it contains all
the rules and information that you need to invent your own DOCTOR WHO
stories and to take part in games based on them. Taking part in a
story is known as role-playing and by using TIME LORD, you and your
friends can play the roles of the Doctor, his companions and his enemies.
You can travel through time and space and face deadly dangers on alien
worlds without leaving your living room. You don’t even have to wear
outlandish costumes — although you can if you want to! All you need is
this book, some pencil and paper, at least two ordinary six-sided dice, a
group of friends and a fertile imagination.
Introduction to the 1996 online release:
TIME LORD and DOCTOR WHO have had one thing in common over
the past few years: both have been unavailable to fans. Behind the scenes,
however, work has been progressing on new versions of both. The wider
availability of the Internet and its suitability for electronic publishing
has made it possible for some time to put TIME LORD on the World Wide Web.
What has been lacking is a number of files from the original typescript —
files that over the past few months I have been rekeying.
During that time, Peter and I have arranged to have the
rights to TIME LORD reverted to the authors; Peter has also very kindly
allowed me to go ahead on my own and republish the book electronically so
that it once again becomes available to fans of DOCTOR WHO and gamers
alike. What appears here is substantially the same as the original work.
The Templar Throne, however, is no longer included, and an adventure I
originally wrote for Marvel’s Doctor Who Magazine — The Curse of the
Cyclops — takes its place. While The Templar Throne is an excellent
adventure, it is a little too complicated for a first game. There is now
also a full character generation system for human companions, which joins
the appendices at the back of the book.
A few words of caution: the files that comprise this
edition are based on the pre-edited version of the game, so there may be a
few differences. If anyone spots them, it would be greatly appreciated if
they could point them out. I intend to release this version of the
game in several forms. The first is rather exclusive: Postscript files
that can just be printed out. More ambitiously I hope to release a version
that can be read on a Web browser in small chunks, which should make
accessing particular points far easier. I also intend to put out Ascii,
Word and WordPerfect versions, but all this will take time. Be patient.
Ian Marsh
Wandsworth, London, June 1996
The HTML, Word, and WordPerfect versions were never
released by Ian Marsh. The HTML version on this site was
independently crafted using the ASCII version as its basis, and is
exclusive to this site. Select one of the buttons on the left to go
to the section of the site you wish to look at.