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"Whataya mean, I've got a '4'
Comeliness?!"
There's
nothing new to the Primary Attributes PCs have in this game. There's
Strength, Intelligence, Constitution, Dexterity, Stamina,
Perception, Willpower, Appearance, and Bravado. (There's
also a Power attribute, if your referee wants to use mental
powers in his campaign.) Bravado is your ability to bluff, fake it,
or otherwise display some cojones in a tricky situation. The
other attributes should be fairly familiar to gamers.
Each attribute is rated as 1-20. However, since the PCs
are avatars of the gamers, and let's face it, gamers are not known
for being hot-bodied muscle-bound super-sly überhumans, most PCs
will have very average scores (say in the 8-12 range).
The book gives several suggestions for coming up with
your own stats in PC form. The first is to have every player at the
game rate you secretly, and the GM will then generate your average
from these numbers. This may be a rude shock to some people; if
you've always considered yourself a charismatic looker, but your
friends all give you a "6" in Appearance, you could end up with a
bruised ego.
To avoid
this, the book also gives methods for determining your stats in a
more unbiased manner. For instance, you'll find your Strength by
actually holding weights at arm's length with one arm for 5 seconds.
Whatever weight in kilos you can support, you cross reference on a
chart and find your game STR rating. Your high school SAT scores or
the score of any IQ test you may have taken will compare to another
chart to determine your INT. Situational modifiers such as, "You
can't stay on a diet no matter how hard you try" will adjust your
base Willpower score of 10 either up or down. You get the idea. This
is a novel approach, and serves to come up with a rough estimate of
your game alter-ego.
Damage is taken on your Body Points, and is
handled a bit differently than in most games. Instead of simply
taking X amount of damage from attacks, subtracting X from your BP
total, and dropping dead when you hit "0" BP, you instead take
damage as a percentage of your BP. (So an attack doing 20 damage to
someone with 60 BP has done 33% damage to that PC, but that same
attack would do 50% damage to someone with only 40 BP.) The
percentage of damage done to your PC affects her in various
ways, usually by adjusting their other attributes and skill scores
downwards until they heal.
"Is there a skill
description for Loafing?"
Skills are
determined for PCs much the same way attributes are. The GM has a
list of what must be 100 skills, and if you possess any of these in
real life, well, your PC has 'em too. These can, obviously, be
anything. Weapons experience, such as with hunting rifles or
pistols, slingshots, or bows of course translates into weapons
skills in the game. Wrestling, martial arts or boxing training means
your PC will be one of the few who are actually adept at fighting in
the game. [I mean, if you as a player aren't used to laying some
whoop-ass on an actual flesh and blood person, then your PC ain't
gonna be Bruce Lee either.] Trade skills such as woodcarving,
blacksmithing, engineering, mechanical training, and whatever other
freaky pastimes you're involved in are covered. And for those of us
with less than squeaky clean pasts, there are such skills as
torture, lockpicking, forgery, and wounding.
Skills are rated 1 through 20 as well, with "1" being
no experience with a skill at all (a default value), and "20" being
a professional with upwards of 13 years of daily use with the skill.
Again, players rate their skills according to a chart comparing
real-life experience with the PC skill. For example, if you know how
to drive a snowmobile, your character has that skill. If you the
player "use this skill often, used actively a few times a month",
then your PC's skill rating would be 10 + 1d2 in snowmobiling.
Most task resolutions are determined on a "roll under"
method, using a d20. If your skill plus modifiers is higher
than the d20 roll, you succeed in using that skill. (So, you want to
roll low in this game.)
There is, lastly, a section of Advantages and
Disadvantages to choose for characters, ranging from Magical
Aptitude to Immunities to Weather Sense to Weight Problem to Phobia
to Enemies. As I've said many many times, this game mechanic sucks
ass. 'Nuff said. But it's there is you want it.
"Great. We're back in last
Tuesday. Nice going, Frank."
The idea
behind TimeLords is that you, i.e. your PCs, are somehow
involved in a temporal displacement incident. (That's 'time travel',
to those of you who aren't up on your sci-fi lingo.) How this occurs
is up to the GM, but it's done via a Matrix. This is a little metal
object much like a twenty-sided die, but which was created waaaay in
the future and is therefore far too technologically advanced for
your little human mind to comprehend. Anyway, the PCs come upon this
Matrix in some fashion, and before ya know it, POOF! they're
transported to another moment in time. The fun starts here!
Now, the exact type of temporal existence for your
campaign will be up to the ref. Many movies and stories have been
made with different explanations and paradoxes for time travel. In
some, time is linear and singular, meaning any change in the past
will affect everything that comes after it, thereby literally
changing history. In others, temporal 'history' is actually a series
of "mirror realities", where every possible version of history
exists, and travelers just jump back in forth between these
realities. (For instance, in some versions of history, the Nazis won
WWII. Time travelers may find themselves in this 'history', and may
be forced to try to 'correct' this version of past events so that
the outcome of WWII mirrors the 'reality' of their own history.)
Confused yet? Welcome to the life of a time traveler,
pal!
The point is, PCs jump around in time however the GM
wants, using their Matrix device. They may be randomly and
confusingly shifted into the past (like the character of Dr. Beckett
in the excellent TV series Quantum Leap) or they may be part
of a time police force whose job is to prevent tampering with the
past by criminals (like Jean Claude Van Damme in Time Cop.)
The rule book gives some timelines chock full of important dates in
history, from back at the formation of the planet Earth up to the
year 2000, so novice GM's can get a taste of real-world history. A
sample adventure's included in the book that sends the PCs back to
Crete as it existed 3,500 years ago, so that they can acquire some
written poetry. (Yeah, you read that right. Poetry. It's a
linguistic thing.)
The book also includes pages of equipment for your
adventures, including weapons, armor, vehicles, and all the other
junk that characters can accumulate as they live their imaginary
lives. Rules are provided for futuristic gizmos, too, since time
travel works backward and forward. Lasers, advanced medicines, and
antigravity vehicles are touched on, as well as animals, both real
and fantastic. A section is devoted to random world generation
tables, so GMs can create alternate planets/ realities for their
players to arrive on via their Matrix. The book is fairly complete
in preparing gamers for the job of meandering through all known
history (and unknown) without overburdening the GM with too much
info. Just enough material is given to get a referee started on
crafting her own inter-dimensional trans-temporal mayhem!
The GOOD
The idea of having the players become their own
characters is fun. Although it may take quite a while and effort to
create yourself as a PC, it's fun to see how you'd fare as a game
component rather than a gamer.
As mentioned, the rules book is complete enough
to get a campaign started, with loads of lists for arms, equipment,
timelines, suggestions, and samples. Obviously, because of the time
travel element, groups can explore every genre of game play, from
historical D&D-type Medieval adventures to futuristic space opera,
or the wild west, or Roaring 20's, or the Jurassic Era where
dinosaurs ruled. (Well, they didn't really *rule*, per se, since
they never set up a clear governmental system, aside from the "I'm
Gonna Eat Your Head" system developed by the T. Rex political
party…)
The NEUTRAL
It seems that playing yourself as a PC might lose the
shine after a campaign, or even a few adventures. Especially if
you're not the mix of Lothario, Holmes, and Hercules you always
imagined yourself as. So while quirky, the gimmick won't have much
replay value. Also, there was never any line of published
supplements for the game, so every single thing the GM runs will
have to be designed from scratch, or borrowed from other published
game lines. And really, if you're borrowing a lot of material from
other time-travel game lines, wouldn't it maybe be easier to just
play with another game in the first place?
Let's explore
this last thought further, in the Evil section...
The EVIL
This is where I explain why TimeLords receives a
One Die rating from this kobold.
Holy. Crap.
I have never seen a game with more charts,
calculations, cross references, and numbers-rounding than this. The
entire combat system is a horrifying mess of numbers, none of which
stand by themselves. In order to simply shoot someone, there are
rolls to hit, modified by cover, distance, weapon, handedness,
attacker's injuries, etc. This is all pretty standard, sure... but
then, the math has only just begun!
Hits need to be calculated against which body part is
struck, how much armor that body part has, how much damage is lethal
and how much is stunning, what percentage of the BP the damage is
equal to on that particular appendage, and then how that percentage
affects that limb.
Dudes, it
goes on for pages. The author was, I suppose, going for a
realistic action system. I would point out that when you're writing
a game about time traveling, you need to shove the realism up your
butt.
I am truly astounded at the number of charts and tables
this book contains. There are combat modifiers for everything,
including right-handed people shooting towards the left side of
their field of vision. Recoil damage. Rules for how long a crossbow
may be held in a "ready" position before requiring Stamina rolls. I
mean, it's like, they took every conceivable idea they had that
would slow down or complicate combat, and made it an integral part
of the game mechanics. I cannot imagine anyone playing this game
actually paying attention to even a fraction of the rules designed
for smacking someone around.
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