First Impressions - Doctor Who RPG - Paternoster Investigations

 

Paternoster Investigations - perfect for Doctor Who games without the Doctor.

TL;DR: Paternoster Investigations is a temporally bound Doctor Who setting which gives you everything you need to set adventures in Victorian London. It presents an interestingly different opportunity to explore the Doctor Who universe. It would also be a useful (but not essential) guide for setting adventures in this period unrelated to the Paternoster Gang. All in all, a fun setting with plenty of potential.

I've lots of Doctor Who roleplaying game books, and yet I've never got it to the table. That's funny, because from what I've seen of the current roleplaying game, it seems to do a grand job of balancing the Doctor and their Companions. You don't have a solo act who steals the show, which is very NuWho, which definitely has seen a rebalancing between the Doctor and their accomplices.

It hasn't got to the table because Doctor Who has never been my favourite SF property. I started watching with Tom Baker (4), loved Peter Davison (5), stepped away and have watched much of the NuWho series with varying levels of enjoyment. I'm happy to fight you over whether Capaldi and Smith had the scripts they deserved (they didn't) and I'm enjoying Whittaker (although, again, I think the scripts aren't a strong as they could be). I'm also not a canon obsessive, so my relationship here is definitely casual. I've read the core rules several times (but quite a while ago) and the original Aliens & Creatures book. I've skim-read both the Fourth and Fifth Doctor sourcebook enough to know that they're great resources.

I picked up some books in the Black Friday sale; Paternoster Investigations was the first one that I've read from those. It's a very purple 128-page hard cover book, glossy throughout and full of pictures from both Classic and NuWho. 

The setting in Victorian London; much like Vaesen, the game recommends that you be a little vague and loose with the exact dates to make for a fun scenario. The Paternoster Gang comprise a female Silurian Warrior (Madame Vastra), a female Human former-maid (Jenny ) and a disgraced Sontaran battle medic. Madame Vastra and Jenny are married, and Strax acts as their butler; they met through the Doctor and his adventures. Together they keep London safety from criminals, murderers and alien threats. It is, if you like, an opportunity to play a Sherlock Holmes style game.

The book gives a decent overview of the Late Victorian Age, Society, the Queen and royalty, plus famous personages who the players could interact with. It discusses how to adapt the setting into more modern sensibilities (as the Paternoster Gang clearly fall into that category) and advises using broad brushes to set the scene. This isn't like Call of Cthulhu where you will be doing detailed historical research. Key events from 1887 through to 1998 are described, along with the various stories where the Doctor has visited.

A reasonably detailed guide is given for the city with key locations outlined (including throse related to Doctor Who's canon). There's a disappointing map of London (squashed on a half page), but it should be simple enough to find a contemporary one on the internet should you want one.

Characters who may support the Paternoster Gang (and could be player characters) are described along with statistics along with others who could be encountered including a fictional Prime Minister (Nathan Fairfield, 8th Earl of Redbury) and a rogues' gallery of potential enemies such as Me (Alice Shield), a stranded Dalek, Cybershades, and more. 

There's a section on creating your own Paternoster Gang, whether it be an affiliated group, a native human or an alien. You can use the provided character sheets to play Vastra, Flint and Strax if you prefer. The text covers a wide variety of options to get the best out of such a temporally tethered setting. 

The final section of the book discusses establishing a Paternoster Campaign, with guidance on how to build adventures. This is then demonstrated with an adventure which can be used to open up a campaign, "A Study in Flax". This ties together many of the elements described earlier in the book, and will leave plenty of hooks to take the story forward. I quite liked the way that it establishes a web that the characters can blunder into. 

There are full-page character sheets for the Paternoster Gang, the Doctor's Companions from this period and others who have featured in the series who could easily be drawn in. The book concludes with a decent index.

Paternoster Investigations is a temporally bound Doctor Who setting which gives you everything you need to set adventures in Victorian London. It presents an interestingly different opportunity to explore the Doctor Who universe. It would also be a useful (but not essential) guide for setting adventures in this period unrelated to the Paternoster Gang. All in all, a fun setting with plenty of potential.

8th December 2020