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.

If you want to know more about DOCTOR WHO, read Part One of this book. It contains a brief history of the television series, an explanation of the most important concepts and a short story to give the flavour of a DOCTOR WHO adventure. If you are familiar with DOCTOR WHO, you can skip Part One.

If you want to know more about role-playing games, read Part Two of this book. It contains an introduction to the idea of role-playing, an explanation of the most important concepts, and a short solo game to give you some idea of what it is like to play a simple role-playing game. If you are familiar with role-playing games, you can skip Part Two.

Part Three is the heart of TIME LORD: it contains all the rules that allow you to take part in a game based on a DOCTOR WHO story. Part Four is the main reference section and will be invaluable both for playing a role in a game and for creating new adventures.

In Part Five there is a ready-made adventure for you and your friends to play. This part also explains how to invent new stories to continue your adventures in time and space.

Terminology

Some technical terms are inevitable in a book of this nature. They will be kept to a minimum, however, and will be fully explained when first mentioned. The following terms will be used throughout TIME LORD to avoid confusion.

DOCTOR WHO (the BBC television programme and the universe in which it is set) and TIME LORD (this book) will always spelled in capital letters. And what is a Time Lord? A Time Lord is a member of the ruling elite on the planet Gallifrey. The Doctor, the main character in DOCTOR WHO, is a Time Lord.

Titles of books and television stories will be written in italics. For instance: Doctor Who -- Survival by Rona Munro is the novel based on the DOCTOR WHO story Survival that was broadcast in 1989.

Now, if you're ready to dematerialize, we'll take off into time and space.

Ian Marsh and Peter Darvill-Evans

April 1991

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.

This is the HTML release of the game. An easy-to-use Postscript version, for anyone with a Postscript printer or who knows how to use Ghostscript, is available on my Web site, The Strange Worlds of Orun hi Kharsan, at

http://www.cygnet.co.uk/~orun/strange.htm

The Postscript files are mirrored on Paul Mason's Panurgic Publishing site at

http://www.tcp-ip.or.jp/~panurge/timelord.htm

Ian Marsh

Wandsworth, London, July 1996

E-mail: [email protected]

NOTES: The Postscript files are no longer available on these two sites.  If Postscript format is desired, it may be downloaded from this site.