So many of you out there deserve this. My apologies to the rest.

[athelind]

What happens if the Doctor picks up a party of first-edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons player characters? It's guaranteed that at least one will have a Bag of Holding, and there might be a Portable Hole in the party, as well.

By the Narrative Causality Conventions of AD&D1*, bringing either of those into the TARDIS will result in some kind of Negative Space Wedgie that automatically kills the whole party.

By the Narrative Causality Conventions of Doctor Who, however, the resultant Very Bad Thing will result in Several Minutes of Tension and Possibly A Cliffhanger, but it will be resolved by the Doctor invoking technobabble, running around the TARDIS console, and possibly pulling out the Sonic Screwdriver.

Combining the Narrative Conventions, I estimate a 30% chance, +5% per Regeneration Level of the Doctor, that the Doctor will not only neutralize the Anomaly, but that the solution will also incapacitate or eliminate or eliminate whatever aggressor the party was confronting when the TARDIS appeared.

This assumes that this is the Doctor's first encounter with the party, of course. If he's established an emotional stake over at least the course of an episode, that probability will drop to 25% + 2%/Regeneration Level.

In any case, a bad roll will, of course, result in the restoration of the full AD&D1 narrative conventions.

---

*In particular, unlike most forms of narrative (including later RPGs), AD&D1 eschews the principles that the narrative must continue to a dramatically satisfactory conclusion; in other words, Total Party Kill is not only an acceptable outcome, but, in extreme examples, a desirable one.

Desirable to some participants, that is.

---

Comments

[cpxbrex.livejournal.com]

I think what would happen is the PCs would kill him and take his stuff. A "Timelord"? Hey, our thief would really like that sonic screwdriver.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Sure, but kind of by definition, that would only happen AFTER the Negative Space Wedgie had failed to automatically kill everyone.

[cpxbrex.livejournal.com]

The Doctor would be, briefly, quite confused. "Why are you ki . . ." Of course he wouldn't finish it because he'd have a battleaxe in his skull by this point. That would cheer me. ;)

But I actually do these kinds of crossovers all the time. In a fairly recent Planescape game I ran, the plot was, this is no joke, they had to go get Godzilla to defeat this super-monster that was going to destroy Mt. Celestia. But to do that, they had to deal with Gorilla City where Grodd tried them as being "sub-sentient" and therefore not meriting civic rights . . . meaning that they could be disposed of as vermin. But they managed to prove they were nominally sentient and thus continue on with their quest.

[cpxbrex.livejournal.com]

Another Unambiguous Victory: In which we are awarded recognition as gorilla retards, and fail a test of moral fiber.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

... I don't think I've ever seen a link to this site before.

This sounds like the Best Game Of All Time. I need links to other pages.

[cpxbrex.livejournal.com]

Well, address for the Wiki is here.

The When Hell Freezes Over game is at the link, and it's my Planescape game that's currently on hiatus because . . . well, you know how games get. I do intend to start it up, again, at some point, but I'm doing a pseudo-Ravenloft game, right now, that is heavily stealing stuff from Dark Shadows (which is only fair, considering how much Ravenloft steals from Dark Shadows). In both games, the same player - my wife - provides a semi-humorous commentary.

My wife runs on-again, off-again (when she can find the time in her schedule), Armageddon & Homecoming, which is based on the Persona video games where the characters are high school students during the day but mystical warriors at night. I provide the semi-humorous commentary on that one, and Peter has a few posts, too.

I didn't have the wiki up when I was doing my M&M game, but that would have provided a lot of fodder, too. I had all kinds of guest stars there, too. Godzilla (again), Howard Hughes with a casino at the Center of the World, an invasion by Ming the Merciless where they had to go get Flash Gordon to help beat him back, and someone summoning Mechathulhu off of a 1337 speak Necronomicon they downloaded off of Kazaa.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

LOL -- my son-in-law runs a game on the RPOL message board that's based on Persona.

[cpxbrex.livejournal.com]

*queues It's a Small World* ;)

[gatewalker.livejournal.com]

Actually the Persona game I run is done in IRC and based out of a different site then RPoL. But close enough~

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

Or it could just be that a hole would tear open in the bottom of the bag and all the stuff in it would fall out.

-TG

[scarfman]

And now you understand why crossovers are such fun to work out.

[yourbob.livejournal.com]

I don't think the Tardis is as big as the bag of holding. But the Doctor's scarf may be larger still, depending on the Doctor.

And I think the probability of use of a sonic screwdriver is 100%.

And here I thought I couldn't get any geekier than my OP.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Feh, first-edition Bags of Holding were puny. You couldn't even stuff a large steamer trunk in most of them, much less a wagon.

The use of the Sonic Screwdriver to solve any given problem is 10% per Regeneration Level, unless Regeneration Level = 1, 6 or 7.

Yes, that means that Matt Smith will use the damned thing 110% of the time, pulling it out even when there aren't any problems to solve.

Re: And here I thought I couldn't get any geekier than my OP.

[yourbob.livejournal.com]

I guess we never did play by the rules, even in first edition.

It's probably why I've never enjoyed it with anyone but my "usual crowd".

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Oh, and River Song will turn out to be The Master.