Doctor Who is one of those great treasure troves of stories and ideas that GMs can plunder from again and again. Personally, I can’t count how many times I’ve adapted ‘Tomb of the Cybermen’ for my Players in one form or another. But today, I’d like to go a bit further back to an episode that is probably not as well known as most.
The Aztecs does not feature Daleks, Cybermen or alien menaces in any form. It is one of those purely historical episodes that relies on misunderstandings, poor choices and human ambitions for its drama.
The Tardis crew—comprising at this time the reluctant travellers, Barbara and Ian, the Doctor’s granddaughter Susan and the Doctor—land in the Aztec empire in the fifteenth century. Before you can say ‘boo,’ they are separated from the Tardis (it is hidden within an apparently entranceless tomb) and Barbara is mistaken for a god.
Desiring to end the perceived barbarity of human sacrifice and wishing to give the Aztecs a fighting chance against the Spanish, Barbara attempts to change history by declaring an end to human sacrifice. Hilarity and cultural misunderstandings ensue as Barbara’s attempt to change the world runs up against the ambitions of a faction of Aztecs. The Doctor even gets to give a ‘stupid humans, don’t try to change history’ speech; possibly his first.
Truthfully, this episode has a glacially slow pace from the perspective of a contemporary television viewer. There is a lot of standing and talking followed by more standing and talking. But don’t let that fool you. This episode still has plenty to steal.
For starters, if you are running a game involving travellers to strange lands, I would certainly recommend taking a page from the Aztecs and having a PC be mistaken for a god. Moreover, it’s a good template the next time you are tempted to say ‘yes’ when your Players try to bluff themselves into a similar situation. It works because:
• It shows that being publicly thought a god isn’t that great, there will be plenty of cynical priests out to use you for their own ambitions
• It gives duties for each of the PCs who are not taken as gods as ‘demi-mortal’ servants of the god, in The Aztecs these included:
o An advisor (the Doctor) who could mingle with a certain faction of more pliant Aztecs (and have his first on-screen romance)
o A champion (Ian) who very much rubbed the established warriors the wrong way
o A marriageable pawn (Susan) who can be drawn into local politics and potentially used against her compatriots
o An honoured sacrifice (not one of the Tardis companions, but I’d make a PC one) who is lauded as hero and given glory, but is doomed if they go along with local custom
• Each of these roles leaves a fair bit of room for the Players who haven’t been mistaken as deities to make decisions and stir the pot
• There is a ticking clock, a climatic scheduled sacrifice slated to occur during an eclipse, that forces all the characters to act and react in a timely way
Taken together, I think there is enough ammunition for a one-shot or a two or three part arc in an ongoing campaign (your ship has crashed on a primitive world and the auto-repair requires two weeks to finish working, your fantasy adventurers have washed up on an unknown island). It even falls into that great category of plundered GM materials: one that your Players are probably not super familiar with.
Stealing Nothing From the Prince of Nothing
In “The Darkness That Comes Before” and “The Warrior Prophet” Bakker constructs a world that is wonderfully rich in detail. Borrowing from Byzantine history, the Crusades and the near East, Bakker builds a world that is at once familiar to students of history and the genre, yet is very different from standard D&D fare. Nearly every bit of setting evokes that it is the result of hundreds of years of history, culture and development; something that is very necessary given the themes of the novel.
And oddly enough, this level of detail is exactly what I wouldn’t recommend stealing. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some Byzantines. I dig on Caliphates. I am always happy to go deep into the strange. But there is a point where it can get in the way, especially for a game setting. In the case of the ‘Prince of Nothing‘ series it comes with Bakker’s efforts to give his setting an authentic feeling by giving every nation, personage , and tradition extremely unique and, frankly, often alien names.
We get Dûnyain and Anagogic Schools, the Inrithi and Anasûrimbors galore. And it does feel real, but you need to do the work to see the logic behind the names and you need to work to keep them straight. The key word being ‘work.’ As a reader, I think it pays off. As a player, I think I would be willing to do the work. As a game master I think it would be a dick move to assume my players will.
Honestly, not all of my players are huge students of history. Most of them do not have time to read more than a cursory bit of setting info. This is not their fault. If I want to insist that they need to be versant in thousands of years of setting culture and history, that is my problem not theirs.
Instead, if I want to play in a milieau similar to that of Bakker’s, I suggest keeping the names simpler. Fewer random accents. More familiar vowel sounds. The occasional name flipped by a letter to really emphasize that I’m just rubbing the serial numbers off of something (if you like Byzantium, you’ll love Kryzantium!). If I’m going to have an Elf like race, then I should suck it up and call them Elves or Fair Folk or Fae or something my players can hang their hats on easily.
Because the reality is that these names are labels and hooks and pegs that every player needs to be able to use easily and fluently at the table. It is often difficult enough to get across an NPCs mood or the layout of a room at the table, never mind what a game of ‘Shmelguggi,’ when I could just sacrifice some depth and call it ‘chess.’ It’s a choice and, at least when a game is starting out, I would always suggest erring on the side of familiarity.
And before you start, I am aware that R. Scott Bakker came up with the idea for these novels while playing an RPG (which only makes sense given that this story revolves around a ‘chosen one’ who is, in many respect, as big a sociopathic jerk as any PC). That said, I would bet that if this setting had its genesis as an RPG setting, it almost certainly evolved over time and organically.
You start by just playing D&D. You end up playing in a rich world. Don’t rush it.