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.

Introduction to the 1996 online release:

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.  I intend to release this version of the game in several forms. The first is rather exclusive: Postscript files that can just be printed out. More ambitiously I hope to release a version that can be read on a Web browser in small chunks, which should make accessing particular points far easier. I also intend to put out Ascii, Word and WordPerfect versions, but all this will take time. Be patient.

Ian Marsh
Wandsworth, London, June 1996

The HTML, Word, and WordPerfect versions were never released by Ian Marsh.  The HTML version on this site was independently crafted using the ASCII version as its basis, and is exclusive to this site.  Select one of the buttons on the left to go to the section of the site you wish to look at.