Doctor Who: Time Lord

TIME LORD – the Doctor Who role-playing game, written by English authors and former Games Workshop staff Ian Marsh and Peter Darvill-Evans – was first published in 1991 by Virgin Books. The rights reverted to Ian, and since 1996 the text of the book has been available as a free download: timelord.pdf. Parts were used with Ian’s permission in a later game by Cubicle 7. The adventure was changed to an easier one that Ian wrote for Doctor Who Monthly for the PDF release.

Being written in 1991 means it may not have aged well. First-hand Doctor Who resources were pretty scarce at the time, and background information was compiled by simply viewing all the available Doctor Who stories on tape. It’s why the book has that sort of detail: no one had fan-based Wiki pages to just look up information online. And for the same reason, with Doctor Who killed off by the BBC at the time, information about the show’s history was important.

As Doctor Who episodes are rediscovered, they bring to light information that would have been useful to include back in 1991. Victoria should have Lockpicking 1 for a start (Fury From The Deep).

The rules unfortunately use male pronouns throughout. At the time, that decision was made to simplify the writing of the rules. Given a chance, nowadays it would be rewritten with gender-neutral pronouns, because “they” has become more widely acceptable editorially to mean he, she or other. With the rich diversity of people who play roleplaying games in the 21st century, compared with in the early 1990s when Time Lord was conceived and written, rewriting it to be gender-neutral would grate less.

The rules do not allow for character progression. The simple fact is that Doctor Who is not really that sort of environment. None of the Doctor’s companions ever really develop: they simply have skills from their backgrounds that become useful. No one ever develops into a combat monster. The joy of Time Lord should come from acting out the character and enjoying the adventures.

The stupidity of the internet is that the book is wrongly credited on Goodreads to an Australian author and lecturer, Doctor Ian Marsh. He didn’t write the Time Lord RPG. The Ian Marsh who wrote Time Lord formerly edited White Dwarf, and was a journalist on a number of trade and consumer publications in the UK. There is a not wholly accurate Wikipedia page about him at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Marsh_(writer). Don’t confuse him with Ian Craig Marsh of the Human League and Heaven 17.

Ian may be contacted via his current business, Fighting 15s.

Download Time Lord at: timelord.pdf

Page last updated: 2 July 2026