The First Doctor Sourcebook: Cubicle 7 Brings WHO of the 60s To Your Tabletop!

Would you say that the book function better as a gaming product, or as a book to read for Doctor Who fans? It sounds like there's a lot of stuff in there that non-gaming friends would find great to read.

 

[MerricB]

View attachment 58413I write a lot about D&D, but that game is actually a fairly late love in my life; I didn't get bitten by the bug until 1982. Well, obviously - given that I was born in 1972 - that's still pretty early on. However, there's one thing that I've been following for even longer. That thing is Doctor Who. As far as I can gather, I've been addicted to the show since about 1978, and I would not be surprised if I started even earlier. It's been part of my life for a very long time.

Cubicle 7's "Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space" RPG is a game that I own but have never played. It's a game I really want to play, as the design looks very solid and - not surprisingly - I really like the subject matter. I just need to find time for it amongst all the other long-running campaigns I play. The game had something of a rocky start, with the initial release being the only product in the line for an awfully long time. I wouldn't have been surprised if it ended up being and orphaned RPG, but the flow of products finally started up again, and in this year, the 50th anniversary of the show, they've started on a major project: providing sourcebooks for each Doctor.

William Hartnell stopped playing the Doctor six years before I was born. In his tenure, the character of the Doctor was a lot different to how it is now, and even the way stories were told and constructed was significantly different to later on. While today, the Doctor gleefully throws himself into whatever situation he finds himself in. Hartnell's Doctor would often only reluctantly enter an adventure. A common start would be the travellers being cut off from the Ship. This is not lost on Darren Pearce, author of the sourcebook; he pays careful attention to how stories differed in this era, and presents us with a lot of advice on how to run an adventure in the style of the First Doctor. Elements such as the extremely unreliable TARDIS, the greater set-up time for adventures, and the greater focus on cultural matters are discussed in the first chapter of this sourcebook.

The bulk of the book is devoted to examinations of the individual serials of the Hartnell era. These are grouped into chapters, with each chapter detailing three or four stories. It's rather hard to work out why the book is divided into chapters at all; the serials are listed chronologically and there's no real reason for the grouping into sets of three. It seems even odder to my eyes as the three season breaks are all mid-chapter!

This oddity aside, each serial is handled in a similar manner: there's a synopsis of the serial, followed by notes on the various elements in the story, with stats for the major monsters or NPCs. There is no critical commentary on the stories, instead the particular elements that are notable in a role-playing context are raised and discussed.

This is well done. Really well done. It would be really easy to just list stats for everything and call it a day, but Pearce instead really brings out what is special and unusual about each serial and brings it into focus for a role-playing game, and then uses them as a basis for suggesting several more adventure ideas in the vein of these classic serials.

Thus we get discussions of strange malfunctions of the TARDIS, how telepathy could work, and the differences between the first Doctor's take on Earth History (things are fixed and can't be changed) and those of later Doctors. There's a lot of discussion of story structure and particular elements of the story; enough so that even game-masters who don't plan to run a Doctor Who adventure may still find significant inspiration here.

The book ends with character sheets for the Doctor and all his companions. People more familiar with the game than I can probably speak to how well the statistics model the characters; my chief interest in the book is the adventure-building elements rather than the rules.

Physically, the book is printed in black and white as befits the era (the books will be in colour from the Third Doctor onwards). There are a good number of illustrations, all photos from the series. I personally find the choice of photograph for Dodo to very puzzling - I think it's at an odd angle and extremely unflattering - but otherwise the choice of photographs are excellent. The book is 160 pages long.

I had no idea what to expect when I picked up this book. How would Cubicle 7 handle a sourcebook on the First Doctor? The answer turned out to be with great style and accomplishment. By showing how elements of the stories can serve other adventures, Darren Pearce has created a book that makes me excited about not only its use in this game, but in its applicability to other games as well.

 

[JediSoth]

The game itself is pretty fun. During encounters, those who would rather use their wits rather than fight are rewarded by getting to go first, and the system is simple and fast, yet flexible. I found the 1st Doctor Sourcebook to be full of information a non-gamer could enjoy reading as well, particularly since it's about an era many new fans are unfamiliar with. I'm sure that will hold even more true when we get to the 2nd Doctor book, since, IIRC, his era contains the most missing & incomplete stories.

 

[MerricB]

Personally, I think the book is aimed mainly at a DM (although a writer would also likely find it interesting). The synopses are interesting general material, but the discussion of the adventures is squarely aimed at running them and creating new adventures based on them rather than being of more general interest.

As a fan of Doctor Who, I tended to like the approach given in the Walker and Howe Handbook series (which is now part of the BBC Classic Doctor Who site), and for more commentary I visit the Wife In Space blog and A Brief History of Time (Travel) site.

 

[Tanstaafl_au]

I can see me getting each Doctor's sourcebook. Well played cubicle 7

 

[Maxwell Luther]

A very large correction to your review, mate. Darren Pearce wrote the book. Gareth and I edited it, but Darren is the main authour.

A smaller, more IMO correction: Dodo's pictures are pretty much unflattering at any angle.

 

[MerricB]

Very sorry about that - I've made the corrections.

 

[Skytheen]

A smaller, more IMO correction: Dodo's pictures are pretty much unflattering at any angle.

I just started watching The Ark. Ain't that the truth!