D&D 5E The Official 5E Version Of Doctor Who Is Coming In Just 2 Weeks!

In two weeks (or back in 2022 depending where in space and time you are right now) Cubicle 7 will be launching DOCTORS & DALEKS, the 5E version of its popular Doctor Who: Adventures in Time & Space tabletop RPG which has been in production for over a decade.

The game launches on Tuesday, July 19th with the Doctors and Daleks Player’s Guide.

Cubicle 7 has been producing the official Doctor Who RPG since 2009, with over 20 books. A second edition launched last year. This new edition is the D&D 5E edition, and was first announced back in February.

D&D 5E - Doctors & Daleks - Cubicle 7 Brings Doctor Who to D&D 5E

Cubicle 7 -- makers of the official Doctor Who roleplaying game -- has announced that the Doctor will officially be coming to 5E soon under the name Doctors and Daleks. There are no dates or details yet, over than that the Doctors and Daleks Player's Guide will launch 'soon'. A NEW COMPANION...

www.enworld.org

Doctors and Daleks​

A New Way to Adventure through all of Space and Time

Doctors and Daleks brings the epic adventures of the Universe’s most famous Time Lord to the world’s most popular roleplaying game. Running parallel to the award winning Doctor Who: The Roleplaying Game, Doctors and Daleks is a new line of products that brings Doctor Whoadventures to your table using 5th Edition rules.

The first book, the Doctors and Daleks Players Guide, brings you everything you need to get started with your adventures in Space and Time!

• Streamlined character creation rules to quickly bring to life a new time travelling adventurer. Create a new Companion for the Doctor, or build your own Time Lord! Do you want to do a bit of time tourism as part of Team TARDIS, or will you create a group of Time Agents to fight back against pesky paradoxes?
• Rules for playing fast paced, combat light sci-fi adventures using the world’s most popular roleplaying game system. Fight like the Doctor with non-lethal weapons, manoeuvres, gadgets, and the power of emotional and logical arguments — or just run away really fast!
• A time traveller’s treasure trove of technological marvels, including sonic screwdrivers, psychic paper, a water gun, and time machines.
• Rules for using and customising the TARDIS, as well as creating and piloting any other kind of time travel device you can think of from the dawn of history to the very ends of the universe.
• Advice on making every Doctors and Daleks adventure feel like you’re living in an episode of the legendary Doctor Who TV Series.
• An expansive look at the history of the Doctor’s Universe, detailing some of the aliens and creatures the Doctor has encountered across space and time, including profiles for Daleks, Cybermen, and Weeping Angels, ready to be played!

The Doctors and Daleks Player’s Guide will be followed by the Alien Archive, a dedicated catalogue of some of the Doctor’s most notorious foes, presenting dozens of recognisable aliens from the series for the players to add to their games.

Alongside these, The Keys of Scaravore is an epic adventure for levels 1-5, that leads the characters to the Wild West and distant worlds, encountering Draconians, Silurians, Zygons, and more, before finally facing the terrifying Scaravore itself.

 

[Von Ether]

It would be cool to use PP to power stuff, so extraordinary stuff, risk and danger, and things like that. Most Whovian weapons are somewhat lethal so HP don't make sense.

The Expanse dabbles in this to the point your "hit points/luck" is called Fortune points. The Cypher system fully embraces this and splits the pools when doing stuff but the total amount in all your pools are hit points.

 

[Jer]

It would be cool to use PP to power stuff, so extraordinary stuff, risk and danger, and things like that. Most Whovian weapons are somewhat lethal so HP don't make sense.

I mean, every weapon is lethal - often even weapons that were designed to be non-lethal can be accidentally or purposefully used to kill someone. A dagger to the stomach is going to kill you as much as a Dalek's disintegration beam will. So in that sense hp make as much sense as they do in D&D or other games that use a hit point scheme like D&D's.

Where they don't make a lot of sense is in the context of a game that is de-emphasizing combat. And it isn't that they don't make sense from a mechanical perspective, it's more that having a giant pool of hit points that are never touched because you're not supposed to be fighting is weird and also probably counter-productive (players are IME quite good at using the resources on their character sheet, so if there are hit points there and the only way to spend them is through combat, that means they should be getting into combat). Having alternative uses for spending those points in a non-combat way can help to emphasize the feel of the game as one where folks are not supposed to be getting into combat (because now you don't want to waste those points on reducing damage when you could be using them for something cool instead).

 

[Jer]

And of course right after I posted I saw that C7 had added a bit of a preview on conflict in the game:

Doctors and Daleks – Conflict! – Cubicle 7

cubicle7games.com

Rather than worrying about Hit Points that measure your physical fortitude, characters in Doctors and Daleks have Plot Points, a narrative measure of your luck, your resolve, and your drive to succeed. Much like in Doctor Who, your character might get a few cuts and scrapes, but they’re unlikely to get seriously injured by any attack — a Dalek’s blaster might burn the sleeve of their coat or they might graze their knee dodging a Silurian’s sword, and that’s how Plot Points are decreased. When you run out of Plot Points you’ll be incapacitated, or surrender to the enemy (though this is a great way to be taken to their leader!).

On the other side, you probably won’t be killing your enemies either. Plot Points can measure how well your arguments are changing the opponents’ mind, or how much your meddling is foiling their plans. When your opponents run out of Plot Points, they might be incapacitated, decide that you’re in the right, or their scheme might be completely ruined. Often they will realise they cannot win this current fight and will hastily retreat and regroup, giving the characters a chance to retain their upper hand and thwart their evil plans once and for all.

Quips are at the core of combat in Doctors and Daleks and are analogous to the spells in the 5th edition basic rules. Quips represent your character’s special abilities and the strength of words, allowing you to do incredible things and hopefully dissuade your enemies from dealing anyone harm. You can use Quips to decrease your opponents’ Plot Points, create marvellous technological effects, or just help someone out by offering them a Jelly Baby.

Very interesting - both less and more than I was thinking. I'll have to wait for someone else to really crack the nut of hit points as a spendable narrative mechanic, but I'm still interested in seeing where they go with this.

 

[MarkB]

I mean, every weapon is lethal - often even weapons that were designed to be non-lethal can be accidentally or purposefully used to kill someone. A dagger to the stomach is going to kill you as much as a Dalek's disintegration beam will. So in that sense hp make as much sense as they do in D&D or other games that use a hit point scheme like D&D's.

Where they don't make a lot of sense is in the context of a game that is de-emphasizing combat. And it isn't that they don't make sense from a mechanical perspective, it's more that having a giant pool of hit points that are never touched because you're not supposed to be fighting is weird and also probably counter-productive (players are IME quite good at using the resources on their character sheet, so if there are hit points there and the only way to spend them is through combat, that means they should be getting into combat). Having alternative uses for spending those points in a non-combat way can help to emphasize the feel of the game as one where folks are not supposed to be getting into combat (because now you don't want to waste those points on reducing damage when you could be using them for something cool instead).

It sounds more like they're reframing 'combat' to include other forms of conflict - battles of wits, talking down opponents, using clever science and gadgets to resolve the situation. You may be thinking in terms of being able to spend your character's plot points to do that, but it can be just as easily framed as depleting your opponent's plot points when you succeed.

 

[Jer]

It sounds more like they're reframing 'combat' to include other forms of conflict - battles of wits, talking down opponents, using clever science and gadgets to resolve the situation. You may be thinking in terms of being able to spend your character's plot points to do that, but it can be just as easily framed as depleting your opponent's plot points when you succeed.

Yeah our posts crossed but it looks like the less ambitious but by far easier to implement version is the one they're going with. Which makes sense and like I said I'm curious to see how it works in practice.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It sounds more like they're reframing 'combat' to include other forms of conflict - battles of wits, talking down opponents, using clever science and gadgets to resolve the situation. You may be thinking in terms of being able to spend your character's plot points to do that, but it can be just as easily framed as depleting your opponent's plot points when you succeed.

"You fight like a cow!"

 

[Weiley31]

So what purpose does this new RPG serve then? Doctor Who with lots and lots of combat? So…not Doctor Who. That’s weird.

I've actually watched quite a bit of Dr. Who on Pluto TV's one Dr Who channel which streams Dr. Who for like 24 hours. And believe me, there is QUITE a lot more fighting/killings that happens in a number of episodes of the series. And let's not forget that in one whole episode of the season with the 9th Doctor, a single Dalek took out almost an ENTIRE military facility of soldiers before the Doctor's companion defeated it by reducing its Plot Points to zero.

So, Dr. Who, with a decent amount of combat in it, is not COMPLETELY unheard of.

Plus, K-9, the couple of times I saw him, has a trigger finger. And he was more than willing to use/threaten with it.

 

[Weiley31]

"You fight like a cow!"

 

[overgeeked]

I've actually watched quite a bit of Dr. Who on Pluto TV's one Dr Who channel which streams Dr. Who for like 24 hours. And believe me, there is QUITE a lot more fighting/killings that happens in a number of episodes of the series. And let's not forget that in one whole episode of the season with the 7th Doctor, a single Dalek took out almost an ENTIRE military facility of soldiers before the Doctor's companion defeated it by reducing its Plot Points to zero.

So, Dr. Who, with a decent amount of combat in it, is not COMPLETELY unheard of.

Plus, K-9, the couple of times I saw him, has a trigger finger. And he was more than willing to use/threaten with it.

There’s a huge difference between Daleks rampaging and killing things (which, unless the Doctor and companion are directly targeted you don’t need combat rules for) and the Doctor and companion rampaging and killing things…which never happens. You don’t need a huge combat rules section in a game that’s not actually about combat. Is your game about friendship and talking, then you need rules for friendship and talking. Is your game about fighting and killing, then you need rules for fighting and killing. Doctor Who is not about combat. So any game that says Doctor Who on the cover but is about combat, with a huge section of rules about combat…has missed the memo on what Doctor Who actually is as a franchise.

 

[Micah Sweet]

There’s a huge difference between Daleks rampaging and killing things (which, unless the Doctor and companion are directly targeted you don’t need combat rules for) and the Doctor and companion rampaging and killing things…which never happens. You don’t need a huge combat rules section in a game that’s not actually about combat. Doctor Who is not about combat. So any game that says Doctor Who on the cover but is about combat, with a huge section lf rules about combat…has missed the memo on what Doctor Who actually is as a franchise.

Apparently its not about combat, but rather conflict, which Dr. Who (as a story presumably made for entertainment) has in abundance. They're just modifying the combat rules of 5e to accommodate it.