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 FOR YOUR ADVENTURES THROUGH ALL OF SPACE AND TIME!

The wild adventures of everyone’s favourite Time Lord comes to the world’s most popular roleplaying game in Doctors and Daleks. Take your gaming group into the TARDIS and travel anywhere, anywhen. Want to meet Leornado da Vinci? Or see what life is like in the year 3,000? What about another planet entirely? All of space and time is your Venusian macro-oyster, but keep your wits about you — there’s a lot of danger in the vastness of eternity.

We are delighted to announce that we are working on Doctors and Daleks – a new line of products that brings Doctor Who adventures to your table using 5th Edition rules! The first release – The Doctors and Daleks Player’s Guide will launch soon.

The wild adventures of everyone’s favourite Time Lord comes to the world’s most popular roleplaying game in Doctors and Daleks. Take your gaming group into the TARDIS and travel anywhere, anywhen.

We’ll also continue to support the new Second Edition of our award winning Doctor Who: The Roleplaying Game, with a host of new products on the way soon!

 

[Shardstone]

Do people complain like this when a licensed product is used with the Savage Worlds system?

Nope! Or when you see a Fate or Apoc World converstion etc etc, no complaints.

Or in the OSR.

The only place where I truly see just real outrage is with 5E. And, just as uniquely, the outrage comes from both sides of the isle.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Regular people bitching and complaining and pulling the "hipster" bit over this is one thing, but if you were reading a lot of the initial reactions, before they were deleted, there were a lot of other game creators and publishers posting all sorts of hate-filled responses to the C7 announcement. That is disgusting and horrible that they would do that to their fellow writers, and if I could find a list of the ones who did it, I would do my best to never buy another product any of them created.

 

[Mistwell]

Regular people bitching and complaining and pulling the "hipster" bit over this is one thing, but if you were reading a lot of the initial reactions, before they were deleted, there were a lot of other game creators and publishers posting all sorts of hate-filled responses to the C7 announcement. That is disgusting and horrible that they would do that to their fellow writers, and if I could find a list of the ones who did it, I would do my best to never buy another product any of them created.

where did that happen. Here?

 

[Greg Benage]

where did that happen. Here?

Twitter, of course.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

where did that happen. Here?

No, not here, though a couple of comments maybe pushed the envelope a bit. It was just most everywhere else.

 

[Bedrockgames]

I am a little perplexed by the response to this. Like a lot of things, it seems it is quickly getting siloed into two camps, and both seem to have outrage in common over the other side. I think that is ashame, because there is definitely room to have a healthy discussion about viable, non-D&D systems in the hobby. Personally I loved the Cubicle 7 Doctor Who system. I thought it was one of the best genre emulation RPGs out there (and it has inspired me in my own design). So I think people reacting to the announcement that they are putting out a 5E version, especially if they are fans of the current system, is fair. Going beyond that, like dragging the designers through the mud on twitter or something, clearly isn't fair. But I do think we are in danger of having no discussion about these things when they happen because of this siloing thing into a good camp and a bad camp.

My view on the ubiquity of D&D: it is a double edged sword. I think there is no question it is the main system out there. I think that it is the amin system, not just because it was first or as an accident of history but because it works. It does something very well and I find whenever I go back to it, I can always reliably run a good adventure/session/campaign. I know what to prep. All the elements of the game work really well on the preparation side and the play side. And there is something fun about the way the characters advance over the course of the game.

So I like D&D, but I also like other systems (and full disclosure I publish other systems myself). I remember the d20 boom, and it had some value in a lot of ways. But I also found that extremely boring, especially coming from gaming between 1986 thought the 90s, where it always seemed like there were viable games you could get a group to try. Post d20, getting people to try anything other than pathfinder or D&D was extremely hard. But that changed a bit. You had the OSR, which was still doing D&D but bringing in some really cool and different ideas. You had stuff like Numenera and Savage Worlds gained more of an audience. And you started to see all the Powered by Apocalypse games. I realize the timeline isn't 100% perfect here. Savage worlds has been out for some time. But the point is, I feel like we were getting back to a place where yes, D&D was the unquestioned elephant in the room, but there were pockets of fandom for other games. Maybe that is just my narrow view from my neck of the woods and it was different in other places of course.

So I think why people are a little uneasy about this announcements, is it may be heralding a shift. Because you are seeing a company that arguably has one of the better 'not-D&D' lines out there and it is now apparently going to make a 5E version (I am still unclear on exactly what they are designing though so open to correction on this). Being concerned about that as a development, or feeling like you don't think it is a good idea for them to do this because it may result in the supplanting of the current Vortex system with the 5E version if the latter is really successful (which I imagine it will be). Now we can say 'that is just businesses making money' and it is true, but this is also a hobby and those of us who remember periods where there was a richer landscape of alternatives I think aren't just reacting to be mean (and to be clear, I don't think they are doing anything wrong, or that the designers should be judged for making a game based on 5E-----I just find the news a little disappointing). And that dissapointement isn't even necessarily a comment on their decision to do this, as this might just be a byproduct of 5E becoming so successful they basically have to if they want to remain in the game. I just hope we aren't returning to a period like the one we had at the height of d20 personally

 

[Shardstone]

I am a little perplexed by the response to this. Like a lot of things, it seems it is quickly getting siloed into two camps, and both seem to have outrage in common over the other side. I think that is ashame, because there is definitely room to have a healthy discussion about viable, non-D&D systems in the hobby. Personally I loved the Cubicle 7 Doctor Who system. I thought it was one of the best genre emulation RPGs out there (and it has inspired me in my own design). So I think people reacting to the announcement that they are putting out a 5E version, especially if they are fans of the current system, is fair. Going beyond that, like dragging the designers through the mud on twitter or something, clearly isn't fair. But I do think we are in danger of having no discussion about these things when they happen because of this siloing thing into a good camp and a bad camp.

My view on the ubiquity of D&D: it is a double edged sword. I think there is no question it is the main system out there. I think that it is the amin system, not just because it was first or as an accident of history but because it works. It does something very well and I find whenever I go back to it, I can always reliably run a good adventure/session/campaign. I know what to prep. All the elements of the game work really well on the preparation side and the play side. And there is something fun about the way the characters advance over the course of the game.

So I like D&D, but I also like other systems (and full disclosure I publish other systems myself). I remember the d20 boom, and it had some value in a lot of ways. But I also found that extremely boring, especially coming from gaming between 1986 thought the 90s, where it always seemed like there were viable games you could get a group to try. Post d20, getting people to try anything other than pathfinder or D&D was extremely hard. But that changed a bit. You had the OSR, which was still doing D&D but bringing in some really cool and different ideas. You had stuff like Numenera and Savage Worlds gained more of an audience. And you started to see all the Powered by Apocalypse games. I realize the timeline isn't 100% perfect here. Savage worlds has been out for some time. But the point is, I feel like we were getting back to a place where yes, D&D was the unquestioned elephant in the room, but there were pockets of fandom for other games. Maybe that is just my narrow view from my neck of the woods and it was different in other places of course.

So I think why people are a little uneasy about this announcements, is it may be heralding a shift. Because you are seeing a company that arguably has one of the better 'not-D&D' lines out there and it is now apparently going to make a 5E version (I am still unclear on exactly what they are designing though so open to correction on this). Being concerned about that as a development, or feeling like you don't think it is a good idea for them to do this because it may result in the supplanting of the current Vortex system with the 5E version if the latter is really successful (which I imagine it will be). Now we can say 'that is just businesses making money' and it is true, but this is also a hobby and those of us who remember periods where there was a richer landscape of alternatives I think aren't just reacting to be mean (and to be clear, I don't think they are doing anything wrong, or that the designers should be judged for making a game based on 5E-----I just find the news a little disappointing). And that dissapointement isn't even necessarily a comment on their decision to do this, as this might just be a byproduct of 5E becoming so successful they basically have to if they want to remain in the game. I just hope we aren't returning to a period like the one we had at the height of d20 personally

We are without a doubt returning to that period.

 

[Greg K]

We are without a doubt returning to that period.

I am starting to feel the same way

 

[Greg K]

Personally, I find the D&D class/level structure and everything that comes with it (e.g. level based hit point increases and proficiency bonus) and several other "D&Disms" a bad fit for licensed properties.

 

[Mistwell]

I remember about a year or year and a half into 5e I had a discussion with a small press game publisher. They were coming out with new PF third party stuff and I mentioned I hoped they would come out with 5e compatible stuff as well. They scoffed at me and said PF stuff sell way better than 5e stuff and they couldn't afford to do something for 5e because it just wouldn't sell enough to justify it.

Which...baffled me. There was little 5e compatible stuff at the time, an obvious demand for third party products as the number of "official" WOTC products for 5e was sparse at the time. But no this publisher insisted PF was the only path to profitability, and said other publishers exchanged information in emails and such and backed up that sentiment. That was just the common thinking at the time among his group of publishers.

And now here we are years later and people are calling it a cash grab to do a 5e compatible version of something and 5e being the only path now to profitability.

Sometimes I think third party sentiment tends to swing to extremes. It's either all or nothing. C7 is trying to do something with their own bespoke system AND with a 5e system, and that just seems intolerable to some. Despite them having experience successfully doing exactly this with LOTR previously.