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!

 

[Aldarc]

5E was not purely a hit because of the miss by 4E. I also feel that a lot of people had gotten tired of the overly complex trend in Pathfinder and saw a simpler D20 system in 5E and returned in droves to the game. This was also before all the D&D streamed games became popular. Those helped cause the explosion of growth after the first couple of years of release. Plus Big Bang Theory and Stranger Things, etc.

Plus, interest in general tabletop gaming was rising, with programs including Wil Wheaton's Tabletop. One of my gaming groups went from board games to 5e D&D.

 

[Doc_Klueless]

Wil Wheaton's Tabletop rocked on toast. Loved that show.

 

[Ovinomancer]

5e was a huge hit upon release. So much so WotC thought something was wrong. They were afraid of even updating the PHB early on.

5e was in fact a response to 4e not doing nearly well enough, for a variety of reasons.

Nothing I said was about 5e not doing well. I even had that in there for the reason it didn't edition flop for so long.

5e was a thing that was going to happen at about that point in the edition cycle anyway. That 4e was contentious had very little to do with 5e, except that the new management at WotC elected to build it with extensive playtesting. That neat little trick was extremely germane to 5e's immediate success -- the playtest built quite a lot of good publicity and got the game out there prior to launch, and convinced many that WotC was listening to them and building this game for them. Good ploy, worked well, wonder if we'll see anything like that extensive playtest for 5.5? I doubt it.

 

[Zehnseiter]

5E was not purely a hit because of the miss by 4E. I also feel that a lot of people had gotten tired of the overly complex trend in Pathfinder and saw a simpler D20 system in 5E and returned in droves to the game. This was also before all the D&D streamed games became popular. Those helped cause the explosion of growth after the first couple of years of release. Plus Big Bang Theory and Stranger Things, etc.

Yep. Accessibility at least at the player side is among 5E's greatest strengths. To gather really large numbers you need a game that casual players can deal with. From a rules mechanics perspective 5E is unimpressive and has some strange quirks that you can easily solve in a potential 6E.

3E was often arcane and very complex in its rules. And it kind of broke after level 10.
4E was mechanically brilliant but it lacked familiarity to previous editions and it was way to focussed on miniature play. That last one might be in hindsight its greatest mistake.

5E is more a cleaned up AD&D III. Some strange things in the rules but way more easy to get into and it rides high on familiarity that D&D build up over decades. And then streaming happened. Lightning in a bottle moment.

 

[Von Ether]

Yep. Accessibility at least at the player side is among 5E's greatest strengths. To gather really large numbers you need a game that casual players can deal with. From a rules mechanics perspective 5E is unimpressive and has some strange quirks that you can easily solve in a potential 6E.

3E was often arcane and very complex in its rules. And it kind of broke after level 10.
4E was mechanically brilliant but it lacked familiarity to previous editions and it was way to focussed on miniature play. That last one might be in hindsight its greatest mistake.

5E is more a cleaned up AD&D III. Some strange things in the rules but way more easy to get into and it rides high on familiarity that D&D build up over decades. And then streaming happened. Lightning in a bottle moment.

Another issue for poor 4e was that it was supposed to usher in VTT before their time but that part never happened due to tragedy, so in essence we only saw half the experience.

 

[darjr]

Nothing I said was about 5e not doing well. I even had that in there for the reason it didn't edition flop for so long.

5e was a thing that was going to happen at about that point in the edition cycle anyway. That 4e was contentious had very little to do with 5e, except that the new management at WotC elected to build it with extensive playtesting. That neat little trick was extremely germane to 5e's immediate success -- the playtest built quite a lot of good publicity and got the game out there prior to launch, and convinced many that WotC was listening to them and building this game for them. Good ploy, worked well, wonder if we'll see anything like that extensive playtest for 5.5? I doubt it.

No, 4e was flagging. WotC was in a bad way with D&D. So bad they took a good while to run the playtest without a real living edition. A big gamble and a ton of work on their part. While they gave stuff away. People did have a really good idea of what they were buying when the PHB dropped. The free basic set had been out and so had the starter set. 5e was a huge success out of the box largely on its it’s own merits. And continued to sell out for months, they had to delay the next core book, stopped it’s print run, to print more PHBs.

Successful on its own, not because of trickery.

You doubt there will be a playtest? Why? What makes you think they’d not do one?

 

[Ovinomancer]

No, 4e was flagging. WotC was in a bad way with D&D. So bad they took a good while to run the playtest without a real living edition. A big gamble and a ton of work on their part. While they gave stuff away. People did have a really good idea of what they were buying when the PHB dropped. The free basic set had been out and so had the starter set. 5e was a huge success out of the box largely on its it’s own merits. And continued to sell out for months, they had to delay the next core book, stopped it’s print run, to print more PHBs.

Successful on its own, not because of trickery.

You doubt there will be a playtest? Why? What makes you think they’d not do one?

Yeah, I said 4e had reached it's end and an edition refresh was due.

5e was a success because it's a decently good game with the D&D brand and WotC had a masterful PR campaign with the open playtest. As for "trick" that's meant in the clever play way, not deceitful or trickery.

No, I don't think there will be anything like the open playtest that preceded 5e. There will, of course, be playtesting. Most likely mostly closed with a few things tossed out a la UA.

 

[Thunderfoot]

I doubt a 5.5 or 6e is forthcoming in that form. I would imagine a PHB 2 before that. Expanding rules for higher level, epic level story construction, etc. I could be wrong, bit I don't WotC wants to move away from 5e so much as refocus what they already have. And unlike 3.5, where it was a case of this part is broken and needs new wheels, I just don't see that blatant brokeness in 5e.

2e stayed around a long time due to the popularity of the system and supplements kept it alive and only died when it's company did. I see that as the continued legacy of 5e Unlike their toy market where you have to re-invent the line to garner new kids that didn't grow up with the old, D&D, when used the way it's being used, creates a self-perpetuating market. No need to gut and glut a cash cow. There is a reason that MtG and D&D have propelled WotC from a brand in the Hasbro family to it's driving force.

 

[Bacon Bits]

I doubt a 5.5 or 6e is forthcoming in that form. I would imagine a PHB 2 before that. Expanding rules for higher level, epic level story construction, etc. I could be wrong, bit I don't WotC wants to move away from 5e so much as refocus what they already have. And unlike 3.5, where it was a case of this part is broken and needs new wheels, I just don't see that blatant brokeness in 5e.

2e stayed around a long time due to the popularity of the system and supplements kept it alive and only died when it's company did. I see that as the continued legacy of 5e Unlike their toy market where you have to re-invent the line to garner new kids that didn't grow up with the old, D&D, when used the way it's being used, creates a self-perpetuating market. No need to gut and glut a cash cow. There is a reason that MtG and D&D have propelled WotC from a brand in the Hasbro family to it's driving force.

I doubt that WotC will do anything at all with higher level play. I don't mean epic level play, although they won't touch that, either. I mean they won't do anything with the game after level 15. Their data already shows that basically nobody plays at that level, so why would they devote development resources to it? There isn't a market for it. That might be a self-fulfilling prophecy at this point (much of the game is extremely broken at high level, but nobody really plays it, so they don't spend time fixing it, so nobody plays it, so they don't think anybody wants it, so nobody plays it, etc.) but it really does feel like the game reaches a natural conclusion around level 12-13. That's when your bonuses have really capped out, few classes get compelling abilities other than new spell levels, and if you have any magic weapons at all your party is probably able to take on nearly any monster in the game. The game is over long before level 15. You can keep playing, but the game has started flickering the lights and wants to go home.

2e didn't stick around all that long on purpose. It was released in 1989, and TSR was out of cash by 1996. However, they did try to revise 2e starting in 1995 with the Player's Options series. Skills & Powers, Combat & Tactics, Spells & Magic, and [DM's Option] High-Level Campaigns. Those by and large did not sell, IIRC, but lots of people do rightly call it AD&D 2.5e because it heavily expands and rewrites the game's rules. D&D as a whole was basically a dead game in the TTRPG space after that until 3e's release in 2000. It took that long for WotC to buy TSR, organize stuff, do some market research (that TSR never had), and then design and develop an RPG to replace the hobbyist game from 1974 with an actual game design.

 

[Voadam]

I really want a good 5e Doctor Who Bestiary. I expect the main book will cover Daleks and Cybermen and Sontarans, but I want a whole full size hardcover bestiary series to comprehensively cover the wide range of stuff that has appeared.