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!

 

[darjr]

So many times I’ve had a “Tardis” in my games.

 

[Voadam]

So many times I’ve had a “Tardis” in my games.

I've only had Baba Yaga's Dancing Tardis make an appearance in mine.

The Tardis in Castle Greyhawk was not gotten to when I ran in Greyhawk.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

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.

Since other people have been speculating on source books, and yours was the most recent, I quoted to add to it. I had to dig deep into Emmet Byrne's Twitter posts about the game, but I found the tweet where he said what would be published for this:

 

[Jer]

Since other people have been speculating on source books, and yours was the most recent, I quoted to add to it. I had to dig deep into Emmet Byrne's Twitter posts about the game, but I found the tweet where he said what would be published for this:

That's interesting - no GM's book. This is a game where adventure creation guidelines would probably be a really good idea for GMs who are transitioning from D&D. I wonder if they've thought of that and are including those in the bestiary or the adventure book.

 

[nyvinter]

The Gamemaster Companion for the Vortex game would be usable even there I think. It talsk a lot more about how to run the game as a Doctor Who episode and not so much rules.

 

[Jer]

The Gamemaster Companion for the Vortex game would be usable even there I think. It talsk a lot more about how to run the game as a Doctor Who episode and not so much rules.

Good point. That is a good book.

 

[Yaarel]

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.

For you gaming ideal, what would each of the following tiers look like according to mechanics and feel (such as superhero or whatever)?

Levels of each tier:
9-12
13-16
17-20
21-24

 

[Voadam]

That's interesting - no GM's book. This is a game where adventure creation guidelines would probably be a really good idea for GMs who are transitioning from D&D. I wonder if they've thought of that and are including those in the bestiary or the adventure book.

That is interesting. I would have expected a big corebook to handle PC info, setting and monster stuff, and DM adventure advice.

A Player's Guide I expect to have character creation stuff including PC Timelord options and a bunch of playable alien races along the Paternoster gang type lines, with probably an essay about Doctor Who adventure style from the player perspective, and a bunch of player facing 5e rules (possibly importing Dr. Who RPG initiative and such).

 

[Thunderfoot]

For you gaming ideal, what would each of the following tiers look like according to mechanics and feel (such as superhero or whatever)?

Levels of each tier:
9-12
13-16
17-20
21-24

It's kind of sad that high level campaigns don't exist anymore. I used to have a lot of fun with those. I'm wondering if anyone has figured out a reason why? Is it because of the higher, lower-level power as compared to older editions or something else?
One thing about those older games, you struggled to get to 5th level because you were just weak. Then grew through about 15 and then enjoyed the power from 15 and beyond. 'Hero status' if you will.

 

[eyeheartawk]

It's kind of sad that high level campaigns don't exist anymore. I used to have a lot of fun with those. I'm wondering if anyone has figured out a reason why? Is it because of the higher, lower-level power as compared to older editions or something else?

Nobody really knows for sure. WOTC did a study that says most campaigns don't reach that level, but then again, it could also be argued it's a self fulfilling loop. WOTC doesn't really support high level play (say past level 15) with adventures or other "epic tier" material. So is it that nobody wants to go that high, or they aren't doing it because there isn't really any material there for them to use.

The fact that those 3PP epic tier things are pretty successful (thinking of the Epic Legacy line) makes me think there is at least some demand.