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Doctor Who RPG regenerates with a second edition, lets you create your own TARDIS

It’s about time.

The Doctor Who: The Roleplaying Game is time-travelling its way into a new era for the tabletop RPG with the release of a second edition.

The Doctor Who RPG was first released in 2009 during David Tennant’s run as the television timelord, before seeing minor revisions for Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor and Peter Capaldi’s Twelth in 2015.

In comparison to the periodic updates to match the show’s new star, the latest revision is billed as a complete second edition for the roleplaying game. The new edition updates the Vortex system that powers the RPG, with publisher Cubicle 7 describing the revised ruleset as “faster, easier, and quicker to learn” during play.

The rulebook allows players to create either their own timelord, a companion for the Doctor or another ally bundled into the category of “investigators and defenders of planet Earth”. The book’s artwork has also been updated to reflect Jodie Whittaker’s latest Thirteenth Doctor, who features as a ready-to-play character sheet alongside pre-generated stats for her companions.

As well as their characters, the players can design their own TARDIS - meaning you don’t have to stick with the Doctor’s familiar blue police box. The rules for creating your own time-hopping ship have been revised for the second edition.

Sessions of the Doctor Who RPG are designed to mimic the feeling of episodes of the TV show, with the ability to run ongoing storylines and campaigns similar to a season. The second edition rulebook comes with guidance for GMs on creating and running adventures.

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The second edition of Doctor Who: The RPG is said to be fully compatible with the first edition of the game, allowing new character types and rules in the latest release to be used with the older ruleset. Examples of characters possible with the new rules include a “Victorian music hall artiste” and a Silurian scientist.

As well as gameplay rules, the core rulebook includes various lore details on the Doctor Who-niverse, with information on the aliens and creatures encountered by the Doctor, as well as the history of the setting.

A physical edition of Doctor Who: The Roleplaying Game’s second edition rulebook will be released in Q1 2022, according to Cubicle 7, with the standard edition costing $49.99. A collector’s edition with artwork of the TARDIS console room, a slipcase featuring the outside of the TARDIS and TARDIS-blue page edges will cost $99.99. The contents of both books will be identical. Physical copies of the game will include a digital PDF version, which is already available.

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Matt Jarvis avatar

Matt Jarvis

Editor-in-chief

After starting his career writing about music, films and video games for various places, Matt spent many years as a technology, PC and video game journalist before writing about tabletop games as the editor of Tabletop Gaming magazine. He joined Dicebreaker as editor-in-chief in 2019, and has been trying to convince the rest of the team to play Diplomacy since.

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