Interview w/ David F Chapman of Cubicle 7 Entertainment

David JH Chapman

Hello, fellow Whovians. My name is David J.H. Chapman, and this needs to be clarified.

Christian Basel

Why he said this is very important because it’s gonna be a fun day. 

David JH Chapman

For me especially, because we’ve got David F. Chapman, who is one of the amazing, amazing, minds behind Doctor Who The Roleplaying Game and Doctors and Daleks. So, Mr. David Chapman, how are you doing today?

David F Chapman

Hi, good, thank you. It’s very late in the night for me. So, if I start talking complete nonsense, do forgive me. I’m sorry.

David JH Chapman

You’ll fit right in.

Christian Basel

Tell us about the Doctor Who Roleplaying Game, Doctors and Daleks, and the differences and connections between the two.

David F Chapman

That’s an epic question if ever there was one. Where do you want to start? Okay, Doctor Who The Roleplaying Game has been around for quite a while now. Its First Edition came out about 2007, I think, and is a tabletop role-playing game which allows you to play as the Doctor and companions or new people in the Whoniverse. Doing whatever you fancy, travelling through time and space and all that kind of business. It’s gone through various different iterations, but the rules have basically stayed the same mostly since the first edition, which I designed when I first started working freelance for Cubicle 7 back in the distant past. It’s been through a David Tennant edition, and a Matt Smith edition, and a Capaldi edition, and then when we decided to do the one for Jody we decided to streamline things and tidy things up a bit. So the new edition is the official Second Edition, which is hopefully super accessible to people who haven’t role-played before but still has everything you could possibly need if you’re an experienced gamer and want to add a bit more crunch to it. Basically, In the past, Cubicle 7 has done multiple games like Warhammer and The One Ring. When the first edition of [The One Ring] came out they also did a 5e version called Adventures in Middle Earth, which was a huge success as well. We thought, wow, we could try doing it with Doctor Who, but it’s gonna be quite tricky. And that’s where Doctors and Daleks came from. The biggest challenge of that is gonna be basically taking the 5e game system, which is mostly Dungeons and Dragons, is a game where you basically go around and hit nasties with a big sword or fight them and try, and I love that. I totally love that. That can apply to Dragon Age too. You’re just aimlessly walking around hitting stuff. That’s all. But the thing is, is trying to get the ethics of Doctor Who in using 5e, which is a very combat-orientated thing, to reflect a TV series that isn’t very combat-orientated. So there was a lot of tinkering, let’s put it that way, and it has its own unique take on conflict resolution, which has gone down pretty well. 

David JH Chapman

 OK. There is also a Starter Set. So what’s in that? I mean, obviously, it’s not just a rule book. 

David F Chapman

Yeah, if you want to give it a try and have never done anything along those lines before, the Starter Set is a box set [for the Doctor Who Roleplaying Game]. It’s got a couple of books in it. One, which is a very introductory adventure, teaches you the rules while you’re playing. The second book is lots of continuation of the story, which kind of sets you off on your own adventures as well. It also comes with pre-generated characters, some dice, handy tokens for keeping track of story points, and handy summaries of the rules that you can keep on the table. They don’t need to keep clicking through books. 

David JH Chapman

Are they different dice? Or is it more like the older ones?

David F Chapman

They’ve got Gallifreyan on them. And if you’re really, really nerdy, if you follow it through one to six, the Gallifreyan actually spells out TARDIS.

David JH Chapman

Oh, that’s amazing. Okay, that is freaking sweet.

Melanie Dean

That’s a fun fact. Because at first when I’m looking at them I’m like, wait a minute, the Gallifreyan patterns are changing. Wait a minute. What are they?

David F Chapman

I don’t think anybody spotted that yet. So that’s an exclusive for you.

David JH Chapman

And then for the adventures, since we’re going through books, Adventures in Space, is this also just more adventures?

David F Chapman

That’s more of a guide to alien planets and alien worlds. There’s a sample of, I think there’s about 20 planets that have been in the series, but also the rules for how to create your own alien planet and populate it with an alien species, and lots of adventure hooks and things like that to get you going. Hopefully, sometime next year, there will be a companion volume, which is Adventures in Time, which is all about doing historical adventures.

David JH Chapman

What about this one? 

David F Chapman

That one’s A Stitch In Time, which is a collection of 10 adventures, that kind of form a complete series. So there’s like a connecting arc that joins them up. And then there’s a big series finale at the end.

David JH Chapman

Is it better than Flux?

David JH Chapman

Oh, yeah. Well, no. Well, I’d like to…

Melanie Dean

Shots fired.

David F Chapman

I liked Flux. But yeah, this one’s epic. Oh, it’s twice as long. Which is always good. And yeah, it was a good one to sort of fill in the gap while there were a lot of mysteries [surrounding the then-upcoming anniversary special and new Doctor].

David JH Chapman

And then we’ve also got the Secrets of Scaravore, which is also more adventures. 

David F Chapman

Yes, yeah. 

David JH Chapman

This one kind of blends us over to the Doctor and Daleks side of things, because you guys have released the same adventure in both ways, in both systems. 

David F Chapman

Yes, so the one cover is for the Doctor Who The RolePlaying Game, one is for Doctors and Daleks. So it’s the same adventure, it’s just converted over to 5e. 

Mackenzie Flohr

There were some great resources for the first twelve Doctors, which in my opinion are some of the best resource books out there for the Doctor outside of my Binge Watcher’s Guide to Doctor Who. But other than that. I know that also they are out of print now. So how exactly going forward does Cubicle 7 plan on handling that whole book series?

David F Chapman

So yeah, some of the stuff that’s in those is going to be compiled into a new book for the anniversary. Well, two books, that can come out for the anniversary with some new material in there as well. But if the demands there, you never know, they might do some conversions over to Second Edition and some reprints. But yeah. I certainly hope they will.

Mackenzie Flohr

How are you planning to handle more new Tennant? Since we kind of saw two and Meta Crisis.

David F Chapman

I have no idea. The problem is, is that we don’t know what’s happening. We don’t know what’s coming, basically. That was certainly the case with the 13th Doctor sourcebook. We got a couple of great writers to do the 13th Doctor sourcebook, and then we left loads of blank bits, just in case, right until Power of the Doctor aired. And then there was some frantic writing to finish off of this. Because we were kind of hoping that there was gonna be a load of revelations in that episode that was gonna answer all the bits that we needed. And then- You and a bunch of us, brother. And then, so we had to wait until that episode aired before we could finish writing that one. And it’s the same with the 14th Doctor, with the specials. We don’t know what’s coming. They’re very secretive. So yeah, we’ve got to wait and see it for ourselves and then there’ll be some frantic writing.

David JH Chapman

I mean, it’s worth pointing out, Cubicle 7 was able to push a full sourcebook out on Eight from the movie and a 10-minute webisode. So I mean, you guys are good as far as being able to put out the content This is all TV, right? That’s something that, that’s kind of another interesting thing that comes on with the specials, or at least what we presume is going to be happening in the specials. We’ve got Beep the Meep, and the Star Beast name, which of course comes from the old comics. One of the questions we’ve had in the audience a lot, like any time this has come up, is do you ever think you might do an extra supplement that reaches more into those other properties? The comic books, the Big Finish audios, some of those other canon… but not quite canon… but maybe canon… side mediums?

David F Chapman

At the moment? No. But I don’t know how things are going to go in the future. I mean, it was a big surprise to me when we did the Thirteenth Doctor Sourcebook and we could cover the Doctor Who: Redacted podcast thing. So we managed to cover that, which was our first foray into something that isn’t purely on screen. So hopefully, in the future. I mean, if we had the chance of working with Big Finish, that’s like 200 more books down the line, at least. I personally would love to have seen a sourcebook that covers the Eighth Doctor novels. Because yeah, I love those ones. So yeah, fingers crossed, let’s put it that way.

David JH Chapman

Yeah, because there’s so much more out there that you guys could, if you guys could touch on, you could touch on. Jo Martin’s comic or Peter Cushing? 

David F Chapman

Controversial. 

David JH Chapman

I mean, while we’re on him, now you’ve got David Bradley. 

David F Chapman

Oh, yes. That’s a whole other side of what are you going to do with these is now there’s more to a lot of those Doctors. Oh yeah, the First Doctor could certainly have an update with the extra bits. Yeah, that’d be nice. 

David JH Chapman

And there’s always new Masters and there’s always new villains and stuff like that.

Christian Basel

Speaking of villains, I got a question for you, David. If that’s your real name… If you could change a villain into a playable hero, who would it be?

David F Chapman

That’s one of the hardest questions I’ve ever been asked.

Christian Basel

I’m sorry. Even our audience is probably going, when the heck did these people start asking good questions? 

David F Chapman

Oh, god. It’s a really hard one. And I’d probably go with my favourite classic story, City of Death, and probably go with Count Scarlioni because he’s really cool. Although he freaked me out when I was a kid because of his scary face. But yeah, that’s a great villain and was he really a villain?

Mackenzie Flohr

Right now there’s a lot of drama. Of course, there’s lots of drama going on with Twitch and Kick and all that. But I also know that there was some drama recently that had to do with an open gaming source. So I’m curious about the Open Gaming License, how it impacted the plans for Doctors and Daleks moving forward, or if it impacted at all.

David F Chapman

There were some meetings, there were some hurried meetings. Especially as we’ve got two of the books out and we promised there’s a set. There’s going to be the three books in a nice slipcase. You never know we might do more after this and then like two books in and then all this drama happens and it’s like oh my god what are we going to do? Um, so yeah there was a bit of a panic for a while. There was the can we get it finished before the license changes completely? But thankfully that’s kind of all died down now, but to make sure that sort of thing doesn’t happen again Cubicle 7 is working on its own D20-compatible system, which is tentatively called C7D20. It’ll have its own core book and all that kind of business as well. And it will take some of the bits that people really liked about Doctors and Daleks, like the quips and the non-violent conflict resolution and incorporate that into there as well. So fingers crossed.

David JH Chapman

One thing I heard at a convention, so I haven’t officially heard this from an official source. I just got the Alien Archive book and, apparently, that’s gonna be nice to facilitate some of those weird crossovers like having your Daleks in your regular old D&D game if you wanted.

David F Chapman

Yeah, yeah. I mean, the stat blocks are completely compatible with 5e. So yeah, you can put your Daleks into your D&D game or Pathfinder or whatever 5e you’re running at the moment and it’s fine. There’s absolutely no problem at all. There’s an extra little box at the bottom which explains how to use that villain/creature/monster/whatever with the extra encounter rules that we’ve created for Doctors and Daleks which makes it a bit easier for lower level characters to encounter a Dalek. You know, you’re toast, aren’t you? The encounter system kind of evens things out a little bit more so you can use the environment. So it’s not quite so dangerous first time around and yeah. The stat blocks have got these extra bits of guidance in there but you could just plug them straight into your D&D. I want to see some games do that.

David JH Chapman

So you’ve got all sorts of these sourcebooks. Mackenzie said it, and I’ve said it every time I write a review on one of these books. If you gave a student an assignment: write a biography on a fictional character, and they wanted to do the Doctor, I would give them these books. Even if you don’t play the game these books are amazing to go through and they reframe things in a way that you might not think about. They’re absolutely brilliant so Bravo to you guys seriously.

David F Chapman

But as I say, the Thirteenth Doctor book had a couple of very good writers on that one, Eleanor Hingley, Hannah-Lital Goldfinch, and Rachel Savicki. Yeah. So many good writers on them. I hardly did anything with those. I just kind of looked at the text when it came my way. No, I’m excited.

David JH Chapman

Mark Robinson, a viewer over in the UK, had a great question for you. “It’s the 60th anniversary of the Doctor this year, but 2024 is the 40th anniversary of Robin of Sherwood. Would you guys consider doing a roleplaying version of that?”

David F Chapman

Oh, I did love that series. Blimey. I’ve got that on DVD over there somewhere as well. I don’t know. That would be good actually. Yeah, that’d be like, I’m making a note now.

Melanie Dean

The next question, which is what I was gonna bring up since we were talking about grabbing all these little different pieces and different mediums and playing with them. So with Time Lord Victorious and Doomsday starting to connect, you know, different mediums, do you have any plans for like the Absalom Doc or Death’s Head or other Marvel UK characters getting a supplement down the road?

David F Chapman

It’s that tricky thing we’re working on. That’s owned by somebody else, especially somebody like Marvel. Well, that could be it could be tricky. But I’m sure there are ways around it. It’s just going to be a case of getting everybody in the same room together and yeah. 

Christian Basel

Are there any plans for a Doctor Who Free RPG Day product?

David F Chapman

Not this year. But yeah, you never know. We should have some free stuff coming soon. I think if I remember rightly, in the buildup to the anniversary we’re gonna be releasing all of the Doctors with 5E character sheets. Which would be free downloads from our website as well so you can use them in a lot of games, and yeah.

David JH Chapman

So here’s a question, because it’s something that, again, this kind of falls a little bit into the, “we don’t know what you’re going to do with the source books” and all that. In the First Edition, I kept finding a lot of little inconsistencies. Characters that would show up between Doctors that would have a stat book here, a stat block here and a stat block here, and they’d all be slightly different. Was that an intentional thing? Was that just kind of how things evolved?

David F Chapman

It was kind of a bit of evolving. I know the Twelfth Doctor changed between the Twelfth Doctor’s [edition of the] Core Rulebook and then his own sourcebook. But that was kind of a case of when the core book’s being written, it’s still while he’s on TV. And then at the end, the sourcebook was afterwards, so we could take into account a little bit extra. Then, of course, we do listen to the feedback from players. So any errata and stuff like that, if anybody thinks it needs tweaking. We’ve kind of refined our errata system now, so there’s always a bit of a gap between the digital being released before it goes to print. So that we can listen to any feedback that people have picked up on and sort of go, “Oh, this isn’t quite right” and we can fix it all before it goes to print.

David JH Chapman

Brilliant. I have to say to be able to do that, and to take that feedback and being able to able to, and willing to, make those changes is very nice. Not a lot of companies are willing to make that extra bit of effort. So I definitely appreciate that. The part of me that collects the physical books and prefers working with them, hates that But for everything else, no, this is great.