DW:AISAT is basically the roleplaying game of The David Tennant Years (although we don't forget Christopher Eccleston or his predecessors, even if the artwork does). This is a game with the lush high quality production that one might expect from an officially BBC licenced Doctor Who product, but how does it stand up?
Pretty well, if all things are considered.
This product aims itself squarely at fans of Doctor Who and relies on the idea that existing RPG aficionados will be intrigued enough to pick it up. For those experienced gamers I'll lay it on the line that this is a great little system (if phenomenally basic) that makes a Time-Lord-Saving-The-Universe-Pseudo-Science out of hand-waving the rules, but does so in a nice way that encourages the games master and the players to work co-operatively to tell a great story. The primary balancing point in the rules comes down to Story Points- want to play a Time Lord, powerful alien, or immortal like Jack Harkness you will have less of these and they allow you to influence everything from roll results to those big dramatic moments when the Doctor returns to his youthful appearance and shows the Master who's boss.
This is a boxed set containing a players guide, a GM book, and adventure book, dice, character sheets for most of the Tennant Run "companions" (and K-9), blank character sheets, gadget cards (sonic screwdriver, super-phone, etc.), and little Story Point counters (massively important if you want to let Donna hear the song of the Ood or have Rose absorb the heart of the TARDIS). It's fantastically complete and takes me back to those 1980's RPG products I started out on. However, it's not all good news because there's huge amounts of redundancy. The players guide contains more detail in some of the character creation areas, but essentially everything in that book is repeated in the Games Master's Guide. The excuse given is that it allows the GM and players to reference the rules at the same time, that's pretty poor given its never been an issue in a game before and it strikes me that this format is lead more by the licensing agreement than anything else. It's a let down, especially given the cost of this game, that we're basically paying twice for the same material.
This game is reverential to its source material and as you read it you can imagine the game sessions that would have been running through the last 4 series. For anyone wondering, it's easy enough to make your own Time Lord, so if you prefer a universe where Romana and her Companions travel in their TARDIS and there is no Doctor, then go for your life - or create a whole new Lord of Time. This set explicitly focuses on the recent reboot, but its wide open for a game before the Time War, without the Time War, or after the return of Gallifray (c'mon, we all want it). Stats are given for some of the main villains of the past 4 years, from the Daleks to the Carrionites, from the Clockwork Robots to the Slitheen. There's enough of a cross section to make you interested in the upcoming Aliens and Creatures supplement, but also enough that you wouldn't have to work hard to do without it. You read the stats for a Dalek and they make sense.
Overall, this is a great game that lives up to its billing for old and new players. Loves its source (Bessie, Kaleds and Thals, and even the original Cybermen get a mention here and there... chapter headings recall quotes from the series), and is a fun read. Its massively let down by huge swathes of repetition between the two main books, there would have been far better ways to integrate the main game rules into a box set without doing this, but still- This is Doctor Who. Its not quite Ninth Doctor "Fantastic", but I'll give it Tenth Doctor "Brilliant".
