Back in the OGL 1.1 aftermath, several companies pledged that they were going to move away from contents in their games that left them vulnerable to the capricious whims of Wizards and Hasbro. I’ve written briefly about some of these companies and games, and now we’re seeing the fruit of their labour. Kobold Press, arguably the largest 5e third party content creator, has released their Black Flag Roleplaying SRD. So let’s take a look at it!
Background
Similar to Paizo’s position at the end of 3.5e D&D, Kobold Press is filled with edition experts; in their case, these experts are specifically 5e D&D ones. So unlike say, MCDM, who opted to create a whole new system to operate with, Kobold Press has opted to refine, polish, and modify 5e. Black Flag Roleplaying (BFR) draws heavily from the Creative Commons 5.1 SRD by Wizards, and will be immediately familiar to anyone used to working in the 5e ecosystem. BFR has been released under the ORC License.
The Good
Right away, BRF is a ready to go game for an SRD. At 385 pages, it’s a brick of a book, but it’s packed with information and can be used as is to run whole campaigns. There are sections that are lite on detail, but that’s for later. Classes have one subclass per, the ancestry and heritage section is solid, there’s lots of monsters, the treasure list is good, and overall the whole thing is set for action either on its own or as a baseline for your own creation. I also have a soft spot for the Luck mechanic, it’s an amazing addition to the game that adds both narrative and mechanical options.
There’s flavour changes. As opposed to individual spell lists by class for example, they divide spells by source. Arcane, Divine, Primordial, and Wyrd are the categories, and each comes with a selection of spells and rituals. These spell lists are universal to whomever uses said source. And to be honest, it’s a huge improvement over the old spell list system. Why? It means that player can make their magic users match their concepts better.
The Ancestry/Heritage selections are a breath of fresh air in the 5e ecosystem. The selections are separate and it’s so good! On the ancestry side, players can choose Beastkin (animal folk), Dwarf, Elf, Human, Orc, or Smallfolk (gnomes and halflings are the same, just one is under and the other is above ground), and none of their natural abilities are cultural. They’re all biological features, and to be honest, especially in the case of the Orcs, they’re good. Heritages are based on where your character grew up, and offer a lot of choices that reflect some skills and talents they may have picked up.
The Bad
God and Pantheons left a bad taste in my mouth. The section was small, underdeveloped, and out of step with the rest of the content. And what I mean by that is that it’s two pages, says “The Egyptian, Greek, and Norse pantheons are fantasy interpretations of historical Earth religions. Mix and match these deities outside of a historical context to serve your game’s needs.” Then it gives short lists of these real-world pantheons with broad, low nuance descriptions in table format, and calls it a day. This is a recipe for problems, and TBH, I expected something more useful like a list of types of fantasy deities (sun, moon, shadow, earth, sea, magic, knowledge, death etc…) and some info on how to use them. This was a disappointing section.
Humans. Making humans get an extra skill or feat or whatever is old hat. Humans don’t have to be real world standard. Kobold Press killed it with all the other ancestries, but their human feels like every other human in D&D type games since 3e. Like, give humans a magical affinity, or a resistance, or something like that. They can be fantasy too!
The Ugly
Vancian casting with verbal, somatic, and material components continues its lurching presence in the hobby. Given that Sorcery Points are a thing, I was hoping for a point based system to at least be presented alongside the conventional casting system, but nope. Fingers crossed as they move forward with their evolution of the game.
Final Thoughts
If this is the core of the Tales of the Valiant, things are looking up for Kobold Press. For people used to the 5e ecosystem and looking for something that feels like 5e+, this is going to do the business. There’s enough difference to warrant a conversion pdf to maximize your experience coming over from 5e, but it’s not so different as to cause shock. It is an SRD though, so it’s not complete, so I’m limited to giving it a solid Rank B. I’m hoping that the Tales of the Valiant series will take this and run hard with it, because it’s an impressive foundation to start a game from.
dfh
