Northlands Kickstarter

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/deepmagic/northlands-norse-adventures-for-dandd-2024-and-tov 

The Northlands Kickstarter has launched, and it seems Kobold Press is creating a version of this book for both 5E 2024 and ToV. The book will also be on D&D Beyond.

It is an interesting split in support for a ToV product, but I am guessing the money the company will make on D&D Beyond forced their hand and this is in their best interests, along with 5E as a whole. I hope ToV support does not falter, but I get the feeling this may be the first steps to supporting ToV as a legacy game and not a primary platform.

I like ToV.

The software requirements and the general decline in 5E as a whole is dragging the whole hobby down. I get the feeling 5E releases from now on will be a dwindling market where fringe players will be forced to drop Open 5E and "support the biggest game" as boats in the market begin to sink and take on water.

Daggerheart, Draw Steel, Cosmere, Shadowdark, Avatar, and many other games are taking a lot of steam from the mainstream D&D market. The market is shrinking, and the big players are circling the wagons.

If it all goes south, I hope Kobold Press is given the official D&D license so they can come out with a true 6th Edition. We are in the end of an era, and releases at this point are a little painful to watch.

Still, I backed this for ToV.

D&D 2024 I choose not to support, for better or worse. 

On A Road Less Travelled

The hardest problem in playing Tales of the Valiant is answering the question why. There are some easy answers, but when you ask a group to buy entirely new books, or dive into a strange system when all they have are D&D books, that is a huge ask.

For me, I play Tales of the Valiant because I can no longer stand Wizards, what they stand for, and how that business operates. The OGL, firings, DLC for physical books, platform lock in, creating the game for digital dependency, and them disrespecting the original creators of the game.

They have these unrealistic expectations, expecting the original creators of D&D to be perfect people, just like them, and it is sickening. Constantly apologizing for things a mature mind could reasonably say "this was back in the day, times are different now." I do that with every piece of media, TV show, movie, and other piece of entertainment I consume. Do we really need to keep apologizing for the past? Did we need to remove orcs and humanoid monsters from the game?

If they feel that strongly, then maybe they should sell D&D if it is such an embarrassment, and make a different game with their values.

Tales of the Valiant managers to walk a line between apology culture and respecting the past. I wish Kobold Press went more old-school in their art choices, and some of the art has this cartoon-like quality that turns me away. The design and rules are solid. The art is good to passing. It is not as bad as some of the D&D 2024 pieces though, which cross over into forcing you to accept a certain set of values.

When a game starts printing "rules for life" and "advocating morals" it has crossed over into religion. That is a red line.

 

On the art side, I have plenty of games with far better and more consistent art than this. Dungeon Crawl Classics, ACKS II, and Against the Darkmaster are flat-out amazing.

Part of the massive problem for all of 5E is the dependency on digital tools. Tales of the Valiant cannot escape that, and I need a Shard subscription to manage characters. I need to "pay other people" for "the right to play my game" and it sucks. I have game after game that do the same thing as ToV, and I do not need digital character sheets to play them. I can run these games by hand.

Another problem with 5E is that it made characters far weaker as they level compared to Old School Essentials or first-edition AD&D. Fireball damage is pitiful in every version of Wizards D&D (3, 4 and 5), and Gary Gygax and TSR had it right. A fireball should vaporize all low hit die creatures in the blast radius.

Modern D&D 5E lowers damage to "make combat fun" like a video game. The infinite, un-take-away-able, laser-pistol-like attack cantrip is the worst offender. Repeated weak attacks do not feel heroic! Tales of the Valiant is compatible, thus has this same issue. Instead of magic being, rare, special, and having a cost, it becomes mundane, expected, everyday, and boring. It feels like playing an arcade shooter like Galaxian.

Shooty cantrips ruin the fantasy genre. They are garbage. While trying to solve the problem of "how do we give the mage something to do every turn" they end up ruining magic and turning into a convenience, like a light switch to turn on and off without thinking or realizing the cost.

Seriously, giving the wizard something to do each turn was solved with wands and magic items, and supported the gold-piece economy. Also, artificially lengthening fights to be more like "video-game combat" only makes the "my wizard has nothing to do" problem worse.

Instead of wizards with a collection of powerful, encounter-ending, massively unbalanced spells that are only used once during an adventure; we turned them into boring, weak, DPS-classes that need to feel like they are doing something every turn on fights that grind on forever.

And the casters are still OP in 5E compared to the martial classes, and even the old-school games have martial classes right. A 1d8+4 damage attack (longsword, +2 STR bonus, +2 magic weapon) once a turn in Old School Essentials will take down an adult red dragon in a few turns of solid hits, and this is still from a one-attack-per-turn fighter. In any version of Wizards D&D? The monster hit points are scaled so high that 1d8+4 means you need dozens or hundreds of hits to defeat the same dragon. you went from doing good melee damage to none, and you needed feats to keep up with casters.

Old School Essentials, Swords & Wizardry, Adventures Dark & Deep, Basic Fantasy, and Castles & Crusades do not have this video-game problem. Dungeon Crawl Classics and Shadowdark solve the "magic has a cost" problem nicely.

I love ToV, it is a great and solid implementation of 5E. This is a playable game. I like and support it.

The bigger problem I have is with 5E itself.

It is such a strange feeling to be sitting here thinking, "ToV is great but 5E is garbage" but here I am. I know, why are you running a blog, then? I need the time and space to feel this out and come to a conclusion. There are still things that 5E does well. There are some unfix-able flaws in the design.

I think as more players try Shadowdark and other games, even ones outside of the old-school genre, they are beginning to realize this, too. 

Part of me hopes Kobold Press can find a way out of this. To fix the "character sheet" problem. To give us options to make magic powerful and have a cost. I know they got great designers, and that a solid second referee book with old-school options, cost to magic, how to remove cantrips, and power mods could solve many of these problems. But how do we even begin to address them if we stay silent?

Part of the discussion is to compare and contrast the hand Kobold Press was dealt with 5E and trying to support that legacy system, and how we move forward and appeal to players who like the old-school power levels, concepts, and feeling?

The discussion is here.

Shadowdark is eclipsing Tales of the Valiant in popularity. People are moving to old-school games. The play and feeling is better there. The books are easy to read and the games are simple. People can "run these games" without a huge investment in time, money, and learning. But this is not just about Shadowdark, it is about systemic problems in 5E's design.

5E needs to change. We need options.

And I am not afraid to say it.

5E is Cratering

I like Tales of the Valiant a lot.

But the 5E market is cratering. We have not seen a million-dollar-plus crowdfunded project for 5E in a while now. D&D is limping along. Baldur's Gate 3 is getting as tired as Stranger Things, and there is nothing new to milk. D&D Beyond is putting DLC on book releases, with no print versions of the expansions.

D&D YouTube sees the writing on the wall, knowing the game is failing, and they are turning into cheerleaders for Wizards. I just watched a softball interview of Wizards. It is hard out there, I get it. Everything you built is crumbling. You need to "be nice" to "get access."

I don't have to watch, though. It does not make me angry, it makes me sad and makes me lose hope in all of 5E, even Open 5E. I can't have that negativity in my life around a game. I will just walk away.

Tales of the Valiant is my "alternate universe" version of 5E I can play and not care about the doom and drama. It exists on its own, its own world, its own rules, a better game, and its own expansions, adventures, and content. It can use what it left of my 5E library.

And I can ignore D&D YouTube. Most of their advice is bad anyways, especially all the "referee theory" and "adventure prep" advice. If you are not having any fun with the game, no amount of bad advice is going to help you. Change what you play. Go to Shadowdark. Play Traveller. Try GURPS. Try an OSR game. Check out Dragonbane or Forbidden Lands. Try war-gaming. If your players don't want to change, find a new group.

Part of the problem playing ToV is the non-existent coverage for the game, with D&D YouTube walking by and feeling "it is just D&D." Another part of it is the creator community flailing to save Wizards and the hobby, versus an onslaught of the new 5E alternatives: Shadowdark, Daggerheart, Draw Steel, Cosmere RPG, Nimble 5e, Warhammer ToW, and a few more.

Not to mention the strong alternatives that are already out there with Dragonbane, Castles & Crusades, Old School Essentials, Call of Cthulhu, Runequest, Dungeon Crawl Classics, and Pathfinder 2E.

Or try an OSR game.

I am keeping ToV in its own campaign world and space to keep it away from the negativity and trying to enjoy it on its own. And while yes, it is 5E, it is its own game and deserves to be treated as its own game.

Shard Tabletop: Rebuilding

The subscriptions to the Kobold Press books are a nice thing to get your feet wet, but after a while, it makes more sense to just buy the books you want and reduce your subscription costs to just what you need.

The first three to grab, preferably on sale, are the core ToV books. This is a no-brainer if this is now your home system. This is your first investment, and will hold you until Monster Vault 2 and Player's Guide 2 come out. Those two will be must-buys as well.

The following two books, The Old Margreve and Campaign Builder: Castles and Crowns, offer more player options. There is a Cities and Towns book, too, that provides a few.

The last two are the least expensive, and round out the best options for players. The Midgard Lineages and Heritages book and the Guide to the Labyrinth give you the final pieces to the puzzle. Buying all these is a few months of a full subscription, but over the long haul, I will be saving money on the monthly costs.

The ToV Lineages and Heritages book is also a cheap grab. Past this, buy the monster books and Deep Magic, a book at a time, plus start collecting adventures. Do a book a month to keep your costs down, and just keep working at it.

Compared to a full subscription, you are missing out on the modules and monsters that come with it, but I can purchase them as needed. These eight core books are the heart of the system on Shard, and I can create custom content for the few things I need.

Northlands Kickstarter Pre-Launch

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/deepmagic/northlands-norse-adventures-for-dandd-2024-and-tov/

The Northlands Kickstarter has pre-launched, so sign up to be notified for launch! This is both 5E and ToV compatible, and seeing more Norse-themed adventures and backgrounds is always good.

ToV Needs a Hard Mode

I would love to see a GM's Guide 2 that focuses on the structure of the 5E rules and makes some dramatic changes to them. The Kobold Press team has some amazing rules designers, and I would love to see them tear the system down and rebuild it in interesting and new ways.

We need a compelling Grimdark mode for the game, with a tighter gameplay loop similar to Shadowdark, but not a direct copy of it. We need time limits and a gameplay mode that creates tension and encourages faster play.

We need a Narrative mode for the game that moves it more towards the systems introduced in Daggerheart, but not directly copying that game, so people who want to have "narrative swings" based on mechanics have a system to play with.

We need a Horror mode with fear and insanity effects, similar to those found in Call of Cthulhu, for those eldritch investigations and horror games.

We need a Cozy mode that removes rules from the game and eliminates the need for players to play in a cozy manner. If players want to play anthropomorphic hedgehogs baking cookies, on adventures to find those ingredients, and saving others in semi-perilous situations, let them do that in ToV.

We even need an Old School mode that introduces Vancian magic, limits resting, and brings the game more in line with classic old-school play.

Kobold Press has an opportunity here to experiment with the structure and flow of the game. ToV is its own game, and they can twist and bend the rules in any direction to make ToV a new game, different from D&D.

They need to take that chance, and move in that direction.

I Want to Save This Game

Every time I reorganize my shelves, the space for Tales of the Valiant gets smaller and smaller. I had so much bloat in my library, it was killing what is arguably the best 5E implementation ever made. The reduction of books helps the game since it becomes more focused on the good content, and the fluff and filler are removed.

It has a better chance of surviving now with three shelves than with eight.

But still, outside forces are working against me. Shadowdark is the biggest threat to this game. Shadowdark does not require expensive online character creation tools, and the time investment in learning to play the game correctly is minimal. Shadowdark's game loop is tight: map, characters, initiative order, movement, torches, timer, monsters, and darkness.

Shadowdark is like the old Dungeon! boardgame, but more like D&D. The movement is turn-based and tight. The clock is ticking. Everyone goes on their own turn. Movement is important. Being innovative and efficient is critical. Resource management is a concern, and carrying capacity is a must, as you need to haul everything out alive. Light is your lifeline. No one can see in the dark.

Shadowdark is almost an "Advanced Dungeon!"

Shadowdark's gameplay is super tight, and it makes D&D 5E look like an abstract story game like FATE in comparison. With D&D, what am I doing? Will the DM please read the text box to us now? Where are we? What is going on? The looseness of D&D makes the game very difficult to get started and approach. With Shadowdark? Map. Characters. Roll for initiative, that is your turn order. Everyone sits clockwise in that order. You are first, please move.

Is Shadowdark too brutal and unforgiving? No way, there are mods in the game to make it more pulp-action and heroic. Roll your stats any way you want, do 4d6 and drop the lowest for heroes, but, honestly, the modifiers don't matter as much here.

Tales of the Valiant needs to compete with that, especially in a time where D&D is going down like a cruise liner versus an iceberg battle, and so many players are jumping ship for other games. I like 5E, I like the heroic heroes, but there is a point where "easier elsewhere" wins. I can do overpowered heroic heroes in Shadowdark easily:

• Roll 4d6 and drop the lowest for character creation.
• Roll for advancement at every level.
• Use a few heroic play mods.

Give all casters a 1d4 damage, range 60' "attack cantrip" as a shoot-y power; if you miss having that, and you don't need to make a casting roll for this, as you always have it. You say what it is: fire bolt, force missile, holy smite, shocking jolt, ice lance, and what have you.

But I am still searching for that compelling game hidden in Tales of the Valiant. I know it is there, 5E did have a certain magic to it, but the hobby is slowly moving on. It needed to be released years ago, and it still is an excellent version of the game.

I just need to keep trying to find it.

That thing to me that says, "You have to play this!"