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!"

The Soul of Tales of the Valiant

What is the soul of Tales of the Valiant?

I like that it's a setting-neutral 5E implementation, without the plethora of product identity gods, monsters, and other Wizards' IP mixed in here. The game feels like a clean-room 5E, ready to be dropped into any setting and start playing.

In that sense, it feels like an OSR game. But ToV is not an OSR game.

What is the soul of the game? It is a feeling and a reason to exist. It can be a place, such as Night City, which is the soul of the Cyberpunk game. It can be like the original D&D setting, Mystara, and the B/X and BECMI rules for that world. But a game's soul is more than a setting; it is a reason to be. GURPS does not have a specific setting, but it does have a soul in that it can be anything, anywhere, and at any place, and you can be anything.

A game's soul can be the system that defines the characters, encapsulates advancement, and establishes the level of heroism they can attain. Tunnels & Trolls is another excellent game, a fantasy game with no specific setting, but it has a definite sense of purpose and belonging. This is the game of strange tunnels under the surface of a savage world, filled with balrogs, trolls, and diabolical traps and puzzles. There is a feeling that unifies the game as a whole.

ToV needs to be more than "not D&D."

This is setting-neutral 5E, but we also have a setting here, Midgard and the Labyrinth, and that can encompass many worlds and places. So any D&D setting can be dropped into unify the rules behind ToV, and you can pull in whatever you want. The adventures and monsters in 2014 D&D will need to be replaced by ToV equivalents, since 2014 encounters will be a step weaker for ToV characters.

Midgard is an ideal home and feels close to the soul and spirit of this game. Midgard and the worlds strung across the Labyrinth form a strong backbone to this game and universe. Perhaps it is best to focus here and rebuild outwards.

There are plenty of great ideas for campaign worlds in the Labyrinth books. Perhaps the soul of the game can be found here, in newly created worlds built only out of your imagination, without legacy product identity IP weighing your thoughts down, and returning the bad guys to the same old beholders, mind flayers, githyanki, and other monsters overdue for the Monster Hall of Fame and retirement dungeon.

If a 2014 D&D adventure has a lot of custom monsters, that will be a harder thing to port over. You can still run these, but you will need to bump encounters up by a CR level to balance them to a good place. 5E is often concerned about balancing encounters, which is a flaw of the system. So many classic settings will need conversion, and many of the 5E mega dungeons will be a more complex conversion. It can be done by replacing and then creating new encounters, adding hit points, and tossing an extra die of damage here and there, but it is a little more work to do it this way.

D&D had a soul. It lost its meaning when modern writers took over and self-inserted themselves everywhere, making the entire game about identity instead of heroism, and rendering gold worthless in some post-capitalist statement. Instead of finding themselves through the game, like ham-fisted writers, they simply wrote themselves as the hero, ignoring the hero's journey, starting everyone off as awesome, and the story becomes a tedious journey to even greater awesomeness.

Tales of the Valiant shares that unfortunate legacy, but the danger is higher, and the balance better. The Player's Guide 2 will help, since the rest of the party archetypes will be filled out, and we will have a better view of the classes and roles of heroes. I need to find the essence of this game to better grasp what it means to be a fan, and to dream and play within this system. In other games, like Dungeon Crawl Classics, the soul is palpable and feelable, and you know the game when you pick up the books.

In ToV, I need to find the game's heart and soul.

Tales of the Valiant: Creative Commons License

https://koboldpress.com/black-flag-roleplaying/

This one is a surprise: Tales of the Valiant has a new Creative Commons license. This is a very nice development, and it provides another wonderful gift to the community, allowing them to build games and support adventures.

Thank you!

There is also a new free quick-start guide, which is more of a "how to roleplay" book with a few sample character sheets to review. It feels like a free flyer that you could pick up in a hobby shop. The pre-gen art  in the guide (above) is beautiful and makes me want to play these characters.

This level of support and dedication to the game gives me hope in these challenging times for 5E.

Selling Off Most 5E Books

While I am keeping my Tales of the Valiant books, I am divesting in most of my 2014 5E library. They are not the types of experiences and adventures I am looking for, and my 5E group fell through due to the decline of D&D as a hobby. Where there was once excitement about playing Ravenloft and other classic settings, now there is disinterest and apathy towards starting a game and experiencing those adventures.

I have decided to start again with a smaller Tales of the Valiant library, instead of keeping a ton of worthless D&D 2014 books around. The uncertainty surrounding D&D 2024 killed enthusiasm in my group, as the community was hesitant to buy the new books. A few of my group's most important players were part of that group, and the rest of the new players were uncertain about making the jump. In the end, D&D 2024's weak reception and low sales sealed the deal; nobody wanted to play, and no one wanted to buy books that had any uncertainty about whether they would be usable.

For 5E to survive on my gaming shelves at all, it needs to lose a significant amount of weight and approximately 80% of my 5E library. My Kobold Press books will likely be the last 5E books I own.

The entire 5E ecosystem is in a critical, life-ending state. Years of junk content, tons of interesting Kickstarter books, and add-on after add-on have turned a once-simple, fun game into an overwhelming mess of a pile of mutant flesh. The game is unplayable in this state. My library needs to lose weight, and most of its books.

The only way this game will have a chance of competing with other games, such as GURPS, Old School Essentials, and Dungeon Crawl Classics, is to tighten up, refocus, and deliver a concise, streamlined, and compelling experience.

I need to give ToV space and room to "find itself."

If I have seven shelves of 5E books sitting there telling me otherwise, I will never be able to do that.