Tales of the Valiant: Staying Power

This blog is in my top performers group. I should not be surprised since this is my only 5E blog, and 5E still has market share and a majority of the players. But for a game-specific blog for Tales of the Valiant to be such a strong performer, compared to my other heavy hitters, is a little surprising.

Tales of the Valiant staying strong helps the entire hobby. Viable 5E alternatives exist with Tales of the Valiant, Level Up Advanced 5E, and Shadowdark. Every game plays to a different crowd, and we have strong options for players of all types.

I have seen a resurgence of ToV interest this fall and winter as the new shine of D&D 2024 wears off, and people settle into the games they are comfortable with. If you play 5E, you have to check out D&D 2024 and at least get that out of your system, and then you can return to the games you feel are home for you. ToV is turning out to be many people's "first choice" for 5E, and I suspect that has a lot to do with the fact that it's one of the few 5E versions you can own a complete PDF collection of, with no subscription or website requirement.

This blog, against all odds, is still drawing views. That is surprising, as all I see on most "RPG sites" about ToV is negativity and lukewarm, middling reviews. These come from the first days of the game's release, when people wanted radical changes. But, if you wish to have radical changes, plenty of options already exist: Daggerheart, Draw Steel, Nimble 5e, Cosmere, Dragonbane, and many others in a crowded market.

But if you want a game with perfect backwards compatibility, please let me use my current library; there aren't many options. You are stuck with three: D&D 2024, Level Up A5E, and Tales of the Valiant. Level Up has a few compatibility issues due to numerous changes to the core system, especially in subclass compatibility, so it primarily focuses on "monsters and adventures" compatibility, like Nimble 5e. Tales is the only one of them that achieves near-perfect subclass compatibility, and it works well with most any book you can throw at it.

The game is turning out to be a sleeper hit, and the class designs in here are superior to a lot of the ones in D&D 2024, since they keep the soft "roleplay" powers that D&D 2014 had, where D&D 2024 focused exclusively on map-play for their failed Shard VTT, and they wrote out a lot of those powers from the classes. The ranger is the best example, with the ToV ranger still having abilities used for exploration play.

Yes, you could houserule those into D&D 2024, but I should not have to. What is in the book is in the book, and that is how it plays.

I get the feeling the initial "there is nothing new here" negativity of ToV has worn off, and those looking for a 2014 "Long Term Support" 5E game are coming home to ToV and making it their core system. I have hardcovers, I own my PDFs, and support is excellent, with no fears that the game will be replaced by 6E in a few short years. My 10 years of D&D 2014 books are 100% supported, and will be for the next 10-20 years. We even get regular crowdfunding projects for new books!

Life is good over here on the Blue Team.

We just play, look forward to the next cool thing, and never get caught up in the drama.

The Kobold Press PDF support is enormous, easily eclipsing that of any other 5E variant, and it's all 5E-compatible. There are something like over 2,000 monsters in all the books for this game. We have a complete world and supported campaign setting for Midgard, along with dozens of adventures. Kobold Press has built a "Greyhawk setting" in Midgard, making it one of the best-supported modern campaign settings in the hobby.

If I only have my Kobold Press hardcovers out, the ToV-focused game is still huge. This is easily a Paizo-level of support, and it is good to see. I wish other 5E variants, including the excellent Level Up A5E, had this level of support. Kobold Press is killing it, the art is fantastic, the books are numerous, and the game design is tight and solid.

Yes, Wizards has the Forgotten Realms, but in terms of releasing regular, small-book adventure releases, the Forgotten Realms feels forgotten. At least in Midgard, I can pick up softcover adventures released at a regular rate, and the back catalog is enormous. There are more than enough adventures to have in Midgard, and they are not all "rules add-on books" like they are in D&D. Please, when I buy an adventure, just let it be an adventure and stop adding things to the rules.

Remember these? The TSR-era adventures that never added new subclass options, feats, races, or things to the rules? They were just adventures, and you could buy them without carrying them around to have a complete game. Please go back to these and stop making compilation books for them and watering them down. There were small ones, too, 16-32 pages most of the time, and they were long enough for a few fun sessions of play. Goodman Games knows this, and their short-form adventures are great fun and don't overstay their welcome.

It is nice to have a game and campaign world you can play and forget that anything else outside it exists. The "save versus drama" of Kobold Press and the Blue Team is super high, and I rarely hear anything negative about them. The Red Team of Wizards consistently receives negative coverage on YouTube, which drags down the game.

I wish it were not so! I skip all the harmful drama clickbait on YouTube these days, since I do not have the stomach for it anymore. I am not in this hobby to trash games; I have what I like and what I don't, and I have my reasons. OGL, PDF support, and censorship. Those are why I don't support the Red Team, and I am upfront about them. I don't make new stuff up every week to draw viewers.

Everything else the Red Team does, especially regarding game preservation, is excellent. Well, they could fire fewer people around Christmas, too, but welcome to Wall Street and that corporate "succeed or die" shuffle. I wish I could support them, but right now, I have better games from companies I like to throw my support behind.

And apparently, my readers here are onboard, too.

The game has legs and fans, I will say that.

The Blue Team is here to stay.

Cleaning Up my 5E Library

So, while a lot of what I own for 5E is compatible with Tales of the Valiant, I won't be using it all. So far, I have two crates of 5E books going into storage, and they are primarily in three areas. This is not to say these books are terrible, far from it; all of these are excellent books. I don't have much use for them right now; they will clutter my shelves, and I have similar options inside ToV that I want to focus on.

Character options I no longer need. I have tons of these for 5E, and while I could use them, I really don't want them in a pure ToV-style game. The above book, the Ainorian Companion, is a very cool resource packed with all sorts of race and class options, and it's worth adding to any 5E game. Right now, I have so much in ToV that I don't need "even more," and that is one of my criteria for the paring down of books.

If it duplicates character options I already have in ToV, or presents minor, alternate options I do not want to focus on, I will instead put it in storage and focus on a core set of books. I still have the PDF and can pull from that. Still, this is a great book completly full of fun options.

Is it nice? Yes. Do I need it for my game? Not really.

The Monster Manual Expanded books are fantastic! I love these books, but I already have 2,000+ monsters in the Kobold-verse, so I will put these away and focus on the monsters in the already jam-packed monster books for ToV and Kobold Press. Again, I have the PDFs; I want to focus on what ToV and KP bring to the table before I start pulling in new stuff. This is another one of those "presents more options that I already have" areas, and I am OK with storing them, as well as the original 5E monster manuals.

Yes! All this stuff works with 5E and ToV equally well! But I have too much. I need to seriously pare down my library and just focus on the best of the best. I have a glut of books from the Pandemic Era, and they are choking the fun game hiding inside there.

I have a lot of cool campaign settings for 5E, such as the Roman-themed Arcanis Campaign Setting. I am focusing on Midgard, so I will not need these and can put them into storage. While these fit on the Labyrinth nicely, I have the PDFs if I want to go that route. The campaign settings I want to focus on are in my Kobold-verse collection.

I can focus on these settings later, but I have so much to pare down to my core books and experience. This is a great setting, just not for me at this time. I will return to this one someday, as it looks cool. This is one I could see existing on the Labyrinth easily, given some love and attention.

But, if I have the room after paring my books down, the settings will be the first books to come back, since the Labyrinth is perfect for them. With Wizards-verse of Greyhawk, the Forgotten Realms, Eberron, and Dark Sun? That is staying in the Wizards Multiverse and I am not revisiting them, nor will they be on my version of the Labyrinth. Why? Part of me says, "been there, done that." And another part of me knows these settings are heavy enough they would completely suck the focus of the game towards them and not these other imaginative and cool settings.

Old settings, make way for the new.

Would I want to revisit the 5E version of the Forgotten Realms, or spend that time in Arcanis? The answer is easy, lose the well-worn and tired Realms, and play with the new setting. We need a fresh injection of blood and energy into fantasy gaming, and the Wizards settings feel like bald tires now they have been so overused and made to be modern world fantasy stand-ins. They are not even how I remember them, and it feels like going back to a place you grew up in and discovered they put in a freeway, stadium, HOA community, state prison, industrial park, and Walmart.

The original charm is gone.

I have played in these 30+ years, I am ready for new experiences.

My Labyrinth is home to new worlds and adventures, not the old ones.

It sounds sad, but I am ready to move on, and the Wizards settings do not define fantasy to me anymore. There is no anger or hate in this choice, but a little sadness and bittersweet memories of places that once captured my imagination, but they have not felt fantastical at all in the last 10+ years. They were changed, abandoned, changed again, and they feel like the undead, brought back again for another go-round.

I have some nice add-on books for NPCs, but the NPC stats for ToV are in the Monster Vault 2 book. The ToV ones are more designed for ToV abilities, and while the above book is a great resource, I am not sure I will use it much in favor of the ones I already have. It is a nice-to-have; I am on the fence about it, but I already have NPC stats in ToV, so I am likely to store this.

There is a problem with higher-level D&D NPCs differing in powers and abilities from higher-level ToV characters. While it could be explained away as a "one-off NPC," I like to have the NPCs in the world reflect the core system they run on.

Spectacular Settlements? Here is a book I am keeping in my library. This is a system-neutral book with towns, tables, and descriptions that could easily fit into any world, including Midgard. This saves me work, does not repeat or overrule anything in ToV, and is not rules-incompatible with the game. There are no characters created with 5E, nor does it stat monsters; it is just an excellent book, complete with interesting locations, and this makes any world you add it to better. Highly recommended.

So we have a new criterion for including books: system-neutral tomes that make the world a better place and are time-saving for me. Setting books I want on the Labyrith. And books that enhance my experiences.

Tales of the Valiant as a Solo Game?

Playing 5E solo is actually not that hard. I can solo 5E much easier than a game like Pathfinder 2E, as that game requires each player to be a "master of their class" and know a lot about powers and actions, but that game was more built for groups to play than solo players. It is a far stronger game to play as a group, since if you know your class extremely well, you will shine as a player and be on top of everything. Pathfinder 2 is a lot like high-level World of Warcraft raiding, where you need to specialize and know your class, but the "fun level" is amazingly high with mastery and a group of specialized players.

5E is an easier game, and playing a party of 3-4 with one person is not too bad, even with all the action types the game throws at you. I recommend a good character sheet and online character designer, which, for some 5E variants, can be very tough to find. For Tales of the Valiant, I use the Shard tabletop, and the Tales of the Valiant (they call it Black Flag) character sheet can be printed and converted to a PDF using Windows' "print to PDF" feature.

Shard, as a solo-play system, is also solid if you want to go that route. The VTT is 5E-only, and it has some good features, especially for adding custom 5E content to your games.

While we are talking 5E, Shadowdark is also another strong 5E game for solo play, but today we are focusing on more "full-featured" 5E rulesets.

But why Tales of the Valiant and not D&D 2024? For me, the OGL thing they did still hurts, and while it was a needed break from Wizards-dependence, I dislike how Wizards is tying your digital books to their online service. I disagree with the "digital first" and AI direction that Wizards of the Coast D&D is taking, and I still believe in tabletop over the hydra of online-only or AI-assisted play.

Yes, I know, AI-assisted play is huge when playing solo, but if I use AI, it will be on my AI system of choice, and it is not required to play the game. I have ethical concerns in this area, and I want to be free to choose my own provider. I also want the power to say "this is a no AI game" and play unplugged.

In a few years, Wizards will likely announce "AI games" that will work insanely well and draw everyone in. You won't know if you are playing with real people or AI bots. AI bots will fill out roles in the party. Any NPC can join the party and play as a complete player. I don't want that type of future. While solo play is similar to AI-play, I have control over the solo experience.

Tales of the Valiant is also designed to be a learnable system first, with plenty of ease-of-use tools and summaries on character creation intended to get you playing quickly. I love games designed to teach, and even though I know how to play these games, the ones that still take the time to hold my hand and slowly walk through a rule or system to ensure I'm doing things correctly make me smile. Care shown is care returned.

The Game Master's Guide in Tales of the Valiant is also one of the best in gaming, easily a 10/10 book. This helps immeasurably when playing solo, and it is also an idea generation machine.

Tales of the Valiant uses a player-driven "luck" system instead of D&D's inspiration mechanic, meaning you do not need a referee to drive that part of the game, granting inspiration. Luck works according to a defined set of rules based on missed rolls, and players spend it as needed. This is an ideal solo-play improvement to the game, and it removes a referee dependency.

ToV is a great game, a worthy replacement for D&D 2014, and compatible with all past and current D&D adventures and expansions. This is the game that got me back into 5E, and it has some of the best class and subclass designs in the hobby right now, with soft "roleplaying" powers that preserve the mechanical crunch 5E is known for. It is a great system; you can own your PDFs, and the VTT play options are solid and well-supported.

The Post-5E World

We live in a post-5E world. After the OGL, many people moved on. A considerable group went to Pathfinder, and the rest scattered to the winds, with Shadowdark, Dragonbane, and also previous D&D editions picking up players. Wizards fired many of its core players, while many stayed on, due to social connections or investments; switching games did not make sense, nor did they have the time to. D&D Beyond was also a platform lock-in; people had characters and friends there, and it was too hard to leave for "just a game."

The market is highly fragmented.

A new D&D version did not unite the fanbase, especially with some of the more divisive changes to the core rules, such as "Orc guilt" or "the wheelchair debate," and other nonsense that changed the game and should play upon feelings of nostalgia rather than reflect modern divisiveness. People want to forget this world and be brought into another. Bringing in modern topics and cultural strife breaks immersion. It is like putting Pepsi product placement into a Star Wars movie.

They don't understand the product and are actively undermining the nostalgia it should evoke. These are fundamental concepts in product development and marketing.

D&D still holds the lion's share of players, and it will. Many are holding onto 2014, but the overall player count and interest are down. The D&D YouTube people quitting proves my point, plus YouTube saw the trends and told many of them to stop covering D&D. It isn't hitting as much as it used to, and you can't fight the algorithm.

They won't let you.

Interest is down, many are calling it quits, views are down, and there is a general malaise around the post-pandemic hobby. It could not sustain the explosive growth, and the fad of live-play shows is over unless you are the top one or two, and those that adopted a franchise model with spin-off content, such as animation. They used their "escape velocity" well to launch shows, books, and other content with broader appeal.

But that time where massive audiences tuned in is over, and that "rocket fuel" is gone. Critical Role has achieved orbit and can self-sustain, while many others will not or will keep floundering on the low end. There is no wake to ride anymore, nor coattails to get dragged along upon.

Shadowdark still has excitement. It won't be as big as D&D, but it will do well in its niche, as it crosses the old-school/new-school divide well.

And with rumors of 6E in development, 5E clones like Tale of the Valiant will become more and more needed as the years move on. ToV is positioned to be the "Pathfinder 1e" that preserves 5E, as that game did, for D&D 3.5E. I know D&D 2024 is supposed to do that, but there is no guarantee that 5E won't be discarded for a new team to come in and make their mark on the system, bring it back to the old AD&D system, or whatever happens in the future.

D&D 2024 did not sell well enough to be a sure thing.

Even if D&D 2024 stays around for the next 10 years, I like ToV enough to stick with it. They preserved everything I liked about D&D 2014, and fixed the exploits. Gone is the hackish +10 damage feat, and martials feel better here, especially with the Book of Blades. Tales of the Valiant is like a long-term support version of Linux for me; it isn't the flashy new stuff, but it works, it has essential patches, and it just performs and runs well.

Do I need more? Not really. Just something that works.

D&D 2014 worked. This is a fixed version of 2014. It works.

People staying with D&D are those remaining on Windows 11; they can use what they want, just understand and acknowledge the drawbacks, and be prepared for whatever the parent company sends their way in terms of annoyances and bugs, not owning the PDFs, and eventually dropping support. I get the feeling more computers will "cease Windows 11 support" sooner rather than later, and this will become a rolling phased obsolescence. I don't want D&D Beyond to shut down, and people to lose their books.

I can always install Linux.

I can always choose ToV.

I can avoid all of those problems by choosing a game where I own my PDFs.

And how many monsters has Kobold Press made for 5E? Somewhere around 2,000? This is more than I will ever use, and it is a wealth of creatures, better designs than D&D, and far more variety and fascinating lore behind them. And they are not censoring Orcs, Gnolls, and Goblins out of the monster books? There are many monsters in here that I have never seen. Just in "fresh, new things" that I have never seen before, ToV and the Koboldverse win for me.

That "new stuff" is also a bit of a strike against classic games, such as First and Second Editions. Much of this stuff I saw decades ago, and while going back to it is fun, ultimately, I have done this all before. Even revisiting the Forgotten Realms is pointless; I was there 30 years ago, and we went everywhere. I'm curious whether I am even in the D&D and Wizards market anymore, or if moving on and having new experiences is where I will be happiest.

Tales of the Valiant, with the spells, classes, and monsters, is something new to see.

Excuse me, I need to go pull my hardcovers out of the garage and find a place to put them.

Mail Room: Book of Blades

Martial classes get a lot of love in the new Book of Blades release for ToV. I like this: more options for martial characters, adding battle tactics (an A5E-like system of martial moves), and providing many more subclasses and options for all types of martial characters. This is a short book, at 126 pages, but packed full of options with no space wasted.

I like the battle tactics, and this is a system of training in special moves you can buy into for a talent choice, and then you get to pick a few and use them for a stamina-like pool every short rest. They give you guidelines on creating your own, so if your character has a special "trademark move," you can design it and use it in the game. Like if you wanted Zorro's "Z" sword signature move to have a practical game effect, you could make it a tactic and give it a few rules, balancing it against the others.

While I would have loved to see more tactics, being able to DIY them is just as good, and the book isn't weighed down by a massive list of optional subsystem choices.

There are also rules for warframes, magical armored suits that are an anime-like battlesuit that you can use as an optional add-on, if your campaign takes that flavor. Again, these are fun to see, and I want more, but for a niche item like this, what they give works as a taste, and I can develop my own.

This is a solid update book for the martial classes, filling in some holes while adding new possibilities.

My Frustrations, and Hope for a Better Tomorrow

A lot of my negativity toward 5E stems from the game's death. I feel let down, especially by the OGL, which is where it all started. People have forgotten, but I was watching the other side, an advocate of OGL games, loving people's creativity, and seeing the fantastic things they came up with.

Watching the painful divorce between creators and the OGL left me with a lot of negative feelings about 5E. I have struggled with these feelings, binging and purging the entire game into my garage storage crates, and moving on to other games, yet still seeing the fantastic work companies like Kobold Press have been pouring into sustaining the platform.

I read posts from people and their families who moved to this game exclusively, had fun with it, never looked back, and moved forward with their gaming, trusting Kobold Press. They are having fun here, and it gives me hope.

"My family switched to Tales of the Valiant, and we have been having a lot of fun."

Some do not miss D&D. Others are embracing the new system. The feeling of "there is nothing new in ToV" has passed, and people see the game for what it is supposed to be: an evergreen, eternal continuation of D&D 2014.

This is all some ever wanted, and this is what we have.

Some have merged 2024, ToV, and 2014, taking the best from each. I prefer one system, one character designer (Shard VTT), with one set of books, and keeping the game clean and straightforward. I do not want clutter, packed shelves, confusing hybrids, or lots of junk I will not use. Like Shadowdark, I am a fan of smaller, simpler, easier-to-reference, and fast-playing games.

There was the whole "Black Flag" rebellion around the OGL, but once the Creative Commons SRD dropped, the focus shifted to a definitive D&D 2014 Long-Term Support game. If you like how things were, we cleaned up the game, fixed the exploits, made the game easy to learn, and made improvements in every area. You get given a chance like that, you take it without question. This is what Pathfinder 1e and Paizo did with D&D 3.5E, and look at where they are.

Kobold Press took the highest ground and made D&D 2014 LTS. Someone else would have, and I'm glad this was the outcome, since Kobold Press has the resources to massively support the game.

I still have a few problems with the infinite-cast cantrips, which feel more MMO-like than traditional D&D. Anything that makes magic less mysterious and fantastical weakens the fantasy concept and moves the genre closer to a video game. I can live with it, though, knowing this is supposed to be more like a video game. Modern fantasy is an MMO translated to the tabletop, and it is hard to escape. But, for an MMO translated to the tabletop, Tales is a good version of the concept.

The game is straightforward, cohesive, easy to learn, and offers good options. The options will be better once Player's Guide 2 comes out, which provides more of the player archetypes that people have been looking for. I am glad they did not go overboard in the core Player's Guide, just the basics, and considering 2024 had not been released yet, this was the smart move to "wait and see" for the options the other game would provide, and then make an answer to them later with "product improved" versions of those archetypes.

This is sort of the MO of Kobold Press; they would rather be second with "better versions" of player options than to be first and then caught with inferior designs. They do not want to be "out-designed," and it shows. This is the nature of playing the underdog. You need to react to the big guy; the big guy will purposely design against you, copy your best work, and try to destroy you. You need to have the "wow, this is cool" options and builds. As a result, you will always be late to the party by a book or two, but you will have the best versions and options.

This is a long-term strategy. ToV has to be a game that lasts 10+ years. D&D can release a 6E in three years after D&D 2024 and shrug off abandoning an edition; they are big enough to absorb the cost and write it all off as a loss. The potential gain exceeds the loss at that scale, especially when you factor in updating licensing and online sales of new books.

Look at Disney and the Willow streaming TV show that was made, and then pulled off the air forever and written off as a loss, or the Batgirl movie, which was filmed and destroyed, never to be seen or released. Wall Street companies do this all the time, and they live in crazy-land.

2024 D&D could be discontinued one day for "something better" as a part of a corporate strategy. Tales of the Valiant puts food on the table for the employees of a small company, supports the vast catalog of books they have in their store, and helps them endure and preserve value.

So, I am back, digging through 55 crates of books for my ToV collection and deciding which games go into storage to make room for it.

Mail Room: Monster Vault 2 (PDF)

The one thing I like about Tales of the Valiant is how they are forging an identity apart from D&D and coming up with "their own stuff," including the monsters of the world. Unlike Pathfinder 2E, they did not throw out the classic monsters, so if I still wanted blue dragons and Drow in my ToV games, they are there, supported, and can show up in published adventures.

This is the best of what we had in D&D, minus the licensed product identity, but all the classics I love are still here. One thing I did not like about the Pathfinder 2E remaster was the memory holing of some of my favorites, including entire races from the world lore. I know, the OGL and all, but it felt extreme.

Also, unlike D&D 2024, they did not censor the monster list. Goblins, orcs, gnolls, and all my favorites are still here. The game did not "go stupid" on us, so some editor could prove a point. The game walks a line between newer players and old-school players and manages to please both crowds. I do not mind some of the progressive stuff in here since they do not go out of their way to insult grognards.

Thank you. Respect shown is respect given.

The Monster Vault 2 is a good addition to the game. 5E is easier to play without the books, just running off PDFs. I don't miss the hardcovers; they took up a lot of space, and I ended up ignoring them and using the PDFs anyway. I play ToV more without my hardcovers out, strangely.

We get expanded doom rules, monster bundles, more monster templates, a few hundred monsters, an animals appendix, and an NPC appendix. We also get reference tables in the back for CRs, creature types, tags, and terrains. The book hits all the notes a monster book should, and even increases ease-of-use at the table with its extra charts and tables.

ToV is still the best 5E. It does not go overboard with too many changes like Level Up A5E (I still like this version, it is just tough to play), and it manages to keep complexity down while increasing character options. I wish they had solved the 'nobody dies' problem in 5E, but that is partially mitigated by increased challenge. I can always homebrew or just make rulings, too.

These are great monsters, unlike what we are used to, but they draw inspiration from a fantasy world and don't seem too out of place. There are fun ones in here, too, like a barrel golem and a bunch of other ones with a touch of fantasy whimsy. I like my fantasy world to feel fantastical, and these monsters hit the right spot. Unlike D&D, the worlds in Tales of the Valiant still feel like medieval and Renaissance fantasy, not modern allegories or West Coast cities dressed in Ren Faire costumes.

ToV, after two years, is proving it has staying power, and it still holds up well against a withering-on-the-vine 2024 D&D with a drought of interesting releases and options. Now, we hear discussion of a 6th Edition of D&D, and a possible return to a version of AD&D. 

ToV will still be there when Wizards gives up on 5E to chase nostalgia.

Game on with your version of choice.

Still Playing via PDF

I ran out of shelf space.

So my 5E and ToV hardcovers are in my sealed crates in the garage, and I am sticking to only playing via PDF and Shard tabletop. Part of my 5E problem is that I have too many 5E books, and if I just focus on one game with the core books, I have a lot more fun.

Most of my 5E collection is junk collected during the boom years, and I regret about 70% of it all.

PDFs take little space, and I can still play without "displaying them all" on a most-played shelf. ToV is still far, far better than D&D 2024, which is just a mess at this point with a dead release schedule. I am no longer interested in Baldur's Gate 3 content; it is a 3-year-old game with no expansions and in its waning years. The Forgotten Realms have been wrecked, and I have no idea what this setting is anymore. I played the Forgotten Realms in D&D 2E, and that is my mental version of it.

Nor do I want the unbalanced classes and power creep of D&D 2024. The monk there is OP and broken. ToV made an effort to keep the classes balanced, and it keeps essential things like the ranger's "roleplaying abilities." You know, things that make a difference in narrative play, where D&D 2024 just focuses on the map, and to heck with the roleplaying and exploration.

ToV was crafted by a team that knows their reputation as game designers is on the line. They needed to care and make sure the game worked and wasn't horribly broken. They don't have the luxury of shipping a broken game, and then trusting "people will buy it anyway."

ToV is made by a team that cares, and their entire business depends on ensuring that ToV remains a solid game to fall back on when the inevitable 6E comes out and possibly breaks 5E compatibility. This game needs to work and provide the best 5E experience, should that happen.