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.
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