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.