#Tales of the Valiant

[theoutcastrogue]

Rogues in fantasy TTRPGs that aren't Dungeons & Dragons

Sometimes it's called Rogue, sometimes it's called Thief. It can be a class, or a template, or a sample build for a classless system. It can be pigeonholed to a couple of roles and specialties, or wide open to interpretations and extensive customisation.

But any self-respecting fantasy game, chock-full as it may be with mighty warriors and powerful wizards, needs a disreputable little shit: the rogue, the thief, the scoundrel, the one who strays. And it's a truly universal archetype. The people in the margins are the salt of the earth, and a setting without them is just… unseasoned.

"The thief gives us a chance to play someone closer to heart, someone who's not strong or possessed of magical talents, someone who has to rely on wit and stealth to survive. Someone, we can imagine, who might very well be just like us. And in being more like us, it's clear that the thief is not just a column of percentile chances to pick locks and disarm traps; she is blessed with as many different skills and appearances as there are crimes to be committed. And that's quite a lot." [x]

So here's a sneak peek at the Thief/Rogue in:

Shadowdark (2023) - gridmark and rules-light dungeoncrawl

Tales of the Valiant (2024) - a D&D 5e variant

Rolemaster Unified (2022) - famously crunchy and customisable

GURPS 4e Dungeon Fantasy (2007) - classic classless system

Ars Magica 5th Edition (2004) - the historically grounded one (in Europe 1200 AD), very customisable

Four Against Darkness (2017) - solo dungeoncrawl

Blades in the Dark (2017) - where everyone's a rogue!

Pathfinder 2e (2024) - a million rules and it's all 3.5's fault

Lankhmar: City of Thieves (2015) - the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser setting, with the Savage Worlds system

[dailyadventureprompts]

Got my hands on tales of the Valiant today (Kobold Press's d&d successor) and while most of it is largely just a better version of 5e (better layouts, some class restructuring, spells codified into 4 lists ala pathfinder) the most interesting mechanical change is their modification to Inspiration

To put it briefly, inspiration has been replaced with luck, which is a stacking resource you get whenever you fail a roll in addition to all the ways you'd normally gain inspiration. You can spend luck to boost rolls on a 1:1 basis, or spend 3 to reroll any d20 you'd roll (so it can't quite cancel out disadvantage). To encourage you to spend Luck any time you have more than 5 , you have to roll a d4 and can only keep that many.

I think it's a very interesting tool to put in player's hands, as for a while I've been considering how to keep forward momentum when the players suffer a run of bad rolls.

I might merge it with some of my other inspiration hacks, such as acting upon your backstory/character concept (inspired by bg3) or engaging with the piety system.

[facelessporcelain]

[ultraflavour]

7 Fantasy RPGs to fill the D&D-shaped Hole in your Life

So. It finally happened. Either Hasbro, or Wizards of the Coast, or someone else associated with Dungeons & Dragons finally did something so fucked-up that you've decided to swear it off entirely.

The problem is that for decades, there has been one obvious answer to the question of "What game with Dwarves, Longswords and Wizards in it should we play" and that was D&D, every time. Even their strongest rival in the past couple of decades was just an older version of D&D with a spit shine.

Now you find yourself adrift in a sea of possibility, with no signposts. There are names you've heard, but you have no idea which ones you'd actually be interested in, because you had always just assumed you'd be playing D&D until the heat death of the universe.

So let's take a look at a few games that want to fill that D&D-shaped hole in your gaming life, and examine what they're offering.

Disclaimer: I'm not covering the entire breadth and depth of the TTRPG industry here. I'm specifically going to be covering Fantasy RPGs that should appeal to D&D fans here. So if I didn't cover your favourite indie RPG, sorry. But there has to be a "First step" outside of the D&D bubble, and each of these games should fulfill that need.

The Other "Kitchen Sink" Game: Pathfinder

If you can't bring yourself to keep playing the corporate game, but you still want something that offers as close to that gameplay experience as you can possibly get, your best bet at the time of this writing is probably Pathfinder 2nd Edition.

I say this as someone who very much did not vibe with the original Pathfinder, or its "D&D in space" sister product Starfinder. But at this point, I'd absolutely tell a newcomer to jump into Pathfinder 2E before I recommended they buy any WotC product.

To their credit, the 2nd Edition of Pathfinder does much more to, uh, find its own path by diverging from 3.5 edition and implementing new systems that take it into uncharted territory. The "Two Actions Per Turn" paradigm is often cited by its proponents as being a meaningful improvement over the 5E way of doing things.

The "TTJRPG": Fabula Ultima

One of the biggest success stories of the early 20's was Fabula Ultima from NEED Games in Italy. It came seemingly out of nowhere to win the ENnie Gold Award for Best Game of 2023. Since then it's become notoriously difficult to find in print, though it's still freely available as a PDF.

Fabula Ultima is a "TTJRPG," modelled after Japanese fantasy video games like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Phantasy Star, Breath of Fire, etc. While it's firmly planted in the Fantasy genre, its gameplay will also very recognizable to fans of those types of games.

The major benefit of this conceit is that you can probably already picture how combat in FabUlt works in your mind: Two rows of characters take turns jumping and slashing at each other, or casting magical spells to harm, heal, or apply status conditions. There's no concept of "Spacing," but the game still manages to be mechanically intricate with lots of varied class abilities and status effects to apply.

D&D refugees looking for a game where you simply pick a class and fight some monsters, but aren't too particular about how they do that, will find a lot to love here. FabUlt leans much more heavily on storytelling mechanics than D&D does, so players who've been looking for something a bit more "Theater of the Mind" should be well taken care of here.

Final Fantasy Lancer: ICON

Like Fabula Ultima, ICON is a TTRPG that takes heavy inspiration from JRPGs, specifically tactical games like Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre. It's from Massif Press, who also authored the surprise indie Mech combat hit Lancer.

And like Lancer, ICON is a game with two very distinct rulesets: Outside of combat, a "Fiction-first" narrative system inspired heavily by Blades in the Dark; In combat, a grid-based tactical skirmish game reminiscent of D&D 4th Edition. All backed by the gorgeous art of its author Tom Parkinson-Morgan, who also writes and illustrates the comic Kill Six Billion Demons.

ICON separates its "narrative" class system from its combat class system, giving each character two distinct character sheets that come into play at different times. Because those two systems don't have to cross over very much, each can be as intricate or as rules-light as it needs to be to promote the type of gameplay most appropriate for the situation.

The Old-School Gateway Drug: Shadowdark

If you ever took a few steps outside of the walled garden that is D&D in the past few years, you will likely have read or heard of the OSR, or "Old-School Revival/Renaissance." Proponents of the OSR are players who yearn for an older style of Dungeon Crawling Survival Horror game that hearkens back to the early days of D&D, before the players became akin to superheroes.

Shadowdark aims to be a game that bridges the gap to that style of gameplay, without being totally unfamiliar to players who only ever learned 5th Edition mechanics. It's "Old-School gaming, modernized."

Aside from simply being a modern take on a D20 fantasy game, it freshens up gameplay using a mechanic called the "Torch Timer." It turns light into a resource that dwindles in real time. This serves to elevate the tension of the game as every minute that passes is one less minute of light on your torch. And when the torches run out, well... You can probably guess what happens next.

5th Edition with the Serial Numbers Filed Off: Tales of the Valiant

Tell me if you've heard this one before: Wizards of the Coast introduces sweeping changes to its "Open" license model, leading existing 3rd-party content creators to create their own version of an older ruleset to protect the viability of their backlog. It happened in the past, but what are the chances that happens a second time? Ha!

Well... It did happen again. This time, playing the role of the "Paizo" in this scenario is Kobold Press, who loudly declared that they were "Raising the Black Flag" in response. In order to ensure that there would always be a "Core Fantasy" ruleset that would remain compatible with their content, they announced Tales of the Valiant, which would essentially duplicate the 5th Edition ruleset with a bit of a spit shine, in much the same way that Pathfinder did for 3.5 Edition.

Tales of the Valiant will be the game for the D&D player who just wanted a rules refresh of 5th Edition, but also doesn't want to keep throwing money at the corporate hegemony. It should end up being "The 5E you can feel good about supporting," and that matters right now.

Matt Colville's Big Bet: The MCDM RPG

Kobold Press was not the only publisher of third-party D&D content to have a strong reaction to the OGL fiasco. Unlike Tales of the Valiant however, Matt Colville's response was to announce a fully new Fantasy RPG system, with no expectation of backwards compatibility with any edition of D&D.

MCDM's sights are firmly set on the "Post-Kitchen-Sink" future, and to that end their game is explicitly not trying to be the one game for every possible playstyle. It's Tactical, meaning you'll need a grid to play it on, and it's Heroic, meaning characters should feel powerful, and not like they're constantly one critical hit or failed trap-sensing check away from being decapitated.

This approach might seem like a massive risk considering how insanely powerful 5th Edition became at its peak. But a record-breaking crowdfunding campaign backed by over 30,000 people shows that there is at least an appetite for something new, and that there is a like-minded community of players ready and waiting to join you.

The Critical Role Game: Daggerheart

If the Kobold Press announcement was a shot across the bow, and the MCDM crowdfunder was a bomb dropped, then Daggerheart is a full-blown asteroid, streaking straight towards Wizards of the Coast HQ.

Daggerheart is an original Fantasy RPG from Darrington Press, the publishing arm of the Critical Role media company. That by itself should mean something considering how important CR is to the D&D brand, but there's more to talk about here. Though it superficially resembles D&D in a lot of ways, it has some extremely important differences. Namely, its use of "Powered by the Apocalypse" mechanics such as "Fail Forward" dice rolling and "No Initiative" combat.

While "PbtA" has become somewhat of a loaded term in the D&D community, Critical Role has an opportunity to overcome that stigma with the sheer force of their platform. I've made this case already in the past, but if they were to use their power to do for themselves what they did for 5th Edition, it would be the most significant threat to the Hasbro Hegemony to emerge since Pathfinder. Let alone taking just a slice, Daggerheart has the long-term potential to take the whole damn pie.

And more!

The games I've listed here are all theoretically capable of replacing the Corpo game as your "go-to" long-term game. Not all of them are fully playable as of this writing, but they all represent one possible future for the "Sword and Sorcery" RPG genre.

There are of course a whole plethora of other games out there beyond the limited scope of "Medieval Fantasy" that are just as valid and just as viable, if you're feeling a bit more adventurous.

If you're looking for something explicitly tactical like a miniature skirmish game, but still in the RPG genre, and you're willing to expand your choice of genre beyond Euro-centric Medieval Fantasy even further beyond ICON, you might be interested in Gubat Banwa or the aforementioned Lancer.

If you want a game that promotes a slightly more streamlined, less mechanically-intricate approach to combat while still giving you tons of monsters to kick the shit out of, you might want to check out the "Illuminated by LUMEN" family of games inspired by the games LIGHT and NOVA from Gila RPGs. It might even inspire you to write your own RPG!

If you're more interested in the Old-School Renaissance, you might want to check out Forbidden Lands, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Old-School Essentials, or MÖRK BORG.

If you like the idea of "Old-School Roleplaying" but are also willing to step outside of the fantasy genre into Sci-fi territory, you might be interested in Stars Without Number, its Cyberpunk sister product Cities Without Number, or Mothership.

Finally, if you just want a game that focuses on telling the best story rather than mindlessly killing monsters and acquiring loot, you might want to check out Blades in the Dark, Thirsty Sword Lesbians, Girl by Moonlight, Coyote and Crow, and many more Fiction-First games in the Powered by the Apocalypse and Forged in the Dark genres.

But most importantly: Just play more games! Don't just buy them, play them! The point of this whole exercise is to replace the monopoly with a plurality, for the sake of the health of the tabletop gaming industry.

Because the next time Hasbro lays off a bunch of WotC employees, there should be a much stronger, more diverse industry for them to land in feet-first. We should all want for the people who build the games we love to feel safe in their career choice. Not just for the sake of the ones who are already there, but for future prospective designers and artists who want to make their mark.

It should be viable to be a tabletop game designer outside of just making more D&D stuff forever, because as we've seen, it's not safe to assume that we can all just keep doing the same thing we've been doing and not get bit on the ass by it.

If we want that future, we have to take it into our own hands and build it ourselves. But if there's one group of people that knows about building something very big from very little, it's TTRPG players.

[infinitemachine]

Post-OGL Debacle D&D 5e Alternatives Round Up

After Wizards of the Coast screwed the pooch by trying to rescind the OGL several designers, youtubers, and TTRPG streamers decided to make their own D&D-adjacent games. Let's have a look at them! (These are not reviews, and I have not played or read many of these. Just an overview of the field for future reference. Please let me know if I've skipped any entries I should have included.)

Tales of the Valiant by Kobold Press is to D&D 5e as Pathfinder 1e was to D&D 3.5. It's basically the same experience as D&D, updated and tweaked, but recognizably still the same game. Like Paizo back in the day, Kobold Press is a highly rated third party D&D publisher, and this has a good chance of getting continued development and support. If you like 2014 5e but want some quality of life updates and don't want to support Wizards of the Coast, this is a great option for you. On the other hand, if you have the 2014 5e books and just want to keep playing them...no one's stopping you, and this may feel redundant. It's already available.

Draw Steel by MCDM is the RPG from Matthew Colville's company, announced very quickly after the OGL dooblydoo. This is not a 5e or D&D clone, but a new cinematic heroic fantasy RPG. While D&D is kind of locked into supporting several different directions and styles, Draw Steel purposefully eschews "zero-to-hero" character development and dungeon crawling. The characters start as powerful, competent heroes. If that's the style of play you want, this could be a good option! If you're interested in a steeper leveling experience or OSR rat-catching, maybe it's not the one? Draw Steel is still in development.

Daggerheart by Darrington Press is Critical Role's long-form fantasy RPG. Like Draw Steel, it is not a 5e clone, but an entirely new fantasy RPG system. Unlike Draw Steel (from what I've seen, correct me if I'm wrong) Daggerheart does not appear to require/support tactical miniature combat, so if that's your jam in D&D (and, honestly it kind of *is* for me) this may not scratch that itch. I wasn't really impressed with Candela Obscura, Darrington Press' previous RPG, but I'm still willing to give this a fair look when it's finished (if only to understand what's going on when the Critical Role team inevitably play it on stream). Daggerheart is still in development.

DC20 by The Dungeon Coach. Of the RPGs on this list this probably has my least favorite title, if only because it's based on a pun which itself requires knowledge of D&D mechanics to understand. I've heard the rules described as "5e and Pathfinder 2e's lovechild". The game itself seems to be a collection of often interesting homebrew rules; it's as if the author looked at each part of D&D, took it out, thought of something they liked better (maybe from PF2?), and replaced it with that. That means it could be a good game to try if you like D&D but want something a bit "more", or could be good resource for homebrew ideas to plug into your own "actual D&D" game. Available now.

Nimble by Nimble Co, like DC20, is an attempt to take the 5e rules and improve and streamline them, in a fairly modular way that would be easy to cross-pollinate into existing D&D games (according to the KS page, it's fully compatible with existing 5e adventure modules, monster books, and supplements). This one does seem a little more polished than DC20, at least in terms of production values. But ultimately, like DC20, whether you want to play the game as-is or how helpful as a resource it will be will depend on how much you like the adjustments to base-5e that they've made -- YMMV. Still in development.

Vagabond by Land of the Blind is an RPG by youtuber Indestructoboy (aka Taron Pounds). It appears to be more generally "D&D"-like rather than specifically 5e-like, if that makes sense. As such, it does advertise some compatibility with previous D&D editions, as well some more modern rules design ideas cross-pollinated from elsewhere (e.g., the monsters don't roll for attacks!). Like both DC20 and especially Nimble, it boasts a streamlined experience, particularly during combat. It's still in development.

[heres-someart]

Chapter 1: The Train

ID under cut. Click for better detail. Reblogs > Likes

This TTRPG campaign can be watched on Forrest Valkai's YouTube channel and is a fundraiser for Doctors Without Borders

ID: A digital drawing of a train car filled with 6 people and a dog. In the back right is Gwen Copperplate, a white woman with brown hair, glasses, a purple vest, and a cool grey shirt. She leans forward, resting her face on her hands, as she looks towards a dog. Opposite her is Dr. Victor Vindeca, a white man with dark brown hair and a green suit. He is looking through a duffel bag. Next to him sits Eloise van der Graff, a yellow tiefling with bright orange hair. She wears white flowing robes which barely cover her. Opposite her sits Ritha Janis, a black person with curly blonde hair, a dark grey stripped suit jacket, a white shirt, a red ascot, and red pants. Between Ritha and Eloise stands a dark grey dog with white feet which looks up at Gwen. Next to Ritha sits Azad, an arab man with brown hair and a curly mustache who is wearing a blue and orange turban, blue robes, and orange clothes underneath that. He wears a lot of jewelry. Across from him sits Kirke Counterfire, a gold dragonborne woman with dark hair who has gauged ears, a red skirt, a red corset, and a brown shirt which has a mix of mesh and opaque materials. End ID

[polycraftory]

We are back with this week's book haul! This is everything we got between 9/24/24 - 9/30/24.

Tuna (our littol cat friend) is shocked! Shocked!!! at what a good deal we were able to get on the full series of Solo Leveling. It was too good a deal to pass up (even this close to NYCC when we are trying to save money😅)! We also snagged @rainbowcrate's edition of Infinity Alchemist by Kacen Callender, which is another book with polyamory rep to add to our collection!

It was the best sort of surprise when my very first Rosemei danmei novel: You're Too OP! by Yi Xiu Luo arrived from Yiggybean (Rosemei's US distributor) this week. I am really working to expand our danmei collection beyond what Seven Seas is translating.

Also!!! TWO whole Kickstarters that I backed came in this week: Many Hands, a polyamory erotica anthology, by @duckprintspress and the Game Master's Guide for the Tales of the Valiant TTRPG by Kobold Press.

We are really in the depths of con crunch in this last few weeks before NYCC, but we are still trying to make time to read so wish us luck!

[rpgsandbox]

The 10 Most Anticipated TTRPGs For 2024!

EN World's annual vote on the most anticipated titles of the coming year, and yes, some games have appeared on this list in previous years.

10 Tales of the Valiant (Kobold Press)

1st appearance Kobold Press joins the 'alternate 5E' club with this rewritten, non-OGL version of the game! A million dollar Kickstarter last year, and a new one for the GM's book going on right now, Kobold Press announced this as 'Project Black Flag' during the OGL crisis of 2023, but being unable to trademark that name opted for Tales of the Valiant instead. The system, however, is still called the Black Flag Roleplaying System.

9. Mothership 1E (Tuesday Night Games)

3rd appearance On this list three years running, the boxed Mothership 1E game should be coming out this year! This is sci-fi horror at its best -- you can play scientists, teamsters, androids, and marines using the d100 'Panic Engine'. Yep, it's Alien(s), pretty much.

8. Monty Python's Cocurricular Mediaeval Reenactment Program (Exalted Funeral)

2nd Appearance Exalted Funeral made quite a splash when they announced this game last year, which went on to make neary $2M on Kickstarter. And how could they not? It's Monty Python fergoodnessake! A rules-lite gaming system, spam, a minigame with catapults, spam, coconut dice rollers, spam, and an irrepressible Python-eque sense of humour. Did I mention the spam? It was at #10 on this list last year, but it's claimed to #8 this year.

7. Daggerheart (Darrington Press)

1st appearance From the Critical Role folks, Daggerheart is a new fantasy TTRPG with its own original system coming out this year with "A fresh take on fantasy RPGs, designed for long-term campaign play and rich character progression."

6. Cohors Cthulhu (Modiphius)

1st appearance It's Ancient Rome. It's Cthulhu. It uses Modiphius' in-house 2d20 System. You can be a gladiator, a centurion, or a Germanic hero. Did I mention Cthulhu?

5. Dolmenwood (Necrotic Gnome)

1st appearance The British Isles, a ton of folklore, and a giant Kickstarter--Dolmenwood is a dark, whimsical fantasy TTRPG drawing from fairy tales and lets you "journey through tangled woods and mossy bowers, forage for magical mushrooms and herbs, discover rune-carved standing stones and hidden fairy roads, venture into fungal grottoes and forsaken ruins, battle oozing monstrosities, haggle with goblin merchants, and drink tea with fairies."

4. Pendragon 6E (Chaosium)

4th appearance Last year's winner was on this list waaaaay back in 425 AD, and it's still here! Well, maybe not that far back, but it's shown up in 2021 at #4, 2022 at #3, 2023 at #1, and now 2024 at #4! What can we say? People are clearly anticipating it... still.

3. 13th Age 2nd Edition (Pelgrane Press)

2nd appearance 13th Age is over a decade old now, and was our most anticipated game way back in 2013. Now the new edition is coming! It's compatible with the original, but revised and with a ton more... stuff! 13th Age 2E was #3 in last year's list!

2. The Electric State Roleplaying Game (Free League)

1st appearance Free League is always on these lists, and for good reason. This gorgeous looking game is described as "A road trip on the verge of reality in visual artist and author Simon Stålenhag's vision of an apocalyptic alternate 1990s".

1. Shadow of the Weird Wizard (Schwalb Entertainment)

3rd appearance First announced by Rob Schwalb a couple of years ago, this is a more family-friendly version of his acclaimed RPG, Shadow of the Demon Lord. SHADOW OF THE WEIRD WIZARD is a fantasy roleplaying game in which you and your friends assume the roles of characters who explore the borderlands and make them safe for the refugees escaping the doom that has befallen the old country. Unsafe are these lands: the Weird Wizard released monsters to roam the countryside, cruel faeries haunt the shadows, undead drag themselves free from their tombs, and old, ancient evils stir once more. If the displaced people would rebuild their lives, they need heroes to protect them. Finally at the top of the list after being #7 in 2022, and #6 in 2023!

[birthdayhatsonoctopi]

Only serving the finest Character On White Background. Uh this time they're not an oc, though! This is Ritha Janis from Roll for Initiagive's The Apron Strings campaign!! And i love them. I drew this during the last hour of the livestream on yt today, so that's why this is a bit rushed and sketchy. I'll try to make something each time i can make it to the livestream ^^

[theoutcastrogue]

A very useful list for DMs who just want an actual price for magic items (you can always adjust it depending on circumstances), instead of a uselessly wide range like in 5e ("very rare" items are from 5,001 to 50,000 gp, just pick something!), or a uselessly flat price by rarity like in 5.5 (all prices are 100 gp or 400 or 4,000 or 40,000 or 200,000. nothing in between!)

You can also check out prices in the 5e-compatible / variants Tales of the Valiant: Player's Guide, and Level Up: Trials and Treasures.

[filipfatalattractionrblog]

Okay, this picture is ridiculously funny

"Nobody told me zombie fungus from Last of Us will be attending Mushroom Convention!"

[dailyadventureprompts]

Another Tales of the Valiant note: backgrounds just straight out give you a feat (called a talent). I think this is a notable improvement over the default "backgorund feature" which was always more of a stopgap to get newer players to roleplay.

Feats at 1st level have been a thing forever, but plugging them into backgrounds is a delicious way of making that powerboost specifically tie into the character.

They've also replaced the class specific bonds/ideals/flaws with Adventuring Motivation which serves much the same purpose if being more specific to creating a character who's going on an adventure.

[facelessporcelain]

[golddragontales]

My first module is out now, set up as pay-what-you-want! Feel free to give it a try and let me know how it goes! I look forward to hearing some fun stories of DnD shenanigans. Planning to release a Pathfinder compatibility module soon. Up Next: Seven Deadly Sins!

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

Tales of the Valiant Cover Art by Hugh Pindur (Pindurski)