Black Flag So What's In Kobold Press' BLACK FLAG First Playtest?

Black Flag, the codename for Kobold Press' new open TTRPG, announced during the height of the recent OGL controversy as an open alternative to 5E, has put out the first playtest packet. It's 12-page document of character creation rules. So what's inside?

The introduction summarises character creation, defining 5E concepts like level, hit dice, and so on. It introduces the game as being backward-compatible with 5E.

Black Flag -- like Level Up: Advanced 5E, and Ancestry & Culture--divides the 5E concept of 'race' and 'subrace' into inherited and cultural elements. Black Flag goes with the terms Lineage and Heritage.

It goes on to present the Dwarf, Elf, and Human, along with a choice of two heritage traits for each--the heritage traits for dwarf, for example, are Fireforge and Stone. Elves get Cloud and Grove, while humans get Nomadic and Cosmopolitan. You can choose any heritage for your lineage, though. These are analogous to 5E's 'subraces', although the inherited/learned elements are separated out -- Cloud Elves are a lot like High Elves, and Grove Elves are a lot like Wood Elves, for example.

Following that are two backgrounds -- Scholar, and Soldier. They each give the usual array of proficiencies plus a 'talent'.

Magic, martial, and technical talents are essentially feats. You get a talent from your background, and can substitute an ability score increase for one.

The playtest feels to me much like a 5E written in their own words, but with 5E's 'race/subrace' structure replaced with 'lineage/heritage', the biggest thing being that the heritage (what was subrace in 5E) is cultural.

As a disclaimer, I do of course publish Level Up: Advanced 5E, which shares the exact same goal as Kobold Press' project (BTW, check out the new A5ESRD site!) It will be interesting to see how the approaches diverge; while both are backward-compatible, they already have different ways to handle what 5E calls race -- Level Up has you choose a heritage (your inherited species, basically), and any of 30+ cultures (learned stuff from where you grew up). Black Flag goes with lineage (again, your inherited species), and a choice of heritages for each lineage. And the bestselling 5E book Ancestry & Culture on DTRPG, uses those terms -- so there's plenty of options to choose your heritage/culture, lineage/heritage, or ancestry/culture!

Whatever happens, the future certainly contains a choice of open 5E alternatives!

 

[darjr]

40+ thousand people downloaded the playtest.

 

[Elodan]

I was a little underwhelmed by the first packet for [Core Fantasy Roleplaying], hereafter known as PBF.

I think we could provide even more useful feedback if we had some idea about things such as:
- What are the design goals for PBF]?
- Why would i want to buy the PBF books vs keep using my 5E ones or going to OneD&D / 6E?
- The packet doesn’t include the basics. Will they be the same as 5E or will PBF make changes such as, a 20 always succeeds on a d20 check / save / attack and a 1 always fails; or make Dex less of a super statistic.
- Will talents have level or other prerequisites?

I do love separating Lineage / Heritage. Renaming feats to talents and adding them to backgrounds.

Wouldn’t mind seeing initial ability score adjustments added to backgrounds with the option of using the flat +2 / +1 instead.

Keep alignment, but move it out of the lineage descriptions. Make it another aspect of your character’s personality. Your general attitude toward laws and morality. More like quirks and flaws.

Bring back low-light vision. Too many lineages have darkvision.

For reference, as a veteran of the 1E / 2E switch, my definition of backwards compatibility is if I can use 5E adventures, monsters, and most supplements with PBF.

Still need to read more. This is my initial reaction and will all be included in my survey results.

I look forward to more about PBF from the Kobolds. Still excited about this project.

 

[EthanSental]

40+ thousand people downloaded the playtest.

Not that I’m doubting the number but it’s 4x it’s higher than their best Kickstarter by backers….which means free gets more download than having to pay

 

[Garthanos]

@Marc Radle

If every movement rate is species-specific and static (all humans move 30 ft. for example) it's a bit dull imo, when movement should be exciting and even unpredictable! Look at chases, races, escapes, pursuits, even trying to outrun that honking great big boulder trap in flicks! As it stands, it's basically just boringly mathematical: You move X distance, They move Y distance, after Z rounds you have moved away/they have gained, etc. Great for play on the likes of battlemats, but not exciting at all. We roll for the excitement of combat and I posit that we should roll for the excitement of movement too.

I've submitted my feedback, but in brief here's what I do:

Speed 30 ft. is the baseline, which I represent as "+0".
Every 5 ft. above/below this is a +1/-1 modifier, so Speed 40 ft. would be "+2".
The GM sets a number of rounds for a race/chase to occur over, and everyone involved rolls d20 + Speed modifier each round, with successes indicating gaining/moving further away, failures indicating cinematic stumbles/trips/brief collisions with items in the environment, etc. that cause you to lose ground.
Characters can take actions during their chases/escapes that might force others involved to make appropriate rolls, such as toppling a merchant's stall to force a pursuer to make a Dex-related Save to avoid losing ground that round.

I'd love to see those old static movement rates presented like "Speed: 30 ft. (+0)". to facilitate this approach for TotM play and more exciting movement. It's also useful because a) it's really easy to convert from 5e, b) it takes up little extra space, and c) it means you can optionally modify the speed/movement rate using DEX or CON as needed (for short sprints/long distance runs) and this nixes the idea that Stumpy Roland, Cleric, can leg it as quickly as Rolanda the Lean, Rogue.

The skill challenge is rather this in abstract... you could have bursts of speed for athletics and sustaining for endurance and acrobatics for navigating obstacles and streetwise for city based shortcuts and so on... open ended of course.

 

[Garthanos]

I was just reflecting earlier on how the D&D Next playtests went. Not only did their packets have full character creation rules (if only up to certain levels, and only providing certain options), but they also included one or more adventures to run test games with. That makes playtesting much more convenient...

It was an actual playtest in appearance the current setup does not even seem like one.

 

[Marc Radle]

Excellent Kobold Chat with Celeste Conowitch, Senior Game Designer
http://twitch.tv/KoboldPress

Discussion includes the Deep Magic 2 Kickstarter, ending in 2 days (which as of today is the most successful Kickstarter in Kobold Press history) and takes a look at the brand new Witch and Theurge base classes AND Project Black Flag, its design philosophy, and the Black Flag Playtest!

Well worth checking out!

 

[Weiley31]

Witch with Combat Conditioning. WOOT!

 

[Parmandur]

SO One D&D should be a system that would work for you, mechanically, since there are fundamental mechanical changes made to the classes, but it's "backwards compatible" in terms of monsters, lore, adventures, magic items, etc. with just potentially a bit of rebalancing needed (acknowledging that 5E isn't necessarily a balanced system in the first place).

Well, OneD&D is maintaining Subclass compatibility, too, as can be seen in the packets so far. From what I can see, both Black Flag and OneD&D are about on the same plane there.

 

[Remathilis]

Excellent Kobold Chat with Celeste Conowitch, Senior Game Designer
http://twitch.tv/KoboldPress

Discussion includes the Deep Magic 2 Kickstarter, ending in 2 days (which as of today is the most successful Kickstarter in Kobold Press history) and takes a look at the brand new Witch and Theurge base classes AND Project Black Flag, its design philosophy, and the Black Flag Playtest!

Well worth checking out!

Now you have my attention. I look forward to the new classes like witch and theurge.

 

[Zaukrie]

Now you have my attention. I look forward to the new classes like witch and theurge.

I assume you can get a preview of the witch on the KS page....IIRC.