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!

 

[Weiley31]

They are showing a playtest witch now.

KOBOLD CHATS | DEEP MAGIC | BLACK FLAG with our Senior Designer CELESTE ... @koboldpress #ttrpg #pbf #dnd #opendnd

From what I saw of the Witch playtest page in the clip: it seems like the Witch's (my guess) Hex is pretty much a Bardic Inspiration die that, instead of applying it to your party, you use it to debuff the opposition.

And since the Bard has a trimmed Arcane Spell List, then the Witch will follow suit, but have a trimmed version of the Druid's Spell List.

 

[demoss]

[...] about Polyglot. I feel that [...] gaining advantage on Charisma checks made with non-hostile creatures as long as you can speak their primary language, is a little too niche [...]

He seems to think it's amazing, and feels that any face character would want it, almost as an automatic pick.

Depends on the game. Romping through dungeons killing things? Useless. Urban adventures or mixing with nobility? Amazing.

 

[Jaeger]

This is like blood from a stone...

Project Black Flag Friday: Design Diary #1

There are lots of questions about Project Black Flag, so we asked our Senior Game Designer, Celeste Conowitch, to give us answers in a new design diary.

koboldpress.com

You heard me. We’re changing stuff that needs to be changed, and doing it in a way that respects your current 5E library and keeps it useful. That’s what we mean when we say the mystic words backward compatible.

Our goal is to change stuff and then give you clear instructions to help you keep using your current 5E material that might no longer be a perfect fit with the (well-needed) changes.

This tells me nothing.

They need to Define exactly what they mean by: Backward Compatible.

Does it mean everything will be fully backwards compatible? Including additional rules crunch like subclasses, Spells, and feats?
Does it mean just adventures, and monster stats?
Does it mean something in-between? Spell. It. Out.

Which one? Because that decision will impact how much you can really fix and adjust systematically to fix some of 5e's known issues.

● Talents are not an optional rule. They are a core part of the game (this was not true of 5E).

At face value; this adds complication to the game.

Or are subclasses going to be adjusted to account for this? Subclasses are basically curated feat trees. Adding more feats on top of that will add more fiddly ability tracking for players.

"That’s awesome! We want to give it all to you right now! But we can’t. We have to be sad, just like you, and roll it out in bite-sized playtest pieces. "

We don't need "everything"

What we do need:
Character creation for humans and 1 or 2 alt races.
A short list of backgrounds and talents.
Combat rules.
Short list of spells - levels 1-3.
2-3 playable classes with short list of subclasses.

We need enough to see how all these parts will work together. i.e. A truncated Alpha build.

Rolling out "bit-sized" chunks is a PR preview, not a playtest.

 

[James Gasik]

Depends on the game. Romping through dungeons killing things? Useless. Urban adventures or mixing with nobility? Amazing.

This is pretty much the crux of the matter, I'm thinking of the usual kinds of adventures I've gone on in D&D. But yes, if the campaign is based around urban areas where one race is especially prevalent, this talent could be very powerful.

But I'm comparing it to combat-relevant Talents that are sure to come up (being attacked is part of the game) and the high chances of encountering hostile NPC's (and ones whose primary language you don't speak).

4e had this exact same problem; there were plenty of non-combat Feats and utility powers, but they wouldn't be taken often, because getting into combat was something you could count on, having a bonus to certain kinds of Skill Challenges somewhat less so.

 

[Eubani]

I was thoroughly unimpressed by the first playtest packet. It was full of typos and bad grammar. The balance was all over the shop talents and heritages being either ribbons or OP creating a lot of mechanics that are auto choose or never choose. Also 80%+ of the document had no need to be in a playtest doc. I expect better from Kobolds and if they want me to play their game they will have to do a lot better than this.

 

[Garthanos]

The number 1 goal appears to be backward compatibility. If you don't want 5e+, then this isn't for you.
Simpler, more balanced, more tools for GMs (not just combat).

hmmm the ability to run 2 concentration spells at once sounds the opposite of balanced but depends on other things with it I suppose.

Cool spellcasting (I wish this meant REAL things, like spell points or I'm not sure what. I've played DnD so long, how could they make it seem magical again, not just another thing in the world?).

Nods magic has since the beginning of D&D sort of been uber reliable like a well established science (or engineering on a not actually complex thing) ... not artistic or creative sigh.

 

[Garthanos]

This is pretty much the crux of the matter, I'm thinking of the usual kinds of adventures I've gone on in D&D. But yes, if the campaign is based around urban areas where one race is especially prevalent, this talent could be very powerful.

But I'm comparing it to combat-relevant Talents that are sure to come up (being attacked is part of the game) and the high chances of encountering hostile NPC's (and ones whose primary language you don't speak).

4e had this exact same problem; there were plenty of non-combat Feats and utility powers, but they wouldn't be taken often, because getting into combat was something you could count on, having a bonus to certain kinds of Skill Challenges somewhat less so.

Pathfinders separation of feats into different types and costing different design/development resources for the character is what I would have considered an enhancement for 4e.

 

[Weiley31]

I can't really offer much advice cuz, I will admit along with everybody else, that the packet is a bit lite.

But I am looking forward to seeing how everything will eventually play out.

The only real thing that sticks out to me is Armored Combatant Talent. It requires Heavy Armor proficiency, but doesn't state if the benefits apply to light/medium as well as Heavy Armor or if it is just a bone tossed to heavy armor users. So that was like my major playtest response for this packet.

Lineage/Heritage to me is just Race/Subrace by any other name to me. So how it goes is however it goes.

 

[Parmandur]

Lineage/Heritage to me is just Race/Subrace by any other name to me. So how it goes is however it goes.

Well, they did several interesting things, though, particularly comparison with OneD&D Species:

- First, unlike 2014 Core, the power budget of the Libeage and Heritage are standardized: in traditional D&D, the power budget between Race and Subrace varies from Race to Race: sime don't even get Subraces, but others (Elf & Dwarf) have different cut-off points. Standardizing the budget allows for mixing and matching, which is not at all feasible in 5E. OneD&D also standardized the format, by eliminating the Subrace dial entirely (though some Species have choices that grant slightly different packages).

- Secondly, they upped the power budget of the whole package compared to 5E. A Stone Dwarf in Black Flag has straight up more stuff than a Moumtain Dwarf in 5E, which they acknowledge in the packet. Not a humongous deal, though it is somewhat of a barrier to backwards compatibility (compared to OneD&D maintaining the same power budget as 2014).

 

[Marc Radle]

Worth a listen

Sly Flourish – The Lazy Dungeon Master
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIrd9yEeGlY
16:35 Kobold Press Black Flag Playtest 1