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!

 

[Morrus]

So far, I'm not seeing anything too much to set it apart from WotC's 5E. I know that's the point about making a compatible product, but at this stage, it's in the Creative Commons.
Let's go bold. Let's do something really unique.
The market doesn't need 5E with the serial numbers scratched out.

There's lots of bold, unique games out there. Thousands!

 

[MNblockhead]

On one hand I get the need to see something beyond vanilla fantasy. On the other hand, going too bold defeats the goal of the project, which is to appeal to a wide a set of customers as possible.

Yeah, but if all that comes out of the OGL fiasco is a bunch of vanilla clones, not sure there is a lot of reason to switch.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Given how 5E has abandoned almost all of the simulation based gameplay elements, it seems weird it still make light and vision as complex as it is -- especially since most people play it like darkvision means "can see perfectly in the dark."

I'd love for one of these games to go the other way, and have twilight and night vision, which each impact your vision without any fiddly radius of effect. That is, twilight vision makes it so you treat darkness as dim light, and in dim light you can see clearly. Night vision means you can see normally in darkness as long as there is literally any light within your field of vision, but are still blind in total darkness. Only magical vision allows sight in total darkness, but there are things like tremorsense and echolocation, which work differently and have their own drawbacks, but do allow for things like cats being able to feel the shape and dimensions of a space and objects within it even when they can't see (with a better name than whisker-sense lol), and some water creatures to see underwater via sonar or electrolocation like a platypus, etc.

But 90 percent of PCs would have twilight or night vision, starting out.

Great feedback! Please remember that Kobold Press isn't officially monitoring these threads for playtest feedback

Be sure to submit feedback via the playtest feedback form:
https://koboldpress.com/project-black-flag-playtest-packet-1-feedback/

What about questions? Is there a better place than here to ask questions? For instance, I'm looking at the talents and wondering if wizards are the only casters that will be using a spellbook, and the answer will color my feedback on that feat.

I've been waiting for a game grow the bravery to do a lingua franca for different regions (north South East West Central) and help DMs integrate them into a setting.

I really gotta get into high gear on my game...

The main setting assumes people are mostly operating in the real world, but when it comes to other worlds, you have common languages, ability to try and figure out statements and questions in a language related to one you know or that you've studied a bit, and language families to denote which languages are related to which, and whether they are cross-intelligible, (like linguistic historians think old germanic languages largely were, IIRC).

 

[StoicElf]

I like this, but wish they would also look af Fantasy Age from Green Ronin for inspiration. I really like how Fantasy Age does racial features, chosing two out of a list, and making half-breeds so nearly fit into this.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Yeah, but if all that comes out of the OGL fiasco is a bunch of vanilla clones, not sure there is a lot of reason to switch.

Thats actually the really cool possibility, though. If people mostly innovate in the things that are easy to swap out, like individual classes, then you can just mix and match between all the SRD clones, and build your own dnd to a greater extent (without spending a lot of time homebrewing) than ever before.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

And I absolutely appreciate that. Thank you.

I don't like 5E. So I'm not your target audience. Changing the game to suit me would alienate 95% of your target audience.

Consider that there are already at least two 5E-alike but heavier games out there. If you're going to change anything, think about making the game lighter rather than heavier.

Best of luck with the game. I hope it does everything you want it to and more.

There is already a 5e lighter game as well: Bugbears and Borderlands

Sorry can’t figure out how to link on my phone

 

[Minigiant]

On one hand I get the need to see something beyond vanilla fantasy. On the other hand, going too bold defeats the goal of the project, which is to appeal to a wide a set of customers as possible.

Same. Its not even that vanilla fantasy is bad. Toget me to really switch, someone would have to dive deep into the vanilla fantasy tropes and blossom some flavor out of it to exist one its own in order to really trigger my sense.

 

[Morrus]

Same. Its not even that vanilla fantasy is bad. Toget me to really switch, someone would have to dive deep into the vanilla fantasy tropes and blossom some flavor out of it to exist one its own in order to really trigger my sense.

The taregt audience is '5E but not WotC'. I suspect you're not the target audience. However, you are the target audience of a thousand other TTRPG publishers who do indeed dive deep into the vanilla fantasy tropes and blossom some flavor out of it!

 

[doctorbadwolf]

The taregt audience is '5E but not WotC'. I suspect you're not the target audience. However, you are the target audience of a thousand other TTRPG publishers who do indeed dive deep into the vanilla fantasy tropes and blossom some flavor out of it!

Indeed. A5e, as you know better than anyone, feels quite different from standard 5e, so there are even games based on 5e that have noticeably different flavour, much less stuff that is totally different mechanically.

 

[Weiley31]

Because I'm a weirdo, thinking about making a PC mixing this material with OneD&D Class material.

Well, it IS backwards compatible and usable with current 5E material. And OneD&D IS current 5E material in a way since its 5.5E.

So go ham!