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!

 

[Nathaniel Lee]

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.

I don't think that we can say they're the same at all there. We of course don't know exactly what Black Flag's classes are going to be like, but I'd be very surprised if they took anything like One D&D's approach and completely changed the progression structure. Assuming that they do stick with how things work in 5E, then at least from the perspective of subclass compatibility, Black Flag is objectively more compatible than One D&D is.

One D&D's "compatibility" with existing subclasses is questionable. Sure, you can go ahead and take their advice and just progress as you normally would if you were using a 5E class, but we all know that's not how it's going to work in the actual final release: that's just all they tell us for us to be able to even try to playtest anything. Those subclasses will be keyed to the structure of the new classes, and in some cases, we're seeing dramatic changes in number of subclass feature slots as well as where they appear in the level progression.

When they release the new rules, it's in all likelihood going to be a choice of using what few subclasses they provide in the initial books or leveraging some sort of conversion guide to fit the square peg of the 5E subclasses into the round hole of the 6E ones.

 

[Parmandur]

I don't think that we can say they're the same at all there. We of course don't know exactly what Black Flag's classes are going to be like, but I'd be very surprised if they took anything like One D&D's approach and completely changed the progression structure. Assuming that they do stick with how things work in 5E, then at least from the perspective of subclass compatibility, Black Flag is objectively more compatible than One D&D is.

One D&D's "compatibility" with existing subclasses is questionable. Sure, you can go ahead and take their advice and just progress as you normally would if you were using a 5E class, but we all know that's not how it's going to work in the actual final release: that's just all they tell us for us to be able to even try to playtest anything. Those subclasses will be keyed to the structure of the new classes, and in some cases, we're seeing dramatic changes in number of subclass feature slots as well as where they appear in the level progression.

When they release the new rules, it's in all likelihood going to be a choice of using what few subclasses they provide in the initial books or leveraging some sort of conversion guide to fit the square peg of the 5E subclasses into the round hole of the 6E ones.

I mean, fair that we don't know how Black Flag will interact with 5E Classes, but foe OneD&D we have a solid idea with examples...and it's easy-peasy, lemon squeaky. I'd hardly call a small sidebar a "conversion document" which is about all I expect based on what we have.

 

[James Gasik]

So I got into a spirited debate with a friend of mine about Polyglot. I feel that the main advantage of the Talent, gaining advantage on Charisma checks made with non-hostile creatures as long as you can speak their primary language, is a little too niche when compared to the benefits of the Magic and Martial Talents.

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

Is my assessment wrong?

 

[Parmandur]

So I got into a spirited debate with a friend of mine about Polyglot. I feel that the main advantage of the Talent, gaining advantage on Charisma checks made with non-hostile creatures who are not aggressive towards you as long as you can speak their primary language, is a little too niche when compared to the benefits of the Magic and Martial Talents.

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

Is my assessment wrong?

For the right character, that's huge.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

So I got into a spirited debate with a friend of mine about Polyglot. I feel that the main advantage of the Talent, gaining advantage on Charisma checks made with non-hostile creatures who are not aggressive towards you as long as you can speak their primary language, is a little too niche when compared to the benefits of the Magic and Martial Talents.

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

Is my assessment wrong?

Balancing combat/non-combat talents/feats is hard. Even if you find a balance, someone is going to find a combat use for a non-combat talent, even when the twain do meet.

In this particular case, we have the fun slant of the utility of the talent being DM/campaign-specific.

 

[James Gasik]

But you don't find that requirements for the Charisma advantage are particularly niche? That was my takeaway, I was thinking about how difficult it could be to actually use it. My friend was like "Common", but I pointed out it has to be the primary language, and Humans are the only lineage that lacks their own language (something I always thought was strange, but that's another discussion).

Even in campaigns where there is one lineage that is a common foe, like Red Hand of Doom, they are almost certainly going to be hostile most of the time.

So I'm thinking "it's the Friends cantrip, except harder to use, but with the upshot of they probably won't want to murder you when it wears off".

I get that I might be focusing too much on this part of the Talent, though it did seem to be the best benefit.

 

[darjr]

They are showing a playtest witch now.

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

 

[Zaukrie]

This answers a few of the questions raised here....though maybe isn't as specific as some here want around goals.

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

 

[Zaukrie]

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).
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?).

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

So I got into a spirited debate with a friend of mine about Polyglot. I feel that the main advantage of the Talent, gaining advantage on Charisma checks made with non-hostile creatures as long as you can speak their primary language, is a little too niche when compared to the benefits of the Magic and Martial Talents.

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

Is my assessment wrong?

I have a hard time imagining a face character not taking it and making short work of social encounters after that.

My dad already wants his bard to chat up every NPC he meets. Having him rolling with advantage throughout would arguably make him unstoppable.

(And yes, devoting resources to this means that social play is important to him, and I do and would create plenty of opportunities for him to do so and to be awesome at it, at least with guards and courtiers, if not letting him talk a king into abdicating or something.)