Black Flag Project Black Flag Design Notes #1

[Faolyn]

“This game has meant too much to us for too long to let it remain owned by just one company.”

- A team member at Kobold Press

I'm sorry, but this has to be one of the silliest reasonings for creating a new game such as this that I have ever heard.

What is this? If you love something just SOOOOOOOOO MUUUUUUUUUUUCH then you should get a chance to own it and the person/company who does own it shouldn't get to own it anymore? That is... I'm sorry, that is just... I can't even.

"Hey! I've love my New England Patriots football team! This team has meant too much for me for to long for it to remain owned just by Robert Kraft! I should be able to own the New England Patriots too!"

"I love Disney! Been going to Disneyworld since I was a kid! I think that obviously entitles me to owning a piece of the Disney pie! It doesn't matter that it's actually someone else's! I just love it THAT MUCH that I now get to have it!"

Wow. Heh heh... that's some... that's certainly a thing. Whelp... best of luck to Kobold! Hope it all works out for them.

Since they're making their own 5e-alike, wouldn't it be more like "We really love the Patriots, so we're making our own"?

 

[tetrasodium]

In some ways, this Design Diary makes me less hopeful than I was with the package itself. Some things that were not implicit in the packet are spelled out here and are likely to meet resistance. The biggest of these, to my eyes, is the description of talents.

we had seen that talents were replacing feats. What we are now told is this:



The division of talents is in itself fine, but assigning each class to one of them, and limiting choice to that one, is a needless straightjacket. Let Fighters take a magical or technical feat; let Sorcerers take a martial one. Allowing choice gives a great opportunity to allow players design choices that suit their own style. It might not always be optimized, but it would be fun, and it would cut down on multiclassing (which is not in itself bad, of course).

Sure, there is still the background feat; but I'd much rather have a mundane character with a dash of magic from a feat (talent) like Ritual Caster than have to MC for a level to get a small handful of spells.

I was also struck by the animus against One:



There's a blending in this of concerns about bad corporate citizenship with bad design, and that feels, to me, sloppy. I too doubt there is going to be "true backward compatibility" (as I've discussed elsewhere), but it feels to me to be a mischaracterization to say the One playtests are throwing any babies out with bathwater.

Indeed, I had hoped that Black Flag was going to be more innovative, and take more risks. This diary entry suggests that is just not going to happen.

I think you are overlooking the possibility of an archetype/subclass/PrC/etc granting limited access to other trees as a class feature or to grant a choice of specific selection of talents outside the ones normally available. Also there is good in not allowing any fighter to "take take a magical or technical feat; let Sorcerers take a martial one." When that fighter/sorcerer/etc can't just snag an A or S tier talent from outside their normal pool it keeps the various thematic niches from being combined into a bland soup of "MOAR POWAH" allowing them (and their weaknesses) to be balanced separately in isolation for more interesting choices relevant to a niche's theme.

 

[Reynard]

Pathfinder 5E confirmed.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I mean, they’re right, though.

D&D doesnt belong to one company. Acting like it does is much more strange, like pretending the NFL solely owns American football.

Heh... well, you are correct that the NFL doesn't own the rights to the game rules of American football... but as we have seen time after time after time... nobody can make their own version of a professional American football league and actually succeed. They may try and follow all the rules of the NFL-- change a few things here and there-- but they still can't get many people to watch it because the fact is, it's really not the game itself people care about, it's the brand. People watch the NFL because it's the NFL, not because it uses a very specific set of American Football rules that everyone care about.

So it just felt like this person was saying that because they loved the NFL that they had the right to own a part of the NFL... when in truth what they are really making is the USFL. And those ain't the same thing.

In truth it doesn't actually bother me... KP can make whatever they feel is best for them, and I know there will be an audience for them. And that's great. But it was just that one comment that struck me as... "Really? You think you deserve to own a piece of the Dungeons & Dragons brand just cause you love it that much?" It just seemed a silly comment. But no harm, no foul.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Since they're making their own 5e-alike, wouldn't it be more like "We really love the Patriots, so we're making our own"?

I believe if I remember my professional football history correctly... they were called the 'Boston Breakers'. And they did well! For one year. Then had to move to New Orleans. For a year. Then they moved to Portland. Then the league folded.

Let's hope Kobold Press has a bit more success than that with their spring season NFL knockoff!

 

[Reynard]

3.5 was the best version of D&D ever and Paizo wouldn't let it die and so... created a similar game that in the end did not actually preserve "D&D" so much as preserve Paizo.

I don't expect PBF to be very different, except there's really no broad call from the community rejecting 1D&D.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Pathfinder 5E confirmed.

Heh heh... Paizo better get on the horn with the trademark office and get 'Pathfinder 3E', 'Pathfinder 4E' and 'Pathfinder 5E' trademarked before they lose those names by it going generic!

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Heh... well, you are correct that the NFL doesn't own the rights to the game rules of American football... but as we have seen time after time after time... nobody can make their own version of a professional American football league and actually succeed. They may try and follow all the rules of the NFL-- change a few things here and there-- but they still can't get many people to watch it because the fact is, it's really not the game itself people care about, it's the brand. People watch the NFL because it's the NFL, not because it uses a very specific set of American Football rules that everyone care about.

So it just felt like this person was saying that because they loved the NFL that they had the right to own a part of the NFL... when in truth what they are really making is the USFL. And those ain't the same thing.

In truth it doesn't actually bother me... KP can make whatever they feel is best for them, and I know there will be an audience for them. And that's great. But it was just that one comment that struck me as... "Really? You think you deserve to own a piece of the Dungeons & Dragons brand just cause you love it that much?" It just seemed a silly comment. But no harm, no foul.

That literally isn't what they said. Not only were they not talking about the "brand", but the actual game, they said nothing about having a right to own said brand. They said that one company does not own DnD. If you've been following the recent discussion, it's pretty clear that they're talking about the idea of the game, and that the community shouldn't be stuck relying on wotc when dnd is very much a folk tradition, at this point.

 

[Parmandur]

I don't expect PBF to be very different, except there's really no broad call from the community rejecting 1D&D.

Well, speaking as someone who is actively interested in what KP is laying down...this right here may be a problem for them longterm. Tacking to the right of OneD&D feels like a strategy that was formed before OneD&D started rolling out and we could see the shape of it: as it stands, PBF and OneD&D feel kind of the same? Which is fine by me, I'm interin both...butnia that enough for the market?

 

[MichaelSomething]

Limiting talents by class groups? Oh well. That's nothing some multi classing can't fix!