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!

 

[Zaukrie]

I would expect Monte Cook to be among the people pondering what a Monte Cook Games 5E core set would look like. And certainly, AU was influential in that regard -- I'm guessing we will see some folks going far afield, when they don't have a goal of providing a backwards compatibility SRD.

I'm fairly confident MCDM is going far afield....

 

[vivsavage]

I realize I'm getting ahead of where the playtest document is right now, but I would like to see 5e's skill system made more customizable. I know we're stuck with the +2 to +6 proficiency range, but I would like to see something like "specializations", where you get a bonus for certain aspects of a skill, like "Tracking" for the Survival skill. I think Level Up does something like this already. And here's a longshot: a stunt system akin to the AGE system.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'm fairly confident MCDM is going far afield....

They're going so far afield, I expect the conversations about whether what they're making is "really" 5E have already started.

 

[Reynard]

They're going so far afield, I expect the conversations about whether what they're making is "really" 5E have already started.

I haven't been following closely, but I thought their game was something new, not a 5E-alike.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I haven't been following closely, but I thought their game was something new, not a 5E-alike.

They announced it during the OGL fiasco, so the messaging was a little confusing. (Colville said on Twitter he still hasn't gotten a good script for their actual official announcement video done yet.) I suspect you're right and this is their DCC, not 5E.

 

[darjr]

Matt has said that after the CC announcement and other 5es out there MCDM may not walk away completely from 5e.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I haven't been following closely, but I thought their game was something new, not a 5E-alike.

It's something new yeah. It might have some basic concepts shared with D&D, like class and level and so on, but a lot of games do. Right now it's a heroic fantasy game with a specific setting (Matt's setting it seems, which is some kind of law-chaos borefest, soz Matt but it's not the '80s anymore), which shares 4E's focus on heroic tactical combat, but with even more of an emphasis on pulling off flashy maneuvers, I think with more of a sort of Page 42 as the the norm approach, combined with some tactical dungeon-crawler board game concepts.

I suspect you're right and this is their DCC, not 5E.

Not even. More like their Exalted or their ICON (from the Lancer guy) or something.

I sub'd to his Patreon and have read the posts on it - I then unsub'd when they decided they would use "funky dice" rather than real dice. I.e. dice with a bunch of different symbols on!

It's sad because there are a lot of clever/interesting decisions being made, but if you insist on using your own dice, and ones that are complicated enough to require a table to look them up if you don't, you've lost a vast proportion of the audience immediately. They said they're thinking of "solutions" to make it "accessible", but what they've come up with so far are pathetic (like putting stickers on existing dice - great way to make dice look horrible, get filthy, and be unbalanced!), and we all know it'll just be a die-roller app and tables in the end.

 

[tetrasodium]

They announced it during the OGL fiasco, so the messaging was a little confusing. (Colville said on Twitter he still hasn't gotten a good script for their actual official announcement video done yet.) I suspect you're right and this is their DCC, not 5E.

They have been doing some pretty great updates on the process in their patreon. Some have been about mechanics others more design goal/concerns to solve type things plus some after playtesting stuff in the mix. All in all they have been pretty great & it looks very interesting so far.

 

[Parmandur]

Then the intended audience for this product is actually Kobold Press, not us. It's a ruleset that KP can use to refer back to without referencing WotC's PHB. That's great for them, but as a player I have to ask if that has any value to me. In 2024, I will have a choice to buy Black Flag, One D&D, or stick with my 5e PHB. So far, the selling point for BF is "I'm not giving my money to eevviill WotC" which isn't really a personal concern. As both systems continue to put out new packets (especially classes, where we will see the true divide in game design) this might change. But for now, "D&D minus WotC" isn't a selling point.

Yeeeeah, I'm interested to see what they do with Classes, but this does feel a little redundant: the Monsters, at least, should be worth the price of admission.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

I may be off base, but my impression was that Colville's game is sort of 4e inspired, but zigs in the places that 13th Age zagged.