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!

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

I was just reflecting earlier on how the D&D Next playtests went. Not only did their packets have full character creation rules (if only up to certain levels, and only providing certain options), but they also included one or more adventures to run test games with. That makes playtesting much more convenient...

You are expect to be able to play with any 5e adventure though, so that part shouldn’t be neeeded

 

[darjr]

It seems the deep magic 2 kickstarter had a stretch goal for black flag. And the new classes will probably reflect black flag.

@Marc Radle can you give us any insight into that?

 

[Remathilis]

I think it really depends on what those small changes end up being. If we look at this first document, for example, none of the changes proposed within break any sort of compatibility with 5E. They have class-specific talents, and so does 5E. They take a singular "race" artifact and split it into the concepts of heritage and lineage. Thus far, every change that they've proposed would be backwards compatible with 5E. It would take zero effort to build a character that utilizes classes from 5E and heritage/lineage/background/talents from Black Flag, and they've even made it clear that you can add a feat to your 5E class-based character to align them closer to the slightly increased power level of Black Flag classes.

We don't yet have any real idea of what the Black Flag classes will look like. If they use the exact same class progression as 5E, then I don't see compatibility being a significant challenge. The only thing I'd be concerned about is maybe if some subclasses might get reduced in power from one or more of their features being invalidated or otherwise made redundant. By contrast, One D&D's classes are flat out not compatible with 5E subclasses. They claim that there's going to be some system to "convert", and that's a concept that I feel starts to indicate that compatibility is not fully there. If we don't need a Black Flag to 5E "conversion" system, then we've got solid backwards compatibility. It's way too soon to say whether that's what we'll actually get.

That's the catch 22 of updating though. You can't have perfect compatibility and meaningful updates. For example, the bard is the only class with less than four subclass features. That makes subclasses for bards weaker in terms of providing meaningful options. Adding a fourth subclass feature to bards is practically a no brainier QoL update, but it breaks compatibility with every subclass currently out there. Will BF ignore the quality of life update of fixing the number of bard subclass features to keep compatibility or opt for some other fix?

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

Playtesting Tips For Kobold Press​

https://koboldpress.com/playtesting-tips-for-kobold-press/
View attachment 275640

Thanks for this. I still struggle in these types of playtests on threading the needle on feedback that is just dismissive and something that is telling the designers how to do their job.

For example, during the UA psionics playtests, what was the best way to say I have no interest in a spellcasting psion? Just say these mechanics are crap, try again or go into detail about what I'd actually like?

 

[Zaukrie]

I guess I have a different view of compatibility.....if it uses the same chasis....I can use existing monsters and adventures w/o massive updates. That's plenty for me, I get others disagree. Level Up PCs can fight 5e monsters and it works for the DM. But A5e PCs are very different than 5e PCs.

 

[Nathaniel Lee]

Proprietary dice typically can't work with online dice rollers.

If proprietary dice are just regularly shaped dice just with symbols rather than numbers or pips, then it shouldn't be difficult for dice rollers to handle them: you'd just need a table in your system that maps a particular roll to a unique symbol. It also shouldn't be difficult for something like D&D Beyond to handle as in that system it's not even RNG like with pretty much every other dice roller out there, but rather a physics simulation on a model that can be easily designed with symbols instead of numbers on the faces.

 

[Nathaniel Lee]

I guess I have a different view of compatibility.....if it uses the same chasis....I can use existing monsters and adventures w/o massive updates. That's plenty for me, I get others disagree. Level Up PCs can fight 5e monsters and it works for the DM. But A5e PCs are very different than 5e PCs.

SO One D&D should be a system that would work for you, mechanically, since there are fundamental mechanical changes made to the classes, but it's "backwards compatible" in terms of monsters, lore, adventures, magic items, etc. with just potentially a bit of rebalancing needed (acknowledging that 5E isn't necessarily a balanced system in the first place).

 

[Zaukrie]

SO One D&D should be a system that would work for you, mechanically, since there are fundamental mechanical changes made to the classes, but it's "backwards compatible" in terms of monsters, lore, adventures, magic items, etc. with just potentially a bit of rebalancing needed (acknowledging that 5E isn't necessarily a balanced system in the first place).

Probably, yes. We'll see.

I'm not sure what I want, really, other than more options and more interesting things for PCs and NPCs to do.

 

[Marc Radle]

Hey everyone, just a quick comment on those typos in the first playtest packet ... we absolutely get what folks have said, and we agree! Those typos, etc. were unfortunate and we were as unhappy with them as you were!

There are a lot of moving parts to getting this playtest packet put together and we are constantly striving to correct and improve on issues as we work on them. Rest assured our editing team is on the job, making sure the final product will live up to the standards fans of Kobold Press have come to expect.

We have release an updated playtest packet that should address those typos on the Kobold Press website (just redownload the playtest):
https://koboldpress.com/playtest-packet-1-is-here-for-project-black-flag/

and on DriveThru if you prefer that platform
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/2189/Kobold-Press/subcategory/4291_44719/Black-Flag-Playtest

A big thanks to everyone for the positive response so far AND for keeping us on our toes!!

 

[Zaukrie]

Hey everyone, just a quick comment on those typos in the first playtest packet ... we absolutely get what folks have said, and we agree! Those typos, etc. were unfortunate and we were as unhappy with them as you were!

There are a lot of moving parts to getting this playtest packet put together and we are constantly striving to correct and improve on issues as we work on them. Rest assured our editing team is on the job, making sure the final product will live up to the standards fans of Kobold Press have come to expect.

We have release an updated playtest packet that should address those typos on the Kobold Press website:
https://koboldpress.com/playtest-packet-1-is-here-for-project-black-flag/

and on DriveThru if you prefer that platform
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/2189/Kobold-Press/subcategory/4291_44719/Black-Flag-Playtest

A big thanks to everyone for the positive response so far AND for keeping us on our toes!!

I trust KP long term.....your products are quite good.