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!

 

[Jaeger]

That's because 5E is the middle ground from most folks' perspective.

LOL, You're probably right...

But 5e is actually quite fiddly, and more complex than people credit it in play. 5e just has such a large network effect with people available to tell new players how things work, that it is largely masked.

Worlds without number is a good example of the middle path I'm talking about. Threading that needle with 5e would require a bit of design finesse.

But I think we can safely say that kobold press is not going in that direction.

 

[Reynard]

Ok, I’m not a supporter so that explains why I’m clueless. Personally, that project is the one I’m least interested in

I'm curious what they come up with, moreso if it is farther from 5E.

 

[Reynard]

LOL, You're probably right...

But 5e is actually quite fiddly, and more complex than people credit it in play. 5e just has such a large network effect with people available to tell new players how things work, that it is largely masked.

Worlds without number is a good example of the middle path I'm talking about. Threading that needle with 5e would require a bit of design finesse.

But I think we can safely say that kobold press is not going in that direction.

There's a lot of moving parts in characters i guess but is really thin on actual rules, especially compared to 3.x or PF2.

 

[ART!]

1. Degrees of success for many/all things. I did not realize how much I liked PFe's over/under by 10 rules, until I started thinking about a game without them.

This is something I'd like to see as well, and since I don't see WOTC doing this with their new edition, it would help to differentiate Black Flag. I'm sure there's a way to do it that would be distinct from how PF does it, too.

4a. Maybe some semi-modularization, or something rationalized enough that you can give solid GM advice for how you want a game world to run. Like, "If you want locks to matter instead of having the wizard bypass them all, do this," and "If you want travel time to matter instead of the wizard teleporting everyone all over, try this." Where the advice is more specific than just "Disable all these spells." Something where those gate-passing spells can be calibrated to kick in at specific levels, instead of making every campaign bypass every gatekeeping effect at the same level. (Other gatekeeping effects-- creating food and water, language spells, and probably more I am forgetting.)

Tone/genre dials in all areas of the game would be a very welcome addition.

4b. More spells that gain utility smoothely as the caster levels up.

Can you expand on this?

 

[Faolyn]

I know it has skill specializations, but does it also have an AGE-style stunt system?

That I can't help you with, because I don't know from AGE.

 

[Faolyn]

There is also a middle ground of design between core 5e, and rules light B&B, 5 torches deep, into the unknown.

No one has treaded that 5e middle ground design paradigm yet.

They have either explicitly added crunch like Level up, or gone total rules light like B&B, 5 torches deep, and Into the unknown.

I think that there is a market for a streamlined, but not quite rules light version of 5e.

OK, at the risk of a thread derail: what would be a good middle between rules-light and 5e?

 

[Nathaniel Lee]

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.

I just want to make clear that it was my own speculation on what's happening based on what I've seen, and what ultimately makes most logical sense to me. I certainly can't speak to what Kobold Press's actual thinking is around any of this.

I don't know what sort of audience they're going for, honestly. I'm not even sure what the ultimate scope of the project is going to be. Are they looking to produce and publish a full blown set of rulebooks that would be direct competition to 5E? Are they just looking to get an SRD out there that absolves them from adhering to what Wizards produces? Not sure what the end goal is, but it just seems obvious to me that ultimately they want as much backwards compatibility as possible, whereas that doesn't seem to be what Wizards is going for with One D&D.

That's not to say that it'll be an exact clone of 5E with no differences other than terminology to distance itself enough from 5E. There are clearly changes in play to address some aspects of 5E, but I don't see them making fundamental changes to things like the new progression structure in One D&D classes that the UA playtests have revealed. I'd guess it'll turn out somewhere between "5E clone" and Level Up.

<shrug>

 

[Rabbitbait]

I feel like I'm the only one who has always felt like 5e starting stats are too high once species ASI are added. I prefer the 'zero to hero' trope. Rather than 'hero to even better hero'.

Only being able to go down to 8 in point buy is another frustration which seems to be continuing across. Having a weak score of 6 or 7 makes for fun rp opportunities.

In one of my campaigns AD&D) there was a dwarf fighter with 6 dexterity. The scrapes he got into were hilarious. Top one was when he was climbing a the outside of a building naked with a shortsword between his teeth to try and escape a bunch of ghouls below him. He slipped and fell backwards onto the ghoul pile with the sword doing him a very nasty injury.

 

[ctorus]

I must be inhabiting a different reality, because everyone seems to be calling for this to be lighter than 5e, yet surely the market is saturated with lighter versions of D&D, and 5e in particular. Meanwhile there is only one game, Level Up A5e, which goes in the other direction (and people seemed to like that).

Edit: correction - not quite everyone

 

[Zaukrie]

anyway.....

I must be inhabiting a different reality, because everyone seems to be calling for this to be lighter than 5e, yet it seems to me the market is saturated with lighter versions of D&D, and 5e in particular. Meanwhile there is only one game, Level Up A5e, which goes in the other direction (and people seemed to like that).

Not everyone!