One of the biggest hurdles Tales of the Valiant has is apathy. Many of the people pissed off by the OGL scandal have moved on to other games, joined those communities, and already walked out the door. They are done with 5E, and even with clone versions of it. Different communities have arisen, and people are over there, having fun and bonding around other games.
Fracturing the market was one of the most significant outcomes of the OGL scandal.
People walked out the door, and I doubt you can get them to return to a game they played for 10 years and gave up on. The 5E market is still huge, but you want to target influencers and heavy users. One influencer or blog writer's reach is thousands of players, and every voice counts.
I had all my 5E books in sell boxes, ready to go out the door. I wasn't coming back. Sadly, even Level Up was getting sold. I saw support elsewhere; games like C&C are hot and I followed along. Why did I come back? Giving Tales of the Valiant a chance is the right and fair thing to do. Once I saw the PDFs and the app support, I knew I needed to cover them.
This is a big deal. This is an attempt to dethrone the king.
Granted, that is not an easy task. Many players are so bought into D&D Beyond it is like getting someone with a few thousand dollars of app store purchases on an iPhone to switch to Android. Also, people's "game choice" is becoming politicized, and I get the feeling that people who try to get people to switch games or even look at alternatives get attacked for "shrinking the market and player base."
It is all idiotic and stupid out there today.
Back in my day, we played a dozen different RPGs with different rules and loved them all. The variety and choice were good since we would not get bored with one game. These days, asking someone to switch rules is like trying to get them to accept a new political party and abandon their friends and social circles.
Me? I never bought into or used D&D Beyond. I didn't use it and wasn't interested in it. Why would I go to a wine tasting if I don't drink wine? Like Pathfinder 2, it wasn't for me.
But I did play Open 5E games like Level Up Advanced 5E. I originally bought the LU monster book for Low Fantasy Gaming (by mistake), which got me started in Open 5E, but I realized the monster book was entirely for another version of 5E. I looked into LU and enjoyed that game since it seriously attempted to incorporate old-school and 4E mechanics into the design.
Level Up and LFG were my introductions to Open 5E, and I still like them.
And then we had Wizards' OGL blunder, and so many DMs and heavy users walked away. People who knew what this was about cared deeply, and they walked in solidarity with a community of creators and players who were gravely hurt by the decision. The echoes of that decision and the pain it caused are still happening today as everyone abandons the flawed OGL license and rewrites their games.
Level Up rewrote the SRD to exclude licensed language; they are immune. They did that long before this happened, which is some fantastic foresight and effort on their part. People laughed at them for doing this "waste of time" early on, and they were right.
I still ask myself, how did they know?
Level Up's story is still amazing, and the entire game (not just select pieces) is now being published under an SRD. And unlike the 5.1 SRD, this is complete, with no removed content, AFAIK, so it can be played as-is, and you can enjoy a complete game. They are selling through their OGL-licensed books (they just used them for convenience) and planning for a non-OGL version (with their starter set coming soon). The A5E SRD is published using ORC, CC, and legacy-OGL licenses, so using it is easy.
Level Up is more community-focused, so the pillars of play (combat, exploration, social) are part of the game's core design. Favorites from 4E appear (eladrin, dragonborn, a warlord-like class). Level Up sometimes feels like a marriage between 4E and AD&D, with 5E rules, and it is a fantastic experience.
Level Up feels like 4E continued, and it is a game I would consider using the Nerrath campaign setting with. Hardcore 4E players will know what this means since we all loved that sandbox setting, and D&D 5E never did it justice. Level Up goes way beyond 4E, and once you buy in, the options and choices for characters and classes become mind-blowing.
Tales is a different game, like a streamlined 5E with a CR+1 challenge level. This is the Pathfinder 1e model, compared with 3.5E, and Tales also has that "power up" feeling that 4E had - but none of the cool stuff. Tales is doing its own thing and starting new, with a more Midgard-focused feel. The base rules are generic and free of a setting, but the look and feel are Midgard.
Tales will go in their own direction, which is great since the hobby needs new ideas and blood. The digital tools are excellent and make the barrier to entry very low, I can have a character in a few minutes and be ready to play.
Both games are worthy of taking the crown.
All they need are voices of support.
No comments:
Post a Comment