Man, these titles are getting long. One problem with "fixing words" is that the replacements for the old ones are often twice as long and wordy, and they, too, will someday be deemed inappropriate and need to be replaced with even longer words. The meanings are not as clear; back in the 1990s, this would have been called race and background options, six syllables versus the nine of this title. Also, "Supplement 1" tacked on there makes an even wordy title so long it probably rolls over on my post title.
I was raised on the use of clear and concise language. Using more words than was needed was disrespectful to your reader and their time.
That said, this book is good for ToV players. ToV desperately needs more options! This is a good first step, even if it is PDF-only at this point. I would love to see many more titles come out in this line and for them to be collected into a hardcover.
We get six new lineages, ten new heritages, and a background here, covering some less-popular options but important ones like goblin, lizardfolk, gnoll, dryad, and dhampir. Eonic is a time-traveler who would work better as a background (and allow for different lineages to be from the future, too). They can't time travel; they just randomly see the future.
This supplement is a step in the right direction for ToV players, but it's just the beginning. We're hungry for more, especially in the form of new class options and character development. The Midgard character option department, in particular, is in urgent need of expansion. We're ready for more, and we're ready now.
The downside? Five of the six lineage options have a dark vision ability. I swear this is a massive problem with all of 5E these days (addressed in Level Up A5E and Shadowdark), and most of 5E being a "dark vision party" is a joke at this point in gaming. Tales need to keep compatibility, so they suffer.
Dark vision for nearly everyone is one of the laziest design decisions in 5E, and at this point, just get rid of light sources and assume everyone (even humans) can see in the dark. This is also why many are leaving for Shadowdark, a game that takes light mechanics seriously appeals to so many, and that "fear of the dark" thing ingrained in humans that "in-humanist designers" fail to see in their rush to make everything play fairly like a mobile phone game rigged to sell stamina and currencies.
Nobody wants to play a "light game" in D&D, so they give everyone dark vision and hand-wave it away as a non-problem.
This book needed a few more backgrounds; only having one feels like a mistake. The PDF could have gone two more pages and given us at least four to six new ones. Level Up Advanced 5E blows ToV out of the water when it comes to character background choices, and once you start designing them and pulling in others from 3rd party books, you have almost too many - and that is a good thing.
This book highlights the differences between Tales of the Valiant and Level Up Advanced 5E. ToV needs to maintain D&D compatibility, so they must take D&D's flaws into account and make it work. Level Up threw out parts of D&D that were garbage and fixed the systems to make them fun and support the classic pillars of play.
I feel that maintaining D&D compatibility (which is different from 5E compatibility) will drag your game down with the hot mess from 2014 to 2024, with ten years of broken expansion books. I love ToV, but Level Up is the more radically redesigned and fixed version of 5E on the market. Outside the new "Queen of the Throne" of dungeon crawling, the excellent Shadowdark.
It also tells that the games that fix the dark vision problem are seen as better experiences. We live in strange times.
A great book; more of this is needed; please keep them coming, Kobold Press.
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