Tales of the Valiant is a Reset

Many of my third-party 5E books exist to address issues with the original D&D 5E edition. We have "fix-it" ranger and monk subclasses everywhere; they are even in Tasha's. We apologize, but please either pay us to fix it or pay someone else to do so. We promise we won't do this again! Not until we remove humanoid monsters from the 2024 Monster Manual, and, oh, oops! Did we do it again? I am sure a third-party Kickstarter will be along shortly, and you can pay seventy dollars to fix our omissions.

I have shelves full of books that the cottage industry of third parties makes to fix Wizards' mistakes.

But I am finding a cleaner, more focused game is more fun. As a result, I am putting many of my third-party 5E books away and keeping only my Kobold Press and Tales of the Valiant books as my supported system. ToV gets better the less junk you pile on it. I like additional subclasses, but not every one in every book is a great fit. Many of them are random junk.

I look forward to the Player's Guide 2 and the rest of the game's curated subclasses. We have the core selection in the base books, but these are the expanded roles that many feel the game is missing. With PG2, we will have the complete game we expected at release. That Kickstarter wraps in a few days, so if you are interested, this is a good time to jump in and support Open 5E. 

ToV is my reset game for 5E. There are plenty of other new systems coming out, and even Shadowdark, but only a few games directly replace 5E for me and feel like the clean reset the game needs after 10 years of expansions and patching. 

I have seen a character designer fully decked out with 2014 character options in 2014 D&D, and it is a mess few can navigate. There are so many options in there, the few players I put that character designer in front of quit rather than design a character. I thought I was giving them options! They took one look and bailed on playing D&D. We should have played Shadowdark instead.

The more I cut my 5E library down, the more compelling the game becomes. The more I focus on ToV, the stronger the game gets. My A5E and 2014 D&D books are in storage, and I don't even care about "losing the monsters" because they are 2014 versions and weaker, and I am tired of the Wizards product identity. I want to explore new lands and battle new monsters.

Books with extra monsters? Unless they are Kobold Press' "extra hot" versions of 5E foes, they will be weak, and those need to be put away. This really simplifies everything.

Even random campaign settings are finding a spot, or being put away, so I can focus on just the one I want to run. I don't need everything; I just need the best of one thing.