Tales of the Valiant: Northlands Hardcovers

I got the Northlands hardcovers from Kobold Press's crowdfunding this week, and I like them a lot. It feels like a new direction for ToV in how the game is presented and in their approach to the system. The game feels like it has hit its comfort zone, and the designers are now focusing on providing curated experiences rather than more generic base-class content.

Once Player's Guide 2 came out, we were mostly done with generic base-class options, those sort of "fill in the gaps" books for a system that add popular niche options. Now, we are adding thematic content that fills gaps in those areas, while also providing enough supporting material for these thematic options so that, when you use them, they aren't "fish out of water" experiences.

It is like a game providing a generic "valkyrie" class option, but no setting to use it in, no lore to support it, and no real reason to use it other than a cosplay option. It is a weak game design trope, as fantasy games are much stronger if you give me something to work with, a collection of "specific yet generic" content built around a theme, and a reason that this class should be in the world.

Shadowdark has this problem with its third-party material. I got dozens of "did this first" classes that don't really belong in the world, other than to have the Shadowdark version of a class, and it is weaker overall since it never fits into a dungeon crawl, doesn't support the theme, nor does it have supporting material to make it a necessary or even useful choice.

With the Northlands books, we get a combination of a gazeteer and character options book, then an adventure book, and I have everything I need to tell thematic stories in this Norse-like sandbox. I have a campaign, character options, and adventures, and I am set for years playing here.

Also, if I am off playing generic fantasy, I can put these add-on books away and narrow down my options to just a core-book experience. I don't need them, but I have them.

Tales of the Valiant is hitting its stride as a popular Open 5E alternative, and I like the design far better than the run-on sentence of D&D 2024, which fixed almost every problem except combat lengths and lethality. To be honest, D&D's biggest problem right now is too-long combats and lethality, and this is an issue that Tales of the Valiant solves by reducing monster hit points and making monsters hit much harder, so players start losing resources at a faster rate. This also dramatically increases lethality, and with a handful of houserules on top of the default 5E lethality, the problem is solved.

"Ideally, you and your players would have established the potential for PC death and the way it would be handled at the start of the campaign."

Tales of the Valiant, Gamemaster's Guide, page 30

All the YouTubers who say "it is impossible to die" in D&D 5E are making me want to challenge this assumption. The ToV GM's Guide mentions "the potential for PC death" in the rulebook, so this means the rules in this area, like any of the rules in the game, can be changed to make the game more lethal. Perhaps you make a "three strikes, and you are out" rule, stating your character may only drop to zero hit points three times in their entire life, total, before they meet their final fate on the fourth, and no magic will be able to bring them back to the mortal coil.

"Impossible to die in 5E" means two things when I hear it: a creator is trying to sell you a new game, or the group you are with is too inflexible to consider houseruling and fixing the issue in a manner appropriate to their table. If you have the energy to complain about it, you have the energy to fix the problem and agree to a solution; then there is no need to buy another game to fix it.

I swear, this is what we did as kids in the 1980s. Mom didn't have the money to keep buying us new games to fix the problems with the old ones, so we worked out solutions ourselves with the game we were lucky to have. Besides, buying new games means buying new problems.

ToV is just a better fit for me since combat runs faster and the game is more lethal, which is a tuning that I prefer to all other versions of 5E. From there, I can houserule-fix any problems 5E has and get to a comfortable spot with the system. D&D has a massive problem with making high-level foes do almost no damage on a successful hit, like the new Ravenloft version of Cthulhu, doing 27 damage on a claw attack and having 385 hit points. The only horror we will experience fighting that monster is wondering why the fight was so easy, and why we aren't playing a Chaosium game instead.

D&D is so easy; it is like playing a video game on the easiest difficulty level and then complaining that you can't die, that the game is too easy, and that nothing is a challenge. YouTubers repeat this endlessly. I get tired of hearing it, and I solved the problem by switching to a game that raises the challenge level, speeds up combat, and makes monsters hit way harder. I also make a few houserules, and the game is as lethal as Shadowdark.

ToV is a great game that fixes structural problems that cannot be fixed within D&D.

The Northlands books continue the string of hits that ToV is having.

It is a better game, tuned perfectly to a speed and lethality I prefer, and it is just the far better choice. If you are sleeping on ToV, you are missing out.