Tales of the Valiant: Game Master's Guide (last 4 days)

 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/deepmagic/tales-of-the-valiant-game-masters-guide-5e/description

The Tales of the Valiant Kickstarter is still rolling along, and they just broke 4,800 backers and $400,000. This is strong support, and the future looks promising for this game.

We are in the final 4 days, so this is the last week to jump in.

A 5E version with the complete game in an SRD (unlike the 5.1 SRD, which is not the entire game) ensures 100% future-proof compatibility and allows others to fork the game should the parent company do horrible things. I doubt that with Kobold Press, but this is a mark and bond of trust between a company and its players that is worth noting.

30+ years from now, we can play the FULL version of this Open 5E implementation.

With D&D, we will all have an incomplete SRD in the Creative Commons.

Like Linux and many 4th generation B/X implementations, having the complete source code to a game that is free and open to use is essential to building today's games and ones in the future.

We got screwed in the OGL mess.

Never again.

Troll Lord Games: Status Update

https://trolldens.blogspot.com/2024/02/state-of-dens-2024.html

Troll Lord Games, makers of the fantastic Castles & Crusades, details their efforts to divorce the OGL from their games and come out with a 10th Edition of the Player Handbook for their game this year, plus many other fun notes about what it is like running a game company.

It is excellent reading, and I can't wait for the 10th Edition to drop without the OGL. C&C is on a secondary shelf as I work through Open 5E news and releases, but this will always be on my play shelves. If you want a no-fuss, character-card-driven, simple, highly compatible kitchen sink d20 fantasy game - this is the one to get.

They Don't Care Anymore

I am slowly getting the feeling that the 5E and OSR communities are fracturing.

Not in compatibility, but the old guard of websites and portals controlling access to games is completely gone - nobody cares what the dominant gaming press, YouTube, or hub sites think anymore. The whisper networks are exposed. Site bans for creators are flying, and those who had control are losing it - and their minds. Even some YouTube creators slowly lose their grip on reality as the scaffolding of 'what once was'' buckles, folds, and comes down in a crash.

The zeitgeist is dead.

Let's go pre-2022. You made an adventure or supplement for the top OSR system (Old School Essentials) or D&D 5E a few years ago. There was no question you did.

Then the OGL was killed.

The ground was no longer stable anymore. 5E blew up, and many left for Pathfinder 2. Many of the 5E community split off, and we have Shadowdark and Tales of the Valiant. And we are seeing that in the OSR, with the 4th generation OSR games just doing their own damn thing and throwing the middle finger to anyone who thinks otherwise.

Shadowdark is a good example. A group of amazing creators found they had more fun with OSR games than they did 5E, so they set out to build a 5E-like system that simulated old-school sensibilities. Shadowdark is the gateway drug for the OSR, and I welcome this game into our community with open arms - since this helps a vast group of players only used to 5E discover the joy of a hardcore 'Dark Souls' style dungeon experience that D&D refuses to supply.

Dragonslayer goes hard on the old-school, with a refined mix of B/X and 1st Edition. There is even artistic nudity - just like AD&D, don't complain - in this book, and the creator speaks openly about what he likes and criticizes the direction of many newer games. He takes flak, and nobody cares. The game slaps me back awake like it was the 1980s again, and roleplaying was something only the cool college kids did, and I wanted in on it.

Since this also is the game for all the fantastic mega-dungeons: Barrowmaze, Highfell, and the others - with a new one coming this year, this one game and those dungeons can provide 20+ years of play without needing to buy anything else. This is expensive, but a 300-page book packed wall-to-wall with consistent OSR art and sensibilities is like a rallying call to me.

It is worth the money. This isn't "just another B/X."

It is B/X+.

The classes in DS are fun, especially compared to OSE or Labyrinth Lord. Fighters are worlds better in DS, since they get a cleave ability when they kill any target at level 1, getting an extra attack, plus another every 2 character levels. So, if you kill an orc at level 1, you can immediately attack another. At level 3, this improves to two attacks after a kill, and at level 5, that is three attacks - and this applies to both melee and missile weapon attacks. This has no HD limitations.

Clerics get a divine channeling power that lets them swap a 1st level spell to cure light wounds, and mages get that but for detecting or reading magic. These are "fun changes," I bet a little inspired by 5E, but it gives casters better-prepared spell choices and keeps them flexible. Some of the pain points of B/X have been house-ruled away and made official rules.

Thief percentages are not horrible; they get a d6 hit die, and a failure margin built into the pickpocket skill could be extended to other skills for fun. They can also appraise treasure. The rules also say, "roleplay precedes thief skill die rolling," - which means in many cases, with solid roleplay, YOU DO NOT HAVE TO ROLL. If you care to creep behind a low wall, out of sight, the referee can rule - it just succeeds, good plan. No game has a "roleplay trigger" for thieves, which makes playing them incredibly fun and interactive as you try to think up strategies to avoid rolling.

Using a rope and spikes, no roll is needed for climbing. If you studied the key, no roll is needed for lockpicking. If you recently disarmed the same exact type of trap, no roll is needed to remove this trap. If you have a good hiding spot, no roll is needed to hide in shadows. If you drop your pack, have a quiet approach, and just creep up with a dagger, no roll is needed to move silently. If you watch your target and know which pocket a wallet is in, and have someone distract them, no roll is needed to pickpockets.

Ninja roleplaying is back with the DS thief class, which is excellent.

I feel like my eyes are open.

OSE. 5E, and Labyrinth Lord don't do this, and their classes feel very "one note" without tools that can provide fun opportunities at the table and player options. If someone asked me to play a fighter, cleric, mage, or thief, I would choose DS over OSE, LL, or Shadowdark.

I get the same feeling 5E gives me - I have the tools to deal with situations. However, here, roleplay and creativity matter a lot more.

Dragonslayer is the next B/X standard bearer. They took the unfun parts of B/X away, or parts where you sit and feel "I am stuck doing nothing," and gave characters options and tools. And these changes have been tested over the years at the mega-dungeons mentioned above, so they are proven winners.

And I get the feeling DS is closer to a Shadowdark than B/X, at least in the design philosophy of "making the game fun" coming before "making the gameplay just like the old one."

And it isn't a digest-sized book, which I see as a positive. Small books never stay open, the information-to-page ratio is horrible, they go on hundreds of pages, and their type, for my older eyes, is a pain to read. Give me a full-sized book with excellent art and page layout any day.

Another amazing Kickstarter late last year, and shipping this year, is the B/X-inspired ACKS 2. This did better than his previous Kickstarters by 3-5 times, and he rewrote the game to eliminate the OGL. All the monsters and spells have been reimagined to fit the world he wants to see, not a world where B/X is forced in there.

Another game that wrote the OGL and SRD out of existence? Basic Fantasy 4th Edition.

A game that went Creative Commons? Swords & Wizardry.

You can't compete with Wizards of the Coast! They are like [throw some considerable number here]! Well, Kobold Press thinks they can, and for that matter, Paizo is doing an excellent job. We are getting a complete replacement for all core books, compatible with 10 years of 5E books - and that is a wonderful thing because people's libraries and investments are being protected.

Add Level Up Advanced 5E to the list of games throwing the middle finger at common wisdom, though they were three years ahead of the curve. This is a complete rewrite of the SRD, with no licensed language, and is free from any OGL license mess. This game is still strong and is another favorite of mine that mixes old-school design with 5E.

But we are seeing a crumbling narrative and a death of the gatekeeper sites and zeitgeist. Wizards killing the OGL killed these cliques' control and the feeling you needed to "play along" to "play at all." If they are unfun, the old ways of doing things get tossed in the bin. Nobody feels beholden to exact copies or Xeroxing games anymore. If a part of a game sucked in the old days, why do we have to replicate it?

And the games coming out in this period, especially the 4th generation OSR games, are fantastic.

Primeval Thule 5E

Primeval Thule is still a fabulous setting. I played this using Savage Worlds and always held a soft spot for its "Conan meets Cthulhu" bronze-age world. This is not your 'pantaloons and plate mail' pseudo-Renaissance 'magic as modern technology' D&D setting or a modern world, but 'we veneer it with the word Steampunk' campaign world. There are times I get tired of the fake Renaissance that modern media and D&D try to foist on us; this was the birth of the nation-state and colonialism that robbed the primitive world blind to feed European wealth, cultural supremacy, and the high standard of living. The era planted the seeds for every problem we live with today, yet it is constantly whitewashed as an innocent, generic fantasy setting.

Steampunk in fantasy settings is also lazy these days, allowing writers to write for a modern world with Starbucks, Instagram, mass transit, and DoorDash equivalents with magical steampunk technology. When steampunk started, terrific alternate-future retro tech forced you to think differently. These days, it is fantasy world writer laziness.

Also, planar settings, as infinite multiverse worlds, are super lazy. This was the D&D-inflicted curse on our games for the last 40 years, where the stakes were lowered to a point where no one cared, and heroes felt so miniscule that nothing mattered.

Anytime the worlds were gritty, low magic, limited access, and players were forced to stay in the sandbox - those were terrific games and settings. We ran Forgotten Realms, Golarion, and Nerrath like that and loved those worlds. When the "planar escape hatch" was opened, the games died.

If I ran Thule, that is what it would be. You live here. You die here. There is no escape to happy planar land. You will never have a cell phone or a Pokémon. You are not playing a Muppet. No one is developing 20th-century technology with the knowledge their characters don't have. It sounds harsh, but the player pandering and entitlement level in modern fantasy gaming would ruin a setting like this.

Please care about the world; it will not be as forgiving if you don't.

Thule is a bronze age, pre-steel, pre-glass, pre-age of sail, pre-printing press, no-stirrups, low magic, a world with no royals, only brutal warlords and savage sorcerer-kings. Yes, no stirrups, meaning no mounted combat or horse archery. There is no walking around in jousting plate mail, which means AC values are capped.

No steel production exists; you have bronze, hide, tin, copper, wood, and bone. Steel is a lost art relegated to the ancient world and a few dwarven smiths who guard the knowledge fiercely. Prepare for your weapons to be unreliable, which need constant repairs and will likely break when you critically miss an attack roll. Anything made from bronze will be 50% heavier than steel.

Level Up A5E has excellent rules for variant weapon and armor materials that do this world justice (p322-323, Adventurer's Guide). Most quality weapons and armor will be bronze. Low quality will be iron, and warlords who are cheap will equip their thug-like guards with iron weapons or just clubs and whips to beat people into submission. City corruption will be high, so a guard may sell their iron weapons and claim they were stolen, so why give them good stuff? There will also be many bone and stone weapons among monster tribes and cultures in the wild, which will be standard. Weapons and armor made of steel and other exotic materials are rare treasures.

This is another reason to play A5E; since the community of designers wanted this game to play Dark Sun with it, the rules for all the standards of that setting are baked in. The game also has a firm survival and exploration pillar, which makes a savage world dangerous.

Yes, your stuff will break. Mark "equipment entitlement" off your checklist of "things the players can be certain of." Some games go out of their way to enshrine everything on the character sheet as untouchable by the game master. Telling a player "your weapon breaks" is a personal attack and reason to pound the X Card.

Ask anyone in this world what it is like to go to war. Everything you bring into a battlefield is on a timer, and you will never be able to predict when and where. All of it will break someday. And when it does, it may mean the difference between life and death.

Honor the warriors by being one.

In Thule, magic is also low, and superstition and fear of the unknown are high. Magic items in treasure hordes are halved and can never be bought and sold - making them insanely valuable. Not every class has magic; if you do, learning to hide it and not flaunt it will increase your chances of surviving. The chances of meeting someone who knows magic are low.

There are no laws, just the iron fist of warlords and their edicts enforced by thug guards. The wilds are dangerous lands with fearsome beasts and the ruins of forgotten empires. The cities are corrupt, decadent, crowded places of forced servitude and vice. Powerful sorcerers with dark magics enslave entire cities to build their grand temples to dark gods. Secret cults of unknown gods seek to corrupt the souls of the world and plunge them into madness.

You also get XP for GP.

What is this, an OSR setting?

We have this world for 5E this time, and it is sad to see this place go under the radar for many. This is like a Conan for 5E without the Conan lore and baggage. It has room for 5E and the standard selection of races and classes while still having that gritty and savage feeling. It feels like "genericized fantasy Conan plus 1980s fantasy sword & sorcery movies," which is beautiful.

And all the faux-Renaissance, planar multiverse, and Steampunk tropes are gone.

This setting is as close as possible to a Dark Sun for 5E, minus the magical wasteland deserts and defilers. I like this sort of savage game world better than a Dark Sun since the magical wastes and deserts became one note and a bit heavy-handed. Dark Sun also had this theme of civilization destroying the world, and it runs counter to a game world theme of the world being so fierce and savage that just surviving in it is a small victory.

Humanity will never destroy this world.

The world will destroy humanity long before civilization even has a chance.

Speaking of which, Thule is being invaded by the Cthulhu mythos. This is a part of the setting that I felt did not belong, but as I thought deeper into it, having a primitive world invaded by invaders from beyond space and time makes sense as the "big bad guys" of the setting. In most settings, dragons and demons are the big bad guys. Having an incomprehensible alien intelligence invade a Conan-style world sounds fun.

The above book is strongly recommended for playing here if you lean into the Cthulhu lore, as it deals with the cults and monsters of this mythos extensively and can be used to understand what happens when the cults of a particular alien intelligence take hold in the area, and what madness spreads. There are also levels of influence, which progress naturally to the next, to the point the world is destroyed. This book is technology-neutral, so you are not dealing with the 1920s and can run these in 5E and fantasy worlds.

Primeval Thule is a solid setting and, with the suitable Open 5E game, is a fantastic place for telling savage stories. I would lean more towards A5E for this one (for the materials, survival, and exploration rules), though ToV would also work well. I will need to wait until September for the GM Guide's release to see if the optional rules support some things A5E does out of the box.

What makes this setting so compelling is it subverts your fantasy gaming expectations. The things you rely upon heavily (plate mail, steel, social norms, everyday magic, technology, planar travel, player entitlement, reliable equipment) are taken away, and you are forced to think hard to adapt and survive.

Not being in your comfort zone makes a great story.

Dragonslayer

Why do I need another B/X game?

Wow, $80 (on sale) for a B&W hardcover? This is pricy, but nearly 300 pages of consistent, old-school art? A one-book game? A large book with an easy-to-read type with line spacing that is easier on older eyes? Expensive but well worth the money.

A replacement for Labyrinth Lord and OSE that mixes B/X and 1st Edition? He wrote this so his mega-dungeons would not rely on "other people's rules." He also wanted to clean up many areas he saw as problems when people played his adventures.

Builds off the 5.1 Creative Commons license?

Consistent art by old-school artists? Nice.

Ability requirements for certain classes? For example, a barbarian requires STR and CON to be 13. This makes special character classes rare if you have the scores to play them. So when they show up, they are extraordinary; not everyone can play one.

Level limits for non-human races, but some very nice bonuses? No race-as-class.

It focuses on the level 1-10 progression path but allows for open-ended progression.

Simplified encumbrance.

No bards? Thank you. I am tired of the modern bard class as a whole. I would be okay with seeing it in an expansion, but the character class is becoming the default choice for many, and it needs to be better defined in what it does in many games that require a complete reset.

If you want bards, necromancers, sorcerers, scouts, and build-your-own classes, consider picking up the excellent B/X Options Class Builder for these special variant classes and use the main-book character classes for everything else. The bard here will work well and is different enough from today's "pop class" bards that you must make some hard choices to want to play one. I would throw a DEX & CHR minimum of 13 on this class instead of the 9 WIS and DEX in the class builder.

Lower overall attack bonus modifiers but leverages flanking (+1), high-ground (+1), point-blank missile (+1), and versus prone (+4) modifiers? Depending on the situation, the Maze Controller can also give positive or negative modifiers. Fighting kobolds with daggers, and you have a spear? I may offer you a bonus - depending on the situation.

Does the system use a modified THAC0 (same for all, 20)? Yes! They set the "to-hit DC" to 20, and you have to add an attack bonus and descending AC to your roll.

Example: A level 4 fighter with a base attack bonus of +2 and a STR 14 bonus of +1 attacks an AC 8 zombie. You roll 1d20 + 2 + 1 + 8 and try to beat a 20. Or, you could do the (this is not hard) math, say 20 - 11 = 9, and roll a 9 or higher. 7 for flanking.

This is an excellent Labyrinth Lord and/or OSE replacement and a solid, CC-based B/X set of rules. My feelings on this went from "Why another B/X system?" to "Oh, old school artists and a cleaned up, reimagined B/X and 1st Edition!" core book.

2024 is the year of the Divorce D&D games. No one is sure if they can even make 3rd party D&D material anymore, so people are writing their own "divorce games" to walk away. The OGL is dead. Keeping these games compatible keeps an olive branch out, but the movement to control your destiny is strong this year.

We are also seeing a fracturing of viewpoints in this space, with certain groups proclaiming one game is more this and another tabletop game is more that. D&D used to be where we could come together to discuss different opinions and find a compromise. Wall Street ended that.

I prefer to invite everyone to my table to come together and discuss differences and find places where we can work together. Discussion is always better than exclusion. Compromise and understanding are better than violence and hate. Safety tools are things that start a conversation, not end it.

Oh, and you need to vote to have an opinion. Everyone used to say this in the 1980s, and I understand why now. And if you feel super strongly, caucus and primary, get involved with your party and use that energy there. You will change the world to your liking much easier and faster this way.

Whatever you believe, your party will be happy to have the support.

One veteran Vermont political person once said to me, "Let the other side talk and engage in ideas. If we silence them and kick them out of our spaces, it will drive more people to their side. Once you do that, it is like you voting for them instead of what you believe in."

I miss those days and those classic liberal free thinkers. They did that to have moral and intellectual superiority in any disagreement, which is how they won many debates. "I'm letting you talk and participate, but I believe my ideas are better. Here's why."

For CC-based B/X, you have this and the excellent Swords & Wizardry release last year. For 5E, we have Open 5E, with Tales of the Valiant and Level Up Advanced 5E.

A solid game with esteemed artists, excellent presentation, and worth participating in.

Ones We Lost Along the Way

I was sad to see the hardcover options for Spec Ops and The Ruin pulled from Drive Thru. This is likely by the author's choice since, in the comments section, he says he can re-enable them for a little while. You can still grab the PDFs, and they are fun little games.

These weren't the definitive games in their genre, but they were fun. It makes me sigh and think of all the cool 5E games we lost along the way and all the dreams shattered by the OGL mess last year. The Ruin was very cool, a tight 5E implementation of an Aftermath-style game (and that is even mentioned in the forward).

And I can't find my Ruin hardcover - somewhere around here. I hate that feeling.

The game felt basic, like it was searching for a game in the concept, but could not quite pinpoint where the fun was. It went metaphysical when it should have stuck to the basics, and ideally, a game like this should look and feel like one of those 'survival manuals' on Amazon. You feel slightly queasy about buying books like this since they feel like 'scary books' to buy.

To me, the fun of an Aftermath game was in the black humor of trying to do the impossible, mainly around the ordinary, such as opening a can of beans. Throw in killer robots, ATMs trying to kill you, a minefield, laser turrets, marauding raiders, diseased giant rats, boobytraps left by nobody you know and for no reason, collapsing rotted floors, and random crossbow attacks by other survivors. You have a fun Aftermath game if you can live to see the Van Camps.

You weren't surviving the adventure; you were surviving the rules.

Again, you need rule rules support to run a survival game, and 5E does not come with batteries included in this regard. Level Up A5E is far better for a post-apocalypse game since it has survival and exploration rules built into the classes and options. 5E needs much work to support other genres; it is not a GURPS and can't do everything out of the box.

Amazing Adventures 5E was another clearance-aisled shortly after release and the OGL mess. There are a few series where a few of the books are missing POD options for their 5E versions, and the cancellation of this was probably related to the mess caused in January 2023. I have seen the PDF of this on DTRPG for 40 cents. The hardcovers are likely out of print forever.

I don't blame Troll Lord for pulling the ejection seat on 5E; Castles & Crusades is fantastic. It is a shame this fun 5E implementation had to end up like this. This was one of the best 3rd party pulp modern 5E games, and it is a shame to see it go.

I was looking at the 5E version of Savage Thule, but one of the books does not have a POD option, and I could never have a complete set on my shelf. Same thing with Esper Genesis; the hardcover for the Master Technicians Guide is MIA, and I doubt that it will ever go back in print. Some of the Lost Lands adventures for 5E are only available in PDF, and the print versions are out of stock.

And many of these 5E OGL books probably never made enough money to make a Creative Commons conversion feasible. What we got was it.

Most everyone left the 5E market or started their own game last year. We have entirely incompatible systems clocking millions of dollars on Kickstarter. Many have walked away from 5E and all the 3rd party 5E publishers. In many places, it looks like a total market collapse.

Even if all you play are Wizards books, this should concern you.

You won't be able to play MCDM RPG or WHFRP game adventures with 5E. Many have moved to the Dragonbane, Cyberpunk, Free League games, Castles & Crusades, and other hobby parts. Many will never return to D&D, myself included.

Tales of the Valiant and A5E? Those adventures can still be played with 5E books, 2014 or 2024. All the Kobold Press content will be cross-compatible. Other publishers are hedging bets with dual-release 5E and PF 2 books, like Roll for Combat - and they make some good stuff.

The mid-market publishers are still holding firm, and the best they can do is make their own Open 5E games, hedge their bets on the most popular, and move forward.

Many 5E players don't want the drama and want to pretend none of this happened.

I get it.

I just want to play a game with dragons and magic. Please don't bring the real world into it.

We didn't. Wall Street did. We can guess what's coming next. I am trying to weave through this mess with a clear conscience and not have to sell a thousand dollars in 5E books. The ultimate end is "I don't care," I sell them all, even A5E and ToV. Goodbye.

I have other games.

I don't need your drama or YouTube telling me that D&D 2024 is inevitable. You know, the people who hate something the most will be the ones that come right back and tell you "how it can be saved." They will "try to find the good in the situation." They get codependent on their enemy. If what they hate disappears, they won't have a channel anymore. Beware of all those gaming and culture channels on that site. They will play that hate-hope game with your emotions and string you along for views.

GURPS has, like, what, 6-7 active YouTubers that are constantly positive? I will play that and enjoy their positivity. I don't care if nobody plays it; I am. I will unsubscribe from all of the 5E channels and join them.

In the end, I did something positive.

But I care about the 3rd party people making a living from great stuff. I can't abandon them with a good conscience. I have done good if my struggles help others through this. Other people have 5E groups, too, and they want to still play with friends and not be forced to sign up and pay monthly fees.

Those people matter, too.

So I stay in the fight.

Many 5E books are being clearance-aisled, taken out of print, and abandoned for a few dollars here and there in PDF sales. And 5E is slowly drifting back into "just" fantasy gaming, and the system is stagnating, feeling that it can't do much else than fantasy. While I am optimistic for Level Up A5E and Tales of the Valiant, I will mourn all the dreams that went down in flames with the 5E market as it was up to 2022.

This is what the OGL mess did. They sucked the life out of the 3rd party 5E market. Unless you are bought in heavily on Tales or A5E and on those trains, the prospects outside that world are bleak. What choices do you have? Pathfinder 2? Shadowdark? MCDM RPG? DCC?

Outside of D&D, it feels better to stay away from 5E entirely. This may be what Wizards wanted. But in reality, this may be what kills the game. Without strong 3rd party support, your game is no longer the market leader; the wave has crested and is breaking on the shore. Nobody is putting a vote of confidence in you. Players are moving on to other games and eventually losing interest.

This reminds me of peak World of Warcraft; people played that game just to be near other people who played. After it peaked, people drifted away and never recovered that 'pop culture mindshare' position ever again. The OGL mess gave people a reason to leave, especially the hardcore players. Once people drift away in that macro sense, you never get them back.

But I have not given up hope on A5E or ToV. These are the future of 5E. An Open 5E. The market will never be as big, but the games, community, and adventures will be unique.

I liked the "also" 5E games, and they were easy ways to get 5E players looking into different genres and experiences. With the D&D VTT clearly fantasy, we are moving into players isolated in one genre only and camps forming dividing us - instead of having a game bring us together.

The Ruin game is an apt metaphor for the 5E market these days. With other systems taking players away, I doubt the market will recover like it was in 2022. Even if the 2024 version is massive (I expect a loss leader strategy, great books, and generous releases), there is still that pressure to monetize hanging over our heads.

Once you buy in, it will be hard to escape being trapped by that website. You and your players. Open 5E is like Linux; it will win in the end. There will be giant "consumer game releases" just like Windows did in the past, but give it 5-10 years. Open 5E will still be here. All my books will still be usable when 6E rolls around. Give it 20 years. Same story when we get the mythical 7E. Open 5E will be here. Like Linux, our distribution may differ, but it will still be open and accessible for distribution and improvement.

B/X and the OSR proved the model. They are already there.

We just need to believe in it for 5E.

People may want to forgive and forget the OGL mess, but if you open your eyes, the destruction and piles of abandoned and failed games litter the gaming landscape.

And it hurts 5E more than any other game.

Tales of the Valiant GM Guide: Last 7 Days

Tales of the Valiant doesn't have to be much more than a patched and fixed 5E; I would be happy with that. A lot of people ask, "What is the point?"

I am not doing business with a company that I feel is low in the ethics area, for one. This is my choice. And your choices on the companies you choose to do business with reflect your character.

Everyone needs to hold themselves to a higher standard.

This is how it was in the 1980s. If a company made weapons and sold them to Central American countries with a terrible human rights record, we would not buy their consumer products. The same sort of people back then would say, "So what? You are just one person. It is not going to matter. They are so big one person won't make a difference."

It matters to me.

And so many people did; we did make a difference.

Also, I can sit around a table with a group and say, "It matters to us."

5E is a sound system, but the older implementation has a few flaws. We don't throw out a programming language because of a few bugs. We iterate, improve, patch, and move on. Open markets and code bases ensure we have the power to switch away should an organization or company go bad.

And the 2014 edition is old, and those who made the 2024 edition are gone now. I don't see a path forward, even if the 2024 books sell well. People always get suckered in by nostalgia, which may be a form of depression - or nostalgia may be us trying to self-medicate the feelings of depression.

I can cure that feeling of "everything was better back then!"

I will buy more things!

I am looking forward to this game. I can use all my old 5E books and play a version of 5E guilt-free. Since it is an open fork of the original, anyone else could take the ToV system reference document and improve it. This is future-proofing 50+ years into the future.

The OGL proved people like the games they like. They don't always need to be "versioned up" like software. A patch and remaster is all I want for 5E, and I don't like to be dragged into monthly charges and not be able to own my PDFs.

ToV fills that need.