Tales of the Valiant is a roleplaying game with a political history. Published by
Kobold Press—best known for the
Free City of Zobeck and
Midgard settings—
Tales of the Valiant was a response to the changes that Wizards of the Coast were rumoured to be making in January, 2023 which would have given the publisher of
Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition tighter control over third-party published content. Other responses included the development of the Open RPG Creative Licence, which included the
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, Second Edition (Remastered), but
Tales of the Valiant is based on ‘Black Flag Roleplaying’, an alternative and open gaming system built from the sections of the Creative Commons licence related to
Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. It is designed to be conversant with
Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, but not beholden to it. The initial two volumes for
Tales of the Valiant—the
Tales of the Valiant Player’s Guide and the
Tales of the Valiant Monster Vault—were published via a
Kickstarter campaign.
Of course,
Tales of the Valiant offers and supports
Dungeons & Dragons-style play and that it is conversant with
Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, means that Dungeon Master and players of the latter can easily adapt to it. It is an action-orientated roleplaying game which takes place in the Labyrinth, a multiverse of infinite words connected by a maze of magic. What these worlds have in common each other and in common with
Tales of the Valiant, is that they have magic, that adventurers are heroes and their adventures are heroic, that they are full of unusual places, peoples, and phenomena, that factions and organisations plot, and that conflict, in which heroes stand up against impossible odds and save the day through cunning, might, and magic, abounds. All of these are intended to foster good storytelling and good roleplaying, whether that is in a published setting or one of the Game Master’s own creation. Of course, whilst
Tales of the Valiant is a Class and Level roleplaying game that offers
Dungeons & Dragons-style play and there are plenty of similarities between
Tales of the Valiant and
Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, there are plenty of differences too.
The
Tales of the Valiant Player’s Guide provides the core rules for the game plus descriptions of some monsters and magical items, so that from the one book, the Player Characters have something to fight and some treasure to find. The bulk of the book though is devoted to the thirteen core Classes in
Tales of the Valiant. These are Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, Warlock, and Wizard—all classics of the roleplaying genre—and they are joined by a new Class, the Machinist. These all go up Twentieth Level and their descriptions include a suggested ‘Quick Build’ and an explanation as to why members of each Class become adventurers. They also have two Subclasses, except for the Cleric, which has three Domains--Life, Light, and War. So, for the Barbarian has Berserker and Wild Fury, the Druid has Shifter and Leaf, Fighter has Spell Blade and Weapon Master, and the Wizard has Battle Mage. Every Class also has two Heroic Boons to choose from at Tenth Level, so the Fighter has ‘Defiant’ which means that his player can choose to have his character succeed at a Saving Throw if he failed one, whilst ‘Unstoppable’ enables him to end the various conditions he is suffering from. For the Thief, ‘Escape Artist’ reduces any damage he receives when making a Saving Throw against to nothing if the Saving Throw made and by half if not, whilst ‘Jack-of-all-Trades’ enables him to choose Talents from any list. (Talents are organised into magical, martial, and technical lists.) Of course, in addition to the six classic attributes—Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma, a Player Character will have a Lineage, Heritage, and Background. Since the Player Character is meant to be heroic, by default, these are rolled on four six-sided dice each and the lowest dropped, but other options are given. The Lineage represents a Player Character’s blood ties and hereditary traits, the equivalent of Race or Species in other roleplaying games; Heritage is a Player Character’s upbringing and cultural origins; and Background what a Player Character did before becoming an adventurer.
There is much that is familiar with the Classes of
Tales of the Valiant, but of course, every Class has been tweaked and small adjustments made to it. For example, the Druid has ‘Nature’s Gift’, an innate Class ability that enables the Druid to heal a number of times equal to a Player Character’s Proficiency Bonus and since it is not a spellcasting ability, it can be whilst the Druid is transformed by the Wild Shape Class ability. Also, a Druid can ‘Draw Power’ from Wild Shape to recharge spells and with ‘Nature’s Grace’, a Druid ignores the need for food or water and cannot be magically aged.
All Classes gain a choice of Heroic Boon at Tenth Level and the Druid has the choice of ‘Rite of the Kingdom’ and the ability to communicate with any animal or ‘Rite of the Shaper’, which grants a use of Wild Shape prior to combat if the Druid has none. The Monk can not only deflect missiles, but if the damage they would do is reduced to zero, the Monk can catch them and throw them back—which is cool, whilst the Paladin can ‘Lay on Hands’ on himself as a bonus action, replaces ‘Fighting Styles’ with ‘Martial Action’—as does the Fighter, though that Class has more options, either ‘Guard’ with a shield or ‘Wind Up’ for a powerful attack, and has the ‘Divine Smite’ feature limited to once per turn. The Warlock has the ‘Eldritch Blast’ cantrip shifted to a Class feature, uses the Charisma bonus to attack rather than Strength or Dexterity with Pact of the Blade, casts a more powerful version of Find Familiar with Pact of the Chain and allows the familiar to attack without any of the Warlock’s actions, has a range of Invocations that either enhance ‘Eldritch Blast’, grant a spell-like effect, and more.
All of the Classes have a range of changes like this, but the wholly new Class in the
Tales of the Valiant Player’s Guide is the Mechanist. It is intended as an inventor, maker, or engineer, but one that can also fight. ‘Eyes of the Maker’ enable the Mechanist to identify magical items, its properties, and how to use it, which is really powerful, whilst ‘Shard of Creation’, fashioned by the Mechanist, can be used to gain inspiration or be transformed into a useful object. ‘Augment’ enables the Mechanist to make an object adhesive, collapsible, enhance the user’s perception, empowered and thus magical, propulsive to increase its speed, and so on. The two Subclasses are the Metallurgist, which specialises in combat and engineered armaments, whilst the Spellwright is an enchanter, tinker, and crafter. This Class is both new and demanding in terms of the amount of effort that a player will need to invest in it to get the most out of it. The player of the Mechanist Class literally needs to be inventive in how he uses the features of the Class, rather than adhering to the more constrained and tightly defined features of the other Classes.
The Lineages consist of the Beastkin, Dwarf, Elf, Human, Kobold, Orc, Syderan, and Smallfolk. The Beastkin requires further definition by the player in terms of what animal features his character has, whilst the Syderan are plane-touched, whether through parentage or a magical upheaval, the choices being Celestial or Fiendish in nature. Lastly, the Smallfolk are either Gnomes or Halflings. The Heritages—some of which are recommended for particular Lineages—include Anointed, Cosmopolitan, Diaspora, Nomadic, Salvager, and Supplicant. The Backgrounds include Adherent, Artist, Criminal, Homesteader, Maker, Outcast, Rustic, and so on. The Lineages and Heritages provide some standard traits, whilst the Backgrounds provide further proficiencies, some equipment, a talent, and a reason to adventure. There is a good selection here, the Heritages and Backgrounds, in particular, enabling players and Game Master alike to mix and match and so create traditional or non-traditional fantasy characters as is their wont.
Spellcasting in
Tales of the Valiant is drawn from four sources, Arcane, Divine, Primordial, and Wyrd. The Bard, Sorcerer, and Wizard draws from the Arcane; the Cleric and Paladin from the Divine; the Druid from the Primordial; and the Warlock the Wyrd. Spells are organised in Circles rather than Levels, but the various schools of magic remain as standard. In addition to cantrips and standard spells, casters also know rituals, spells take a minute or longer to cast. Classes who know rituals record which ones they can cast separate to their standard spells. For the most part, the spell list will look familiar to other fantasy roleplaying games, with the exception of a few new additions. For example,
Gear Barrage, which conjures a burst of magically propelled gears!
The tweaks continue with the equipment. Weapons have ‘Options’ that provide extra effects beyond mere damage, such as ‘Bash’ for the club or ‘Hamstring’ for the scimitar. So, a successful ‘Bash’ causes the target to have disadvantage on its next attack whilst ‘Hamstring’ reduces the target’s movement. The other ‘Weapon Options’ are Disarm, Pinning Shot, Pull, Ricochet, and Trip, all of which give a player choices other than just damage and can make play that little bit more dynamic. Armour can have properties like ‘Cumbersome’ and ‘Natural Materials’, the latter meaning that the armour is immune to the types of effects that metal armour suffers from. The magical items include a new degree of rarity, that of ‘Fabled’. These only include a few items such as
Blood Spike Armour,
Book of Names, the
Ring of the Flamekeeper, and
Quickfinger Gloves. These are wondrous items, very rare, gained through the play of the story and the narrative, rather than through random events, which grow with a Player Character as he gains Levels. For example, the demonic
Blood Spike Armour lets the wearer attack with its spikes as a bonus action, but attuned at Fifth Level, the spikes also inflict additional necrotic damage, at Ninth Level, there is a simple bonus to Armour Class and to hit and damage with the spikes, at Thirteenth level, the bonus increases and the wearer can make a nearby creature frightened, and lastly, at Seventeenth Level, the bonus increases again. Effectively, these ‘Fabled’ items—which unlike the other magical items listed, do not have a price attached, are designed to stay with a Player Character and become part of his story.
In terms of playing the game, relatively little is changed. The core mechanic still consists of rolling a twenty-sided die and adding the total of the attribute bonus and Proficiency Bonus when it applies, to beat a Difficulty Class. These range from ten or ‘Easy’ to twenty-five and higher for ‘Very Hard’. The Advantage and Disadvantage mechanic introduced in
Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, remains, but this is joined by a new mechanic, that of ‘Luck’. Luck is gained for failed attack rolls and Saving Throws, as a reward for clever, interesting play, and for surviving difficult encounters or achieving story goals. This is up to a maximum of five points. It can be spent on a one-for-one basis to improve rolls or at a cost of three Luck, a player can reroll the twenty-sided die in any check. The rules encourage a player to spend the Luck. If a Player Character has five already and more is earned, then the player has to roll a four-sided die and reset it to that new value. Also covered here are the rules and the guidance for social, exploration, and combat encounters, essentially the core of game play, whilst downtime activities take in carousing, crafting, researching, training, and working. In the case of crafting, researching, training, and working, these open up the opportunities for the Player Characters. Traditionally, Classes such as the Wizard would spend months on researching spells or creating potions and the like, whilst the other Classes had no similar options. Now they can research for information, earn money, craft non-magical items, and actually learn a new language or gain a proficiency in a new skill, tool, weapon, or armour. Of course, it takes both time—at least a year—and money to undertake this training, but it gives options for Player Characters who traditionally did not have anything to do whilst others were occupied in their projects.
Rounding out the
Tales of the Valiant Player’s Guide is a set of three appendices. In turn these explain the roleplaying game’s Conditions that a Player Character or NPC or monster can suffer, entertainingly illustrated/demonstrated by Kobolds; detail the ‘Gods & Pantheons’ of not just the Labyrinthian Pantheon, but also some fantasy historical ones like the Egyptian, Greek, and Norse pantheons; and a selection of creatures. The latter is not extensive and does not include any intelligent humanoids. The main entries are to provide support for the various Classes, such as a mount for the Paladin and a familiar for the various spellcasting Classes. Although the ‘Gods & Pantheons’ are nicely detailed, they do include numerous Domains that are not listed for the Cleric Class, limiting their use straight out of the book. The appendix does include a disclaimer, stating that they will be detailed in future books, but their inclusion is tantalisingly frustrating at his point.
There are a couple of oddities in the book. Multiclassing is an optional rule, but is explained before the Classes, whilst the magical items are given at the end of the equipment chapter rather than in their own section. The ‘Playing the Game’ chapter is placed before the spellcasting section rather than perhaps at the end of the book where it could have been more easily accessed.
Physically, the
Tales of the Valiant Player’s Guide is cleanly, tidily laid out. The artwork is excellent and in addition, throughout the book, there are sections of advice for the player which further explain the rules or make suggestions how to get the best out of
Tales of the Valiant and its rules. For anyone new to the style of play that
Tales of the Valiant offers, this is all very useful.
The
Tales of the Valiant Player’s Guide is a solid introduction to the first ‘Black Flag Roleplaying’ game. There are a lot of little tweaks and changes to how this plays compared to similar fantasy roleplaying games, but the fundamentals of that play remains unchanged, which only serves to make it all the more accessible. The overall effect of those changes in the
Tales of the Valiant Player’s Guide is that
Tales of the Valiant is a cleaner and perhaps leaner roleplaying game offering classic fantasy roleplaying.
On the tail of Old School Renaissance has come another movement—the rise of the fanzine. Although the fanzine—a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon, got its start in Science Fiction fandom, in the gaming hobby it first started with Chess and Diplomacy fanzines before finding fertile ground in the roleplaying hobby in the 1970s. Here these amateurish publications allowed the hobby a public space for two things. First, they were somewhere that the hobby could voice opinions and ideas that lay outside those of a game’s publisher. Second, in the Golden Age of roleplaying when the Dungeon Masters were expected to create their own settings and adventures, they also provided a rough and ready source of support for the game of your choice. Many also served as vehicles for the fanzine editor’s house campaign and thus they showcased how another DM and group played said game. This would often change over time if a fanzine accepted submissions. Initially, fanzines were primarily dedicated to the big three RPGs of the 1970s—Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller—but fanzines have appeared dedicated to other RPGs since, some of which helped keep a game popular in the face of no official support.Since 2008 with the publication of Fight On #1, the Old School Renaissance has had its own fanzines. The advantage of the Old School Renaissance is that the various Retroclones draw from the same source and thus one Dungeons & Dragons-style RPG is compatible with another. This means that the contents of one fanzine will be compatible with the Retroclone that you already run and play even if not specifically written for it. Labyrinth Lord and Lamentations of the Flame Princess Weird Fantasy Roleplay have proved to be popular choices to base fanzines around, as has Swords & Wizardry and the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game from Goodman Games. Some of these fanzines provide fantasy support for the Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game, but others explore other genres for use with Dungeon Crawl Classics Roleplaying Game. One such fanzine is Legends of Uganda.
