Disclaimer: I worked on this system, so I am obviously a bit biased. However, I was a designer, not a PR or marketing person! This is all very much how I actually feel.
If you're wanting to play 5e, but not to give WotC money, consider Level Up: Advanced 5e from EN Publishing. The three core books, The Adventurer's Guide, Trials and Treasures, and the Monstrous Menagerie are drop-in replacements for the PHB, DMG, and MM.
The whole system has been rebalanced, there are new systems that support the exploration and social pillars, it has crafting rules and costs for magic items, it has stronghold and follower rules, it has the concept of rare spell variants. It has a new Marshal class (a kind of homage to the 4e warlord). Expertise has been changed from static bonuses into scaling extra dice (similar to the bless spell or Bardic Inspiration). All of the egregious multiclass cheese (sorcadin, coffeelock, 2-level dips into fighter for Action Surge, paladin/warlock) has been fixed. Race has been split into Heritage and culture, there's a new Destiny system that provides more character-centric ways to get inspiration. The monsters now use more of the action economy. There is an entirely new (and MUCH easier to use!) system for encounter building. There are pre-made encounter elements like rushing liquid and high gravity with CR adjustments already worked out. Martial characters get access to a new maneuver system that gives them more to do than basic attacks. Weapons and armor have more properties and materials, meaningfully differentiating a battle axe from a longsword.
It is a really, really good system, and it is backwards compatible with vanilla 5e. Arguably, it works better with third-party 5e stuff than regular 5e due to a lower mutual distance from the common baseline of the 5e SRD. You can use subclasses, feats, spells, equipment, monsters, etc from 3PP books with little or no adjustment.
Also: EN Publishing is a much better company than WotC. They pay their freelancers fairly and on time (something I can attest to personally), consulted sensitivity readers for the entire system, deliberately recruited a diverse, international design team, and actively support third-party publishers, to the extent of listing all known 3PP releases specifically made for Level Up on the official tools site (look at the bottom link under "useful pages").
If you want to take a look at the whole system for free, check out https://a5e.tools/
That sounds very interesting. Thanks for the writeup.
Holy carp. I used to play the hell out of 1e Chivalry and Sorcery. Very curious what 5e is like.
Super chuffed at all the new stuff getting to see the light of day. Unintentionally shooting themselves in the foot might be the best thing Hasbro has ever done for TTRPGs.
Super chuffed at all the new stuff getting to see the light of day. Unintentionally shooting themselves in the foot might be the best thing Hasbro has ever done for TTRPGs.
We can hope!
The AP I'm on AND my Sunday group are both looking at doing a bunch of "RPG tasting" which should hopefully give me the chance to finally try out the huge list of non-d&d stuff I've wanted to play for ages.
The AP I'm on AND my Sunday group are both looking at doing a bunch of "RPG tasting" which should hopefully give me the chance to finally try out the huge list of non-d&d stuff I've wanted to play for ages.
I feel ya. My regular group is now wanting to branch out. I am trying to get them to play Blades in the Dark over on One More Multiverse. The module they have in place for it is really well built. If anyone would like to try it I have a test game set up so people can make a character and demo it.
The Avatar tLAB RPG book should be in backers hands this week and in stores next week, for people looking to play in that universe.
The Avatar tLAB RPG book should be in backers hands this week and in stores next week, for people looking to play in that universe.
Yup, I just got mine, haven't had a chance to look through it.
I'm still waiting!
The Avatar tLAB RPG book should be in backers hands this week and in stores next week, for people looking to play in that universe.
A local game shop had a stack of them on Saturday, now I'm fearful that I should have grabbed one when I had the chance.
The Avatar tLAB RPG book should be in backers hands this week and in stores next week, for people looking to play in that universe.
Fire nation attacked Avatar, or blue Pocahontas Avatar?
NathanialG wrote:The Avatar tLAB RPG book should be in backers hands this week and in stores next week, for people looking to play in that universe.
Fire nation attacked Avatar, or blue Pocahontas Avatar?
f*ck, there's ANOTHER Avatar to keep straight?
Goddamn it, two of you find a different title!
Looking at you, James Cameron, you hack! The Last Airbender had it first!
D&D Beyond releases a draft OGL 1.2 that looks much better on quick scan. Uses the Creative Commons license rather than being owned by WOTC, uses the magic words "perpetual" and "irrevocable", and has a distinct lack of the heavy-handed and threatening language they'd sent out to Kickstarter and other third parties in prior weeks. Still can obviously change, but looks like the power of nerd rage really may have made some change here.
I was in a bad relationship once, so bad that I packed my bags and moved out. She came and found me where I was staying at a friend's place, brought me my favorite meal, full of smiles and apologies and promises about how she would do better. I thanked her for her kind words and showed her the door. If I have to literally pack my stuff and leave to get this kind of treatment, it's not worth staying, because I can't do that every time we have an argument.
Not sure why I just decided to tell that story. Must have thought it was applicable in some way.
Humble Bundle is apparently getting an ORC bundle together for this weekend.
D&D Beyond releases a draft OGL 1.2 that looks much better on quick scan. Uses the Creative Commons license rather than being owned by WOTC, uses the magic words "perpetual" and "irrevocable", and has a distinct lack of the heavy-handed and threatening language they'd sent out to Kickstarter and other third parties in prior weeks. Still can obviously change, but looks like the power of nerd rage really may have made some change here.
There's a bit more nuance than that, sadly.
The CCing of the absolute bare-metal core concepts like proficiency, ability scores, and saving throws is basically a capitulation that they won't sue over basic game design concepts. It is the one unambiguously good thing in there, if, and it's a big "if," they actually go through with it. Very possible it's a bluff or feint.
The rest is still full of poison pills, but it's more softly-worded and carefully-hidden poison pills. They're basically painting better camo on the trojan horse.
Here's a breakdown from an actual lawyer who explains things that I, not a lawyer, am better off just linking to: https://medium.com/@MyLawyerFriend/l...
If you'll all forgive a little self-promotion, a couple of new Monster of the Week things just announced that some folks might be interested in.
Our latest reprint is a new hardcover edition. There's nothing new in the text, but we've added some of the rules modules from Tome of Mysteries and a couple of hunter playbooks previously available direct from me.
Crowdfunding for the new supplement Codex of Worlds is coming next month. You can sign up to get notified when it opens here.
We forgive you and congrats!
We forgive you and congrats!
Thanks. It’s pretty exciting to be at this point, after spending most of last year putting them together.
Need to read some Quality Legal Analysis of this, but first glance is the nerds might have just won? WOTC is abandoning plans to de-authorize the original OGL, getting rid of the VTT stuff, and moving all of the new OGL into Creative Commons, making all explicitly irrevocable. Nothing completely final yet, but man, there is some serious panic-reversing here from people at WOTC/Hasbro.
The question is, with all the bridges they burned, how much damage does this do long-term? With all the people who were pledging to support the new ORC initiative, does that turn into a viable game system with enough support to more or less be to 5e/One D&D what Pathfinder's 3.5 replacement was to 4e?
Yeah, I saw this earlier, and to say I'm shocked by the outcome would be an understatement.
They even seem to have kept whatever idiot felt it necessary to insist "No, we didn't lose! We won, actually!" in the last statement away.
It must have hurt WOTC's (Hasbro's?) bottom line considerably.
I am amazed at just how terribly they misread the community around the game though.
I'm curious to see how much this hurts them, because they've burned so much goodwill. Part of me thinks people are just never going to trust them again and move on, while an equally large part of me thinks most people are going to go "Phew! Glad that's over!" and just go back to business as usual.
(Also, as someone pointed out at io9, there's a decent question as to exactly how much of the hobby actually cared about this issue. People on Twitter have an issue with vastly overestimating the size of their interest groups [glances at the fandoms of several recently canceled cartoons].)
Some high school group playing with battered copies of the Player's Guide, DMG, and Monster Manual from the school library probably don't care, but those aren't the people plopping down a monthly fee for Beyond anyway.
I'd guess that there's probably a pretty large overlap between the kind of hardcore player Hasbro is relying on to keep Beyond bringing in money, and the kind of person keeping very current with OGL news.
Who knows if they're accurate reports, but multiple reports said 40,000 paying subscriptions canceled within the first week or two after the original OGL leak, and my guess is that continued, and the game nerds trying to design WOTC were able to yell at Hasbro enough to get the business types to back off a bit. That measurable hit to income in a short period of time makes people sit up and notice. If it was just internet rage, well, you shrug and go on, but you start losing that reliable monthly income stream . . .
IMO, a lot depends on two factors; one, how rapidly can WOTC put out a good-looking VTT to entice people into their ecosystem around the time One D&D hits, and, two, the Open Roleplaying Creative (ORC) thing comes about, which a lot of third-party creators signed onto. I'm not really optimistic about either of those; the VTT is going to require a lot of significant development work from a company lacking any history with that, and the ORC has a bit of a "too many cooks" thing about it with lord knows how many people trying to create a system, that always turns into a hellscape of complexity and options. Who knows.
Regardless, it's shocking to see internet rage actually do something good for once . . .
I will sy, perhaps all those disgruntled FIFA/NBA 2K/Madden/CoD fans should pay attention to this.
It turns out, businesses will really listen if you hit them in their pockets, rather than "endlessly yelling online while continuing to pay them $60 year in and year out."
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