Tales of the Valiant: Players' Guide - Thoughts

 So it's been a couple of months since Tales of the Valiant (ToV) came out for everyone to see. For those who don't know what it is, Tales of the Valiant is a 5e compatible TTRPG by Kobold Press. So far they've released the Player's Guide and the Monster Manual, but the Game Master's Guide is still on the way.

Now before I start rambling, let me say that I'm a little scatterbrained today. So I don't know whether this is going to come out sensibly.

You've been warned...

So what is ToV?

Tales of the Valiant is in some ways Kobold Press' response to WotC's OGL scandal. It is a system that appears built on D&D 5th Edition's foundation with a few variations in it. Though not the most accurate of comparisons, the best way I can think to describe it is when Paizo created Pathfinder as an answer to the frustrations players had with D&D at the time.

What does ToV's Players' Guide consist of?

ToV approached its introduction as though you've never played D&D. And so everything you can imagine in how to run a game and character creation and rules are in there. For those who know D&D, and 5e specifically, you'll see that the book holds everything you need to create a ToV character with a few minor rules differences or clarifications. Nothing that completely rocks the boat, yet enough changes to make ToV feel like it's own game. 

I'll try to go into the differences in a bit more detail later or maybe in a later post... I dunno yet.

Compatibility with 5th Edition D&D.

What appealed to me of ToV was that, from the beginning, they stated that you'll be able to run 5e and ToV characters together and, from what I have read, they've kept to that. How would that work? Essentially for the GM, it will be important to tell your players that they can choose either a 5e character or a ToV character. They can't mix the two rulesets for their classes and whatnot. But you will be able to have a party that consists of characters from either set. The rules of ToV doesn't vary so much that there would be sticking points and they've even released a Conversion Document to assist.

It's all about the flavour...

Having read the Player's Guide, I think one will be both curious and a bit perplexed. As this is the initial release of Tales of the Valiant, I suspect the creators went for quality over quantity. As such, ToV doesn't have the same class versatility with respect to player options, but what it does have is flavour and that it has in spades.

Each class feels unique and, where D&D can sometimes feel like a melange of sameness, I think the way they approached the different classes is really intriguing. When creating a ToV character, you're not going to feel like this is a D&D clone. Sure the stats are similar, but when it comes to what each class does, how Talents work and even the heritages, there's a lot that makes you realise that, though they can eat at the same pasture, they're not the same kind of beast.

I would have liked to see more player options, but I also recognise that this is something they can build from. And that makes me curious to see what other things Kobold Press are going to come up with.

What I got stuck on...

The sharper tools in the shed would probably have found the magic concept in ToV easy to grasp. I've admittedly had difficulty. It's not impossible to understand, instead of separating the types of spells by class, it's done by 'source', such as Divine, Arcane, Primordial, to name but a few. In the class description, you'll learn which ones your character will utilize. It's when they overlap that I get confused. I think, for me at least, I'll need to create a couple of ToV characters before I'll adequately understand it. But I figured I'd be honest and mention that there was one hiccup in my reading.

(Dis)honourable mentions

Just a few things that I thought would be worth mentioning: 

• Some magic items are listed in the book and they have suggested prices.
• Crafting of Mundane items are tackled but not magical ones. This is supposedly going to be addressed in the GM's Guide.
• Eldrich Blast is a Warlock ability in ToV and not a spell and thus can't be twinned if you have a sorcerer multiclass.
• ... Oh! They have multiclassing...
• The Luck mechanic is awesome. I've already started incorporating it in my games.
• Kobold Press says NO to generative AI

Final Thoughts

I've been very supportive of a lot of Kobold Press things and Tales of the Valiant is one product I feel I can get behind. I don't know if I'm going to buy their setting guide (I have my own setting to play in, afterall), but any books that build on the classes, ancestries, and heritages that has been established in this initial book will definitely be purchased and consumed.

I'm going to read through the Monster Manual now and (maybe) post about it too at some point. If not, I'll definitely have a post on the Game Master's Guide after I've read it. Can't wait for that to be released!

Nanowrimo, AI, and digging yourself into a hole you can't crawl out of...

 It's been a while since I posted. I've been busy, but I'm still alive and doing well. So if you were wondering, wonder no more! 

It's no secret that I used to be a big fan of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) which was, initially at least, a movement to get a person writing creatively for no other gain than to create. The idea was simple: Start the beginning of the month of November with a 'blank page' and write until the end of the month with a target of 50 000 words. It was crazy, zany but, importantly, it was 100% achievable.

I've been doing nanowrimo for over a decade and was successful a couple of times. Followers of this blog would know that I'd pitch the nanowrimo idea once a year (during the years I participated) by writing a post about it and its benefits while trying to make the daily word count of 1667 and I mostly succeeded doing just that.

Nanowrimo has done a lot of good. It has made strangers friends and sometimes even marriage partners. It has helped people write up their thesis, it has launched authors into the sphere of having content that they might one day publish (even though this was never the ultimate goal of the movement). In my own life, nanowrimo was how I got into D&D, how I met people who've made deep impacts on me, and helped teach me that I could if I put my mind and heart to it.

So it wasn't willy-nilly that I decided to delete my nanowrimo account a couple of days ago. It was with a heaviness I haven't felt in a long time.

What spurred it?

Nanowrimo recently release a statement (which they've now heavily edited) stating their stance on AI. I managed to find a copy of the 'first post' before they edited it and edited it again. I'm posting it as a picture, but for those who can't access images, it basically states that those who are unsupportive of using AI in writing are classist and ableist.

This broad-strokes acceptance of the use of AI in an activity that was meant to encourage human creativity in writing, and the statement that opposition to their acceptance was classist, ableist, and privileged, really rubbed me the wrong way. Let me be clear, the issue isn't using things like Grammarly to fix what has been written, but rather generative AI that generates the writing without enough creative input to call it the work of the data entrier. 

The other matter that ground my gears was the emphasis on publication. The original idea that Chris Baty came up with wasn't "let's get 21 people to publish or otherwise be considered failures". Creative expression, like any other hobby, can bring growth by doing without hitting professional or published spheres.

A tangent...

In writing this blog post, I got interrupted by a five-year-old who wanted my attention (not mine, I'm still allergic). We took out some Rory's Story cubes and crafted a story together using the pictures on the cubes as prompts. While it did throw me off of my thought of how I wanted to conclude the post, it did remind me of the magic of creativity and the joy that can come with it - even when it's only a single moment that will not be made permanent by publication or whatnot.

Nanowrimo has effectively killed that joy for me in my support for them. They've told me my disagreement makes me inferior and icky. And the knowledge that they're following the money of an AI-related sponsor over the original vision that made nanowrimo the highlight of my year is frustrating and heart-breaking.

Conclusion

I won't stop writing because of NaNoWriMo's actions, but it will no longer be the reason I do decide to write. And nothing they say now will bring me back to them. Because even in their final edited post which takes away the hurtful remarks, this wasn't done out of actual remorse or realisation that they were wrong. It has been to save face.

And what a unwashed, grubby face that is.