Black Flag Playtest! Aye, They've Pirated the SRD, Matey!

 Well, I mean I don't know what I was supposed to expect, but the Black Flag Playtest document (which right now is 12 pages of basic proof of concept stuff) seems to follow the SRD 5.1 pretty closely until it doesn't, which is when ancestries and talents suddenly come in to the picture. It basically means we have High Elves as cloud elves now, and wood elves are grove elves, I guess? Couldn't wood elves still exist apart from D&D IP, seeing as how Tolkien formulized them in the first place?

There's not quite enough here for me to have any real opinion, but I do have a chance to see what Kobold Press is doing against another revisionist competitor....the era of Officially Licensed Fantasy Heartbreakers, I guess; and that competition is Level Up! A5E RPG from EN World, which does a really good job of taking base 5E and fixing everything anyone ever found even vaguely wrong with it. 

That said....I can see where Black Flag is going, and I like it, too. The two backgrounds layer up a bit in nice ways. The talent system is a way of codifying stuff that previously was best considered "class abilities" into something that might have more universal applicability in design.

It's going to be interesting over the next couple of years. The monsters were quiescent in their pens, but the handler got a bit drunk one day and became very abusive. Now the monsters have broken loose and roam free, and the handler is no longer hidden behind his safe walls. 

About the only downside I can see is also an upside: everything here looks like its meant to sustain compatibility down the road across multiple related systems. It's meant to woo D&D fans by being close enough to D&D in whatever incarnation to feel comfortable. 

Maybe, one day, WotC will be publishing a licensed "Worlds of D&D" campaign expansion for Black Flag. Who knows! Probably not, but it would be really amusing if it got to that point.

The downside of all this is, of course, the fact that the days when a much wider range of RPGs that are strange, interesting and different all appear to be dwindling behind us. At some point soon (and in some ways already) it will feel as if 95% of all RPG content is somehow 5E compatible or derived or otherwise based on some variant of D&D. In reality while we still have some different stuff out there, it's getting ever so less common to see new, interesting alternatives on the market. I guess that's what the zine scene is for, these days, but even it suffers from its own problem with imitation and flattery.

Reviewing the 2017 Gaming Predictions

Back in December 29 of last year I made some gaming predictions/analysis about where things ought to go for 2017....so how did it stack up?

1. A Companion Book for Fantasy AGE

--NOPE!!!

As it turns out, Green Ronin got Blue Rose out this year, announced a Modern AGE (though that will probably not come out until sometime in 2018) and that was about it.

2. WotC Releases a Player's Tome for D&D 5E

--YEP!!!!

Sure enough, the did it: Xanathar's Tome is also for DMs, but contains plenty of new archetypes for players, new background details, and loads of little bits that D&D 5E needed. I wish they'd do this every year, but understand that the game's focus is on less splat...so maybe 2018 will give us a new monster book, instead.

3. Starfinder support for straight SF

--NOPE!!!!

Starfinder is fun, but it's pure fantasy space opera of the Nth order. I still contend it needed to be a broader toolkit, but for what it does set out to do, it does very well. So I suppose this is a wash. Given how saturated the market has become with SF game options, though, I would suggest that Starfinder probably is doing fine by distinguishing itself with its fantasy-based Pact Worlds universe and this was probably a smarter move on their part than directly competing with Star Wars, Star Trek, FrontierSpace, a re-release of Star Frontiers in POD, Traveller, Coriolis, and probably two dozen others I haven't mentioned, never mind all the generic systems with SF support. So yeah.

4. Swords & Wizardry goes mainstream

--NOPE!!!

The new edition came out but it doesn't appear to have changed S&W's saturation in the market. If anything the OSR seems to be dominated by the more innovative titles which are better described as "inspired by" as well as a slew of weird "we are going to repurpose the fuck out of B/X D&D" releases on rpgnow that are all over the place. So no mainstream OSR title.

5. GURPS Returns

--YEP!!!

Hell yeah it did. Dungeon Fantasy has re-energized GURPS, and then Steve Jackson Games got GURPS on to rpgnow which was a bold decision on their part, but brings it back in to the "view" of most gamers who don't frequent e23. They are looking to a future of new stand-alone, Kickstarter-funder releases similar to Dungeon Fantasy, and lastly Steve Jackson also regained control of his content for The Fantasy Trip, which was GURPS's predecessor, which based on his comments on the GURPS forums he plans to re-release as-is, meaning a very "lite" version of the system which inspired GURPS will be available again soon.

SJG could move too slowly on future plans, but for 2017 at least GURPS got some much needed love and attention.

6. Pathfinder 2.0 

--NOPE!!!

They could be quietly working on this, but they didn't announce it. There are lots of streamlined design decisions in Starfinder, but I feel many of those are designed to suit the space fantasy laser gun elements of the setting and may not be so ideal for straight fantasy gaming. There's a planned release schedule that suggests no 2.0 announcement for 2018, either....and judging from the diehard dislike of the Wilderness Adventures book's shifter class, the Pathfinder core will not be happy with anything that isn't fully public in playtest, so I suspect no 2.0 is in the works right now, or the foreseeable future.

So...2 out of 6! About par for the course with any good fortune teller, in other words....

2015 Gaming Year in Review Part V: Wizards of the Coast

I saved WotC for last because of course it is best, biggest, and also the most scrutinized. Here are a few of the Big Dog's highs and lows for 2015...

High: The first Campaign Guide Arrived

Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide was a much-needed baby step in the right direction. As campaign books go it was more than sufficient for any average Joe to pick up and play with, although hardcore Forgotten Realms fans wanted much, much more. More importantly it expanded character play options, something the game is going to have do more of, and soon, to keep the jaded player base interested.

LOW: Sword Coast Legends Continues to Disappoint

If the Sword Coast got some decent attention in print it's digital analog got the short end of the stick. Wizards of the Coast seems to have lost its ability to leverage the D&D brand into good computer games. What could have been a great return to the world of isometric RPGs instead turned into a buggy, awkward RPG that was clearly aimed at the computer D&D fan market, and not at tabletop gamers. I'll keep checking back and seeing if it improves, but as it stands right now Sword Coast Legends has continued what is now a long line of "so-so's" and "godawfuls" in the world of D&D computer gaming.

HIGH: WotC finally offers some more "gaming oriented" support and a desktop edition of Dragon+

It's a step in the right direction and I can't complain much because free is a hard price point to argue with. But....

LOW: Dragon+ continues to still be the worst sort of marketing shill a zine can be

'Nuff said. Dragon+ is nowhere close to providing the sort of experience older gamers want or wish it would, and I doubt that will ever happen in the internet age, unfortunately.

HIGH: Lots of planned stuff suggested or implied

WotC continues to offer up tantalizing subjects in Unearthed Arcana, and implies cool stuff in the future such as Ravenloft is on the way. They are great at conducting weird surveys and seem to have a fetish for revising the ranger. This all sounds really cool, but there's a low to it all as well:

LOW: WotC's implied promises and results in 2015 were mostly miss.

By this I mean: Dragon+ shows up, but it's like a pale shadow of what we wanted. They strongly implied an OGL was in the works, but here we are in 2016 and nary an OGL in site, with plenty of implications that not only is it not happening, but WotC is happy 3PP are using the old OGL instead to fill gaps in their own publishing schedule. The last part is especially sad...while we are all excited to get Tome of Beasts from Kobold Press, everyone really wants a new Monster Manual or an official rules expansion with some of the implied content. Each year this drags out will only make it worse.

HIGH: Fantasy Grounds Licensed D&D

A good thing! Fantasy Grounds is useful, and efficient. The only downside is the price of the D&D packs are pricey, so you'd better have a lot of vested interest in online gaming to make the purchase. It fills the gap in a reliable digital gaming environment that has plagued WotC.

LOW: No new "good" CRPGs or MMORPGs in D&D's name on the horizon

This isn't so much a "low" as a "no news in this case might be good news." Neverwinter is a nightmare of vaguely 4E-skinned content with a strong in-game cash shop laden with multiple weird currencies and a whole lot of "Perfect World Entertainment wants your money" feel to it, and a lot less "this is anything approaching something you'd identify as D&D." Turbine seems to be winding down or out of the picture as I haven't heard of any expansions on their end, and alas D&D Online is, despite being the best D&D MMO, very, very long in the tooth these days. Sword Coast Legends as mentioned earlier was at best a charismatic failure and for most an utter disappointment. But at least Daggerfall was still worse!!!!

Unfortunately, what we're not seeing is any effort to license the game out to a real Neverwinter Nights 3 expansion that actually replicates the D&D 5E ruleset, or even an effort to produce a robust isometic RPG engine that can compete with Pillars of Eternity.

HIGH: a D&D movie is on the way and it might not suck

Warner Brothers officially wrestled away the rights to the D&D movie and are now in production on one (in theory), with the goal to leverage it in to a blockbuster like Transformers and other toy properties (for better or worse). Is this a good thing? We'll have a better sense of that after the WB-produced Batman v. Superman movie arrives, but frankly the only thing it means for sure is that the next D&D film might be a big budget stinker instead of a low budget syfy special. We'll see.

PREDICTIONS: We'll get 2 more campaign books out of WotC this year and one of them might not be Forgotten Realms. We might see another sourcebook for a setting or characters (possibly with psionics and some ranger stuff), and if we're damned lucky we'll hear talk of a monster manual in the future. But most of what we'll hear will involve board games, miniatures, doomed-to-fail computer games and probably some late-in-year announcement on the film and a possible media tie-in. Dragon+ will continue to suck and offer tasty scraplets on occasion. We will all continue to play D&D 5E because it is fun, but if no sourcebooks are forthcoming this year then I will find renewed interest in playing Pathfinder and 13th Age coming back to my local groups. I will thwart them by running Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures instead.

UPDATE!!! ....AAAAND they just released a shockingly comprehensive OGL and SRD (400 pages!!!) and a complete Dungeon Masters Guild option to publish actual Forgotten Realms based content. Holy cats I think I'll throw all my other predictions for D&D out the door this year right now. All bets are off.

Oh, and we will be in heading in to 2017 and still no OGL.
Well that prediction died quick!!!

The D&D 3.5 Reprint Covers

So ENworld's Morrus has the scoop here. They are basically variations on the same style as the 3.0 and 3.5 covers....nothing unusual I guess, although I was really hoping for a return to "cover with good art" form but ...whatcha gonna do.

I have no idea if I will ever play 3.5 D&D again, given how Pathfinder has magnanimoulsy swept through my gaming spheres like some sort of fandom-powered ramjet sail sucking up gamers like stellar gas....but I will definitely grab these books, and definitely use them if one day the opportunity arises.

I'm so used to Pathfinder with its enhanced level of character scaling now that honestly 3rd edition would feel almost quaint and traditional by comparison, I suspect.







You know what? I likese these covers, they're less busy than the 3.5 covers, and have a better thematic style to tie them together with that stylized dragon motif in the faux leather.

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Commemorative Editions, or "I just Got Internet Whiplash"

I would honestly regard this as bigger news than the 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons announcement...

First is the ENWorld article here.

Next is actual press anouncement here.

..aaaand here's the WotC page for the PHB.

I for one am amazed that they are doing this, and actually this really suggests to me that WotC is now officially "thinking outside the box" about what D&D is and who plays it (and who they want as their customers).

SO yeah, I'll be ordering these new prints of AD&D, and I think I see a brand new 1st edition campaign in the near future to enjoy them!