The Conundrum of Buy-In and Very Similar Game Systems

 I have been thinking about how, when and where I will run a future campaign using one of the D&D-like rule sets, and realized that this is probably to some degree a bit futile. One of the problems is a simple matter of buy-in: while I have all the Level Up! Advanced 5E rules at hand, only one of my other players has also invested in it, and it might be a tough sell to the multiple players in my group who buy lots of regular D&D books and have D&D Beyond subscriptions. Would they give it a try? Sure. Will they enjoy it as much as if they were playing straight 5E? Maybe....maybe not. The optimistic view is that if I run it and they enjoy it, they may decide to become invested. The pessimistic side recognizes after decades of gaming what a slog it can be to convince players to try something they were not already aware of. We'll see how it goes. 

I want to try Level Up! A5E soon because it's essentially already what One D&D plans to be: a revision of the current rules with an emphasis on new and interesting features and approaches to the core mechanical conceits of 5E. Once One D&D is out, I predict that the ongoing success or failure of the D&D-variants (such as future Tales of the Valiant from Kobold Press, as well as Level Up! A5E and other prospects like Shadowdark RPG down the road) will depend on precisely how they manage to distinguish themselves from the competition. Given that Level Up! A5E is already here, I'd like to get a chance to see how it fares before the tidal wave of future competitors arrives along with One D&D.

There's also the Pathfinder 2E Revised situation looming for later this year. I can't decide if I will buy in to it or not, though knowing me, I probably will. If I'm lucky PF2E will fix all the little gripes I have with PF2E in its current format, and at least make it easier to sell to players. Until then, I don't know what to do or where to go with it....PF2E is a game I like running as a GM, but its a hard sell to a lot of my players for precisely the problem I mentioned earlier: we've all had a chance to play it, and not as many people like it as don't. PF2E is super GM friendly, but it caters to a certain type of player over others, and therefore is not nearly as fun and interesting to play when you're on the other side of the table unless you grokk (and like) the minutiae of the character development systems.

If I did find a gang of pro PF2E players though, I would totally run it again. Just saying! But in the mean time, I am going to make the Level Up! A5E pitch to my players, probably sooner than later. I think the live group would be the best choice, though Roll20 has a decent Level up! character sheet. A Roll20 game I ran with my son went pretty well. We devised some characters based on one of his favorite subjects (Mortal Kombat) and tried out the combat with an off-brand Scorpion and Sub-Zero, and it was quite fun. Still, I'm loving the concept of live play whenever possible, and currently the Roll20 game on Saturday is in a new low level D&D 5E game, so suddenly jumping to Level Up! A5E might feel a bit redundant there.

In fact....that redundant part I mention is the real problem all of the off-brand D&D competitors will face. Time will tell, I guess, as to which (if any) manage to claw their way to a level of competitive status. 

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.