Gnome Stew

In any adventure, the party of player characters (PCs) will inevitably encounter other intelligent creatures and people. These are the non-player characters (NPCs) of the world that are largely controlled, run, an enacted by the game master. There are moments (and some systems greatly support these moments) where an NPC will be “taken over” by a fellow player at the table to reduce the load on the GM or to allow for a wider variety of interactions. That topic, however, is an entirely different article.

The article that I’m presenting to you today is about supporting and opposing NPCs. There can also be neutral NPCs, which I had not considered until I started writing this article, so there will be an addendum at the end to touch on that topic. However, most NPCs will be somewhere on the spectrum of opposition-to-supportive. It truly is a spectrum, and not a binary. Few NPCs are going to risk their lives for the benefit of the PCs. An equally small number of NPCs will drop everything in their lives to hammer down on the PCs’ plans to put a stop to them. Sure, both of those can happen, but for the most part, support and opposition will be measured actions, no absolutes.

I’m not going to get into how to create effective NPCs on the grand scale. That topic has been covered (in quantity and in quality) via other articles and Gnomecast episodes. However, I’ll touch on a few areas of consideration as it relates to your adventure that you’re designing.

Overall Traits

Your NPCs need to have a reason to be in the adventure as an opposing or supporting force. This is their motivation for doing what they are doing. Of course, if someone is motivated to take action, odds are they have a goal in mind to apply that motivation to. If you’ve read any of my articles on characters or storytelling, then you know I hammer the drums for “goals and motivations” quite hard and heavy. Creating NPCs for your adventure is no different. They need to have a goal that supports (or opposes) the PCs’ goals. Then the NPC needs to have a deep reason for why they’re going out of their way to help/harm the party.

Also, by now you’ve determined your Boss (and sub-Bosses, if any). The NPCs in the locales that intersect with the Boss locations should support (or intentionally break) the themes, styles, and tones you’ve set for your Boss and the mooks. This means if you have the party get lost while trekking through a swamp, then a mountain dwarf ranger is probably not the appropriate NPC to show up and help. However, it would be quite humorous for a mountain-based ranger to also be lost in the swamp and team up with the party until the entire group gets oriented. A better alternative to the mountain ranger would be a friendly swamp hag who knows the environment and area. Why would a hag help the party? Perhaps the hag is diametrically opposed to the trolls in the area that the party is hunting. Perhaps the hag lost a sister or parent to the troll’s depravations, but the hag alone is not powerful enough to take down the troll or the Troll Boss.

Supporting NPCs

Supporting NPCs need to have a reason to risk something to help the PCs. Sometimes the risk is merely a small percentage of profit at their store by giving the PCs a discount at the local store the NPC owns. Sometimes the risk is to step up, put on armor, grab a weapon, and push into the swamplands alongside the party. There’s an infinite number of choices along the spectrum between the “neutral NPC setting” and the “fanatically supportive NPC setting.” The trick is to adjust that dial to the right place, so the party doesn’t suspicious about the over abundance of assistance or the lack of total support.

Different NPCs are going to be able to support the party in different ways and to different extents. This entirely depends on the capabilities and motivations of the NPCs. Once you’ve determined ways an NPC can 100% help the PCs, you’ll need to use the NPC’s motivations to determine how close the NPC will push to “100% support.”

Opposing NPCs

Flipping the coin to the other side, why would an NPC get in the party’s way? That’s usually where I start with opposing NPCs. Once I know the why, I figure out the how. Is is sabotaging the party’s mounts or equipment? Stealing something vital from them? Lying to them and feeding them misleading clues? Directly attacking them? Informing the Boss or mooks of what the party is up to? Simply charging them 110% of an item’s value in the general store to try and sap their funds?

Once I know the why and how, I determine the “how much” factor of the resources the opposing NPC can throw at the party. Sometimes, the “how much” is trivial (such as charging 110% of items’ values in the general store). Sometimes, the “how much” could be assembling a large strike force to ambush the party on the trail while they make their way to the edge of the swamp.

One thing to note is that opposing NPCs should not always be “behind the curtain” and unseen. This is just frustrating to the players and makes it appear as if the GM is “cheating” by having the Boss always knowing what the party is up to when there’s no logical way the Boss should know the party’s plans. The mysterious NPC can be spotted in the shadows or glimpsed from afar (or even hidden in plain sight as a villager), but the mystery should be revealed by the end of the adventure of who the major opposition was during the course of the story. This can easily come in the form of a handout or three where there are letters between the NPC and the Boss. (Side note: Why do the bad guys always keep their incriminating notes around? Why not burn them? Alas, those are questions for another day.)

Neutral NPCs

Somewhere in the middle-ground of the supporting vs. opposing spectrum lies neutrality. This is where the bulk of the NPCs will start the adventure. These are your townsfolk, other citizens of the city that don’t know the Boss or PCs, merchants, and folks met on the roadways during travel. Each neutral NPC may have something to offer the PCs, but they will not freely offer it up. At the same time, they will not try to hide or keep the offer away from the PCs. This is where the PCs will need to work just a little (or spread some coin) in order to get the NPC to offer up whatever rumors, tales, wares, or advice the NPC has in hand.

Changing Alignment

No. I’m not talking about a paladin losing her lawful good alignment and becoming a “mere” fighter in this section. Here, I’m going to talk about shifting an NPC’s outlook toward the PCs based on the party’s actions. In this case, I like to keep it pretty simple. Use a scale of 0-20 with 0 being highly opposed, 20 being highly supportive, and 10 being neutral. After a assign a starting point on the scale, I’ll bump the alignment of the NPC up or down the scale depending on what the PCs do with the NPC. This is purely a gut call and a quick reference. There are no hard-boiled, carved-in-stone rules or mechanics for what a 12 means vs. a 14 on the scale. I just have a note in my document next to each NPC, so I can quickly see if Graynar the Merchant is a 4 or an 18 because that will sway what Graynar is willing to sell to the party and at what percentage of actual value.

Conclusion

I hope this article helps you out in solidifying your ideas of which NPCs should oppose or support the party (and why!), and how to approach determining what the NPCs can and are willing to do in order to show that opposition or support. Next month, I’ll be talking about some fun stuff: Clues, Rumors, and Connective Tissue.

It being that time of the year, I decided to reflect again on my year of gaming and see what lessons I learned. This is the second year I have done this. 

Overall, this year I gamed less than 2023. There were two main reasons. The first was that at the start of the year, I had some terrible back issues, which resulted in several months of chronic pain, such that I was not in a place to feel creative or be able to run any games. I am happy to say that I am free of any back pain, and mobile with the help of physical therapy and a professionally monitored workout regimen. 

The second reason was the end of the year. My November and December became fraught with both work (the day job kind) and a family emergency, those plus the holiday season killed nearly all my gaming from October until now.

So what did I learn this year? 

The End of the Campaign May Not Be The Most Memorable Thing About It

I typically strive to have a large and dramatic climax for my campaign arcs. I think that is pretty natural in terms of how campaigns are structured. I did this for the Children of the Shroud AP that I ran, earlier in the year. The campaign built up to a battle to prevent a new elemental force from being formed. It was the kind of battle that you would see in most TV series or a movie, but it was not the penultimate story of the campaign. 

That honor went to the third story of the campaign, Smarty Pants, which was recorded the year prior. That story had such emotion and drama that all my memories of the campaign fixate on that story, with the conclusion of the campaign being a distant third. 

The lesson from this, is that is ok. Your next game does not always have to be better than the one before it. If you are running entertaining games, having fun, doing no harm, etc, you do not have to chase the curve to make every story better than the last one. 

Also, due to the interactive nature of this hobby, you won’t be able to control which stories or moments are going to have the greatest impact, because what you prep and what happens at the table can be two vastly different things. So don’t sweat it. Keep prepping good material, and let the table do the rest. 

Some Crunch Can Be Fun

Over the past decade I have favored games with lighter rule systems, but this year I ran Mutants in the Now, and its combat system is a bit more crunchy than I am used to. For the first few months of the game, I re-read the combat system before every session. While it took more to achieve any kind of mastery, the combat system for that game was tremendous fun. The Focus system was killer-tech for me. 

My lesson learned from this is kind of an obvious one…which is to sometimes stretch beyond your comfort zone, and to make that more useful, you should stretch, but also adapt and adjust to make the experience a possible success and not a self-fulfilling prophecy. What I mean by that, is that when I chose a more crunchy game I increased my studying of the mechanics, in hopes that I could enjoy my play of it by getting to a level of mastery, and it worked. 

Gaming With Old Friends Is A Treat

I am blessed that many of the members of my regular gaming groups have been friends of mine for years, but this year I had the chance to run a game for my high school gaming group. The details of the experience are in my earlier article, but suffice to say it was a great experience and a chance to go back in time, to visit my teenage self. 

My lesson learned from this, is to do it again. My group is going to plan another gathering in 2026, and I plan to have a game to run for them. 

The Outside World Can Affect Your Campaign World

My Mutants in the Now campaign was about mutant animals as a marginalized community, living in a District-9-like environment. The campaign had themes of oppression and marginalization, with the heroes fighting to overcome those things. The campaign was going along quite well until November. 

After election day, I suddenly could not imagine running a game about oppressing a marginalized community. I asked my players if we could end the campaign after the current story, which did conclude a small arc. 

I understand Bleed as a player, but this case was one of the first times that Bleed affected me as the GM. The geo-political situation, and the impending struggles of what could come, bled into my campaign and made me unwilling to play a game that could land so close to a possible reality. For me to do a good job running that campaign, I would need to take on the mindset of an oppressor, and that was too uncomfortable.

My lesson learned from this is that Bleed for a GM is possible and not just as a character, but as the world, setting etc. 

I Was Not Bold Enough

Looking back this year, I find myself struggling with something that is not new. I wish I was bolder as a GM. I don’t mean bold, like crushing the characters under opposition, but bolder as in being less casual about my gaming and running things with more energy. 

Part of this was just the amount of pain I was in at the start of the year, and the amount of stress I had at the end. But in the middle, my own insecurities were the culprit. I am always concerned that I am “too much” and that my natural intensity for things will turn people off. I hide this by trying to be somewhat casual and detached, taking a “no worries” mentality. Often that casual approach is fine, I have run many a successful game and campaign with it, but other times I just want to let “Phil be Phil” (to paraphrase The West Wing). 

My lesson learned here is that I need to let Phil be Phil and have faith that I won’t be too much or that my group will still like me (and talk to me about it) if I am too much. 

My Hopes for 2025

First, with my health improved and with my work and family stress passed, I am hoping that I will be able to run more games. I am feeling pretty confident in that. 

Second, I think I want to get into Traveller. I have always had an interest in the game, and I have been reading a lot of sci-fi recently. I think I would like to try my hand at a long-form Sci-fi campaign.

Third, I want to work through my insecurities and really let Phil be Phil. It is something that I can bring to therapy for next year, so that I can do the work. 

Fourth, I have some ideas about some GMing advice I want to research that could lead to a new GMing book. I am not putting pressure on myself for this, but I like the idea of writing something longer than a blog post. 

My Wish To You and Your Lessons Learned

As I finish up this article, and another year of writing GMing advice (my 16th year since being on this site), I wish for you that your 2025 is full of great gaming, in the games you like to play and the ways you like to play them. 

I am also curious about your lessons learned from this year. What did you learn from gaming in 2024? 

Full disclosure before I launch into my review of the promo issue of Shadowcat Magazine: I received the PDF for free (you can too!) from Chaz Kemp, the creator of the magazine. Additional disclosure: Chaz and I have been good friends for a number of years now, but that has not colored my review and introduction to the Shadowcat Magazine Promo Issue. Chaz has always done great work, and I’ve been impressed with everything he’s done. While Chaz’s primary skills lie in being in artist, he’s no slouch when it comes to role playing games. I’ve been on panels with him (and been in the audience while he’s been on panels) related to the RPG sphere. He’s been a gamer for a long time, and has great insights about gaming and what it takes to help out GMs of all levels across the lands.

Enough about Chaz, though. I’m here to talk about his latest venture: Shadowcat Magazine.

Click to enlarge

The magazine itself will be a collection of evocative art pieces tied with random generation tables that are related to the artwork. These elements will be split up between characters, locations, creatures, items, and other goodies found within RPG settings and adventures. The generation tables will always have 20 options to either pick from or to roll that trusty d20 on. There is always guidance in the magazine on how to use the elements you randomly generate (or pick). These include rumors (unverified information), lore (verified information), tales (exaggerated information), and obscura (unknown information) about the element depicted in the artwork. You can roll/choose as many elements from the table as you desire for each category.

Click to enlarge

Of course, with all randomly generated ideas, it’s best to let your imagination run wild based on what comes up. If the literal text behind the generated idea fits you, your game, and your world perfectly, use it! If not, there are usually ways to twist things around to make it fit. Of course, if the concept just plain doesn’t fit or make sense, discard it and roll again.

I love Chaz’s artwork that he’s included in the promo PDF (more on how you can get it yourself at the end of the article), but his true genius shines in the brief descriptions of the random ideas attached to each element. They’re truly beyond the generic concepts typically found in most random tables. He’s put quite a bit of thought into these.

Let’s put the rubber to the road. In the promo PDF, there’s a two-page spread for an Arena of Dalubar. I decided to snag four random ideas (on for each type of information) and see how it’ll fit into my world. Here goes:

• Rumor: There is an air of wariness here, almost as if you are being watched.
• Lore: You see the bones of long-dead gladiators in the fighting pit. If you enter the pit, skeletons will attack you.
• Tale: Anyone stepping into the pit will suddenly be surrounded by long-dead gladiators that must be defeated in order to leave this place. If you win, however, you will be showered with money.
• Obscura: There is an aura of caution here, bordering on fear.

So, putting these four ideas together, I’ve come up with the following:

The Arena of Dalubar sits at the heart of of an abandoned city, and anyone entering will find themselves watched by the spirits of the long-dead gladiators. Anyone showing fear will rouse the barely-buried skeletons that will rise from the arena’s sands. If the skeletons are attacked, then combat ensues. However, if the people inside the arena put aside their fear of being attacked, the skeletons will stand guard over the living for three rounds. If no combat happens at the end of the third round, the skeletons fall inert. The disturbed sands from the skeletons’ rise reveal scattered handfuls of coins.

This is a pretty cool location that I could use in almost any fantasy game. I like it, and it only took me a few minutes (with the help of the magazine) to put it all together.

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Of course, this is a fantasy (or some other magical/supernatural) setting item, but Chaz isn’t going to lock himself into just doing fantasy items. In the promo magazine, he has a two-page spread for the “Widowmaker MK-03” which is strange future-horror bioengineered creature that really doesn’t like humanity much at all. It makes for a great antagonist for an encounter (or full adventure if you make it the boss) in a strange, futuristic setting.

Enough of me blathering on about the quality of Chaz’s work. It’s time for you to experience it yourself! You can do so by sharing your email address with the Shadowcat Magazine mailing list. Chaz won’t give away, rent, sell, or otherwise share your email address. Once you sign up for the mailing list to find out about future releases, you’ll automatically receive a link via email that will allow you to download the PDF for yourself. Within the promo magazine, you’ll find spreads for Widowmaker MK-03 (adversary), Arena of Dalubar (location), Raina (character), and The Swindler’s Pen (item).

If you’re interested, you can find the mailing list sign up form here.

I hope you check out the Shadowcat Magazine promo issue and continue to follow Chaz for his future works.

An interesting side effect of having multiple iterations of D&D 5th edition based on the 5e SRD is that some content allows publishers to produce content that works in their game but may also be helpful to people who aren’t utilizing the entire ruleset. One of the most prominent examples of this are monster books. As long as most of the assumptions of the core game remain similar, monsters can translate across different variants.

Kobold Press has had a long history of producing 5e SRD monsters, including The Tome of Beasts I & II and the Creature Codex. Those books have been widely praised but are also known for hitting harder at various challenge ratings than official D&D monsters. With all this in mind, let’s explore the Monster Vault.

Disclaimer

I received a review copy of the Monster Vault from Kobold Press, but I also backed the Tales of the Valiant crowdfunding campaign and had my own copy. I have used a few of the monsters from this book in play, but not a wide variety. 

 Tales of the Valiant Monster Vault

Designers: Wolfgang Baur, Celeste Conowitch, Tim Hitchcock, Rajan Khanna, Jeff Lee, JB Little, Greg Marks, Michael E. Shea, Brian Suskind, Mike Welham
Developer: Meagan Maricle
Editor: Meagan Maricle
Proofreader: Kenny Webb
Cover Artist: Hugh Pindur
Interior Artists: Felipe Malini, Damien Mammoliti, William O’Brien, Ian Perks, Roberto Pitturru, Kiki Moch Rizki, Craig J. Spearing, Florian Stitz, Bryan Syme, Egil Thompson, Eva Widermann, Mat Wilma, Zuzanna Wuzyk Graphic Designers: Marc Radle, Amber Seger

Opening the Vault

This review is based on the product’s PDF, hardcover, Demiplane, and Shard versions. I’ve seen this thing from many angles. The book comes in at 384 pages for those versions with pages. That breaks down into roughly these categories:

• Title Page and Credits Page–2 pages
• Table of Contents and Introduction–4 pages
• Using Monsters–10 pages
• Understanding Monster Statistics–10 pages
• Understanding Terrain and Creature Types–22 pages
• Monster Stat Blocks–282 pages
• Animal Stat Blocks–28 pages
• NPC Stat Blocks–12 pages
• Monsters by Challenge Rating, Tag, and Terrain–10 pages
• Front Cover, Back Cover, Ads–4 pages

At this point, there aren’t many RPG companies that will be able to make something that looks nicer than Kobold Press can produce and let’s face it, nobody is going to have the art budget that WotC has when launching an anniversary edition of D&D. I’m a big fan of most of the monster depictions in this book. Most designs balance being recognizable based on your familiarity with various D&D depictions and diverging enough to make them distinctive. 

There are also a few more dramatic deviations. The Monster Vault Basilisk returns to being the typical serpentine appearance from folklore. The Chuul becomes a bit more humanoid in shape. Most of the fiends are easily recognizable, but they go hard. Black and Gold Dragons take on a more serpentine form, and Blue and Brass Dragons take on some desert reptile traits. Silver and White Dragons pick up some forward sweeping horns. The Ettercap is more spindly and spider-like. Bugbears lean harder into the “bear” side of things. The Hydra splits the difference between the quadrupedal dragon-like appearance and the serpentine body, which has a serpentine body with forelegs. The Guardian Naga gets an entire torso! I wish I had this picture of a Shambling Mound for my Curse of Strahd game when one showed up because this is a scary-looking mound of plants. Tarrasques take more inspiration from French folklore, where it originated, and pics up some feline and turtle-like traits. 

I’ll touch briefly on the electronic versions of the product. If you’ve used any of the games with a Demiplane implementation, they have the same functionality you would expect. Rules popouts appear when you click on some of the hyperlinks, with links to the detail page of those rules elements. The Shard implementation works well within that platform, and monsters are as easy to modify as the other 5e SRD creatures on the site. You can use Monster Vault versions of creatures even if you don’t use that as your primary ruleset in the campaign you create. The stat block will display in the same format that monsters appear in Tales of the Valiant, but they function identically to standard 5e SRD stat blocks.

The D&D 2014 Monster Manual and the Tales of the Valiant Monster Vault

The 5e SRD doesn’t list every monster that appears in the game. Some creatures are reserved for WotC’s exclusive use as staples of D&D IP. For many humanoid creatures with examples of higher CR “boss” versions of the creatures, only the base creature is generally provided. The Monster Manual and the Monster Vault have over 300 stat blocks in common, and by that, I mean that the stat block has the same name and generally the same abilities and falls within the same Challenge Rating. The Monster Manual has about 100 unique stat blocks that don’t have a version represented in the Monster Vault, and the Monster Vault adds about 80 new stat blocks in places of those that don’t port over from the Monster Manual.

I want to be careful to say stat blocks and not monsters because, in both the Monster Manual and the Monster Vault, there are creatures with variations with their own stat blocks that are not new creatures, just more specialized, skilled, or advanced versions of the core creature. 

If you’ve never looked into it, some of the creatures that WotC holds back from the SRD include some classics like Beholders, Carrion Crawlers, Displacer Beasts, Dracoliches, Githyanki and Githzerai, Grell, Hooked Horrors, Kuo-Toa, Modrons, Myconids, Nothics, Slaad, Thri-Kreen, Twig Blights, Umber Hulks, Yuan-Ti, and Yugoloths. Some of these concepts are pretty broad, so creating new dungeon-crawling bugs, fungus people, undead dragons, or snake people isn’t out of the realm of possibility. 

All About Monsters

You may notice from my breakdown of page count that a significant portion of this book is dedicated to stat blocks and exploring how to pick monsters, work within a theme, and how creatures relate to their terrain. Since this is the monster book for a complete game and not just a supplement to be used with other core rules, some of this is revisiting concepts introduced in the 5e SRD, but there are enough nuances in how this material is presented that it’s worth reading through this to make sure you don’t miss that more subtle but significant changes.

Before we even get to the monsters themselves, we have the following sections in the book:

• Using Monsters
• Understanding Monster Statistics
• Understanding Terrain & Creature Types

Using monsters introduces the encounter-building guidelines for the game. If you’ve seen Flee Mortals! or Forge of Foes, these guidelines may look familiar because it’s Mike Shea’s encounter-building rules. And by that, I mean that Mike Shea is a contributor to this source. There is a formula that changes a little at 5th and then again at 11th level. There is also a benchmark table that summarizes your budget for monsters based on parties from three PCs to 7 PCs, as well as the minimum and maximum CR any individual monster should be in the encounter.

These rules don’t weigh multiple opponents more heavily than single creatures, like the original 2014 encounter building rules, but they provide guidelines about how many monsters should be used. This is to avoid overwhelming PCs and to prevent the GM’s monsters from being mauled by action economy issues. There is also a note about going easy on first-level characters that appears in other versions of these rules, but I’m mentioning it here because it’s probably even more relevant in Tales of the Valiant. 

Since I first picked up Flee Mortals!, I have used this encounter tool, which has worked well for me. It’s easier to use than the 2014 5e encounter building rules, and it doesn’t suddenly show a spike in encounter difficulty because you add an additional monster, and the multiple monster multiplier kicks in. If you’re interested in looking at these rules, Kobold Press already has an encounter building site set up utilizing this method. 

There is a section discussing monster roles, using the terms Controller, Leader, Soldier, and Striker. While it does a good job of explaining how monsters with different abilities can complement one another, there isn’t a list of what monsters fall under what categories, which means if you want to use this information, you’ll need to analyze what each monster you’re using is good at and how well it lines up with the definitions given.

My favorite part in this section is the Customizing Abilities and Traits section. This gives a list of good traits to tack on to the monster to customize the creature. There is also a discussion of the effects of granting a monster new movement rates for that creature. Essentially, it’s a section on templates that don’t require the more rigorous process for applying a template and is similar to what Green Ronin does in the Fantasy AGE Bestiary. A note mentions that adding one or two of these abilities may not push the CR up too much, but if you’re adding more than that, you may need to look for a monster that already does what you’re trying to get this monster to do.

The section on Adjusting CR is one that I’ve already played with in a few games. Essentially, it’s a quick and dirty set of guidelines on how many hit points, how much of a bonus is added to armor class, or the amount of damage to add to the creature’s potential damage. Based on how often you do this and how many of these modifications you apply, you can reasonably adjust a creature’s CR if the one you want to use is just too high or low for what you have planned for the PCs you have in the game. It is recommended that you don’t move CR more than five steps in either direction in this manner. In the few times I’ve used it, this does seem to give a monster a little more breathing room if you increase the CR to survive longer, and it’s another tool that’s useful with being as fiddly as some templates might be.

This section also introduces the alternate mechanic of Doom. Doom is a GM currency that can be added to an encounter. There are guidelines for how much Doom should be available based on the encounter CR, and it allows the GM to spend Doom to give a creature advantage on a roll, impose disadvantage on a PC’s save, or recharge a limited use ability of the monster. I’m not a fan of forcing PCs to roll a save with disadvantage. That feels more adversarial to me than boosting the monster itself. I like the idea of having a currency to make monster recharge abilities more predictable, but intentionally triggering a recharge can be deadly, depending on what the ability does. 

There are some guidelines for when Doom should be used. This includes encounters where PCs are only likely to have one encounter per day, when you have a more significant than expected number of PCs in the party, when the party has a substantial advantage in magic items, or when the encounter is important to the plot of the adventure you’re running. The playtest rules also included some creatures with “Doom Only” abilities, and I would like to see a product that reintroduces that concept.

Understanding Monster Statistics and the New Stat Block

This is similar to the 2014 5e SRD discussion about monsters and their statistics, but because Tales of the Valiant remixes the order of these and what appears where I wanted to touch on the order in which these elements are presented:

• Name
• Challenge Rating
• Experience Points
• Proficiency Bonus
• Size
• Type/Category/Tags–in addition to the monster’s type, creatures now have tags, often used to signify how the monster interacts with other rules.
• Armor Class
• Hit Points–the hit point section of the monster doesn’t have the hit dice and bonus calculation used to derive the monster’s average hit points
• Speed
• Perception–stat blocks have a perception score for monsters rather than giving a bonus, essentially meaning you’re using passive perception for all of the monster’s perception checks
• Stealth–stat blocks have a stealth score, which is the DC that the PCs need to roll against to notice a monster that has a chance to hide or set up an ambush
• Vulnerable/Resistant/Immune–the main reason I include a description here is that many items that would be individually listed here have been shifted to traits common to a creature’s type
• Resistant
• Immune
• Senses–this line is mainly notable because blindsight has been more accurately changed to keensense, to indicate that the creature can function without its sense of sight effectively
• Languages
• Ability Modifiers–instead of including a statistic, a statistic bonus, and a saving throw bonus, this section now only shows the bonus of the ability score, with proficiency bonus added if it’s likely to be good at saves with that ability
• Traits–similar to D&D 3e stat blocks, specific abilities are bundled together as creature-type traits, for example, (creature type) Nature or (creature type) Resilience
• Actions
• Bonus Actions–this isn’t a new section, but more creatures have bonus actions in this book compared to the 5e SRD version of these creatures, and some abilities that used to be full actions have been shifted to a bonus action so the monster doesn’t lose one of its turns triggering a signature ability
• Reactions–as with bonus actions, some monsters have always had reactions, but more monsters in this book have reactions compared to the 5e SRD version of the creature

Monsters in Tales of the Valiant retain the 5e SRD concepts of Legendary Actions, Lair Actions, and Regional Effects for some especially noteworthy creatures. 

In general, the changes in the stat blocks work. I like the expanded use of tags to group monsters together, and tags are used to indicate effects in cases where alignment may have been a trigger before. For example, some abilities may be key to the Devil tag and not trigger when used against a fiend that doesn’t have that tag. 

I like knowing the hit dice used to generate hit points because I often moved hit points up or down to address the difficulty of the monsters I used. I like the concept of the ability bonuses, but it can oversimplify using the monster. The GM is instructed to adjudicate when a monster should use a modifier with the proficiency bonus when used outside of their normal combat functions, but many creatures are proficient in saves that don’t correspond with skills their stat block may have had in the 5e SRD. For example, creatures that don’t have a strong Intelligence Save but have various knowledge-based skills. Monsters good at perception or stealth usually have that proficiency added to their Perception or Stealth scores.

Moving resistances and immunities to the traits section if they are related to a monster type isn’t as functional as I would like. If you want to save space, you would have a standardized list of creature types and their standard immunities, resistances, and weaknesses, but I don’t like that solution because I remember flipping back and forth in 3e to reference creature types. But if you’re going to reprint bundles of creature abilities in every monster with that creature type, I’m not sure what you’re gaining by moving things to the traits section of the sheet. It could be helpful if there were more game rules that disabled abilities based on monster type.

I’ll touch on this more when I do a high-level look at monsters, but I like that more creatures have bonus actions and reactions. In some cases, the bonus action isn’t useful on every turn, but it gives the monster an additional ability to trigger, often after a specific action has happened in the fight, or to set conditions at the start of a fight. 

Understanding Terrain and Creature Types 

This is an interesting section because it discusses how to use individual monsters and build the story of your encounters. This section looks at the following types of terrain:

• Arctic
• Badlands
• Coastal
• Desert
• Farmland
• Forest
• Grassland
• Hills
• Mountain
• Planar
• Swamp
• Underground
• Underwater
• Urban

Each of these entries discusses examples of monsters that would live in that terrain and gives some examples of where the monster might be found in that terrain. The entries don’t cover every monster in the book but create a good jumping-off point to extrapolate. 

Each creature type is summarized and includes a section on allies, traits, and themes. Some tables show various creatures, along with the most common allies for that creature and a pronunciation guide for the creatures on the table.

I like this section. It doesn’t just examine the monster from the standpoint of what makes a mechanically challenging encounter and how to convey the story using specific monsters. I may be slightly biased since I think this is a good topic to explore. My biggest downside is that some of the information on creature types is repeated from elsewhere in the book, but I can understand reprinting that information since this section is likely to be referenced separately from the rest of the book.

And Now, the Monsters

I won’t go into every monster in the book, or we’d be here forever. I did want to touch on some of the unique creatures that Kobold Press decided should be in their core monster book. I also want to touch on key changes to 5e SRD creatures and general trends. The new Tales of the Valiant additions include:

• Astral Destroyer (CR 18)
• Balara (CR 6)
• Chol (CR 5 to CR 17)
• Crimson Jelly (CR ½)
• Deathless (CR 9)
• Demons (additional types)
• Derro (CR ¼ to CR 3)
• Dragon, Void (CR 2 to CR 22)
• Dragon, Yellow (CR 2 to CR 20)
• Drake, Scorch (CR 6)
• Feral Hunter (CR 3)
• Fey Guardian (CR 5)
• Flinderbeast (CR 1)
• Genie (additional types)
• Ghoul, Necrophage Ghast (CR 4)
• Giant, Dirgesinger (CR 9)
• Grimlock, Morlock (CR 2)
• Hag, Ambush (CR 9)
• Hippocampus (CR 1)
• Hivebound (CR 5)
• Infernal Champion (CR 11)
• Insatiable Brood (CR 3)
• Kobold (additional types)
• Lantern Hagfish (CR ⅛)
• Lich, Virtuoso (CR 12)
• Living Colossus (CR 15)
• Mechadrons (CR ⅛ to CR 6)
• Moon Knight (CR 5)
• Mordovermis (CR 3)
• Mycolids (CR ½ to CR 3)
• Nimbostratus Spirit (CR 2)
• Robots (CR ½ to CR 3)
• Satarre (CR 1 to CR 3)
• Selangs (CR 4 to CR 7)
• Selkie (CR 3)
• Sporeborn (CR ½ to CR 2)
• Star Crow (CR ¼)
• Vampire Thrall (CR 1)
• Voidling (CR 4 to CR 11)
• Wickerbesat (CR 6)
• Wood Herald (CR ½)
• Wyrdling (CR 1)

Many new creatures have been added, such as fey, one of the thinner creature types in the 2014 rules. The Chol are mercenary fiends. The Satarre are reptile/insectoid humanoids that worship the apocalypse, and Selangs are satyrs connected to eldritch forces. Vampire Thralls are living victims who haven’t transitioned to undead status yet. Mechadrons and Mycolids may look familiar if you know anything about Modrons or Myconids.

Compared to the 5e SRD versions of some of these creatures, many have boosted hit points and do more damage. In some cases, it’s enough to survive a few more hits at its challenge rating, which, with its boosted damage, can start taxing the PCs’ resources more effectively. Kobold Press has a reputation for monsters that hit harder than WotC monsters for their CR, and while I haven’t used many of the new versions in this book, the ones that I have looked at seem to bear this out.

As a comparison, the Tales of the Valiant Vampire has about 30 more hit points, gets to use charm as part of its multiattack, does about 12 points more per claw on average, and can grapple if more than one claw hits. The Frost Giant has about 30 more hit points, averages five extra damage per hit, and gets a recharge ability. The adult White Dragon gets about 38 additional hit points and maintains the same damage but gets an aura in effect on rounds when it hasn’t used its breath weapon.

Now, looking at the low end of the scale, Bugbears pick up 13 hit points and an extra point of damage on their attack. This may not seem like much of a boost, but thinking about four 1st level characters, 13 hit points can mean a whole other round of the bugbear doing 12 points of damage, and if that hit doesn’t fall on a barbarian, fighter, paladin, or ranger, that could drop a player character in one shot.

From my experience using other Kobold Press monster books, the increase in power for characters of higher level is a welcome boost compared to some of the official WotC monsters, but I’ve also seen low-level PCs get wrecked by a low CR monster. To reiterate the advice in the Using Monsters section, be careful using these monsters against 1st or 2nd-level characters. On the other hand, when adventures call for lower CR monsters in adventures for higher-level PCs, I think it works perfectly well to use these in place of the 5e SRD versions.

Wild Kingdom

One of my annoyances is that monsters in the 5e SRD are hit points with an attack roll added to them, with the type of creature mainly determining if the animal does piercing, slashing, or bludgeoning. Animals have a range of attacks that never appear in their stat blocks. So, how does Tales of the Valiant handle animals?

Deer don’t bite anymore. They get a kick and a bonus action to bound away from trouble. Crocodiles get a bonus action they can use to damage a grappled creature with a death roll. Swarms of bats can confuse people with screeching. Several creatures get roars that can cause fear. Mastiffs can use their reaction to bite someone attacking their ally. Saber-toothed tigers can cause a creature to bleed out with its bite. In some cases, the regular version of the monster doesn’t get a neat ability, but the giant-sized version does. 

Not every animal gets an upgrade, and not every animal gets something that I feel is iconic to that animal, but there are so many more that do, and I’m pretty happy with it. Two of my ongoing pet peeves have been the crocodile’s lack of death roll and the fact that saber-toothed cats used the deep wounds they inflicted to bleed out prey, so right off the bat, they addressed some of my long-term annoyances with animal stat blocks. Also, cats get the ability to meow and cause the charmed condition, and I kind of love that for them.

Rogues Gallery

Since D&D 2014 came out, I’ve been happy with the wide range of NPC stat blocks. This means it’s not too difficult to find adversaries that aren’t wholly monstrous to throw at the player characters in appropriate situations. Tales of the Valiant brings over the NPCs and makes some tweaks.

If you are used to the more recent D&D stat blocks for NPCs, including spell-like abilities as attacks for some characters, the spellcaster NPCs in the Monster Vault continue that tradition. For example, the Archmage gets three Arcane Blast attacks and can replace one with a spell they can cast from their Spellcasting feature. 

One subtle change I appreciate is that the Tribal Warrior stat block has been changed to Wild Warrior. Was this a significant issue in the 2014 rules? Maybe not, but it was an instance where a naming convention communicated more than intended. This change removes the idea that any people with a “tribe” associated with them will all have the same general stat block. 

Appendices

I know they take up page count, but I appreciate having information arranged in logical groups when looking for information. In the case of monsters, there are so many ways to organize lists, and the Monster Vault contains several summary tables. Monsters have the following organizational lists in the Appendices:

• Creatures by Challenge
• Creatures by Tag
• Creatures by Terrain

On the one hand, the encounter builder I linked earlier can sort monsters by these categories, but as I’m regularly reminded, many people don’t use every electronic tool available when prepping or running their games. That makes these lists practical for those users.

Legendary Encounter

 A few months back, I was looking for an Aboleth stat block that fit exactly what I wanted, and I ended up piecing together a version from three different sources. If I had the Monster Vault at the time, this is precisely the Aboleth I wanted. 

The encounter-building tools are much more functional than the 5e SRD tools. The attention to addressing the story elements of encounter building is an example of supplementary material I love to see in monster books. Many monsters from the 5e SRD didn’t hit hard enough or couldn’t bring their extraordinary abilities to bear before the encounter ended, and the redesigns for many of these creatures have addressed that. Because these monsters retained their challenge ratings from the 5e SRD, this book provides additional options for anyone running adventures referencing 5e SRD creatures, even outside a Tales of the Valiant game. I appreciate Perception and Stealth stats because while I like rolling dice as a GM, sometimes I’m okay with just comparing the player’s rolls to a DC.

All Out of Doom

Some of the stat block changes address a problem I didn’t know the 5e SRD stat blocks had, and other changes feel like they just miss out on being as functional as possible. Encounter building for 1st or 2nd-level characters may be challenging due to how hard some low CR monsters hit. I’m not a fan of reintroducing standardized traits across an entire monster type, even if those traits are reprinted in every stat block for a creature of that type. One of my reservations isn’t even with this book; it’s with a broad rule change. I do not like how Adamantine and Silver interact with Golems and Shapechangers. Because the material properties aren’t listed in this book, you can easily miss that silver has any special effect on lycanthropes. As written, non-magical silver weapons will do [(weapon damage) + 1d6]/2, which feels less like a specific bane and more like additional math. The golem situation is worse because golems are immune to non-magical adamantine weapons, so the unique property of adamantine only comes into play if you have a magical adamantine weapon, which doesn’t feel like adamantine is a specific weakness of golems.

Recommended–If the product fits in your broad area of gaming interests, you are likely to be happy with this purchase.

If you are playing a 5e SRD-based game, this will be a solid purchase. It will give you more options for familiar monsters that may provide you with tools for more challenging encounters. Compatibility with the 5e SRD means that this will be useful for just about any 5e SRD-based game, emulating the assumptions of D&D 5e. A few months back, I was looking for an Aboleth stat block that fit exactly what I wanted, and I ended up piecing together a version from three different sources. If I had the Monster Vault at the time, this is precisely the Aboleth I wanted. I’m also considering using the druids in my D&D 2014 Curse of Strahd game with the druid stat blocks from this book. 

It’s not perfect. You can use the book’s CR altering advice at low levels to adjust monsters by at least 1 CR for 1st and 2nd-level characters. That stat block may not speak to you, especially after seeing some other stat blocks introduced for 5e SRD games. But despite a few imperfections, this is a showcase of one of Kobold Press’ core competencies: a solid, useful monster book, and this time, one that can be used to swap out your 5e SRD monsters that need an upgrade.

Join Ang, JT, and Tomas as they look at what they hoped to accomplish RPG wise in 2024, how that turned out, and what they’re hoping for in 2025.

Links:

Libby

JT’s Amazon Link

JT’s Website

Tomas on Bluesky

Snowys Maps has been kind enough to come to me to talk about their product. They offered me 2 of their spiral booklets for free (just a press review version which is not the complete one) and allowed me to speak my mind of them. When this happens I try not to post negative reviews, talking directly to the creator why I think that. However, with Snowy’s Maps, the moment I had them at hand I felt the need to try them out in a one-shot with some players. I must say, they were a true success, so I come here to give my own take on them, and state why I believe you should check them out!

The non-gif images were taken by me, so you can see the incredible quality for yourself! Over 82 maps will be on the final product, with everything from barns, inns, taverns, temples, marketplaces, gardens, cultist bases, and much more to see!

If you don’t have too much space you can always just use one page

Art

A quick glance at Snowy’s Maps can show the level of quality they display. The city streets look incredibly detailed with plenty of stuff for the players to want to interact to. I have found that these kinds of detailed maps allow player’s imaginations to go wild. There’s a blanket from a vendor on the ground filled with jewels on top? I am sure a player will sometime ask to pull from it for the jewels to break to create a distraction. A fruit cart? You know the barbarian is going to throw it at enemies creating an incredible cinematic experience.

What I intend to say is that there is a delicate balance regarding how much flexibility and immersion a map can give. Theatre of the mind gives plenty of flexibility but it might not trigger the player’s ingenuity as much as actually seeing stuff to interact with. A simple marker-drawn map falls into the same problem. If there is a reason for you to want amazing art it is because it allows you to not have to worry as much about placing fun stuff for players to interact with.

One last detail that I consider incredible is the fact that if you have good minis you can take gorgeous photos with these incredible looking maps. I mean, just look at the pics I took myself that decorate this article. Incredibly cinematic, right?

Look at those details!

Flexibility and ease of use

The spiral notebook format allows for you not only to use just one page, but with it fully open, using both pages of the notebook at once. If you get a second one, you can even go further than that and make the battlefield even greater. Excellent for city chase scenes!! How about a third one? Let’s make a whole battlefield for an Avengers Endgame finale-like fight, as I did with my Waterdeep Dragon Heist campaign.

The pages are A4 sized, an excellent size to carry in a bag wherever you go. If you get two of them together you can make an A2-sized battlemap! Get as many of these map notebooks as you need and carry them wherever you go. This product is absolutely recommended for those GMs who meet at somebody else’s house to play and need something lightweight and comfortable to carry their maps while providing superb quality.

Did I mention that these maps are also dry erasable? If you are the kind of person that doesn’t usually get these maps because you can’t write over them, well, this is your lucky day! Draw the area of effect of those fireballs or let your players make notes of which places they should DEFINITELY not go in once they see there are cultists inside.

‘Not here’ can be seen written with a dry-erase marker over one of the houses

Quality

As you may be able to see from the images I’ve taken,  the pages are A4, with premium colour quality, 300ppi. Paper quality? Top notch, and does not seem easy to break at all, allowing you to use these for ages to come. I also took the test of writing over one whole page with different dry eraser markers, and they were easily cleaned leaving no trace behind with one simple cloth.

Another additional detail to stand out is that even trying multiple combinations within the two maps they all fit excellently with each other, allowing for endless combinations (maybe fewer than endless but I am not planning on doing the math). Just look at the many combinations of the gif below and see for yourself!

Virtual Table Top-friendly

Maybe you stopped playing in person, or your friends live on the other corner of the world. Why would you want to support this? What if I told you that all these high-quality maps have been created and adapted to your VTTs of choice? The crowdfunding offers a FoundryVTT (V11+) module and Roll20 addons containing lighting, doors, and walls (dynamic lighting) for every map. All the work is already done for you so you can just plug and play!

You can check out some of the maps yourself by checking out the sample provided in the Kickstarter here.

Foundry version. Images not final

Roll20 version. Images not final

Funded Project

With a little bit less than a week remaining, there is practically no risk in getting into the Kickstarter. I have received a review copy that has 38 of the 82 maps it will have, so most of the work is already done. The goal has been met, and all the stretch goals but one have been fulfilled. So be sure to jump in as soon as you can to make sure you don’t miss your chance of getting this incredible pile of maps:

BACK THE TOME OF MAPS: CITY BATTLEMAPS

Players love getting handed real-life, physical artifacts that tie their characters into the ongoing adventure. There are oodles of props, maps, handouts, images, and so on that can be tossed over the GM screen into the middle of the gaming table. Not everyone has time, energy, or skill* to get super in-depth with this kind of effort, and I get that. However, if you have even an inkling of desire to get into this aspect of creating an adventure, here’s what you can do for your gaming group.

Note on skills: I am not an artist at all. I can do decent maps, but not super fancy ones. I do not have the skills developed with practice to do any kind of character sketch or pretty map. However, there are resources out there that can help you out in this area. Keep reading for those resources.

Props

Props for your game can range from swatches of cloth, to hats, to pins, baubles, jewelry, metal coins, and other key items that players might come across. I highly recommend that you only acquire or create props for key elements. Don’t hand them a literal pile of copper pieces on the table after they kill a dozen rats. That’s just going to annoy everyone as the mess of coins gets cleared from the table in order to allow the game to continue.

Instead, if they find a brooch of a noblewoman with a family crest on it, that might be a good time to provide a brooch with some paint on it. Alternatively, you can provide them with a hand-drawn image on a piece of paper and point at it while saying, “You find this brooch in the alley.”

This sounds like it can get very expensive (it can) or become very time consuming (it can) or both (yes). Because of this, I’ve not done physical props in a long time. When I used to do it, I’d scour thrift and second-hand stores for things. Sometimes, just wandering the jumbled goods found in those types of stores, I’d come up with a great hook or NPC or aspect to a character that I didn’t know I’d find.

Maps

Maps are easier because they can go on a sheet of paper. The trick here is to use blank paper, not graph paper or hex paper. You can even find “aged paper” that looks yellow-brown and maybe has a faded stain pattern on it. Personally, I like to use thicker (50-60 pounds) paper over the thinner photocopy paper (20-22 pounds) because it takes up the liquids that I use in my aging process better, holds up longer, and allows for a good feel at the table. It’s heftier in a way that can be felt, which tricks the players into thinking the sheet of paper they hold before them is somehow more important.

For aging paper, I use tea and/or coffee to lightly stain the paper. This is an art and does take some practice, so you’re not dissolving the paper in the liquid. This is especially true in the day of recycled paper that doesn’t seem to hold up as well under exposure to moisture. After I get my paper properly aged, I draw what I need to on the paper. I usually use charcoal sticks of different sharpness to give it a truly “authentic” look.

Once I get the map prepared, I will (on rare occasions) bake the paper for a dozen minutes or so at a very low temperature in the oven. We’re talking around 200 degrees Fahrenheit, and I never walk away. I don’t want to char what I’ve just created. I keep a close eye on it while it’s toasting on the baking sheet.

There are some additional treatments you can add to the paper as well. Like holes burned in the paper, singed edges, torn off sections that are “missing,” and tearing the map into different bits. The different bits of missing sections can be scattered about different locations within your adventure.

Handouts

Handouts will be things like messages, missives, writs of permission, payment promises, grants of title, grants of land, and so on. I have horrific handwriting (my mom always said I should have been a doctor because of my handwriting), so I do not write these out by hand. Instead, I use a word processor and some fonts with “archaic” appearances to generate the handouts. This is my go to. However, if you are a calligraphy expert, then you can be proud of the work you do with your own creations!

Encoded Messages

If you want to present a riddle to your players, you can even encode the messages using a very basic cipher system such as a Caesar cipher, an alphabet substitution cipher, or some similar encoding method. Don’t get super fancy here because the point of the handout is to show someone is trying to keep something secret and to allow the PCs to figure out what’s what with the message. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about or how to implement these ciphers, head over to Cryptii and use the online tool to encode your messages. In the middle column of settings, you can click the orange text representing the type of cipher, and then choose something under the “Ciphers” header.

Images

Images go a long way toward immersing your players in the world. Really, these break down into people, monsters, and locations. Unless you’re planning on publishing the adventure, you can use stock art, free art, and such to print out and hand out at the table. I could list various sites that have stock art, but a good search on the World Wide Web for “stock art” or “stock images” and then using those sites’ internal search engines will do you better than following my lead. There are just so many different sites out there these days. There is also the Google Image search feature out there as well, and I use that quite often.

I’ll print out the images on my color printer using standard copy paper. I don’t try to feed the heavier paper through my printer because it’s not really designed to handle the thicker art paper I mentioned earlier.

Let The Players Handle The Goods

Once you have everything put together and hand things out to the players, I’d recommend letting them handle and tinker with all the things you’ve handed to them. If a handout or prop becomes a distraction from the game, then you can gentle ask the distracted player to refocus, but allowing them to handle the props increases their immersion in the game.

I would recommend collecting everything you’ve handed out at the end of each session and keeping those items separate from props that you’ve yet to hand out. This way, when the next session rolls around, you can place the found objects back on the table as reminders to the players on where they were and what they’d accomplished thus far.

Usually, I try to be more timely with reviews here, but I kept running into interesting hurdles while working on my review for Building Better Worlds. I had heard rumors that Alien: Romulus would remove Prometheus and Alien: Covenant from the movie timeline going forward. Then, we received news that there would be a second edition of the Alien roleplaying game. At the very least, I wanted to wait until I could see Alien: Romulus before I finished this review. Since I didn’t have time to see it in theaters, that meant waiting for streaming.

In the meantime, Free League postponed the crowdfunding for the second edition of the Alien roleplaying game. Some of the confusion around the Alien franchise timeline was cleared up, as Alien: Romulus pulls elements from just about every movie in the franchise to date, and some of the confusion surrounding that assumption was cleared up, as Noah Hawley, the showrunner for the upcoming Alien: Earth television series said that he wouldn’t be pulling from Prometheus or Covenant’s storylines, but not necessarily that he was going to do anything that invalidated them. It’s even possible that the series isn’t meant to fit into the timeline of the movies. Now that I’ve finally seen Alien: Romulus, I can say that this is probably a really good time to look at an Alien product focused on colonial life in the setting.

Disclaimer

I received a review copy of Building Better Worlds by Free League. I have not had the opportunity to play or run any of the included material, but I have experience with various Year Zero System games.

 Alien: The Roleplaying Game – Building Better Worlds
Publisher Free League Lead
Writers Andrew E.C. Gaska, Dave Semark
Editor & Project Manager Tomas Härenstam
Illustrations Martin Grip, Eelco Sebring, Gustaf Ekelund
Graphic Design Christian Granath
Map Design Stefan Isberg, Christian Granath, Dave Semark, Clara Fei-Fei Čarija
Proofreading Brandon Bowling, Kosta Kostulas
Prepress Dan Algstrand
Brand Management Joe LeFavi/Genuine Entertainment
PR Manager Boel Bermann
Event Manager Anna Westerling
Streaming Doug Shute
Customer Support Daniel Lehto

This review is based on the PDF version of the book, which is 304 pages long. The breakdown of pages is as follows:

• Far Spinward Colonies Maps: 4 pages (front and back endpapers)
• Title Page and Credits Page: 2 pages
• Table of Contents: 4 pages
• Setting Information: 42 pages
• Player-Facing Mechanics (Character Options, Gear, and Ships): 31 pages
• Game Mother Game Facing Mechanics and Campaign Information: 62 pages
• The Lost Worlds Campaign: 132 pages
• Colony Building and Development Appendix: 16 pages
• Index: 4 pages

Each chapter begins with a two-page image and chapter header with an in-setting quote. If you haven’t seen the layout of the Alien: The Roleplaying Game books, instead of standard headers with header titles, all of the text that would be under that header is included in a stylized box. Thus, each page has multiple blocks with a topic header and several paragraphs. 

This is one of those situations where I need to be careful what I wish for. Some RPG books have walls of text that can become easier to digest by being broken into smaller topics. The boxes go in the opposite direction. It almost feels like the issues are isolated and don’t flow into the following box on the page, even if they are subcategories of the same overall information. 

Modiphius had a similar stylization in the first edition of Star Trek Adventures, and the second edition scaled back on some of that stylization. I’d love to see the second edition of Alien: The Roleplaying Game do something similar. I like thematic layouts, but they can go far enough to become distracting.

Outside of readability, the book looks very nice. I like how the tables and special topics appear as green characters on a black field, similar to the appearance of the MU/TH/UR computer displays in the movie.

What are We Looking At?

When Alien: The Roleplaying Game was first released, one part of the product line was the boxed cinematic adventures, which use pre-generated characters with built-in agendas, loyalties, and plot twists. However, to facilitate campaign play, Free League planned to release books to support different kinds of campaigns. The core rules isolate three campaign concepts: Space Marines, Colonists, and Space Truckers. 

One of the game’s first releases was the Colonial Marines Operations Manual, which included information about locations, organizations, and events in the Alien setting, with a focus on conflicts, wars, and flashpoints. It also included an extended campaign where your space marines encountered various military engagements while finding escalating evidence of dangerous experiments, which they could string together to find the source of this research and shut it down.

In campaign mode, you need to have more to do than running from and surviving xenomorphs. In the Operations Manual, what happens between running into the xenomorph-based military experiments is an escalating conflict that they fight in, presenting a different kind of horror, the horror of war. These adventures don’t focus on glorious battles but on ugly engagements where players fight to survive.

We haven’t seen the Space Trucker-themed sourcebook yet and probably won’t until after the new edition of the game, but Building Better Worlds is the Colonist campaign book. Just as the Operations Manual presented the horrors of war as the baseline of the Space Marine campaign, Building Better Worlds seeks to introduce survival horror into the campaign. Characters will try to survive hostile environments, keep terraforming equipment working, and deal with threats that corporations or nations have promised to alleviate when those organizations fail to support people isolated in cold, uncaring space.

In Space, No One Can Hear Your Setting Information

The core rulebook and the Colonial Marines Operations Manual include setting information, but the core book touches on significant events, and the Operations Manual focuses on military flashpoints. This book presents the setting from the viewpoint of humanity’s colonization of space. That means that while wars may be important, much of this information looks at the expansion of various nations and corporations as they reach further from Earth.

The Frontier War is a conflict that breaks apart formerly allied nations within the UN. It creates an interesting dynamic, as colonies may not find out who “owns” what stretch of space, and colonists traveling in hypersleep may find a whole different chain of command when they wake up. 

The significant organizations we have in the setting are:

• Central Confederation of Africa (CCA)
• United Nations Interstellar Settlement Corps (UNISC)
• Throop Rescue and Recovery (TR&R)
• United Americas (UA)
• Colonial Marshal Bureau (CMB)
• United States Colonial Marine Corps (USCMC)
• United American Colonial Guard (USCG)
• United American Outer Rim Defense Fleet (UAORDF)
• The Union of Progressive Peoples (UPP)
• Progressive Peoples Cosmos Exploration (CEC)
• The Three World Empire (3WE)
• Royal Expeditionary Group (REG)
• Sir Peter Weyland’s Explorers Academy (SPWEA)
• ICSC Investment Group (ICSCIG)
• The Geholgod Institutete (GI)
• Weyland-Yutani Corporation (W-Y)
• Seegson Corporation (SC)
• Hyperdyne Corporations (HC)
• Omni-Tech Resources (OTR)
• Gemini Exoplanet Solutions (GES)
• Kelland Mining Company and Consortium (KMCC)
• New Albion Protectorate (NAPRO)

The book has much information on these organizations’ backbiting, warfare, and alliances. There may be more information that you can incorporate into a campaign, but as we’ll see later, I appreciate how the presented campaign uses this information. Some of the highlights include Weyland-Yutani taking control of exploration for many nations after the UNISC lost contact with several colonies and the war breaking out between several nations coordinated by the UNISC, making any UNISC operations highly strained.

This also means that Wayland-Yutani is subcontracting from various unaffiliated nations in many cases, and the colonies are more Wayland-Yutani than any nation they are subcontracting from. However, there is enough information that if you don’t want everything to fall back on “Wayland-Yutani sucks,” you can find other nations and corporations to fill your uncaring organization quota for your campaign. 

There is also an overview of various regions of the galaxy and the settlements found in those regions. These regions include the Outer Rim Territories (you have to have one of these), the Frontier, and the Far Spinward Colonies. Each of the settlements has the following entries:

• Location
• Affiliation
• Classification
• Climate
• Mean Temperature
• Terrain
• Colonies
• Population
• Key Resources

Most of these settlements have a paragraph or two that gives an overview and sometimes a plot hook for using the settlement, like the mysterious disappearance of the settlers, a flashpoint in the Frontier War, or a dramatic shift in climate. 

The chapter entitled Redacted from the Weyland-Yutani Extrasolar Species Catalog includes several creatures that exist across the galaxy, beyond humans, the Engineers, and Xenomorphs. These include Abominations, creatures mutated by the Engineers’ black goo, The Perfected, an intelligent species also created by the Engineers (picture humans with the techno-organic look of the xenomorphs merged with their skin), proto-xenomorphs, and full xenomorphs. There are also creatures like the Harvesters, giant tardigrade-like creatures used to facilitate mining.

Life on the Frontier

There are notes on modifying the careers presented in the core rulebook for a colonial career. This includes swapping out key talents and equipment and explaining what that career does in a colonial campaign. For example, Colonial Marines in a colonist campaign aren’t going to be part of a larger unit; they’ll likely be stationed as some of the few defenders of the colony. 

There are also two new careers: the Wildcatter, professional miners and prospectors, and the Entertainer, who tries to brighten colonists’ lives with your professional skills. These are structured like the professions from the core rulebook, presenting the following:

• Key Attribute
• Key Skills
• Career Talents
• Personal Agenda
• Signature Item
• Appearance
• Gear
• Typical Names

There is a list of new personal agendas keyed to colonial campaigns and suggested ones for the Wildcatter and Entertainer careers. 

The book expands on the weapons available, including pistols and rifles manufactured by some colonist-focused corporations and tools that can be used as weapons, like mining lasers and flame throwers. There is also an expanded section on outfits, armor, survival gear, and exploration tools. The key to most of these is to highlight that colonists aren’t likely to have higher-powered military weapons or armor, but there will also be gear that can be repurposed to destructive effect.

This section details off-road vehicles, trucks, tractors, small aerial vehicles, shuttles, dropships, and exploration pods. It also includes additional FTL ships, mainly exploratory and colony ships. I can easily see why smaller vehicles need stats showing how much damage they can take, how maneuverable they are, etc., but I’m still at a loss for why the larger FTL ships have combat-oriented stats. Capital ship combat seems to be the least “Alien” thing to spend time on in a campaign, and there is a place in the example campaign where they could use these rules, but they (wisely, in my opinion) don’t focus on the ship to ship combat in that part of the campaign.

The Mechanics of Survival

The campaign section of the book presents the Game Mother with example missions and scenarios for colonists and discusses campaign themes such as Explorer Campaigns and Colony Campaigns. Colony campaigns try to build up and establish one location, while Explorer campaigns survey different worlds, set up preliminary equipment and then move on to other worlds. 

Various charts handle unexpected or variable events, like what happens when a Wildcatter goes prospecting or what happens when a compression suit has a breach. I’m happy to report that many of these events interact with the Stress and Stress Dice mechanics. You don’t just gain stress from xenomorphs jumping out at you, but when survival gear breaks, you wonder if you’re going to suffocate due to a lack of oxygen.

The Appendix includes expansions to the core rulebook’s random star system generation tables. Several charts show what a starting colony looks like in the game. This includes who sponsors the colony (and who you have to keep happy), what the colony was set up to achieve, and the policies, installments, and projects that modify the stats of your colony, which you measure to see how well your settlement survives if it prospers, and what complications come up.

For this style of colonial play, there is a cycle to follow:

• Phase 1–Colony Incidents
• Phase 2–The Command Team Does Its Job
• Phase 3–Grow or Decline
• Phase 4–Colony Initiatives

The suggested pacing for this style of campaign is for the PCs to engage in one or two more traditional adventures before advancing to the next colony cycle. While the cycle generates events that the PCs will have to deal with, the GM is going to have to do the heavy lifting to make sure those one or two adventures between cycles have horror themes because, without that, the colony cycle may appeal to people that want more of a “hard work and a little bit of survival” campaign, and less of a “space doesn’t want us out here, and it’s trying to kill us” style horror.

The Lost Worlds Campaign

This is the strongest part of the book. This section answers everyone who asks, “What does a campaign even look like in an Alien RPG?” While the Operations Manual also included a multi-part campaign, and I don’t think that one was bad, this feels much more like what I envision for an Alien campaign. While colonial marines may not be prepared to face mutated monstres and xenomorphs, they are trained for violence, and they expect someone or something to try to kill them. Colonists and explorers aren’t expected to do anything other than survive the environments they explore and try to tame.

The PCs are part of an expedition sent by the UNISC to reconnect to lost colonies, offer help, and reintegrate them into broader society. The expedition has members of multiple polities on board, eventually becoming a problem as word of the Frontier War reaches the expedition. You also have a nice built-in explanation for new PCs if any of your players have a character that meets their demise since the expedition has tons of colonists in hypersleep, waiting to be tapped to take over for a deceased specialist.

This campaign most resembles the Explorer campaign model mentioned elsewhere in the book. The PCs will be sent to various worlds to assess them, make contact with lost colonies, potentially help repair and replace damaged equipment, and resolve any local problems at the colony in question. After each mission, the PCs must present the colony’s potential and world, describing how worthwhile it is to spend resources on that lost colony.

Six different expeditions can be approached in any order. Six clues to the Metapuzzle, the campaign’s background story, are slowly coming into focus. In addition to the six expeditions and the six clues for the Metapuzzle, campaign events trigger after the PCs take certain actions or after a set number of expeditions.

So, what is going on in the background? An intelligent species, The Perfected, have founded a religion among some of the human colonists in this area, and they have introduced a new strain of the black goo to modify these cultists. The Perfected version of the substance can even mutate the synthetic bodies of androids. The Perfected want to prove to their creators, the Engineers, that they are worthy, and to do this, they want to spread their version of the pathogen and seed their modified versions of the xenomorphs to the wider galaxy. Not literally, because they haven’t seen any Engineers for centuries, but the Engineers considered them a mistake. 

No one in this region has the coordinates to travel back to the core settlements of the galaxy. The Perfected need a means to find that region of space. The Perfected are attempting to fake out the UNISC expedition, trying to make it look like they’ll use one means of leaving this region of the galaxy to secure another way to do so.

That means the PCs will encounter modified xenomorphs, weird mutated cultists, and strange humanoids with a chip on their shoulder, in addition to the warlords, cannibals, overenthusiastic automatons, and petty criminals who live on the various colonies with which they are reestablishing contact. They may also run into bioluminescent xenomorphs and possibly even a Xenomorph Empress. 

I like this campaign’s structure and the Metapuzzle it uses, but I wish some points were executed better. I don’t like the narrative of one expedition, that people who are under duress turn into barely human cannibals. The expedition involving Warlord Zhāngjié suddenly starts to use the word honor left and right since the people in power are Chinese, and some of the presentation feels like caricature. 

While I like that actual climax, as it’s presented, running it in three parts, it feels like it needs to cut to the scariest, most dangerous parts of the resolution. The climax involves a confrontation at a space station seeded with mutated xenomorphs, with various factions in open combat. At the same time, the cultists and the Perfected pull everyone’s strings. While on the space station, there are also xenomorphs with the “capture” ability, meaning they’ll cart off captured people to be cocooned into one of the queen’s hives. PCS may end up facehuggered or infected with the modified pathogen, and the best resolution may be to perform a major sacrifice play to save the wider galaxy. 

It’s an Alien RPG campaign, so players should be prepared for a horrible death. However, given the way the ending may require a Kobayashi Maru no-win situation, you may still need to be careful about your expectations. When you get close to the end of the campaign, you may want to reinforce that it’s unlikely to get the best possible ending they can imagine. 

I Think if We Are Kind, It Will Be A Kind World

This book is the answer to your question about what an Alien RPG campaign would look like

As I mentioned above, this book is the answer to your question about what an Alien RPG campaign would look like. Focusing on the colonial and exploratory narratives leans into franchise elements that have been highlighted many times, including in Alien: Romulus. The campaign presented does a great job of taking some of the more comprehensive setting material presented in the front of the book and making it relevant to the campaign.

I Don’t Dream at All

Some of the essential points in The Lost Worlds campaign, things that need to happen to make everything make sense, aren’t called out or bullet-pointed in a way that makes them stand out. While the campaign uses the setting information well, it does feel like it could be more concise. Some of The Lost Worlds campaign expeditions lean on negative stereotypes and assumptions. The climax itself is satisfying, but everything in the adventure leading to that climax feels like it gets a little bloated. 

Qualified Recommendation–A product with lots of positive aspects, but buyers may want to understand the context of the product and what it contains before moving it ahead of other purchases.

Some tables will get everything they want from the cinematic offerings for Alien: The Roleplaying Game. Two or three nights of quality entertainment per cinematic adventure is a good return on investment. But if you explore what Alien can be as a campaign, this is the stronger option that makes the most of the franchise’s wider setting and themes. But it may take a little work to get everything out of it that it can provide to hit all the right notes.

You may have noticed some significant developments in fantasy games that rely on the 5e OGL for their core rules. Not long after the Great OGL Debacle of 2023, Kobold Press announced that they were working on their own set of 5e OGL fantasy rules, and part of the draw for this set of rules is that they could keep their own set of rules closer to what they appreciated about the D&D 5e rules. 

Tales of the Valiant hit the shelves in June, along with the Monster Vault. It arrived before the September release of the D&D 2024 Player’s Handbook and launched with a monster book. Also, with the magic items included in the Player’s Guide, the game was less reliant on the Gamemaster’s Guide, which didn’t arrive until October.

Initially, I was thinking of covering all three at once, but as time wore on, I realized that it would be important to look at each separately. This is driven, in part, by the fact that each part of the triumvirate of core books can be useful in a D&D 5e game, even without the other two, without the adoption of the complete Tales of the Valiant rules. Because of this, I will start my coverage of the core books with this article, focusing on the Player’s Guide. Most of what I will be looking at is a comparison to the 2014 rules rather than the 2024 ones. I’ll review the D&D 2024 rules as we get closer to the Monster Manual’s release.

Disclaimer

I backed the Tales of the Valiant crowdfunding campaign and received a review copy of the Player’s Guide. I am very familiar with 5e SRD fantasy games and have been running a Tales of the Valiant game, although everyone still has tier-1 characters.

 Tales of the Valiant Player’s Guide
Publisher: Kobold Press
Lead Designer: Celeste Conowitch
Designers: JB Little, Sarah Madsen, Sebastian Rombach
Developer: Jeff Quick
Lead Editor: Jeff Quick Editors: Misty Bourne, Scott Gable, Meagan Maricle, Thomas M. Reid
Proofreaders: Meagan Maricle, Kenny Webb
Cover Artist: Hugh Pindur
Interior Artists: Paola Andreatta, Darren Calvert, Basith Ibrahim, Maria Viktoria Kanellopoulou, Erika Lundrigan, William O’Brien, Corwin Paradinha, Ian Perks, Roberto Pitturru, Addison Rankin, Kiki Moch Rizki, Craig J. Spearing, Florian Stitz, Bryan Syme, Egil Thompson, Eva Widermann, Mat Wilma
Graphic Designers: Marc Radle, Amber Seger

While composing this review, I’ve been able to reference the PDF, the physical copy of the book, and the Demiplane electronic reference site. The page count is 387 pages, and in the PDF and physical copy, the page breakdown is as follows:

• Front and Back Cover: 2 pages
• Title Page and Endpapers: 2 pages
• Credits and Table of Contents: 5 pages
• Introduction: 4 pages
• Character Creation: 126 pages
• Equipment and Magic Items: 72 pages
• Game Rules: 40 pages
• Spellcasting and Spells: 116 pages
• Appendix: 8 pages
• Index: 5 pages
• Character Sheet: 3 pages
• Ads for other Kobold Press Products: 4 pages

The book has a very clean layout. It’s not dissimilar to other Kobold Press offerings, but the text seems to have more breathing room in this book. The artwork in the book looks great. I know some of it is reused from previous books, but much is brand new, and Kobold Press has always had strong artwork in its products.

While each page has borders with images from elsewhere in the book, the individual pages are white with blue headers, table elements, and black text. I appreciate flourishes like faded art under text or pages that look like ancient parchment, but I have to admit that bright white pages with easy-to-reference layouts usually win out if you ask my preference. 

Delving into the Text

The character creation section is divided into sections for character classes, lineages, heritages, backgrounds, and talents. The magic items appear at the back of the equipment chapter, and this section mentions that magic items aren’t always intended to be for sale despite having prices added to them. The Playing the Game section includes sections about planes of existence (not specific, but what is usually assumed in the type of game these rules are written for) and downtime activities that introduce some new mechanics. Spellcasting splits spells into new source categories and then splits those categories between standard and ritual spells.

I appreciate a few things in the introduction beyond serving its general function of explaining what’s inside. There is a section about what kind of fantasy this game facilitates and a section discussing safety. While it’s only about 75% of a page, it’s got a nice procedural presentation instead of what I’ve seen some traditional games adopting, which is to say that safety is essential. Then, it suggests other places to look for a more in-depth discussion. In this case, it runs the reader through developing lines and veils before the game starts and brings up some common issues that may need to be considered in a heroic fantasy campaign. There is also a section discussing some active safety procedures and tools for use during the game.

A Quick Look at What’s Changed from the 2014 5e SRD

I’m going to try to hit some of these points upfront before I delve into them with more detail later in the review. The most significant changes seem to be:

• No ability score bonuses tied to character elements in character creation
• Race is split into Lineage and Heritage, with lineage being physical traits and heritage being cultural
• Keensense replaces Blindsight and just means you gain the typical benefits of vision via another sense
• Feats are changed to talents, and no talents provide ability score bonuses
• Backgrounds grant you a choice of three different talents
• Subclass levels have been standardized across all character classes
• Spells are organized into sources instead of class-specific spell lists
• Each class has some tweaks to it, but one of the most significant changes is that the Warlock is a half-caster that also has pact magic
• Fighting Styles are now Martial Actions, which take a bonus action to use and which can be used to trigger a weapon’s Weapon Option
• Weapon Options are additional effects a weapon can have, but when you attack with a weapon, you have to choose either to do damage or use a Weapon Option
• Luck replaces Inspiration, and it’s a currency that can either be spent to add to rolls one for one or by spending multiple Luck points, you can reroll
• The downtime activities of Carousing and Researching can generate favors or clues as narrative currency that can be used while adventuring
• Ritual spells can only be cast as rituals, and spellcasters keep track of how many rituals they know separately

Some of these can be summarized quickly but may have more long-term consequences. For example, the changes to spell lists can shift some of the expected competencies of different classes. 

Making Heroes and What Makes a Player Character

The order of character creation steps as presented in Tales of the Valiant rules is as follows:

• Character concept
• Class
• Ability scores
• Lineage
• Heritage
• Background
• Equipment
• Fill in blanks
  

The Tales of the Valiant Player’s Guide makes an interesting choice to present multiclassing at the beginning of the character creation section. I’ll be honest: I’m not a huge fan of multiclassing. I think there are enough tools to pick up some flavor from other classes that, for story purposes, you can achieve what you want, and fully multiclassing makes class and subclass design trickier because designers have to take into account what abilities are going to synergize, and what abilities might synergize too well. It also means that many classes are designed to hold off on delivering core elements, so a single-level dip doesn’t provide a separate core play experience.

There are a few subtle changes. Some classes grant simple weapon proficiency, which is redundant in the Tales of the Valiant rules because every class gets at least simple weapon proficiency. Multiclassing into Bard or Ranger was used to grant an additional skill, which has been eliminated from the ToV rules. Beyond those changes, it works the same way as in the 2014 rules.

Most classes have all of their abilities in the 2014 rules or something similar to replace an ability that appears in that source. However, those abilities may shift up or down multiple levels to accommodate the standardized subclass levels. I would love to dive deeper into this, but I could write whole articles for each class so that I will summarize some of the changes to classes here.

Barbarian–Unarmored defense has a higher base AC rather than using both Dex and Con. Barbarians can move when they roll initiative. Brutal Critical affects threat ranges as well as critical damage dice. Unyielding Might now works like the other “reliable” class abilities. 

Bard–Bards get any finesse marital weapon as a proficiency now. Bardic Inspiration doesn’t specify that you need to decide to use it before you know if the roll is successful. Jack of All Trades is removed from the class abilities and replaced with Expertise. Song of Rest is replaced with Bardic Performance, a class feature with multiple persistent effects when active. Cutting Words has been moved to the core class. Bards pickup a subclass feature at 11th level. We’ll go into this later, but Bard is one class that notices the shift to power source spell lists instead of class spell lists. 

Cleric–Manifestation of Faith allows the cleric to either get heavy armor and martial weapons or an extra cantrip from any source and a damage bonus to cantrips. Divine Intervention is more reliable but is limited to spells or effects similar to spells that the cleric could typically cast. Blessed Strikes rolls back to 1st level. Clerics gain an 11th-level subclass feature.

Druid–Druids aren’t proficient in scimitars anymore, but it still appears as an option for starting equipment. Nature’s Gift is a non-spellcasting healing ability that can be used in beast form. Non-beast creatures with animal tags are also fair game for wildshape forms. A hard cap on hit points from wildshape forms is based on level. You eventually gain the ability to burn wildshape uses to recover spells. Nature’s Grace allows you to ignore the need for food or water, and you can’t have ability scores lowered. 

Fighter–Martial Actions replace fighting style; Second Wind is replaced with Last Stand, which lets you use a reaction to spend hit dice if you’re below 50% of your hit points. Turn the Tide adds additional damage that’s non-reducible.

Monk–Monks can throw items they catch with their Deflect Missile ability without spending a technique point. When a stunned opponent takes damage, they get another save against the effect. Slow Fall is moved up to 9th level as part of Perfect Motion. Tongue of Sun and Moon is changed to Astral Teachings, which allows for proficiency in a language, skill, tool, or weapon. The capstone ability is to gain 2 Technique Points per turn and get 4 when you roll initiative.

Paladin–You can use Lay on Hands on yourself as a bonus action. Martial Action replaces Fighting Styles, with minimal options (defending or using two-handed weapons). Aura of Salvation was added as a capstone, which grants resistance to non-magical damage and additional hit points. On the other hand, you can now only smite once per turn, which, honestly, is probably a good thing.

Ranger–Explorer replaces Natural Explorer, grants a swim or climb speed, and makes you immune to difficult terrain that isn’t magical. Most of Hunter’s Mark is rolled into a class feature called Mystic Mark, which you can trigger when you hit a target. Martial Action replaces Fighting Styles with limited options (two-weapon fighting or archery).You no longer get Primeval Awareness. You can eventually always pinpoint the location of marked targets. Stalker’s Step replaces Hide in Plain Sight and Vanish and shows up earlier than either. It allows the Ranger to turn invisible if they have natural cover or concealment. Strider lets you move without provoking Opportunity Attacks and gives you advantage on any saves against effects that slow or still you. You gain Keensense instead of Feral Senses. Foe Slayer is no longer limited to once per turn.

Rogue–Weapon proficiencies are changed to simple and martial with finesse. Precise Critical increases range, and bonus weapon die on a critical hit. 

Sorcerer–Weapon proficiency is changed to simple weapons. Font of Magic moves down to 1st level, and Metamagic to 2nd. Additional Metamagic options include Hunting Spell, Lucky Spell, Retain Spell, and Shielding Spell. Sorcerous Renewal gives back some Sorcery Points on a short rest. Devour Spell allows you to absorb a spell targeting you to convert it to Sorcery Points. Your capstone ability lets you target another creature in range to be affected by a spell that affects you.

Warlock–Eldritch Blast is a class feature instead of a cantrip. Pact Boon is moved down to 1st level. Pact of the Blade lets you attack using Charisma with melee weapons. Pact of the Chain lets your familiar attack without spending any of your actions, and you can speak through your familiar. Some Eldritch Invocations have effects instead of allowing the Warlock to cast a spell. Warlocks gain a half-caster progression in addition to Pact Magic.

Wizard–Magic Sense allows you to detect spellcasters, magic items, and ongoing spells. Rote Spells are spells that don’t count against your prepared spells. Superior Recovery allows you to swap out prepared spells on a short rest. You eventually gain advantage to saves against magic and resistance to spell damage. Spell Mastery now lets you cast each of your Rote Spells once without using a spell slot. Archmage enables you to roll when you cast a spell to see if you used a spell slot to cast the spell. 

In addition to all these changes, each class gains a Heroic Boon at 10th level, which gives you a decision between one of two abilities that might specialize how you want to approach your class’ role. Some feel like valuable tools that can be tailored to play style, while some have more significant effects. Some boons allow you to trigger a class feature when you roll initiative. In some cases, the Heroic Boon is a slightly different expression of an existing ability. For example, the Fighter doesn’t get Indomitable, but at 10th level, they get two effects that do something similar in two different ways. Sorcerers, Warlocks, and Wizards have options at this level to let them add spells of other sources to the spells they can cast.

I like the tweaks away from multiple ability dependence, as seen with the Barbarian. Most abilities that could be triggered a number of times per ability score bonus have been changed to proficiency bonus. However, there are a few that still use ability score bonuses. I like Bards gaining an ongoing ability that can be triggered while maintaining their performance. I miss that concept from earlier edition Bards. I like the idea that Martial Actions require a bonus action to activate, which makes them feel more active, and Martial Actions can be used to trigger Weapon Options. I am a big fan that the Ranger streamlines standard abilities, makes them less fiddly, and still frames them as abilities that a hunter or a scout would learn rather than just adding abilities without context. For both the Ranger and the Warlock, I appreciate that a spell that is effectively a class feature just becomes a class feature. I like that the Wizard’s Spell Mastery has been reworked so that it doesn’t break the game to allow Wizards spells outside their standard list (i.e. unlimited healing).

There are a few classes where I’m concerned about what happens with 1st level abilities. Nature’s Gift, especially, catches my eye because it scales based on proficiency bonus versus Druid level. The 2014 Bard can almost be the party’s primary healer if you don’t have a Cleric. Still, the Tales of the Valiant Bard loses much of that functionality by being tied to the Arcane source. Their spells become much less subtle, opening up more area attacks with damage that doesn’t focus on psychic or thunder damage. I’m curious to see what the Aim Martial Action does to bounded accuracy in that it doesn’t add +2; it doubles the proficiency bonus for the attack. Moving Slow Fall to 9th level for the Monk feels like it’s really delaying a core Monk feature, and overall, it feels like Monks got a gentle nerfing when it only needed one ability to be nerfed and probably could have used some boosts. The limited Martial Actions for Paladins and Rangers feel very constricting. Paladins have to choose between specializing in a shield or a two-handed sword, so swashbuckling paladins are suboptimal, and Rangers using a spear are just doing it wrong. I can’t even guess what adding half-casting to a Warlock does without taking anything away. I don’t know if it’s an overall negative, but it feels like something significant to tack on without losing anything. 

Subclasses

I’ve said a few times that Kobold Press makes excellent material, but their subclasses have tended to leave me cold. Sometimes, they feel like they’re just a little bit too rigid to be flexible, or they work well mechanically but don’t quite hit the right notes for the story they tell. I’m not saying they’re bad, but they tended to lean toward 2014 mechanics and sensibilities and not fully embrace some evolving design in books like Xanathar’s and Tasha’s. The Player’s Guide has a mix of updated and new subclasses, with some being replacements for subclasses that weren’t part of the 5e SRD.

Barbarian

• Berserker
• Wild Fury

Bard

• Lore
• Victory

Cleric

• Life
• Light
• War

Druid

• Shifter
• Leaf

Fighter

• Spell Blade
• Weapon Master

Monk

• Flickering Dark
• Open Hand

Paladin

• Devotion
• Justice

Ranger

• Hunter
• Pack Master

Rogue

• Enforcer
• Thief

Sorcerer

• Chaos
• Draconic

Warlock

• Fiend
• Reaper

Wizard

• Battle Mage
• Cantrip Adept

Right off the top, I’m thrilled that the Berserker doesn’t cause a level of exhaustion for using their Frenzy, and I like the new ability they get that does extra damage to an opponent with the frightened condition. I like abilities that trigger based on a condition that the target has. It’s great to have a less supernatural barbarian option that might get played. The Wild Fury is an excellent reconstruction of the Totem Warrior. However, players will need to pay attention to notice what abilities shifted to what animals (you’re going to be looking for Toad). I also like that the higher-level abilities have a different set of animals to alleviate some of the confusion from the 2014 Totem Warrior.

There is a simple logic to swapping out Cutting Words as a core Bard ability and putting Jack of All Trades in the Lore Bard. Adding ritual-based abilities also reaffirms the Lore Bard as the one who learns about magic on top of everything else. The Victory Bard is similar in theme to the Valor Bard, but it has more “leader” type abilities, allowing other party members to move and even letting everyone make their save versus an area attack if you do.

The Shifter Druid is a nice update to the Circle of the Moon, without the confusing Moon connection to a subclass about shapeshifting. The Leaf subclass is an interesting addition that says, “If we have an animal-focused subclass, why not a plant-based one?” They can spend their Wild Shape to generate a moving grove surrounding them.

The Spell Blade is a nice update to the Eldritch Knight with a few tweaks. I wish they had gone one step further and removed the school restrictions from the start. The Weapon Master is the Battle Master if none of your options affected other people, and there are no dice involved, just uses of their stunts. My main problem with this one is that it needs more stunts.

I love the Flickering Dark subclass for the Monk. You tap into your inner reserves to generate darkness around you that can either boost you or hinder an opponent near you. It’s thematically a replacement for the Way of Shadow, but it has much different mechanics. The updated Quivering Palm has twists and turns that work against each other. It still can last days before you trigger it, but it goes away when you take a long rest, which is a balancing point for being able to activate it on more than one opponent.

The Ranger subclasses make changes to the Hunter and the . . . Ranger with a pet that feels like net positives. The Hunter removes some choices and focuses, makes defenses more straightforward, and gives the Ranger the ability to shortcut to a targeted creature. The Pack Master lets your pet get the benefits of your Mystic Mark, and you can sacrifice them to save you if you take an attack that would take you to 0 (how dare you).

The Enforcer has a lot of the Assassin in it, but you aren’t sneaking around to kill people; you’re the person called in to hurt people. Their Brawler ability gives them the same ability as the Swashbuckler subclass, granting sneak attack if you pair off with people to beat down. Kill Shot has a feature that implies something we’ll touch on in a bit, but half of the feature works fine. Thief has some useful changes, but it’s hard for me to get excited about them.

I like Chaos much better than the Wild Magic Sorcerer, but you need to roll too often to check for Chaos manifestations. I appreciate that there are features that give you something for triggering a Chaos surge, so you have a reason to want to do it willingly. The Draconic Sorcerer doesn’t worry about playing with fear as much, other than imposing disadvantage to save versus the frightened condition. It has more elemental damage tricks, eventually giving your opponents vulnerability to your elemental type.

The Fiend Warlock has some positive tweaks addressing common problems with the subclass. The Reaper Warlock gets an ability that lets them attack in addition to firing off eldritch blasts, and eventually, you can reap souls to give you an armor class boost and area melee attacks as a capstone.

The Battle Mage is a merging of Evocation and War Wizard, giving the wizard a bonus to AC when casting spells, keeping from blowing up your allies, and doing damage to opponents when the spell is typically a save or no damage spell. I wish the Cantrip Adept had almost any other theme. “I’m really good at cantrips” doesn’t feel like an exciting draw. Converting one action spells to a bonus action is great, but everything else is about cantrips, and adding more damage to cantrips.

I didn’t have much to say about the Cleric or the Paladin subclasses. Overall, these are both interesting subclasses that update some known issues for many, if not all, of the classes. My other minor quibble about subclasses is that, for some reason, subclasses don’t have “titles” anymore. It’s not the Circle of the Leaf; it’s a Leaf druid. Some wording in the classes makes it seem like there may have been names for the subclasses, but that didn’t translate all the way through. 

What About That New Class?

The Mechanist is interesting for several reasons. It’s designed to be more of a front-line combatant than the most comparable class in D&D, the Artificer. In some ways, it’s designed to be the opposite of the Artificer. The Artificer can be a front-line fighter with the proper subclass, but the Mechanist is built that way from the start. The Artificer is a spellcaster, but the Mechanist is only a spellcasting class if you take the subclass that grants it spells. 

Thematically, I like that this class is something I’ve wanted for a long time. Can I play one of those legendary dwarven smiths or elven swordmakers? That makes the name Mechanist an interesting choice for them since it’s easy to picture them as supernaturally gifted crafts-folk. Beyond the name, the one thing that throws me a little is that the Mechanist’s Shard of Creation is flavored as a glowing glob of plasma that can be shaped into various items. I would have almost rather it had been a little more open to interpretation, as a toolkit, a lump of clay, maybe even a runestone housing lots of the Mechanist’s previous works to be retrieved.

Lineage and Heritage

Beyond loving the concept, I don’t have much to say about the specifics. In general, Heritages are a little broader than I would like, but I understand this is a core rulebook, and you have to go broad, while a setting book can go more specific. I like the Lineages, with a few notes. Beastkin, Sydereans, and Smallfolk are all “multipurpose” Lineages. Beastkin can be anything from Ravenfolk to Minotaurs, Sydereans can be Aasimar-like or Tiefling-like, and Smallfolk rolls halflings and gnomes into the same package. This goes back to the broader appeal a core book needs because, with fewer lineages, a player can emulate more character concepts. But I like these “subcategories” to have more distinct personalities. Given that Kobold Press has released (as of this writing) two smaller PDFs with more specialized Lineages like Bearfolk and Ratfolk, it shows that they will follow up with more specific options.

Backgrounds and Talents

Backgrounds only have about a paragraph or so of text but have supporting narratives attached to them. For example, each Background has a Reason for Adventuring that shows examples of why someone with that background would start to delve into dungeons or hire themselves out as a sellsword. There are also three different talents attached to each background, allowing it to be used for multiple character concepts, such as a fighter and a wizard, both of which have a soldier background. 

From the standpoint of starting from scratch while keeping the game familiar, I like Talents being organized into groups that aren’t open to everyone and standardizing them so that there aren’t some that grant ability bonuses and others that don’t. It feels like a more controlled way of making “feats” more familiar to the game’s core experience.

Equipment and Magic Items

Most of this section isn’t radically different than what you might expect from the 2014 rules, but there are a few tweaks here and there, some of which are more important than others. For example, Weapon Options were added to weapons. Those options don’t trigger every time the weapon is used, but various classes can use them with some of their abilities, and you can always use them instead of doing damage with the weapon. I like that making those options trigger less often they feel more like a tactical choice that will make a player choose what they want to use. The Weapon Options are Bash, Disarm, Hamstring, Pinning Shot, Pull, Ricochet, and Trip.

Armor entries have a “natural materials tag,” which shows that armor of that type isn’t affected by something like a Rust Monster or Heat Metal. That tag got me all excited that they wouldn’t remove the Druid’s restriction on metal armor, but alas, it has been removed. 

Giving certain materials specific properties is something I like, but I’m not thrilled with how it’s executed in the examples in the book. Silver gives you a smaller die to roll when you attack a creature with the Shapeshifter tag with a silvered weapon, and Adamantine weapons do the same to constructs and objects. We’ll look at this when we get to the Monster Vault, but the exception to damage reduction has been taken out of these entries and is left to the material quality. But one problem with this is, as written, a silver weapon doesn’t bypass a lycanthrope’s damage reduction; it does its regular damage, plus the extra die, still halved for the damage reduction. It feels wrong if that’s the intended way for this to work.

If you like vehicles with a stat block, they’re still in this book. 

One of this section’s best parts is in the tool entries. Each of the tool kits that characters can have proficiency with has the following entries:

• Associated Abilities
• Components
• Special Uses
• Example Tasks

I like the additional guidance for these toolkits and the reasons why you may want to use them.

Magic items now have prices associated with them, which aren’t restricted to rarity. Other factors can shift the prices up or down. The book clarifies that magic items aren’t commonly available, but occasionally, you may want to make them available, and the prices help facilitate what happens next.

A new level of rarity has been added to the book, fabled items. Fabled items gain more abilities based on the character’s level attuned to the item to grow with the characters. These don’t have prices because they are meant to be exceptional story-based items. I like all this, except we only get four in the Player’s Guide. I would have loved an example item that would be worthwhile for each character class in the book.

Playing the Game

The core rules haven’t been updated much here. Some terminology changes, like shifting Blindsight to Keensense, are made. The biggest change is the addition of Luck.

Luck is a new currency players gain once per turn when they fail an attack roll, a saving throw, or whenever something significant happens and the GM wants to award it. You can spend Luck 1 for 1 to increase the result of a die roll and three Luck to reroll. You can only have up to 5 luck.

Seeing this in action in a few games, I like this. I like it better than Inspiration (Heroic Inspiration), which it replaces. The biggest complaint is that in combat and action scenes, Luck takes care of itself, but if you go a long time between those kinds of dangers, your GM still needs to remember to find reasons to hand it out. 

Encounter Gameplay

While this is a Player’s Guide, this is essentially the GM’s section of the Player’s Guide, giving examples of how adventures and campaigns unroll and adding some rules like Hazards. It also includes downtime activities and creates some new currencies that surround them.

Carousing can be used to find contacts and generate favors, and research can be used to generate clues. There are examples of what kind of favors can be called in from different contacts, and clues can be used to automatically succeed on an Intelligence check to recall information.

The training downtime allows characters to learn proficiency with weapons, armor, or talents, in addition to languages and tools. It still takes forever to learn something, but some of those might be more tempting for a player to attempt.

Spellcasting

The most significant changes to spellcasting involve splitting spells into four sources, Arcane, Divine, Primordial, and Wyrd, and separating Rituals from other spells. There are no class spells, only sources of power, which certain classes use for their spells. 

Arcane magic is drawn from ambient magical energies, Divine magic is drawn from the gods and powers of creation, Primordial magic comes from the natural world, and the Wyrd power source pulls from places beyond the standard planes of existence. I have the most problem with Wyrd because it mainly exists for Warlocks and shifts some of the Warlock class’ story. Warlocks now are people who learn to cast spells that tap into the Wyrd power source, who need a patron to keep those energies from warping and twisting them. That feels like it detracts from the feeling of a Warlock being someone willing to bargain for unearned power, and it also means that if you introduce the full range of patrons that have appeared in D&D before, you’ll have genies and angels granting Wyrd power because that’s what the Warlock uses.

I like the split between Ritual spells and other spells, and letting classes track known Ritual separately. I like the feel of Rituals being a separate, long term style of magic, which fits a lot of fictional narratives. The downside is that there aren’t enough Rituals to make that Ritual spell list feel robust. There are a few new rituals to fill out some of the power sources, and I know we’re never going to have as many Rituals as we have standard spells, but on the ground, as a brand new rule, it feels like a great idea that could use more support. 

With four power sources, it will be tricky to determine what kind of spells should go on what list and how to keep all of them feeling distinct. While this can be tricky with Arcane, Divine, and Primordial, it gets even trickier with Wyrd. I can see Primordial as having some overlap as a little bit of Arcane and a little bit of Divine, but Wyrd feels like Arcane, and maybe some stuff that lets you reach out to entities you shouldn’t. I almost feel we need distinct Wyrd spells that do what other spells do, with their own quirks, rather than matching existing spells.

One change to spells illustrates what I mean in the above example. The Arcane power source has Create Familiar, a spell where you’re pulling together magical forces to create a unique creature bound to you. But the Wyrd power source still has Find Familiar because they are calling some entity to come and work for them.

Most of the spells don’t change much in this source from the 5e SRD, but there are a few new ones from other Kobold Press sources, like Gear Barrage. There are also some interesting reframings in some spells, like changing Fire Shield to Elemental Shield and adding additional damage types. While this shouldn’t throw people off too much, it does mean that some spells that could have used some tweaks or clarification, like Tiny Hut or Heroes Feast, don’t get any changes. Goodberry does get a slight change in that it can only sustain people every other day, meaning you can’t infinitely feed a small group of people with spellcasting. As with the Druid’s Wild Shape ability, creatures with the Animal tag may now be subject to some spells used only to affect the Beast type. This is basically the “fix” for using spells that affect animals and also affect hybrids like hippogryphs or owlbears.

Appendix

The appendix has a variety of information, including the gods of the Labyrinth, Kobold Press’s new “meta-setting” for the game, which holds every other campaign world you can think of. The gods included cover Dreams, War, Deception, Crafting, the Moon, and the Sun, and leave me wanting a little more in terms of covering standard pantheon roles.

There are also lists of Egyptian, Greek, and Norse gods. These gods are listed with Domains that go beyond the three presented in this book, with a disclaimer that future products will have more. That makes me wonder if Kobold Press will do books like Xanathar’s or Tasha’s for this line or like their own Tome of Heroes. Without a “core” setting-neutral book providing these options, they may not get as many people invested in setting up books and adventures to get more options.

Some stat blocks for different creatures may come up, either through purchase or class abilities. There are some changes to the stat block, which I’m not going to go into here because I’m going to dive into the Monster Vault all on its own. 

It’s Not in the Book, But . . . 

When looking for clarification on the Enforcer’s capstone ability, I wanted to see if there was any explanation. On the Kobold Press Discord, it appears that the Rogue’s Sneak Attack was meant to trigger only once per turn on their turn, which would align with some of the earlier playtest documents for the 2024 D&D rules. The indication was that it would be addressed in an errata. I hope they don’t do this. I don’t think the Rogue is overpowered with this ability, and it actually feels like a Sneak Attack to be able to get that damage when they can make attacks on other turns. It also makes the Rogue a little stickier, and dangerous to retreat from without using a full Withdrawal action. I don’t think the Rogue needs to be nerfed in this way.

Valiant Tales

 Many of the rules in the Tales of the Valiant Player’s Guide do what it says on the tin, staying closer to the pre-2024 iteration of D&D, with some tweaks here and there to make things work better and to curtail noted problems 

Many of the rules in the Tales of the Valiant Player’s Guide do what it says on the tin, staying closer to the pre-2024 iteration of D&D, with some tweaks here and there to make things work better and to curtail noted problems. Lineage and Heritage are a great change. Luck is an excellent replacement for Inspiration, and I like creating currencies for Downtime activities that can be used while adventuring. It’s appealing to give secondary uses and traits to weapons, and building ways for them to work that don’t cause them to be triggered and adjudicated constantly is a plus. I love the descriptions and examples of the tools. Magic item pricing that isn’t overly broad is greatly appreciated. I like the logic behind splitting Rituals out from other spells. 

Lost in the Labyrinth

There may be more changes to expected gameplay by grouping sources of magic than is immediately apparent, and the Bard, especially, feels like a very similar frame that will have a different role in the party. I hope the change talked about for the Rogue doesn’t get made in future printings. I think their Sneak Attack is fine, and once it’s in print, it will take a lot of people by (unpleasant) surprise. I don’t know how I feel about the Warlock and just gaining a spellcasting progression, and I don’t like how the power sources change the “story” of the class. I didn’t want drastically reimagined spells, but a few more problem children getting some fixes would have been appreciated. Rituals are a good idea that feels a little thin. 

Qualified Recommendation–A product with lots of positive aspects, but buyers may want to understand the context of the product and what it contains before moving it ahead of other purchases.

If you want a version of the 5e SRD rules that just cleans up the 2014 rules and addresses some issues with the system, and the 2024 D&D rules don’t do exactly what you want them to do, this system will get you most of the way there. I would say using some of the classes with their ToV changes but with their original class spell list is an upgrade in many cases. The Ranger exemplifies this. However, if you do that, you cannot use your 2014 subclasses without modifications, which will be a sticking point for many people. Its strange that more of Kobold Press’ library of subclasses will work better with 2024 D&D than with Tales of the Valiant.

Cutting off full compatibility with the 2014 SRD material means that this line will need to provide a lot of variety quickly to feel as robust as the other option. Some of the most needed content will be subclasses and rituals. I’m still waiting to get a feel for how changing spell lists and significant changes like the Warlock’s redesign will affect expectations. But there is enough in here that isn’t an open question, and I appreciate everything Kobold Press has done here.