Be Bold. Be Brave. Be Valiant!

Tales of the Valiant (ToV) is a Black Flag Roleplaying game that builds on the Creative Commons foundation of 5th Edition.

Fully compatible with the 5E products you already know and love, Tales of the Valiant is a new game, but if you’ve played 5th Edition D&D, you’ll feel right at home.

Why Is Kobold Press Taking This Step?

For 17 years, Kobold Press has made top-quality roleplaying material: adventures, supplements, accessories, and more. We’ve grown from three kobolds in a trench coat to five, and it’s time for a new trench coat. 

Tales of the Valiant is that new coat. 

ToV moves the independent 5th Edition community forward with a system that is open and available to all.

Our goal is to keep 5E products vibrant, both in print and on VTT partner platforms, by keeping a set of rules available under an open, perpetual, and irrevocable license.

We Are Writing Tales of the Valiant Now. 

You might have seen some of our playtest documents. It is a work in progress! 

When it’s done, it will be based on the new Black Flag Roleplaying rules. (If you’re just joining us, the Black Flag Roleplaying rules will be a complete, distilled system document permanently available to everyone.)

What’s the Format for Tales of the Valiant?

You will only need two books to play: The Player’s Guide and the Monster Vault.

The Player’s Guide includes 13 base classes, lineages and heritages from classic fantasy roleplaying, and all the rules you need to be a player or GM—all in one book. 

The Monster Vault includes every dungeon-crawling and fire-belching fantasy creature you need to craft compelling fantasy encounters.

And that’s only a start! The Tales of the Valiant Kickstarter campaign was a huge success, raising over $1 million! If you weren’t a part of it, you can still preorder your Tales of the Valiant books now!

We expect to ship both books in early 2024. Until then, get the Alpha Release to get a glimpse of what’s in store!

The Tales of the Valiant roleplaying game is the most established new game you’ll ever play.

We had already committed to creating our own game when the 5th Edition System Reference Document 5.1 was released into the Creative Commons. After that, it was clear we could build on the foundation that so many people already know and love. 

While its roots are familiar, the Tales of the Valiant RPG brings new realms of adventure to the table. Explore the new Mechanist class, the kobold and beastkin character lineages, and hundreds of new options in the form of talents, spells, and monsters.

Kobold Press is refitting 5th Edition to use more straightforward language, reduce complexity, and organize information in a user-friendly way. This presentation style uses examples and standout advice to help onboard new players.

Here are the big-picture streamlining goals we are working toward:

• Make the rules easier to read, understand, and use.
• Reduce GM burden with encounter-building tools, exploration encounter tools, social encounter tools, and more.
• Rebalance some existing elements such as feats (now known as talents) and subclasses.
• Provide opportunities for PCs to make meaningful choices throughout every level of play.
• Make spellcasting cooler.
• Keep combat interesting for martial characters.

The Name Game

What Happened to “Project Black Flag”?

Amid the noise and explosions in the TTRPG business in January 2023, Kobold Press decided to make a completely free, open, 5E-compatible RPG that gamers could use and under which they could publish forever.

We called this audacious new thing Project Black Flag.

What Is It Called Now?

Project Black Flag was meant to be just a code name at the beginning. We found we couldn’t trademark “Black Flag” so we tried a couple of different other names. For a while, we worked with Core Fantasy Roleplaying.

But we still really liked Black Flag! So did a lot of playtesters. After the change, we still spent a lot of time doodling the old logo on our notebooks.

Sometime in mid-2023 it finally occurred to us that we weren’t going to trademark our open ruleset anyway. We’re releasing it into the open.

So we can call it whatever we want!

Going Forward

We’re making a 5E-compatible game system that everyone can use, for free, forever.

We’re calling it the Black Flag Roleplaying (BFR) system.

But that’s not all. We want to be bold in publishing new ideas, brave in standing up for our principles, and valiant like the characters we tell stories about.

So in addition to BFR, we’re making the Tales of the Valiant (ToV) roleplaying game. It will run on BFR rules, but we are trademarking this one, and it will be 100% a Kobold Press game.

In old terms, think of BFR as the equivalent of the D&D SRD, and ToV as the equivalent of D&D.

What’s the Difference?

Black Flag Roleplaying system: free, open, 5E-compatible game system, available forever. Get the BFR Reference Doc here.

Tales of the Valiant roleplaying game: The Kobold Press game based on BFR where we push our own boundaries.

We Did It!

After months of playtests throughout most of 2023, including hundreds of Kickstarter backer playtesters and at Gen Con, playtesting is closed.

Our deep thanks go to the thousands of you who has participated. We’ve looked at every comment. If you gave us feedback, we paid attention to it, and you helped make the game better.

We’re working on incorporating all of it, getting the Player’s Guide and Monster Vault ready for a Q1 release in 2024.

Once all playtesting is closed and work on ToV is final, we’ll release more information about how your feedback helped shape the game!

Support our efforts to bring the Tales of the Valiant RPG to life!

• Pre-order your copy of the Tales of the Valiant Player’s Guide and Monster Vault
• Sign up for our newsletter
• Join the Discord
• Show your colors
•  Follow us on: Twitter | Facebook | Instagram

You can still pre-order your copy of Tales of the Valiant RPG as a crucial support mechanism for Kobold Press as the rules go through design, editing, layout, and printing for release in early 2024.

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Learn more about the Valiant 4, example characters built with Tales of the Valiant rules, including bios and downloadable character sheets!