A Look at Kobold Press’ Project Black Flag First Playtest Reveals 5E Roots
Project Black Flag has unfurled its first playtest packet. What exactly is in it, and what is “core fantasy?” Turns out, it’s dwarves.
Yes, Core Fantasy means dwarves. And elves, and humans, and everything else that goes along with it. After a decade-long January, Kobold Press has given players their first look at Project Black Flag.
But as the community chews on its first bite of Kobold’s new system, the question on everyone’s mind is, “will it be ‘5E but different’ enough?”
Project Black Flag Playtest #1 – A Dwarf By Any Other Name
Project Black Flag was initially announced as “a way to keep 5E open, available, and subscription free” in the wake of WotC’s OGL misadventure. Kobold has been working on this project for some months now — reportedly since August. But this first playtest packet keeps that “make 5E open” ethos firmly in sight.
It lays the groundwork for what Kobold means by “Core Fantasy” quite plainly:
In a nutshell, it’s about heroic adventurers who go on quests, engage with “power structures” like evil empires, and end up solving conflicts (presumably with violence). And if that sounds an awful lot like D&D of any edition, you’d be right. Moreso when you read that Black Flag is intended to be roughly compatible with vanilla 5E. A Black Flag Fighter and a 5E fighter can be in the same party, with relatively little work:
If you would like to make a 5E character of equivalent power to a [Core Fantasy System] character, simply give the 5E character a feat that character would meet the prerequisites for at 1st level.
As for the playtest rules themselves, it’s fairly simple. This packet introduces character creation rules, which are mostly the same as D&D 5E. You use the same six stats, point buy or random generation, etc., though they cap starting character stats at 18, which is a nice move.
Lineage and Heritage – A Forest Dwarf’s Frolic
The big change is in the details. Black Flag will change the way characters are built. Instead of picking a single species and getting most of your traits from that, characters will pick a lineage and heritage.
It’s a lot like Pathfinder 2E’s Ancestry and Heritage. The first choice determines something like “you’re a dwarf or elf” while the second choice determines what kind of dwarf/elf you are. In 5E terms, this would be the high elf/mountain dwarf decision.
Only heritages are completely divorced from lineage. So you could potentially, if you wanted, play a dwarf with the “grove” heritage and get the elven weapon proficiency feature, for instance.
Aside from that, the backgrounds in Black Flag have a new wrinkle as well. They add Talents, which are roughly on par with a feat that doesn’t increase an ability score.
You can find several more in the full playtest packet, which you can find right here.
With the playtest out in the wild, many in the community are curious to see how this System will compare with the forthcoming One D&D, especially since the latter may be under Creative Commons.
What do you think of Project Black Flag?
