It’s launch day for the new D&D 2024! Congratulations to our colleagues at Wizards of the Coast who have worked hard to get this fifth edition game off the ground.

We did that too! About five months ago. It’s called Tales of the Valiant. We shorten it to “ToV” sometimes.

ToV. Wut?

A thing we’re seeing a lot of around the Internet is, “I’m very interested in ToV. But D&D is coming out. How is ToV different from this new D&D?”

The good news is, it’s not terribly different. If you like D&D 2014 or think you’re going to like D&D 2024, you won’t have to rearrange much of your mental furniture. We did that on purpose.

But we have introduced a few tweaks and improvements. (And, we see a few places where D&D 2024 borrowed some of our innovations!)

A mere blog post could not possibly do justice to all the ways that the Tales of the Valiant roleplaying game is different and frankly, better than D&D 2024. But let’s hit some highlights.

Written for New Players

New D&D touts its “expanded guide to playing the game.” That kind of thinking is well overdue for fifth edition! It’s such a good idea that we already implemented it earlier this year in the Tales of the Valiant Player’s Guide.

The book begins with a how-to, including a section on safety tools. Each class comes with a Quick Build to get you through the decision-making process quickly if you are new or just want to get going. And the book is peppered with Player Advice sidebars giving you a look behind the scenes, providing tips on making the most of your play experience.

Weapon Options

Weapon Mastery is a new feature of D&D 2024. Different weapons have additional capacities to do stuff, other than just dealing damage to enemies.

That’s such a great idea that Kobold Press implemented it two years ago in our Tome of Heroes book of player options. We refined it slightly and put it into the Tales of the Valiant RPG, as weapon options. It’s not just for masters in ToV though . . . any character proficient with a weapon can use the weapon options associated with it.

See more about ToV weapon options here!

The Mechanist

What happened to the artificer class in D&D? Reply hazy. Ask again later.

While you wait for that, check out the ToV mechanist. Some people say it’s a better implementation of the whole idea. Now, I grant you that we’re biased. But also, they’re not wrong.

Look at the mechanist and meet your new “artificer” character!

Characters, not “Species”

Your character is distinct. Unique, even. Yours. Not every dwarf needs to come from under the mountain. Not every elf needs to be dexterous. It’s a big fantasy world, and some fine tuning is in order.

So we made character building blocks a little more modular to reflect your character’s uniqueness. Lineage is the kind of being you are. Heritage is where you come from. And background is what you did before you started adventuring.

Your ability scores are not tied to any of those. You can put your numbers—and your bonuses—wherever you want, without having to take a “best” build so that your character stays competitive. They’re all the best for your character.

Monsters Today

We’ve been comparing the ToV Player’s Guide to the D&D Player’s Handbook in this article, but let’s not forget D&D 2024’s Monster Manual. Which, hold on . . . I hear the Monster Manual 2024 will be out in 2025. Hm.

If you don’t want to wait five months for the complete D&D rule set, try the Tales of the Valiant Monster Vault, which was released at the same time as the Player’s Guide. It’s got nearly all your classic D&D monstas RIGHT NOW. And for the few monsters that D&D has claimed rights to, that’s fine. Kobold Press is known for clever, creative monsters. We’ve put some of our favorites in the Monster Vault that the Manual just won’t be able to contain.

Even the old standards—the unicorns, the owlbears, the red dragons—our Kobold touch is on every one of them in the Monster Vault. You can use them easily with any fifth edition compatible game you’re playing. But keep your sword handy, because they’re a little bit tougher than you’ve seen before.

Where else are we ahead of the WotC curve?

There’s a lot we didn’t even get to here. The new Luck mechanic is miles ahead of inspiration as a fail-forward player currency. Downtime gives you a solid system for doing life-stuff between delves. We rewrote and fixed feats completely. They’re talents now, and you’ll want to take them.

Also, we don’t use AI in creation of any of our products (more on that later this week).

We made our Black Flag Reference Document (BFRD) completely open forever.

And while we love playing online, and ToV is all over Shard, Fantasy Grounds, and more VTTs you’re already playing on, we don’t want to lock you into playing online.

We like books and we like gathering with our friends to play. We’ve got online tools to help you do that, without a subscription.

Kobold Press was built directly on a community of fans. We’re still fans ourselves. There are no shareholders to appease. There are just customers to please.

We’re grateful for everyone who has joined us. And if you’re not part of the Warrens yet, give us a shot. We’re only getting started.