RPG publisher Kobold Press has issued an apology to its fans for two articles on its website that unfavorably compare the DnD Player’s Handbook and Dungeon Master’s Guide to its own equivalent products. The firm states that it’s “going to leave opinionated reviews to the community and press” from now on.
Kobold Press publishes adventures and rules supplements for Dungeons and Dragons, as well as its own DnD variant Tales of the Valiant. When the new Player’s Handbook hit the DnD release schedule in September, Kobold Press published a comparison article called “Tales of the Valiant vs D&D: New game+” which, unsurprisingly, concluded that Tales of the Valiant was the superior product.
On November 12 it published another article, this time comparing the DnD 2024 DM’s Guide with the Tales of the Valiant Game Master’s Guide. This proved sufficiently controversial in the community that a discussion in the enWorld forums ran to 52 pages of comments.
Kobold’s apology article, published on November 14, states “We’ve been tuned into our fans and supporters’ discussions regarding these comparisons, and we hear you”. The firm pledges to “lift up companies and creators in the industry instead of tearing them down”, and that it will “continue to listen and respond to the community’s feedback”.
Kobold Press has precedent for defining itself in opposition to Dungeons and Dragons and Wizards of the Coast. The firm announced that it was working on Tales of the Valiant in early 2023, when Wizards of the Coast was mired in the OGL controversy, with a new open-source license a key part of the marketing.
In September this year, Kobold Press’ CEO Wolfgang Baur reaffirmed a pledge not to include any “AI snake oil” anywhere in its content or production workflows, after Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks enthused to investors about the technology’s potential uses in DnD.
Whatever you think of Kobold Press’ for creating the articles, Tales of the Valiant’s target audience are most likely people who do want to know how it stacks up against the new DnD 2024 rulebooks. It’s an evolution of DnD 5e rather than a revolution, and still fully compatible – its versions of the DnD classes are very similar, while its answer to the DnD races and DnD backgrounds are a little subtler.
If you want to grab a whole lot of books for another DnD alternative at an incredible discount right now, check out the current Pathfinder Humble Bundle.
Source: Wargamer
