Tales of the Valiant starter set makes the RPG seem 10 years behind DnD

Tales of the Valiant, the Kobold Press spin-off from 2014’s Dungeons and Dragons rules, released its debut starter set at the end of May. Packed with glossy maps, monster tokens, and Steamforged Games’ own character minis, the set makes a flashier first impression than any D&D boxed set has done to date. Unfortunately, there’s a big ‘style over substance’ problem going on underneath the surface – one that perhaps doesn’t do the core Tales of the Valiant rules adequate justice.

Below I’ve detailed my experiences testing a copy of Tales of the Valiant’s starter set kindly provided by Steamforged Games. A thorough read-through and multiple games at various levels have helped me generate these personal opinions on the product.

Who is the Tales of the Valiant starter set for?

Tales of the Valiant is a 2024 tabletop RPG that was developed and released in the wake of Dungeons and Dragons’ OGL scandal. This last titbit is relevant because, in almost every way, Tales of the Valiant started life as a near clone of the original rules for D&D 5e.

These had been released under Wizards of the Coast’s older licensing, making them free for all to use and profit from. Tales of the Valiant‘s big selling point during crowdfunding was that it would preserve these rules, just in case Wizards went ahead with a stricter Open Gaming License in future. It also marketed itself towards people who wanted to keep playing 5e’s 2014 rules in a world where the 2024 Player’s Handbook might make drastic changes.

As it turns out, neither of these proposed realities came to pass. Wizards of the Coast backtracked on a restrictive gaming license, releasing its new Systems Reference Document under a Creative Commons license. Additionally, the new version of 5e plays largely like the old one, only with a few much-needed balance tweaks. In my 2024 Player’s Handbook review, I called it “D&D 5e, but a little to the left”.

Now, Tales of the Valiant must define its legacy as a system related to but separate from D&D. A starter set is key in cementing a game’s brand, as it’s the first product many new players will encounter first.

What’s in the Tales of the Valiant starter set?

As is typical for an RPG starter set, Tales of the Valiant’s includes the following:

• A condensed version of the core rules
• A full set of polyhedral dice
• Four pre-made character sheets

The box also includes five introductory adventures and a 19-page ‘Welcome to Roleplaying Games’ booklet. In terms of extras, Steamforged has gone above and beyond, with several glossy maps, cardboard tokens, and four plastic character miniatures included.

To produce the starter set, Tales of the Valiant’s publisher, Kobold Press, collaborated with Steamforged Games. Steamforged is better known for producing miniature-heavy board games, often attached to the license of a popular videogame, and it’s now at the helm of the promising revived version of tabletop wargame Warmachine. The firm has, however, published several RPGs, including Runescape Kingdoms and the somewhat controversial Dark Souls RPG.

This starter set’s design credits go to a mix of Steamforged and Kobold Press veterans. Richard August (Achtung! Cthulhu, Conan: The Hyborian Age, The Dark Souls RPG) is project lead, with adventure design support and further writing from Oliver Darkshire, Ginny Loveday, and Steve Winter.

What’s good about the Tales of the Valiant starter set?

Tales of the Valiant’s starter set does plenty of things right, but they come with caveats that it’s tough for a reviewer to ignore.

The rules

Firstly, the core rules are consistently fun. Tales of the Valiant makes sparing changes to the D&D 5e system, but those it has made proved complementary and engaging in testing.

Perhaps the biggest change (in the starter set rules, at least) is the Luck system. This awards players Luck points when a character misses an attack or achieves something the GM deems particularly cool.

Single points can be spent to modify a d20 result, while a cluster of points can be spent to re-roll the die entirely. These points stack up quickly in play, meaning players are slightly more (though not entirely) immune to scenarios where bad rolls back them into a corner.

It feels strange to commend a product for design work done by other people, however. The foundations of this system were ultimately built by Wizards of the Coast, even if Kobold Press fine-tuned them to make something new. Given that I didn’t encounter any rules that seriously overhauled the experience during playtesting, it didn’t feel fair to account for this fun factor in my overall score.

Something Tales of the Valiant does deserve full credit for is the monster designs. There are many familiar faces in its bestiary, but they come with unique abilities that feel fresh and surprising. These made for varied and strategic encounters in Tales of the Valiant’s starter adventures, and they were my favorite part of the entire product.

The components

The quality of the components is also impressive. The maps are large, numerous, and made of a glossy material that seems to encourage notes scribbled in dry-wipe pens. However, these are exceedingly brown and dark, which may make these notes difficult to read. During testing, it also wasn’t clear from the adventures where certain features of the dungeon (doors, monsters, etc) were supposed to be.

Few starter sets offer players custom miniatures for their character, so this will be a delightful surprise for newbies – and, as we’d expect from Steamforged, they’re excellent. The catch here is that you’re paying far more than you would most starter sets. D&D’s previous starter set was $20 on release day, and it remains available at that price or cheaper. Steamforged Games’ website lists the Tales of the Valiant starter set for $44.99, while I’ve seen other tabletop retailers price it at around $30 to $35.

An extra $10 dollars for quality maps and minis seems like a steal, as long as the rules explainers and adventures included are top-quality. It’s on that front that I have bad news.

What’s not good about the Tales of the Valiant starter set?

The adventures

Tales of the Valiant’s starter set seems entirely uninterested in the ‘roleplaying’ part of ‘tabletop roleplaying games’. In the introduction of its first adventure, it dissuades the GM from spending time on the characters actually traversing the encounters.

“There’s no need for the characters to have complicated backstories, or to work out how they know each other. You can simply hand everyone a character sheet, and begin the adventure as outlined below.”

Each adventure spends even less time establishing why the dungeons you’re crawling exist or the reasons that you went into them in the first place. Your players are a group of adventurers who are employed to do various menial yet dangerous tasks for a haughty Wizard named Rantipole (who forgets who you are between every adventure in the book, so don’t bother trying to establish a relationship with him).

When I say menial, I mean it. The introductory solo adventure that’s designed to teach you to play is quite literally a list of chores with skill rolls attached. The level one adventure involves falling into a sewer system with no real landmarks of interest, then walking through it until you find a way out. The stakes remain low in almost every case, and even when danger or intrigue rear their heads, the story is rarely resolved in a satisfying manner.

One adventure introduces an NPC from Rantipole’s past, who it’s possible to present to him at the end of the adventure. This person is apparently immensely dear to Rantipole, but the adventure doesn’t even suggest dialogue for him to say in the event that these two characters are reunited. “Thank you for the magic item I sent you to get, here is your gold” is all the closure you’re getting.

When the starter set presents the players with a particularly interesting monster, it’s usually far too high a level for them to conceivably fight. This means that the adventures repeatedly MacGyver situations where the players won’t really fight the interesting and threatening enemy. They’ll easily talk their way out of trouble, the monster will invent a reason to use non-lethal damage, or it’ll simply flee if it takes more than a few hits. It’s a creative way to show off more of the game’s bestiary, but it’s a trick that gets old quickly.

It also gives me the impression that Tales of the Valiant is fighting against its rules rather than working with them to create adventures. Another example of this is an adventure that involves unlocking multiple doors in order to complete.

Tales of the Valiant must here address the classic RPG problem of “what do you do if players fail a crucial roll?” The starter set suggests that the GM improvs their own solution, drops the group a magic item, or simply reduces the difficulty of the skill roll. This advice isn’t terrible, but telling a new GM to ‘figure it out’ wouldn’t be necessary with some more elegant dungeon design.

The rules

Speaking of the rules, their presentation in the starter set is, in places, flawed. In some very rare cases, key rules appear to be missing from the starter set. One of the pre-made characters is a Barbarian, but I couldn’t find the actual number for their Rage Damage bonus anywhere on the character sheet. That same sheet lists a variety of Weapon Options for the character’s arsenal, but there is no mention of these traits in the Rules Reference guide.

A more common but less egregious issue is the structure of the books provided. The rules are covered in a 50-page booklet, and they are then repeated throughout all five of the set’s adventures in popout boxes.

These are clearly meant to be helpful reminders of key rules to save a new GM searching the rules reference book for them. They do have some value in that regard, but they also bloat the adventure text enormously. It’s easy for a GM to find a rules reminder about vision and lighting, but they’ll struggle to find a clear description of a room’s doors and features among all the rules snippets and helpful tips.

After a few test runs of this starter set, I can’t help but feel there’s a great game hidden in the Tales of the Valiant system. Its foundation is fairly stable, and it brings some interesting new ideas to the table, so there’s room for it to blossom into a more unique game. This starter set, however, does not make a favorable first impression.

If you’d like to share your thoughts on Tales of the Valiant, join us in the Wargamer Discord. Or, for more on a very similar system, here’s all you need to know about DnD classes and DnD races.

Source: Wargamer