What is the difference between the 5E DMG and Tales of the Valiant GMG?
The big-picture goals for Tales of the Valiant Game Master’s Guide are:
1) Provide extensive guidance on organizing and running games, including: • How to find players • Dealing with scheduling • Running games for different personality types • Creating effective session notes
2) Present expanded rulesets to enrich the elements of the game that your table cares about most: • The Advanced Combat chapter includes rules for running colossal monsters, creating minion-versions of monsters, staging mass combat scenarios, and using a brutal injury system to track damage. • The Advanced Exploration chapter includes rules for running exploration as a hex crawl, constructing chase encounters, and playable resource scarcity options for survival-style gameplay. • The Advanced Social chapter contains rules for an attitude system to combine roleplay with rolling and reputation mechanics to track PC influence with factions. • Other highlights include rules for sentient magic items, magic-item crafting, firearms, siege weapons, skill challenges, monster harvesting, and MORE!
3) New options for mechanics introduced in the Players Guide and Monster Vault. These plug-and-play options include : • A huge selection of curses, diseases, hazards, and traps to raise the stakes of your encounters. • More vehicle stat blocks of every type—including suites of burrowing, submersible, and flying vehicles! • Expanded lists of poisons and poison-types • Random treasure tables and random magic item tables to generate killer rewards quickly—all using treasures from the Player’s Guide. • Random encounter tables for every environment and tier of play—all using creatures from the Monster Vault.
4) An extensive suite of homebrewing tools. These tools provide specific and actionable guidance whether you want to modify existing options quickly or build brand new options from scratch. Best of all, we show you every step of the math we use to build our obsessively engineered monsters!
And quite a lot more. See the sample PDF for a complete table of contents.
Last updated: January 10, 2024 09:34
What will shipping cost? Even an estimate helps.
We have some rough estimates to share.
The book will be around the $10 to $15 range in the US (depending on weight and which shipping partner offers the best bid), around $25 to $30 in Canada, and $10 to $30 in Europe. Australia is very hard to say because volume matters, but we are estimating $30 to $35 via bulk/friendly.
All of those are best guesses based on current container and postal rates, and we won’t have final pricing on shipping for some time.
If these shipping costs are prohibitive for you, please remember that buying locally is always an option. When you ask for Kobold Press items at your local game store, it can lead to more bulk store orders, chances to partner for distribution, and, eventually, cheaper shipping options to our wonderful fans abroad.
Last updated: January 10, 2024 09:34
What does “European-friendly” or “Australia-friendly” shipping mean? Are postage, VAT, and Customs duty paid for me?
“EU-friendly” and “Canada-friendly” and other forms of backer-friendly shipping can be confusing. It means bulk rate shipping to reduce postage costs (in some international projects, postage costs can exceed the cost of the reward itself).
How does it work? Instead of shipping rewards outside the US via Air Mail (very expensive), Kobold Press packs and ships rewards on a container on a freighter (or a truck for Canada) and ships that way to a local partner. The local partner then packages and ships rewards to backers in that country.
This project will provide reduced-cost, friendly bulk shipping to Canada, Australia, UK, the EU, and New Zealand.
This saves you a great deal of air freight money, and it means that Kobold Press pays the customs duties. Your shipment arrives via the local post a few weeks or months later than it would by air mail.
However, this does not mean that Kobold Press pays VAT or other fees levied in your country. Those are the responsibility of the buyer, as always, and are included in the shipping costs of the survey stage.
Last updated: January 10, 2024 09:34
Do I need the Game Master’s Guide to run Tales of the Valiant games?
If you own the Player’s Guide and the Monster Vault, you have everything you need to run a basic Tales of the Valiant game—especially if your table uses pre-written adventures and published campaign settings.
However, GMs who want to create their own adventures and settings—or GMs who run games for more advanced players—will find the Game Master’s Guide a must-have tool for creating robust and well-rounded game experiences.
Last updated: January 10, 2024 09:34
Are previously printed monsters by Kobold Press compatible with the ToV rule set?
Previously printed 5E creatures are compatible with this rules set. The Monster Vault and the GMG NPC gallery use the same power curve as TOB1, TOB2, and TOB3.
Last updated: January 10, 2024 09:34
Is Tales of the Valiant RPG set in Kobold Press’s world, Midgard? Do I need any Midgard books to play Tales of the Valiant?
No! Tales of the Valiant is a setting-agnostic rules update to the 5th edition rules.
You can use Tales of the Valiant rules in your 5E homebrew world, in your favorite fantasy TTRPG world, in your favorite novel’s world, or any other world–including Midgard.
Last updated: January 10, 2024 09:34
What VTTs will get support?
Tales of the Valiant has deep support from a range of VTT. The Game Master’s Guide will appear on Roll20, Foundry, Demiplane, Shard Tabletop, World Anvil, Alchemy, and Fantasy Grounds. Each company will release their VTT support as it becomes available.
Last updated: January 11, 2024 13:28
What is BackerKit?
BackerKit is a service that crowdfunded project creators use to keep track of hundreds to tens of thousands of backers—from shipping details, pledge levels, preferences and quantities, whether they have paid or had their card declined, special notes, and everything in between!
The BackerKit software and support team is independent from the campaign’s project team—BackerKit does not handle the actual reward shipping. For more information about the preparation or delivery status of your rewards, please check the project's updates page.
How does BackerKit work?
After the campaign ends, the project creator will send you an email with a unique link to your survey. You can check out a walkthrough of the process here.
I never received my invitation. How do I complete the survey?
The most common reasons for not receiving a survey email is that you may be checking an email inbox different from the email address you used to sign up with Kickstarter, Indiegogo or Tilt Pro account, or it may be caught in your spam filter.
Confirm that the email address you are searching matches the email address tied to your Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or Tilt Pro account. If that doesn’t work, then try checking your spam, junk or promotions folders. You can also search for "backerkit” in your inbox.
To resend the survey to yourself, visit the project page and input the email address associated with your Kickstarter, Indiegogo or Tilt Pro account.
How do I update my shipping address?
BackerKit allows you to update your shipping address until the shipping addresses are locked by the project creator. To update your address, go back to your BackerKit survey by inputting your email here.
When will my order be shipped, charged or locked?
That is handled directly by the project creator. BackerKit functions independently of the project itself, so we do not have control of their physical shipping timeline. If you want to check on the project’s status, we recommend reading over the project's updates page.
I completed the survey, but haven't received my rewards yet. When will they arrive?
As BackerKit does not actually handle any rewards or shipping, the best way to stay updated on the shipping timeline would be to check out the project's updates page.