Yesterday, Kobold Press announced the name of the roleplaying game they will release within the next year. There is a detailed announcement on the Kobold Press blog.
When Kobold Press announced last week that they would reveal the name of the new game, I was a little surprised. I thought they had settled on the uninspiring Core Fantasy Roleplaying as the name of the product. It turns out that it's more complicated than that.
And if you’re just joining us, Kobold Press is committed to releasing Core Fantasy Roleplaying to everyone under an open, perpetual, and irrevocable license. It’s sort of like the SRD, but more thorough.
So "Core Fantasy Roleplaying" will be the name of the mechanics they release in their System Reference Document, while "Tales of the Valiant" will be the name of the game they release as books, presumably with extra lore and GM advice. The phrase "but more thorough" seems to indicate that the Core Fantasy Roleplaying SRD will be more like the SRDs released for other games: at minimum, all the game mechanics text of the core rules (not just one archetype per class), and possibly more such material from supplements as they are published.
Why call the SRD text by a different name than the game itself? I am not a lawyer, but I suspect one of the reasons may have to do with legal issues. One of the justifications Wizards of the Coast gave for trying to revoke the old OGL earlier this year was to prevent third-party publishers from sullying the Dungeons & Dragons trademark with racist content or other offensive OGL material. Releasing the open content of their game under a different name allows Kobold Press to avoid the possibility that an offensive product using the Core Fantasy Roleplaying rules, with the Core Fantasy Roleplaying logo, would bring ill repute to the separate Tales of the Valiant Game. By the way, this measure demonstrates that there are plenty of ways for WotC to address the issue of offensive content without revoking the original OGL.
Meanwhile, a fuller SRD could be a competitive advantage for Kobold Press against the better funded next edition of Dungeons & Dragons. Both games will use the same core mechanics, so the one that allows players to access more information more conveniently online (especially for VTT use) may have a point in its favor.
Overall, I think this is a smart move by Kobold Press that can position Tales of the Valiant well going forward.
