Hi folks!
We’ve seen some comments or concerns surrounding the Black Flag Reference Document and its contents. We thought this would be a good time to explain what exactly the BFRD is and what it’s used for.
Simply put, the BFRD is a collection of developer tools. It is a reference document that contains all of the elements of the Black Flag Roleplaying System that are free-to-use for designers and developers that are interested in creating material for Tales of the Valiant (and its inevitable mutations).
Like the 5E System Reference Document, the BFRD does not contain EVERYTHING you can find in the Player’s Guide and Monster Vault. Some material from Tales of the Valiant remains protected IP, which is why you may see some subclasses mentioned in the BFRD that are not fully outlined. We’ve included subclasses for each class so developers and designers understand how we developed our subclasses, but as much as we’d love to we can’t give everything away for free in the reference document.
Hope that helps!
Hi Marc! Nice to see you here on the EN Worlds!!
Black Flag is actually a really interesting case in how ORC and the CC work and how the downstream flow or ORC works.
Kobold Press is using the 5.1 SRD through it's CC BY 4.0 license which means they can use it however they wish, including locking down content they don't want to release. Kobold Press isn't forced to release everything in ToV under the same license because CC BY 4.0 isn't a viral license.
But Kobold Press releases
their material under ORC which means that anyone downstream from Black Flag
must release
all of their mechanical material under ORC. They can't pick and choose which mechanical bits to release and which not to (like the extra subclasses, monsters, spells, magic items, and what not). Someone downstream from Black Flag doesn't get the benefit that Kobold Press got being downstream from WOTC with the 5.1 SRD and it's non-viral CC BY 4.0 license.
If I chose to use Black Flag to build some kind of supplement, I have to release everything considered mechanical content (which is a lot of stuff – monsters, spells, subclasses, magic items, etc) under the ORC license. I don't get the benefit that Kobold Press got.
Also, the reality is I can make just about anything compatible with any 5e product by using the 5.1 SRD CC BY license and skip ORC completely for 5e stuff, so I don't know how much it matters.
It's worth noting, of course, that Kobold Press didn't have to release
anything under any license even if they use the 5.1 SRD under the CC. But that was a big part of the marketing of ToV when the whole OGL debacle was going on. Kobold Press has also been extremely generous with their release of monsters and other material under the OGL.
In fact, my next 5e product is going to be using the A5e SRD because it's like 5x bigger than the 5.1 SRD and still under the CC. Thanks
@Morrus!
I'm not complaining here. I just think its interesting to see how ORC and CC play out together from an upstream / downstream perspective.
