D&D 5th edition will live on in Project Black Flag, and The Vineyard leads the way

Dungeons & Dragons publisher Wizards of the Coast has promised that One D&D, the next iteration of the famous tabletop role-playing game, will be backwards compatible with its 5th edition. The problem is that some people just don’t believe it, especially after leaked documents revealed that the iconic TTRPG could have gone in a very different direction. Therefore external publisher goblin press has a back-up plan to keep the most popular version of D&D alive, and it brings with it a sizable roster of freelance artists and writers.

Project Black Flag is the code name for Kobold’s effort to “update, streamline and publish a fantasy RPG based on” the Systems Reference Document 5.1 – the version of D&D governed by the Open Gaming License (OGL). After protests from fans, Wizards recently moved that document to the Creative Commons, effectively putting it out of its own control. While that license change means that the existing system must remain open to serve as the basis for new works, there is no guarantee that key 5th edition rulebooks, such as the Player’s Handbook and the Dungeon Master guide will remain in print.

Wolfgang Baur, co-founder of Kobold Press, says the existing 5th edition books will eventually disappear. Project Black Flag could replace them.

“Someone who’s in high school, a junior in 2024, wants to pick up the game,” Baur said in a recent interview with Polygon. “Where are they going? Well, they can go to One D&D. And a lot of people will. But for anyone who plays the 5th edition and loves it because they’ve been playing here for a decade, why not stay [it] alive by packing the core books into a gorgeous new hardcover? That’s Black Flag in a nutshell.”

That may sound like a crazy idea, but Kobold Press has the institutional knowledge to build a business around it. In 2008, Baur won the prestigious Diana Jones Award for his patronage system known as Open Design. Before Kickstarter came on the scene, and before the launch of Patreon, Baur used a similar system to fund his work writing supplements for D&D. From the Diana Jones website:

In an effort to find an innovative way to fund the kind of game design Baur wanted to pursue, he went back hundreds of years to dig up the concept of patronage, add a few modern twists and apply it to the problem . In Open Design – as he calls his system – Baur posts a number of ideas for potential projects and publishes them along with a cash threshold for each. As the sponsors join in, they vote on which project Baur should pursue. When the funding for the chosen project reaches the threshold, he starts work in earnest.

“If I had been really smart, I would have started a Kickstarter,” Baur said. ‘But I’m not that smart. But we’ve continued with that open publishing model and we’re still using it to some degree. But the big shift in the company’s fortunes came with the 5th edition of D&D.”

Early in the life cycle of the 5th edition, Baur and the team at Kobold Press were brought in to draft some of the first published campaign books, including Treasure of the Dragon Queen And The rise of Tiamat. Kobold would later perform similar work in the making of the popular 5th edition anthology, Spirits of Saltmarsh. Baur’s company has incorporated that success into a series of other popular books, including The Tome of beasts series. It’s that momentum — both in steady sales and a steady pipeline of artists and authors familiar with the world and its ruleset — that Baur says will help propel Project Black Flag off the ground.

“We are maintaining the 5th edition ruleset,” said Baur. “And because there are really big holes in it, we said: Let’s take those holes in the SRD and fill them with something great and new. The monsters that aren’t in the SRD? Well, let’s find other awesome monsters. We happen to have three Tome of Beasts full of large monsters. I bet we can come up with something to fill in the blank where the spectator sits.

In addition to these new core books that Kobold Press hopes to produce later this year through a crowdfunding campaign, a new cohort of independent publishers is also taking on the challenge. Be the first to leave the house with a work based on Project Black Flag Friday Bushwhose Kickstarter campaign for The vineyard RPG currently seeking funding. At its core is a secret society that can be easily connected to just about any institution you can think of.

“The Vineyard operates through a range of collection services,” Strout told Polygon in a recent interview. “They lend money, [since] they have a monopoly on all the rare gems in our area. That allows them to wield political power over different people. The Vineyard, it’s a kind of slang […] based on the fact that they could cultivate death until return. If someone dies while still indebted to the Vineyard, the Vineyard will still cash in one way or another.”

Inside The Vineyard RPG, players will find nine richly detailed villains, each with pages of backstory, motivation, and plot hooks – far more than the page or two found in many similar books. In addition to the required stat block, there are even examples of dialogs that can be used during table social and combat encounters. Everything, Strout said, is designed to make running these vivacious villains easy for harried Dungeon Masters. The project also includes an extraordinary cast of writers, talents such as Gabe Hicks (Critical Role, The Session Zero System), Kiena Shaw (TTRPG Safety Toolkit, Candlestick mysteries), and co-creator of the product M. Ebel (Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden). They even brought in YouTuber LegalKimchi – a real lawyer – to work out the Vineyard’s nefarious contracts in great detail.

“Initially we developed this for 5th edition,” Strout said, “before the OGL debacle happened in January. […] I had to make a decision about who to entrust our future to and who to work with. Kobold Press believes in an open and fair system that allows them to collaborate with various creators throughout the community, and enables them to thrive on their own, treat people with respect, and pay them well. So I thought it would be a good idea for me to kind of port our product over to Project Black Flag from Kobold Press.

The campaign for The Vineyard RPG runs through May 2. It offers physical copies for $50, with digital copies for $40.