Currently, Kobold Press is likely best known for Tales of the Valiant, their version of a spruced-up 5th edition D&D. But they have a long history of not just D&D-compatible work, but also aids for building your own content, not just for D&D, but whatever your roleplaying game of choice is.
The Kobold Guides are a series of books that provide varied professional viewpoints on a number of topics, from world building to creating magic systems to designing entire games. The full list is an impressive survey of the most creative aspects of games, whether you’re talking about RPGs, board or card games, or even computer games:
- Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding
- Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding Volume 2
- Kobold Guide to Board Game Design
- Kobold Guide to Gamemastering
- Kobold Guide to Combat
- Kobold Guide to Magic
- Kobold Guide to Monsters
- Kobold Guide to Plots & Campaigns
- Kobold Guide to Dungeons
- Kobold Guide to Roleplaying
Each book looks at the topic from a number of different viewpoints, from the point of view of designers to publishers and the final end-user. And because each book is made up of a series of articles from a diverse group of creatives, you’ll find use
ful advice in each, no matter what style of play or games you prefer. The Kobold Guide to Plots & Campaigns includes articles on how to start an RPG campaign, how to adopt pre-made campaigns to best suit your group, how to organize a campaign using beats and hooks, how to run a sandbox campaign completely lacking a pre-created plot, how to create good antagonists for all levels of play, and things you do with action scenes that accomplish more than just dead monsters and acquired experience points.
And the authors are a who’s who of creative brilliance: Margaret “Dragonlance” Weis, Keith “Eberron” Baker, Jeff “Spelljammer” Grub, Michael A. “Wasteland” Stackpole, David “Zeb” Cook, Ed “Forgotten Realms” Greenwood, Monte “Ptolus” Cook, Shanna “Cypher System” Germain, Wolfgang “Kobold Press” Bauer, and Martha “Murderbot” Wells.
If you’ve been feeling the itch to create your own adventures, settings, or games, you can do a lot worse than give the appropriate Kobold Guide a look. You won’t agree with every author in every book, but you will find pearls of wisdom in each. Talk to the bibliophiles at your local Dragon’s Lair Comics & Fantasy® today about adding one of these august tomes to your library.
