Complete KOBOLD Guide to Game Design

Kobold Press (based on 4 ratings)

Got Questions About RPG Design?

Wolfgang Baur, Monte Cook, Ed Greenwood, Mike Stackpole, and other industry veterans have the answers you asked for...and the advice you need!

Want to create great new adventures, monsters and magic for your RPG campaign? Maybe even design your own game?

The Complete Kobold Guide to Game Design offers 240 pages of in-depth essays on what makes RPGs tick. Get time-tested advice from the top designers in the industry. This compilation includes all three volumes of our Kobold Guide to Game Design series—now with all-new material by Wolfgang Baur, Mike Stackpole and others!

From core rules and magic systems to fantasy adventures, monster design, playtesting, and much more, these 40 essays cover every aspect of RPG design in clear, accessible language, to show you what it takes.

Pick up the Complete KOBOLD Guide to Game Design today, and starting designing your RPG tonight!

"Game designers and those just curious about the process will all surely find something within these pages to capture their attention and imagination. Some of the articles are a little technical and hard to understand, but most are very accessible for even the most novice gamer. Highly recommended for gaming nerds everywhere." —City Book Review

Winner of the 2012 Gold ENnie for Best RPG-Related Product!

The Kobold Guide to Board Game Design

Kobold Press (based on 4 ratings)

Pull up a chair and see how the world's top game designers roll.

You want your games to be many things: Creative. Innovative. Playable. Fun. If you're a designer, add "published" to that list.

The 144-page Kobold Guide to Board Game Design gives you an insider's view on how to make a game that people will want to play again and again. Author Mike Selinker (Betrayal at House on the Hill) has invited some of the world's most talented and experienced game designers to share their secrets on game conception, design, development, and presentation. In these pages, you'll learn about storyboarding, balancing, prototyping, and playtesting from the best in the business.

Featuring a cover and interior art by John Kovalic, the book’s 15 contributors include:

• Richard Garfield (Magic: The Gathering)
• Steve Jackson (Munchkin)
• Dale Yu (Dominion)
• James Ernest (Kill Doctor Lucky)
• Lisa Steenson (Redneck Life)

Whether you're a game enthusiast who wants a deeper understanding of the hobby, an aspiring designer looking to break into the industry, or a seasoned pro who knows there's always more to learn, there's something for you in the Kobold Guide to Board Game Design.

Winner of the Origins 2012 award for Best Game-Related Publication!

Kobold Guide to Combat

Kobold Press

A full-throated battle cry. The clash of swords.
The smells of smoke, mud, and blood. Combat!

At the heart of every adventure lies conflict, whether it’s between a cursed knight and a half-elf prince at swordspoint, a troupe of adventurers facing down an ogre, or the armies of two great nations clashing for ultimate power.

Between these covers, 20 master game designers and storytellers get into the thick of it. With essays that cover everything from strategy and tactics to the history of military systems at war, from increasing the tension in a conflict to using monsters, magic, and war machines on the field, these creators show you how to bring together the elements to create great combat on the tabletop and in your storytelling.

Open these pages and enter the fray!

The Essential Guide to Combat in Fiction and Games
This companion for fantasy gamers and readers alike is edited by Janna Silverstein, and features essays by:

• Wolfgang Baur
• Clinton Boomer
• Ed Greenwood
• Jeff Grubb
• Rob Heinsoo
• Colin McComb
• Richard Pett
• Chris Pramas
• Aaron Rosenberg
• John A. Pitts & Ken Scholes
• Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
• Steve Winter
• and many more!

This latest volume in the best-selling and award-winning series of Kobold Guides tackles the violence and heroism at the heart of the fantasy genre. Improve your game and expand your combat storytelling skill with the Kobold Guide to Combat!

Praise for Prior Design Guides

“Class is in session... The Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding SHOULD be considered a textbook on intelligent setting creation.” —Dave Hinojosa, The Gaming Gang

"A fantastic resource" —Skyland Games

“While the book is aimed at the RPG crowd, a huge percentage of the material would be just as valuable to an author writing a novel set in an original world... For anyone who’s ever had the drive to create a fictional place... The Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding will spark some new ideas and help you add the proper doses of verisimilitude and outlandishness.” —Ed Grabianowski, i09

"Highly recommended for gaming nerds everywhere." —CityBookReview.com

"If you're an aspiring pro this book is a must. If you're a rules hacker like me, this stuff is solid gold." —Berin Kinsman, UncleBear Media

"A fantastic collection... a solid 5 star rating." —Joshua Gullion, AdventureAWeek.com

"An amazing collection... from some of the best designers and writers creating role-playing game material today." —Brian Fitzpatrick, BlogCritics.org

Kobold Guide to Gamemastering PDF

Kobold Press

The latest in the award-winning and fan-favorite series of Kobold Guides tackles gameplay head-on, with advice from everyone from veterans to talented newcomers on how to make a tabletop RPG session snap, crackle, and shine!

Writers on include Frank Mentzer, Keith Baker, Zeb Cook, James Jacobs, Monica Valentinelli, Shanna Germain, and many other well-known industry vets and long-time GMs.

From session prep to problem players, the Kobold Guide to Gamemastering will help any game master up their game and entertain their table like never before!

Kobold Guide to Plots and Campaigns PDF

Kobold Press (based on 1 rating)

Run Your Best Campaign Yet

Whether you're a new gamemaster or a seasoned vet looking for a new angle to shake up your game, these 19 essays by expert gamemasters help construct your campaign from the ground up—and keep your players engaged until the dramatic conclusion.

Kobold Guide to Plots & Campaigns shows how to begin a new campaign, use published adventures or loot them for the best ideas, build toward cliffhangers, and design a game that can enthrall your players for month or even years. Want to run an evil campaign, or hurl the characters into unusual otherworldly settings? Want to ensure that you're creating memorable and effective NPCs and villains? We've got you covered.

Complete with discussions on plotting, tone, branching storytelling, pacing, and crafting action scenes, you'll find all the tips and advice you need to take on the best role in roleplaying—and become an expert gamemaster, too! Featuring essays by Wolfgang Baur, Jeff Grubb, David "Zeb" Cook, Margaret Weis, Robert J. Schwalb, Steve Winter, and other game professionals.

This latest volume in the best-selling and award-winning series of Kobold Guides tackles the storytelling and campaign planning at the heart of any great RPG. Improve your game and expand your plotting and scheming skills with the Kobold Guide to Plots & Campaigns!

Praise for Prior Design Guides

"A fantastic resource"
—Skyland Games

"Highly recommended for gaming nerds everywhere."
—CityBookReview.com

"If you're an aspiring pro this book is a must. If you're a rules hacker like me, this stuff is solid gold."
—Berin Kinsman, UncleBear Media

"A fantastic collection... a solid 5 star rating."
—Joshua Gullion, AdventureAWeek.com

"An amazing collection... from some of the best designers and writers creating role-playing game material today."
—Brian Fitzpatrick, BlogCritics.org

Pages: 124
ISBN-13: 978-1-936781-62-1

Kobold Guide to Magic

Kobold Press

Kobolds Work a Little Magic!

The popular and wildly useful Kobold Guide series tackles the biggest subject in fantasy: Magic!

What makes a fantasy fantastic? Magic, of course! Whether it's unearthly beasts, scheming sorcerers, legendary swords or locales that defy logic and physics, a compelling fantasy story needs magical elements. The tricky part is that in order for the story to work, you have to get your reader or player to believe the unbelievable.

The Kobold Guide to Magic takes you behind the scenes to learn the secrets of designing and writing about magic from 20 top fantasy authors and game designers. Find out how to create more compelling, more interesting, and more playable magic at your table or in your stories—with the word from some of the most talented creators working today.

The topics are wide-ranging, from the secrets of Irish magic to tricks of impractical magic, from how to generate a sense of wonder at the gaming table to how to rejigger the teleport spell for stronger adventures to how to sell a character's soul and how to run a game with visions and prophecies. There's even sections on the magic of J.R.R. Tolkien and the tools available to a game master for making magic their own.

The Essential Guide to Magic in Fiction and Games
This essential companion for fantasy gamers and readers alike feature essays by:

• Wolfgang Baur
• Clinton Boomer
• David Chart
• David "Zeb" Cook
• James Enge
• Ed Greenwood
• Jeff Grubb
• Kenneth Hite
• James Jacobs
• Colin McComb
• Richard Pett
• Tim Pratt
• John Rateliff
• Thomas Reid
• Aaron Rosenberg
• Ken Scholes
• F. Wesley Schneider
• Amber E. Scott
• Willie Walsh
• Martha Wells
• Steve Winter
• and with an introduction by Monte Cook

This latest volume in the best-selling and award-winning series of Kobold Guides tackles the mystery at the heart of the fantasy genre. Improve your game and expand your magical power with the Kobold Guide to Magic!

Praise for Prior Design Guides

"Class is in session . . . The Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding SHOULD be considered a textbook on intelligent setting creation." —Dave Hinojosa, The Gaming Gang

"A fantastic resource." —Skyland Games

"While the book is aimed at the RPG crowd, a huge percentage of the material would be just as valuable to an author writing a novel set in an original world...For anyone who's ever had the drive to create a fictional place...The Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding will spark some new ideas and help you add the proper doses of verisimilitude and outlandishness." —Ed Grabianowski, i09

"Highly recommended for gaming nerds everywhere." —CityBookReview.com

"If you're an aspiring pro this book is a must. If you're a rules hacker like me, this stuff is solid gold." —Berin Kinsman, UncleBear Media

"A fantastic collection...a solid 5 star rating." —Joshua Gullion, AdventureAWeek.com

"An amazing collection...from some of the best designers and writers creating role-playing game material today." —Brian Fitzpatrick, BlogCritics.org

Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding

Kobold Press (based on 2 ratings)

The Essential Elements for Building a World!

Roleplaying games and fantasy fiction are filled with rich and fascinating worlds: the Forgotten Realms, Glorantha, Narnia, R’lyeh, Middle-Earth, Barsoom, and so many more. It took startling leaps of imagination as well as careful thought and planning to create places like these: places that readers and players want to come back to again and again.

Now, eleven of adventure gaming’s top designers come together to share their insights into building worlds that gamers will never forget. Learn the secrets of designing a pantheon, creating a setting that provokes conflict, determining which historical details are necessary, and so much more. Even take that creative leap—and create dazzling worlds of your own!

Essays by Wolfgang Baur, Keith Baker, Monte Cook, David "Zeb" Cook, Jeff Grubb, Scott Hungerford, Chris Pramas, Jonathan Roberts, Michael A. Stackpole, Steve Winter, with an introduction by Ken Scholes.

"For anyone who’s ever had the drive to create a fictional place, whether in a game, for your novel, or just to pass a rainy afternoon, the Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding will spark some new ideas and help you add the proper doses of verisimilitude and outlandishness." —io9.com

“Class is in session... The Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding SHOULD be considered a textbook on intelligent setting creation.” —Dave Hinojosa, The Gaming Gang

"A fantastic resource" —Skyland Games

“While the book is aimed at the RPG crowd, a huge percentage of the material would be just as valuable to an author writing a novel set in an original world. . . . For anyone who’s ever had the drive to create a fictional place . . . The Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding will spark some new ideas and help you add the proper doses of verisimilitude and outlandishness.” —Ed Grabianowski, i09

Praise for Prior Design Guides:

"Highly recommended for gaming nerds everywhere.”—CityBookReview.com

“If you’re an aspiring pro this book is a must. If you’re a rules hacker like me, this stuff is solid gold.”—Berin Kinsman, UncleBear Media

“A fantastic collection...a solid 5 star rating.”—Joshua Gullion, AdventureAWeek.com

“An amazing collection...from some of the best designers and writers creating role-playing game material today.”—Brian Fitzpatrick, BlogCritics.org

More Whispering Homunculus PDF

Kobold Press (based on 1 rating)

More Oddities and Disturbing Bits of Whimsy Ahead!

Master Richard Pett takes us on a tour of the bizarre, the curious, and the strange in More Whispering Homunculus. Within you'll find a multitude of weird charts that provide you with strange timepieces, unusual locations for overnight camping, extraordinary pets-among so many other things!

As smattering sample of topics for your perusal, master.

• Fifty Treasures of the Pharaohs
• One Hundred Strange Pets
• A Short Summary of the Fine Art of the Recurring Villain
• A New Birth—Improving Your Worthless Menial
• A Salt and a Seasoning of d12 Charts

Additionally, Wolfgang Baur and Miranda Horner grant you a look at explosions and supernatural activity, respectively. And finally, you'll venture into the world of the Master with an adventure that allows players to portray hapless homunculi who seek a position.

Whether you need a nugget of outlandish inspiration for your game or wish to run an odd little adventure, More Whispering Homunculus delivers!

Your Whispering Homunculus (PFRPG)

Kobold Press (based on 4 ratings)

Richard Pett’s Your Whispering Homunculus is the GM’s humble servant and guide to the vile, whimsical, disgusting, bizarre, horrific, odd, skin-crawling, and mildly disturbed side of fantasy gaming.

Your Whispering Homunculus provides wonderfully lunatic ideas and encounters to keep your players on their toes‚along with tips on how to make ordinary creatures and locations truly memorable.

Within its 150+ pages of essays, lists, and random tables, the homunculus whispers of:

• Unsettling Moments and Strange Entertainments
• Pointless Objects and Mangled Monsters
• Trog-Kin and Troll-Touched
• Daft Bets and Dismaying Delicacies
• The Curious Contents of Dungeon Toilets
• And so much more...

Buy it today and get your very own Whispering Homunculus!

KOBOLD Guide to Game Design—Volume 1: Adventures PDF

Kobold Press (based on 9 ratings)

Practical Advice from Great RPG Designers

Ever wondered what it takes to make it as a freelancer? Want to improve your homebrew adventures?

Wonder no more!

The KOBOLD Guide to Game Design distills years of professional experience into a collection of design wisdom that can improve your game and vastly increase your odds of selling a publisher on your work.

• Your Audience and Making the Pitch
• Design Tips and Tricks
• Writerly Craft
• Pacing and Drama
• Worldbuilding
• Genres from Noir to Arabian and Underdark
• City Adventures
• ...And More!

This 88-page collection of 15 essays—many previously presented only to patrons of OPEN DESIGN—is now available to the public for the first time. It also collects design wisdom from the pages of KOBOLD QUARTERLY magazine.

Authors include Keith Baker, Wolfgang Baur, Ed Greenwood, and Nicolas Logue.

KOBOLD Guide to Game Design—Volume 2: How to Playtest and Publish PDF

Kobold Press (based on 1 rating)

Game Design Secrets You Need to Know!

The practical side of success as a game designer is revealed in these dozen essays by two professionals—how to pitch your work, how to survive a killer deadline, how to make an impression with magic items, and even how to set up a mystery. Learn what makes a good playtest, and what makes a design matter to a wide audience.

With insights won from experience in the freelance trenches, this book of advice, tips, and tricks belongs on every designer’s shelf!

This collection of essays—many previously presented only to patrons of Open Design—is now available to the public for the first time.

59 pages.

Wolfgang Baur is the winner of the Diana Jones Award for Excellence in Gaming, the editor-in-chief of Kobold Quarterly magazine, and the author of Dark*Matter, Frostburn, Empire of the Ghouls, and dozens of other RPG titles for Paizo, Wizards of the Coast, Open Design, and others.

Nicolas Logue is a madman and master of the theatre. His credits include work for Paizo’s Pathfinder series, Wizards of the Coast’s 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons, and Blood of the Gorgon for Open Design.

KOBOLD Guide to Game Design—Volume 3: Tools & Techniques PDF

Kobold Press (based on 1 rating)

The best-selling series of game design how-to continues!

The Kobold Guide to Game Design Volume 3: Tools & Techniques goes even deeper into the territory of professional design with a dozen essays by an all-star lineup of industry veterans including:
• Award-winning designer and publisher Wolfgang Baur
• 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons designer Monte Cook
• 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons designer Rob Heinsoo
• New York Times best-selling author Ed Greenwood
• Videogame and tabletop RPG designer Colin McComb

You will find nearly 100 pages of tips, tricks, and how-to guidance from the pros about:
• Designing combat systems
• Sandbox and event-driven adventure design
• Working well in collaborative design
• Optimizing encounters for roleplaying
• Creating memorable locales and dastardly plots
• ...and more!

The Kobold Guide to Game Design Volume 3 is a great resource for professional designers and GMs who want to take their homebrew campaigns to the next level.