I can’t believe it’s been 2 ½ years since the launch of Kobold Quarterly. This magazine has grown and matured as the page counts and issue numbers have swelled. Wolfgang has had a difficult path to walk since the release of 4th edition as he has tried to cater to multiple games and I think under his skilled editorial hand this issue represents a really good balance for all gamers of OGL Fantasy.

I’ve been going back and forth on how exactly to review a magazine and what I should focus on and I think what I’m going to do is talk about my five favourite articles in this volume.

First up on my list of articles to talk about is Swords Against Darkness – Dungeon and Underground Skill Challenges by Michael Brewer, Quinn Murphy and Jonathan Jacobs. If you are not familiar with 4th edition a skill challenge is a type of challenge that does not necessarily involve combat. This article presents three skill challenges – one for 5th level and two for 10th level. The three skill challenges presented here are very cinematic in nature involve chases on mine carts, moving through machinery and navigating submerged rooms and tunnels. They are clear “good action sequences” from a movie standpoint and with a quick renaming of some of the skills involved could provide a nice narrative challenge that isn’t bogged down by precise map movement. I think I’ll be stealing these skill challenges for my 3.X game and will look for more challenge-related 3pp niche products.

Second has to be the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game preview. In this section Jason provides an overview of some of the decision goals and some of the changes that did and did not occur as a result of the playtesting process. I’m very excited for the release of the Pathfinder RPG and since the Grand OGL Wiki did not receive a publisher preview copy (didn’t really expect to either) I’ve had to check the blogs, scan the forums and hunt down other pieces wherever possible. In this preview Kobold Quarterly also released the first glimpse of the shadowdancer prestige class. This is the first class preview that I’ve seen that we can look as the class format and not just a finished npc. There is also another article on protean magic (the salad-replacements) and an Katapesh location covered in another section.

Zobeck takes the third spot for me and this time the two articles that I like most about Zobeck are Ed Greenwood’s take on Ninkash the dwarven matron goddess of ale and Wolfgang article on the spring and harvest festival that are held on the edge of Zobeck. Open design has been focused on dwarves a lot lately so it is not surprising to see that another dwarven faith snuck into this issue. Both articles are concept rich and mechanics light making them very useable for gamers of any system. Okay, I know I’m cheating and lumping articles together but it is really hard to pick just five.

The coveted fourth spot goes to the Kobold Ecologies entry for this month. Richard Pett looks at the ecology of the Hill Giant and I’m really glad he did. I don’t remember ever using hill giants in my campaigns for some reason I always seem to go ogre, troll, stone giant, frost giant and stone giant – totally skipping the hill giants as nothing more than bigger ogres. There are a host of new giant-based feats that can make these opponents more devastating. It looks at the traditional view of hill giants as powerful but stupid, stupid opponents, as well as providing a rationale for having some hill giant tribes better prepared and better armed. What I like about this article is that it is forcing me to relook at a monster that I’ve traditionally glossed over.

The final article that made my list this issue is PCs without Backgrounds by Amber E. Scott. This is a game advice column that looks at the role of backgrounds for the development of player characters. In my campaigns, I’ve had problems on both sides of this spectrum I’ve have character sheet players who are not attached to their PCs at all and often have unexpected accidents then new rule supplements come out so they can bring in new