terraleon
Explorer
In what’s becoming a welcome annual tradition, the folks at Kobold Quarterly bring you the Gencon issue-- #14 is bigger and more jam packed full of good stuff than any issue before it. The magazine rolls in as a full centurion, perfect bound with a great Nicole Cardiff painted cover that’s a little heavier weight paper than the 100 inside pages. The table of contest offers a buffet of twenty-some articles, and depending on which side of the edition fence you stand, you’ll either love or grumble a little at the slight Pathfinder focus. For those keeping score, it’s 5 4E articles, 8 Pathfinder articles, and 9 system-neutral or alternate system articles.
And four years into this, you can be sure the selection is pretty fantastic all around. KQ has been award winning shop from the start, and this issue doesn’t buck that trend. What articles stood out in this offering? With so many to choose from, it’s tough to pick just a few, but these alone make the issue worthwhile:
“The Ecology of the Tengu” rocked the house, especially when combined with the four days of bonus material provided on the Kobold Quarterly website. Did you want Tengu culture? There. Maybe Tengu variants? Got it. How about ways to integrate Tengu into Golarion or the Open Design world of Midgard? Yeah, it’s in there. The Tengu article is just shy of a full supplement, and that’s great, no matter what you’re playing.
Next, the article on Skill Battles offers a very interesting and cool method for expanding your encounter variety. Intended for 4E but conceptually applicable to any edition, Hanson’s option looks at procedural and dramatic contests, giving characters an abstracted alternative to the usual fare of encounter, dailies and at-wills. It strives to create a hybrid of traditional battles and the reskinned idea of complex skill checks that are skill challenges and succeeds—presenting something a bit off center which builds on established 4E mechanics but pushes the game’s boundaries.
Michael Furlanetto continues to spin up engaging ideas for 4E, and his article on Hoard Magic doesn’t disappoint. Perhaps builing on the idea of magic item sets and detailing how the collected wealth of a great dragon can take up an arcane power of its own, he shows that there’s not only room for unusual and nontraditional magic in 4E, but the system does it very well. This is one idea I’m scooping up for later on just for the pure cool factor.
Finally, the article I thought better than the paladin feats, the magic perfumes, the alternate codes of honor, or the middle-class magic items—which were all rich grist for a GM’s creative mill—was Jeff Tidball’s article on Moral Choices That Matter. He talks first about crafting genuine ethical dilemmas that evoke emotion and push characters into making hard choices, and then goes on to discuss how to make consequences with depth and importance. It’s not a long article, but laser precise and packed with enough roleplaying explosive to change your game’s landscape. You can bet this is one piece I’ll be copying and putting into my design binder.
And while these four stars shine brightest, the whole of the issue continues to build on the reputation of what we’ve come to expect from Kobold Quarterly—a well edited and gorgeously produced magazine that promises to deliver an envelope full of awesome with each season. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again—you’ll find KQ is worth every penny. Now if we could just get those kobolds to go bi-monthly!
And four years into this, you can be sure the selection is pretty fantastic all around. KQ has been award winning shop from the start, and this issue doesn’t buck that trend. What articles stood out in this offering? With so many to choose from, it’s tough to pick just a few, but these alone make the issue worthwhile:
“The Ecology of the Tengu” rocked the house, especially when combined with the four days of bonus material provided on the Kobold Quarterly website. Did you want Tengu culture? There. Maybe Tengu variants? Got it. How about ways to integrate Tengu into Golarion or the Open Design world of Midgard? Yeah, it’s in there. The Tengu article is just shy of a full supplement, and that’s great, no matter what you’re playing.
Next, the article on Skill Battles offers a very interesting and cool method for expanding your encounter variety. Intended for 4E but conceptually applicable to any edition, Hanson’s option looks at procedural and dramatic contests, giving characters an abstracted alternative to the usual fare of encounter, dailies and at-wills. It strives to create a hybrid of traditional battles and the reskinned idea of complex skill checks that are skill challenges and succeeds—presenting something a bit off center which builds on established 4E mechanics but pushes the game’s boundaries.
Michael Furlanetto continues to spin up engaging ideas for 4E, and his article on Hoard Magic doesn’t disappoint. Perhaps builing on the idea of magic item sets and detailing how the collected wealth of a great dragon can take up an arcane power of its own, he shows that there’s not only room for unusual and nontraditional magic in 4E, but the system does it very well. This is one idea I’m scooping up for later on just for the pure cool factor.
Finally, the article I thought better than the paladin feats, the magic perfumes, the alternate codes of honor, or the middle-class magic items—which were all rich grist for a GM’s creative mill—was Jeff Tidball’s article on Moral Choices That Matter. He talks first about crafting genuine ethical dilemmas that evoke emotion and push characters into making hard choices, and then goes on to discuss how to make consequences with depth and importance. It’s not a long article, but laser precise and packed with enough roleplaying explosive to change your game’s landscape. You can bet this is one piece I’ll be copying and putting into my design binder.
And while these four stars shine brightest, the whole of the issue continues to build on the reputation of what we’ve come to expect from Kobold Quarterly—a well edited and gorgeously produced magazine that promises to deliver an envelope full of awesome with each season. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again—you’ll find KQ is worth every penny. Now if we could just get those kobolds to go bi-monthly!
