D&D 5E Kobold Press (and are they the new Paizo?)

[Bacon Bits]

Has anyone got any criticism of the Kobold Press adventures for 5e? I like to hear praise, but I'd like to hear something more critical from someone who has run the adventures before. I've mostly been re-running old AD&D adventures and Dungeon adventures and translating them to 5e, or else running WotC adventures or the Goodman Games adventures.

Do you need to have the KP monster books to run their adventures? Personally I've found third party monster books a mixed bag where, oftentimes, the monsters are so strange or unique that they sometimes become too exotic to fit in any campaign not purpose built for them.

Are there any issues with adventures presented for both 5e and PF, one way or the other?

Are the map packs worth the extra cost? Are they really just maps, or are they handouts, too? Are there maps in the modules and these really are just intended for VTTs?

The printed books are expensive. How is the book quality? Page quality? Art quality?

 

[humble minion]

The printed books are expensive. How is the book quality? Page quality? Art quality?

I can only speak for the books i own in print (the Midgard worldbook, and the Southlands campaign setting special edition, which was a lucky ebay find since Southlands is no longer in print outside of PoD), but i find them gorgeous. Page quality very high, both books have a removable poster map in the back. They're perhaps somewhat lighter in amount of art than WotC books of similar size - very often there'll be multiple pages without any art other than maybe a map or a heraldic crest - but what art there is I find very evocative and high quality. Mixture of white-background character illustrations in a very WotC style with big scenery paintings, and the odd action scene in a chapter heading etc. Cartography is very nice but sometimes the labels and lettering are hard to discern/read, especially when you have the additional complication of ley lines all over the place.

I haven't owned them for all that long, but they've stood up well so far. The Midgard book in particular is a big, heavy volume and if it had binding problems I expect they'd have started to show up by now.

Be aware that some of the Kobold products are multi-system or Pathfinder. The Midgard worldbooks is 5e/PF dual system, Southlands (if you can get it) is purely PF at this stage. So there's likely to be a bunch of pagecount that's not of much use to you. There's some more 5e mechanical support in the various Heroes' Handbooks and Deep Magic though.

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

Southlands 5e is supposedly their next Kickstarter.

 

[humble minion]

They've already posted cover art for Brilliant East. I suspect they'll release that before a 5e Southlands, though as someone mentioned up-thread, it's possible they may not make a kickstarter of it.

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

I read up on Brilliant East after hearing about on this forum. In a thread (think it was Giant in the Playground), a Kobold representative said a) Brilliant East is not for release due soon and b) all but said directly that the net KS is Southlands.
This was yesterday or the day before.

 

[jayoungr]

Has anyone got any criticism of the Kobold Press adventures for 5e? I like to hear praise, but I'd like to hear something more critical from someone who has run the adventures before.

I've run and played several of them. The main criticism I have is that they sometimes have editing issues. For example, there was one adventure (Tomb of Tiberesh) that has an error on the map and also misidentifies the location of an important object. I was only able to clear up the issue by asking a Kobold Press rep about it at the following GenCon. I don't know why they don't just correct it and put out a revised PDF.

 

[Bacon Bits]

I've run and played several of them. The main criticism I have is that they sometimes have editing issues. For example, there was one adventure (Tomb of Tiberesh) that has an error on the map and also misidentifies the location of an important object. I was only able to clear up the issue by asking a Kobold Press rep about it at the following GenCon. I don't know why they don't just correct it and put out a revised PDF.

That is a bit odd that they don't put out a revision or errata, but some editing issues are pretty common even in the best modules. Thanks for the input!

 

[Tyler Do'Urden]

I read up on Brilliant East after hearing about on this forum. In a thread (think it was Giant in the Playground), a Kobold representative said a) Brilliant East is not for release due soon and b) all but said directly that the net KS is Southlands.
This was yesterday or the day before.

On the other hand, they dropped a completely different hint on the website yesterday:

Kobold Dispatch: October Edition

Straight from the Editorial Director’s snout, this monthly blog series provides a peek at current publications and projects headed from the warrens to gaming tables everywhere—so you’ll always know what to watch out for! Most autumnal of greetings to you, my little kobolds! October has arrived...

koboldpress.com

There’s even more to come next month though, so I’ll simply leave you with this teaser:

Who wants to head North?

 

[TheSword]

Tales of the Old Margreve is the best 3rd party campaign book I’ve read (bar possibly Odyssey of the Dragonlords).

It has a fascinating and rich setting and background with awesome bite sized adventures. Love the style, love the story, love the atmosphere. Awesome production values.

Ive folded it fully into my Kingmaker campaign for the Narlmarch Forest and it works a treat.

 

[Marc Radle]

I agree some of the issues can be ascribed to the fact that it was the first adventure module. The first adventure is often either kind of rough, or else so heavily polished by repeated playtesting that it shines. HotDQ isn't the one that was polished. LMoP was.

Further, I agree that it being released months before the DMG was significant, too. It was released well before the 5e encounter guidelines even existed. I think that threw a lot of people off. I almost wonder if Crawford took feedback from HotDQ and used it to help figure out how to peg the encounter difficulty to get the gameplay pacing they were shooting for.

Excellent, and insightful, comments ...