Why should evil overlords have all the fun? Sometimes it needs to be about the minion! Ennie-award-winning designer Ben McFarland continues a new five-part series by taking a look at Richard Pett’s piece from Kobold Quarterly #10, “Ecology of the Hill Giant.” He offers a way to turn this monster into the signature foot soldier …
A quick interview on how to write better adventures and then how to run them most effectively, with Brandon Hodge and yours truly over at Roleplayingtips.com. We blather a bit about how to plan an adventure, how to spice up an encounter, the most useful design tools, and related topics.
From the very beginning of the order, the Servants have been preparing for the end of the world, putting contingencies into place in the event that the 5 blackest rites mentioned in the Codex of the Harbinger Star ever come to pass. Several nearly complete reproductions of the Codex exist in the Servants’ vaults for …
Preview of Red Eye of Azathoth, Part 2:
Secrets of the Servants Read More »
The newest Open Design Podcast, a discussion about game design and game mastery, brings us a slate of expert guests, including: * ‘Ask the Kobold’ with Skip Williams * ‘Wicked Fantasy’ with John Wick * Green Ronin publisher Chris Pramas * Open Design stalwart Joshua Stevens * Operatic madman Nicolas Logue We talk about game …
Part One : A History of Service For over 3,000 years, they have waited patiently in the shadows, acting swiftly and silently when needed to thwart man’s destruction at the hands of unknowable horrors. They are the Servants of Man, a clandestine order zealously obsessed with preventing occult forces from bringing about the enslavement or …
What are the differences between touch, ranged touch, and incorporeal touch attacks? What ability modifier applies to each of these attacks? All these attacks have one thing in common, the target’s armor, natural armor, and shield modifiers can’t defeat the attack (though incorporeal touch attacks provide some special cases). Enhancement bonuses that increase armor, natural …
Yesterday we featured the Reapervast, a sentient solo controller construct. It’s brutally tough to defeat in combat — so here’s a few options other than the straight smash-and-smash-some-more. Are you excited about the reapervast but want to give your players more ways to deal with it? Does your group look down their collective noses at …
Steel grates on steel as a steady hissing steam clouds your vision. Through the haze you see a gigantic mechanical beast surge forward. The reapervast is the ultimate invention of Beret Tinglefoot, but alas, the gnome’s ambition outstripped his skill. While Tinglefoot learned to graft souls into clockwork machinery, the inventor did not realize the …
The 2d6 Feet in a Random Direction podcast gave glowing reviews to KQ and Open Design in their latest installment, Episode 46. The show is a project of Brian Isikoff and Chris Hanranhan, an owner of the Endgame store in Oakland CA.The whole show is worth listening to, though if you are mostly interested in …
How would do you adjudicate an unhallow spell when is has a silence spell added to it and the caster chooses to make evil creatures immune? My guess was that creatures save once when entering, and that the spell goes away when they leave, but they need to save again when they enter again. I …
Ask the Kobold: Unhallowed Silence
and Making Tough Calls Read More »
As part of the Open Design projects that I design, I generally write a set of essays. Some of these have been collected (with contributors from others) into the Kobold Guide to Game Design series. For Courts of the Shadow Fey, I have a set of topics chosen ahead of time, though I’m open to …
Goblins favor the ambush, because then, for a brief moment in time, goblins have the upper hand. A successful ambush is the stuff of legend among goblins, and with each recounting the tale becomes taller and pride fills the scrawny chests of the surviving goblins. Pride in one’s work is a rare and precious thing …
Every kingdom has its royal guards: stoic souls with vigilant eyes, strength of arm, and unmatched loyalty. The Courts of the Shadow Fey are no different. That final quality — loyalty — has forced the black-hearted nobles of the court to seek guardians from unorthodox sources. Knowing no living shadow fey could be trusted to …
Monday Monster: Deathshade Wisp
from Courts of the Shadow Fey Read More »
Our t-shirt contest was a modest success, with a dozen entries from around the world showing gamers and KQ readers in all their finery. There’s many we remember fondly: the clockwork automaton, the drow, the dragon eating a hapless gamer at GenCon. Alas, it came down to two entries: a KQ reader and a maiden …
The great minds at Critical Hits have interviewed Joshua Stevens, the KQ regular and Open Design leader of The Red Eye of Azathoth project. It’s a quick interview that covers Josh’s inspiration (hint: a bar napkin may have been involved), why Open Design projects have been so successful, and likely patron contributions to the project. …
I tell ya, boys, we’ve fished up and down this coast for years and never seen anything like ’em. We’d found what was left of Ol’ Patch and his crew — washed up on the shore there, all picked apart to bones and gristle. It was bad enough seeing ’em like that, and worse when …
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