interview

Novelist and game designer Jeff LaSala is perhaps best known for his Dungeon Crawl Classics: The Transmuter’s Last Touch and his Eberron novel, The Darkwood Mask. Both of these, it is important to note, involve kobolds. Lots and lots of kobolds. In fact, it is safe to say that Jeff LaSala is a bona fide

Kevin Ross is back. Miskatonic River Press is back. With a Call of Cthulhu license from Chaosium, Cthulhu is once again dreaming, and all across the world, investigators are being scared witless. A veteran horror RPG writer, Ross has contributed to over 30 products, for companies such as Chaosium, Pagan Publishing, and Miskatonic River Press.

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.

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.

Maps do much more than tell us where we are or how to get where we’re going. Maps tell us about the world they depict and the cartographer who created them. As RPG cartographer Jonathan Roberts says, “A good map should be functional. The primary purpose of any map is to be clear and precise.

Game designer Hank Woon, Jr. got his start with Demonblade, a 15,000-word adventure that appeared in Dungeon 97. The best part of Demonblade for Woon was that he got to include a new prestige class, the Keshen Blademaster, who hail from the land of Kesh and are fierce enough when encountered alone. And profoundly deadly

Ralf Schemmann is a designer for ProFantasy Software Limited. Currently, he works on “styles” for Campaign Cartographer. He is also a web designer and freelance cartographer with a love for classical fantasy campaign maps. “The guidelines I use are generally very loose, since maps vary so wildly,” said Schemmann. “The most important one is probably

Steven D. Russell has written for E. N. Publishing, Bastion Press and Expeditious Press, among others. He’s worked on Monsters Evolved, Verrik Evolved and The Rituals of Choice Adventure Path. These days he focuses on being the Lord Protector of Rite Publishing. Like many designers, Russell is first and foremost a player of games. “I

Greg Stolze has worked on games for White Wolf, Atlas Games and Arc Dream Publishing, among others. He’s a game designer with a love of streamlined rules and good storytelling. Stolze, in the words of James Lowder, editor of the Origins award-winning Hobby Games: The 100 Best, has been “a key player in several of

Harley Stroh mostly writes adventures—good old, down and dirty dungeon crawls reminiscent of the AD&D modules of yesteryear. His scenarios feature vengeful rat kings, bat-riding goblins, and twisted, giggling evil gnomes who worship the eldritch crystal that deformed them. In a Stroh adventure, there are plenty of new monsters, exotic magic items, and more than