Thursday 27 October 2011

Kobold Quarterly 19 - Autumn Fall Issue

Kobold Quartley 19
Fall Issue (PDF)
Yay for Kobold Quarterly! 

Highlights of KQ19 (or what I liked) :
  • A complete character class for Pathfinder, moral knife-edge White Necromancer - an "enlightened" breed of necromancers as opposed to the "foul, twisted individuals obsessed with corruption and death."  Which made me grin. Bad necromancers, bad!  (Must also resist Goth jokes)

  • An article by Monte Cook on making races more "flavourful" derserves a mention because he suggests that "Elves never get dirty." could be an actual class feature. 
    Cue: blood and mud splashed heroes looking over at the sparkling-clean elf, picking something from under a nail. 
    I liked that.  Class features which don't include actual combat bonuses (can you imagine? - I'm looking at you 4th Edition - yes, you!)

  • A pick up and play d20 style solo text entitled "Aneela, Human Cleric - Party of One" - Wait a sec - didn't she die in mid-80s D&D Basic? No matter what you did she died, the first lesson of D&D: no emotional attachments to PCs or NPCs, because they will all die!  No, wait, that was Aleena, not Aneela, poor Aleena.  Aneela has the option to explore a cave with goblins in - DON'T DO IT!  "Aneela (human, cleric) HP: 12"  -Don't get attached! She's so dead, dude! ;)
There's also articles with cool ideas about traps and playing characters werewolves (I've noticed on my travels that people like werewolves, when they're not going on about zombies or vampires, pirates or combinations of...).

Although Kobold Quartely mainly caters for Pathfinder and 4E, I'm often suprised at how transferable many of the ideas are, for example, the article about Magic Items Shops would be relevant to almost any fantasy RPG running mid to high level campaign - also the Midgard settings article could customise most locales.

My PDF copy was a free review copy, but I think if you're shopping for inspiration it's worth the $5.99 it's selling at on DriveThru.

Subscriptions and printed copies: http://www.koboldquarterly.com/

Generally I  prefer my magazines in glossy printed form so recently I bought some Kobold back-issues thanks to Dusty at Mythplaced Treasures  which proves that no matter how far away a friendly local gaming store is -I'm in the UK-, that they are genuinely friendly and willing to help.  Mythplaced Treasures on Facebook.

Interestingly enough, there's a plea from Mr W. Bauer  in the Editorial for readers to avoid bit-torrenting KQ where possible.  It's worth remembering that the publishers of magazines like these are not faceless pan-continental music corporations and that companies (or at least the sub-let office) can fold on a sudden drops in sales, so resist the feed!
(Says the man with the free review copy ...hmm, I can see how this looks ... oh well.  Don't do it, kids.  Just say "No!"  Occupy Jupiter!) 


Kobold Quartley 19
Fall Issue (PDF)
Summary:
KQ19 - Slick, professional, inspirational, good teeth, class act all around. :)

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