Open Design Blog

The success of the Kobold Guide to Game Design (Vol. 1) in PDF has prompted a paper edition. This is a digest-sized edition with a clean layout on heavy paper, and yet is slim enough for reading just about anywhere, with essays on game design basics and advanced topics. This particular volume is focused on worldbuilding and adventure design.

You can pick up the print edition of the Guide to Game Design at the Kobold Quarterly store.

As a way to say thanks to everyone who has supported Kobold Quarterly as a subscriber this year, I've given them all a Easter egg: a free adventure from Highmoon Media Productions!

No, it's not a trick, a scam, or a teaser for anything else. No, we are not launching a line of kobold-flavored adventures. No, it's not an epic, but it is fun.

The adventure is called the Havenmine Gauntlet, it is written by Adam "Trans Am" Daigle and naturally, it features kobolds.

Most people will have to pay actual cash dollars to get a copy, but not KQ subscribers! Anyone who becomes a new subscriber from now until April 18th gets a freebie copy too. So, um, why not subscribe? A PDF subscription is just $16 in our worthless American pesos. That's, like, 2 euros or something. And print+PDF subscriptions are likewise a bargain at 33% off the full retail price.

PS. If you are a subscriber and didn't get your copy, let me know your correct email address. A few bounced like bunnies.

Back in the day, long ages past, when Open Design was founded (better known as 2006), I had a problem. And that problem was this: How would I keep patrons entertained while I waited to see if gamers would chip in to fund the project? I mean, I wanted them coming back to the Open Design blog every now and then, because, hey, the project could start up at any time. I was worried that people would wander off because fundraising is inherently boring.

So what to do? I wrote a few things I called design essays, describing some of the tricks of game design that I know and love. And lo and behold, those essays were met with some acclaim. Most designers don't walk around spilling their guts about how they work, but it seemed like the right thing to do for a project called Open Design.

But the essays were transient, freebies, available to patrons only while the real show of designing was waiting in the wings. It was, to stretch a point, the opening band in my mind. When the next project came along, I expected they would no longer be necessary.

As usual, I was wrong. The design essays were popular and I kept at it, one a month or more for each project. WotC picked up a few of them for the Adventure Builder series. A few others were updated as Dungeoncraft. And all the rest are now available in public as well, as the Kobold Guide to Game Design.

The collection of 15 essays includes material by Ed Greenwood, Nicolas Logue, and Keith Baker, and it's a good start for anyone who's looking to design and write professionally, or who wants to bring some new tricks to the screenjockey position at the next weekly game.

Please give it a look, won't you?

I am pleased to announce that Blood of the Gorgon has attracted enough patrons that it will feature cover art by an artist who has done great work in the RPG field, including WotC work and book covers.

The adventure will also feature the first complete map of Zobeck. Not the complete city description, mind you, but the first complete map. Open Design contributor settimbrini23 will be doing the honors for the Cartographer's Guild. Details on the maps and art will be shared early with the senior patrons for the project. How do you become a senior patron? Donate at a higher level of support, and you'll see more of the project, including much more of the manuscript as it is written.

Even if you support Open Design as a regular patron, you are in for a lot of opportunity to shape this adventure or follow the adventure as it goes from outline to playtest to final text. Nicolas Logue is on a tear, and the brainstorming so far has covered monsters, locales, street gangs, and more. It's shaping up to be a stunning adventure, worthy of the reputation of the man who brought us Viktor Saint-Demain.

Join Open Design as a patron, and help shape the Blood of the Gorgon!

Here's a 4E spoiler for a kobold skirmisher I just stumbled across via a link on the Paizo boards.

He's got combat advantage as the Rogue does, and a Mob power that seems appropriate for a creature like a kobold.

But 27 hit points? That seems un-koboldishly high.