NewbieDM Review: Kobold Quarterly 13

A review copy of Wolfgang Baur’s Kobold Quarterly dropped in the old inbox, and I took it for a spin. First thing worth mentioning is the very randy and very sexy cover by Malcolm McClinton, it was worth a double take, and I’m sure it’s there to complement the article on sex and romance in your fantasy rpg game.

So, what’s in the mag?  Well, for you Pathfinder players, there’s plenty of stuff.  Some of the standouts are the Arquebusier, a firearms based class, Scions of Shadow, which introduces shadow based abilities for PC’s, and an article highlighting Gnomish flying Contraptions. I like that article in particular, as I’ve always liked the idea of tinker gnomes.

For 4e D&D, some of the better stuff includes a pretty neat capture the flag type scenario, an article with 3 evil Lovecraftian gods, and a mechanic for destined weapons, for use when the pc’s starting weapons are important to them on a personal level, and they don’t want to part with them.

There’s some good stuff in here for players and DM’s of both D&D 4e and Pathfinder, but the best stuff in the magazine for me was the system neutral stuff, especially the Dragon Age stuff.  There is a Chris Pramas interview (the designer of Green Ronin’s Dragon Age RPG) and a conversion for using Dragon Age with Green Ronin’s Freeport flagship city setting.  It looks like the engine behind Dragon Age, which is d6 based, will be applied for other games later on, and that’s pretty exciting as I’ve had the chance to mess a bit with Dragon Age and I like it.

They issue is rounded out with columns by authors like Monte Cook, letters to the editor (which WOTC should consider doing in their magazines), and some book reviews.  Again, the production value of this magazine is top notch, and most certainly worth checking out.  If I have to pick a gripe, is that I’d really prefer for the tabel of contents to tell me what game an article is for, and for the articles themselves to have  a clearer label for whether something is for Pathfinder or for 4e.  But other than that, Kobold Quarterly is a winner.