Review: Kobold Quarterly 17

This month, the 17th number of Kobold Quarterly was released. For those of you unfamiliar with Kobold Quarterly, Kobold Quarterly is a quarterly magazine focussing on Pathfinder, Dungeon and Dragons 4th edition, Dragon Age, and system neutral materials. Since the demise of Dragon, it is the sole torchbearer of quality RPG magazines.



Kobold Quarterly 17 is packed with ideas and resources for your games, review of fiction, and questions and answers. A few highlights of issue 17 are:

Rules for archenemies
This article from Michael Kortes describes a series of rules to make the recurring villain in your campign even more memorable. A really nice approach is to give characters certain benefits, such as improved diplomacy when aquiring information on the villain, or an extra 5 foot step to represent the extra mile characters are willing to go to slay the villain.

Interview with Jeff Tidball
The interview with Jeff Tidball (twitter) focusses on the practical aspects of game designing and working as a freelancer in the games industry. Very valuable to see a little bit of the inside of the industry.

Secret of the Four Golden Gates
This article describes new societies and new items for monks. A monks weapon that is presented in the article is a magic prayer wheel. Somehow it's a funny thought seeing a monk beating the living daylights out of a drow using a prayer wheel.



Fireworks
Jonathan McAnulty writes an article on fireworks, and the magical effects they can have. These effects range from being blinded to sustaining damage, and finding the way north in the wilderness.

Kobold Quarterly shows that there is an important place for print or PDF magazines in addition to all the online content that is out there. The articles and artwork in this issue generally are of a higher quality and higher editorial standards than blogs and other online content.

Kobold Quarterly is available in print and pdf