Robot Viking

Open Design and Kobold Quarterly are trying to conquer the world. Two worlds, really, if you count Wolfgang Baur’s Midgard and Earth. You can help and win some gaming stuff in the process — a lot of of stuff if you happen to spend some time down south. Way down south.

Imagine a book filled with essays on the art and science of designing role-playing games and RPG adventures, all written by some of the biggest names in that eldritch field of endeavor: Wolfgang Baur, Monte Cook, Rob Heinsoo, Michael Stackpole, Ed Greenwood and more. That’s exactly what this book is, and it’s pretty damn awesome.

Well, it doesn’t literally bring them to life. That would make for a pretty terrifying book. There are things in here you absolutely do not want to ever encounter in real life. You’ll want to encounter a lot of them in your Pathfinder campaign, though!

Imagine my surprise when, upon opening this pdf for review, I was suddenly transported back in time 17 years. In the span of a moment, I was lost in a magical forest of majesty, wondering if I should choose the well-traveled path known for scary skeletons (turn to page 64) or the rocky mountain road [...]

You have to love it when two things you really enjoy mesh together perfectly. In this case, those two things are”D&D” and “getting stuff for free.”

The coming of a scarlet comet every 100 years is the harbinger of grave cosmic events, coinciding with the efforts of an insane sorcerer and some alien nightmare creatures to either enslave humanity or summon forth the slumbering chaos deity at the center of the universe. See if you can do something about that.

Open Design’s Divine Favor series of Pathfinder supplements serves as a set of player’s option books and optimization guides for paladins, clerics, druids and oracles. They’re fairly straightforward splatbooks with some cool ideas and a few powerful feats and spells that DMs may have to keep an eye on for balance purposes (and if there [...]

If you make your living designing games (or just dream that you do), the Kobold Guide to Board Game Design is money in the bank. It is packed cover to cover with incredibly useful information on every aspect of game design, written by the most creative, insightful and experienced minds in the gaming industry.

Monster books are much beloved by all RPGers. This is known. The Midgard Bestiary from Open Design is more useful than most, filling two potential gaps in your monster arsenal: it serves as a monster manual for Wolfgang Baur’s Midgard Project, and it uses Green Ronin’s AGE system, adding a ton of new creatures to [...]

If your D&D group has grown weary of dungeons, kings and earthly quests, perhaps they’d care for a visit to the heavens and hells of the outer planes. Open Design’s Dark Roads and Golden Hells looks like just the thing to turn your planar adventures up to 11. And like all Open Design patronage projects, [...]

A city is a hard place, a lean place full of lean men and women all looking for the next big score, or maybe just the next meal. Open Design’s Streets of Zobeck by Ben McFarland provides a perfect passage to a gritty urban fantasy setting for the Pathfinder RPG system.

Many an RPG splat book has been written about military campaigns, but not very many were written by an author with both a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. Filled with interesting historical notes, campaign flavor and plenty of new 4E rules and options, Soldiers of Fortune presents an in-depth look at how and why [...]

As a publisher, I don’t have a lot of time. Much of my available time is taken up with writing new material. But I always make sure to take the time to read other material.

Five years ago, gaming industry veteran Wolfgang Baur decided to create an independent game company with an interesting business model. He called the company Open Design. Using the patronage model, in which customers pay into a fund to support projects they want to see go to print, Open Design has enjoyed five years of success. [...]