Got Questions About RPG Design?

Wolfgang Baur, Monte Cook, Ed Greenwood, Mike Stackpole, and other industry veterans have the answers you asked for…and the advice you need!

The Complete Kobold Guide to Game Design offers 240 pages of in-depth essays on what makes RPGs tick. Get time-tested advice from the top designers in the industry. This compilation includes all three volumes of our Kobold Guide to Game Design series—now with all-new material by Wolfgang Baur, Mike Stackpole, and others!

From core rules and magic systems to fantasy adventures, monster design, playtesting, and much more, these 40 essays cover every aspect of RPG design in clear, accessible language, to show you what it takes.

DriveThru RPG is promoting Teach Your Kids to Game Week, and the kobolds are 100 percent in favor of it. If we don’t teach our spawn to game, who will defend the warrens when we’re old and enfeebled, and adventurers kick in our doors and try to take our stuff? Those traps aren’t going to set themselves!

As a designer and publisher who is also a proud, exhausted papa of two, teaching kids to game is very important to me. Because a lot of what you’re seeing this week involves groups of people sitting around a table, I thought I’d weigh in on another great way to teach kids to game: solo play.

To celebrate this Veteran’s Day, please consider supporting one of our many troops with a subscription to Kobold Quarterly through our Adopt-A-Soldier program.

We currently have a backlog of soldiers who would love to receive your sponsership. Help send a message of appreciation and spread the joy of gaming by connecting to a soldier today.

Kobold Quarterly thanks you, and those serving in our military thank you.

To celebrate the release of the Kobold Guide to Board Game Design, we asked some of the world’s top board game designers to tell us about the first game they fell in love with, and whether it still holds up for them today. Today we hear from Andrew Looney.

The first board game I ever fell in love with was Sorry! I have fond memories of playing Sorry (and other board games) with my mom as she sorted laundry. For her, such distractions were a great way of keeping me busy while she also got a few chores done.

Much as I loved Sorry growing up, I hadn’t played it in such a long time that I wasn’t even clear on all the rules anymore. So, we dusted off my old copy, and I fell in love all over again.

To celebrate the release of the Kobold Guide to Board Game Design, we asked some of the world’s top board game designers to tell us about the first game they fell in love with, and whether it still holds up for them today. Today we hear from Matt Forbeck.

The first board game I really fell in love with was Dungeon, the classic game from TSR. I’d had my first encounters with Dungeons & Dragons already, but I didn’t have enough people my age to play with back in those days. I did, however, have a younger brother and two younger sisters. I tried to shanghai my brother into playing D&D with me, but it never stuck. Like most kids of that age, he just wanted to knock down doors, kill things, and take their stuff.

That’s where Dungeon came in. It gave me and my siblings the most intuitive and primal D&D experience without any of the baggage that came along with the actual roleplaying part of RPGs. We played that game until the cards gave out.