Madness has struck the editors at KQ, and so the monster arena is opened! Yes, we're having a contest to crown the King of the Monsters.

To enter your monster design in the contest, take a look at the prizes and contest rules over at the Koboldquarterly.com site. Deadline is December 1.

Good luck!

An odd little dragon, the crimson drake, makes it's appearance on KQ.com today, with art by Hugo Solis AKA butterfrog. Take a bow, little dragon. After two weeks of 4E and 3E horrors, ghosts, and deadly mycolids, maybe it's time for a somewhat more traditional beast.

Mini-dragons: worthy foe or tasty snack?

Hey, Paizo posted a cover mockup for From Shore to Sea, the adventure that Brandon Hodge and the Open Design studio is doing.

The cover is.... More piratey than I expected, since there are no actual pirates in the adventure.

Every new issue of Kobold Quarterly makes me happy in its own way, but the Fall Horror issue is always my secret favorite (shhh, don't tell the other issues!). And it's the same this year, with issue #11 in PDF and in print. There's PC monsters, and a 4th Edition Wish spell, and a new Pathfinder RPG base class, and an Ecology of the Vampire, and How to Torture PCs, and it's just like Christmas, really.

Oh, and this last week has been great for the KQ.com web site as well, with free material of all stripes and flavors:
1) an interview with Cthulhu impresario Kevin A. Ross,
2) a second interview with Goodman Games' Jeff LaSala,
3) the 4E doppleganger Paragon path for PCs, and today ...
4) the classic Rocks Fall! trap. Just to catch up.
5) released the madness that is the Imperial Gazetteer PDF upon an unsuspecting public.

A pretty good week, I'd say.

Wonderful news! The 4th Edition project Courts of the Shadow Fey has met its commission and is moving ahead to design. The adventure outline will be posted and first brainstorms start this week in the patrons' forum.

My sincere thanks to everyone who has supported this as a patron; I'm very much looking forward to the work.

I'm delighted to say that the Open Design Podcast is now on its fifth episode, and we have a fine roster of guests to discuss game design and game mastery. Chris Pramas, John Wick, Skip Williams, Nicolas Logue, and Joshua Stevens join us, and the conversation covers a wide range of topics. Such as minis design, licensed setting design, and one way to deal with cheaters and poor roleplayers, for starters.

Oh, and you can win a free patronage to either the Call of Cthulhu Red Eye of Azathoth or the 4th Edition Courts of the Shadow Fey in our new contest. Just a thought.

Joshua Stevens, the design lead for Red Eye of Azathoth, is interviewed over at Critical Hits today.

He's got some things to say about the murky origins of this project at PaizoCon.

I'll be attending Pure Speculation in Edmonton the first weekend of October. While there I've been asked to run a 4E Celebrity D&D adventure (Monte Cook had already snagged the 3E slot for these charity games).

I'm considering three options for what to run there:

1) Dragon Bait: An adventure with kobold PCs involving a dragon; heroic or paragon tier, lots of trickery and played for laughs. Expect some kobolds to be squished underfoot, expect a lone survivor, expect a lot of fire damage.
2) A preview of the Court of the Shadow Fey planar adventure. Lots of demons, shadow magic, maybe a stealth sequence and a big, deadly roleplaying number with the Moonlit King. Dark and tragic, with a dollop of hope and victory.
3) Best of the River King: A highlights reel from the Wrath of the River King adventure, to include the Birch Queen's Fair and perhaps a certain crazy combat sequence. Would feature fey trickery, a moustache-twisting gnomish villain, and chances to do very foolish things to impress the ladies.

If you were attending the convention, what would you like to play?

Poll #1455313 Pick an Adventure for the Con
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 81

I would like to play....

There's a free preview of From Shore to Sea today, or maybe it's a preview of Sunken Empires (the two go together). Check out the Bone Crab on KQ.com, written by Brandon Hodge and with art by Hugo Solis.

You may have seen the news elsewhere, but it's worth point out here as well: Open Design is creating an official Pathfinder setting adventure, revealing a few secrets of the ancient Azlanti.

The project is very close to being commissioned by its patrons, and when that happens, the price does go up for later patrons. If you are thinking you'd like to make your mark on Golarion, now's the time. Sign up today!

So about a week after the launch, we're looking pretty good for the 4th edition and Pathfinder commissions.

Both Courts of the Shadow Fey and From the Shore to the Sea are more than halfway to meeting the commission goals. The Red Eye of Azathoth is not quite a third of the way there, and may start a little later than the other two projects as a result.

If you know someone who might be interested in the Open Design projects, please let them know we're still looking for patrons. Or if you have been considering it for a while, sign up today!

With the 3E Halls complete and 4E Halls of the Mountain King off to the editor, it's time to look at commissioning the next Open Design.

Or rather, the next THREE Open Design projects. This time, we're not trying to go head-to-head, edition warz style. We're just offering three great options, for Pathfinder and for 4E, as the senior patrons chose.

The proposals for the next projects are:

Court of the Shadow Fey 4E Proposal | Sign up!
From the Shore to the Sea Pathfinder Proposal | Sign up!
The Red Eye of Azathoth Pathfinder Proposal | Sign up!

Please give them a look and support the ones you like best. I hope to have at least one or two of them commissioned by mid-September.

EDIT: Comments disabled here so I don't wind up answering everything twice...

So once upon a time, I swore that if a patron project ever won an ENnie, I'd make it available to the public.

Well, that day has come! On Friday, the Tales of Zobeck anthology won the Silver ENnie as Best Electronic Book, and I've now made it available from DriveThru/RPGNow and from the KoboldQuarterly.com store.

Please tell your friends. I'm rather proud of this one.

One of the KQ authors in issue #10 has taken Ed Greenwood's Ales of Ninkash concept and run with it.

See the results over at KQ.com, with a 4E take on the 7 Sacred Ales. Seems about right for the first full day of GenCon, and a toast to 4 great days of gaming.

The print edition is now available to 3E/OGL patrons. If you are a patron of the 3E edition, please check your email.

If you were not a patron of the 3E adventure, hey, cartographer Jonathan Roberts discussed how he got his start, how you can become a RPG mapper of renown, and how he does his work, including his tools and methods. Not shabby.

The Dwarves of the Ironcrags gazetteer is now available in print as well as PDF.

( Contents and Full Description )

EDIT to Add: A European Edition is now available, using Lulu's European press to reduce shipping costs.

A interesting twist on the standard tomb trap this week from the trapsmith Maurice de Mare, who presents a trapped corridor. Also, a fine discussion of patron projects with Steve Russell, who has grand ambitions for Rite Publishing.

Oh, and one more extra-fine and extra-funny review of KQ10, this one from Spirit of Eden. 4E Warlocks are just like Eminem, indeed.

Give them a look, no?

I can't say enough how much this resonates with my experience as a writer and designer. A short meeting, even if it is a productive one, tends to destroy my productivity as a maker.

Why Makers Hate Meetings

The Monday Monster this week is a giant by Richard Pett, one called the Suffering Man. No matter what edition you play, I think you'll find some bits of encounter business there to make this giant stand out.

The stats are OGL, but the giant is pure Pett horror.

The 178-page massive tome of 3E/OGL goodness that is Halls of the Mountain King has shipped to its patrons.

My thanks to all of them, and to everyone who had a hand in making the largest project in Open Design history a success.