When the Tales of the Valiant Player’s Guide debuts in just a few months, it will contain the classic fantasy people for player characters: elves, dwarves, humans . . . the usual suspects. This blog series of extra lineages doesn’t appear in the Player’s Guide . . . but if you like these, let us know here and in the Kobold Discord server. There’s potential for them to appear in an official capacity in the future! In the Monster Vault, gnolls have a suite of abilities that make them great monsters. But what if a player wanted to play as one? Gnolls Gnolls look like hyenas given humanoid bearin ..read more

The earliest public playtests for the Tales of the Valiant RPG focused on player options, so we kept the high-level game rules in the Alpha Release pretty similar to the original SRD. This was the best strategy to get people testing player options as quickly as possible. Some people assumed the base rules presentation in the Alpha Release was how they would look in the final book—oh man, those people will be shocked. We dug into everything, making little changes everywhere, to increase usability and address some of the more confusing pieces of the 5E rules, while keeping the base mechanics in ..read more

It’s Midgard Monday! Each week, we visit a corner of the wide world of Midgard. Look for standalone content you can drop into your campaign—whether it’s in Midgard or your own homebrew. Find new inspiration each Midgard Monday! Conflict between the Seven Cities and the occupied territory of Rumela isn’t just a war story—it’s an opportunity to partake in the ceremony of the Season of War. Before delving in, GMs and players should familiarize themselves with the chapters on the Dragon Empire (Chapter 5) and the Seven Cities (Chapter 7) in the Midgard Worldbook. A refresher can help you represen ..read more

The village of Redtower, home city of the Scarlet Citadel megadungeon, is a modest community, boasting just a handful of interesting locations for the adventuring crowd that the neighboring Scarlet Citadel sometimes attracts. You’ll find a smithy, stables, an inn, a brewery, and two temples (with a third abandoned temple to boot). What you won’t find is a proper place to move the loot you find in your travels or a supply of provisions heroes need for dungeoneering. These two new locations (plus NPCs and sidequests to go along with them) fill in those gaps! Oak & Valerian Apothecary Valeri ..read more

Love ’em or hate ’em, gnomes are a classic part of the D&D experience. Unless you go out of your way to exclude them, they’re in most campaign settings, even Midgard. In modern RPGs, gnomes have taken on a more playful, some might say, wackier tone. you might be able to pop a human name off the top of your head, but a silly gnome name in the heat of the moment might be more challenging. Fret not! Roll 4d20 and consult the Quick-Work Gnome table. You’ll make quick work of finding a name or two or three for your background gnome, their non-adventuring job, and some character hook that you c ..read more

Potion Commotion looks at a few staple potions in the game and plays around with them. We’ll taking the standard abilities and offer them with either boosts or limitations, providing new versions of these old classics for all levels of play! This time we’re looking at a fairly straightforward item: the potion of speed. Catch up on all the other Potion Commotion articles! Reach Escape Velocity The potion of speed is a very rare item gives you the effects of a haste spell for 1 minute, no concentration required. Very useful—not terribly fancy. This leaves room for interesting side-effects and c ..read more

Books are at the printer. We’re here at the Warrens putting together the rest of the first act after the Tales of the Valiant Player’s Guide and Monster Vault. Over on the Kobold Press Discord server, the fans have spoken! They want to see more of the mechanist class! The two pages here give you the beginnings of the class and the progression table for all 20 levels. And now, a word from Celeste Conowitch, lead designer of the Player’s Guide! The first public look at the brand new Tales of the Valiant class—the mechanist! Before we begin, I want to thank the hundreds of public and internal pl ..read more

It’s Midgard Monday! Each week, we visit a corner of the wide world of Midgard. Look for standalone content you can drop into your campaign—whether it’s in Midgard or your own homebrew. Find new inspiration each Midgard Monday! The Midgard Worldbook is packed to the brim with lore and legends of the Midgard campaign setting. Its nine interconnected meta-regions offer decades of gaming material, even without the hundreds of adventures available for play. Empire of the Ghouls is one example of a massive campaign spanning the length and breadth of Midgard. So why don’t we blow up the Worldbook a ..read more

It’s time again for the Kobold Press advice column, Pack Tactics! Our roundtable experts this month are Ben Eastman, Basheer Ghouse, Sebastian Rombach, and Mike Welham. You might recognize some of these names from Kobold Press products such as the updated Tome of Beasts 1 and Campaign Builder: Cities and Towns. And as contributors to this very blog! Whatever questions you have about running a game, handling tricky metagame traps, and ruling edge cases, they’ve got an answer. Sometimes several! Long-Time Player, New GM asks . . . I have an idea for a campaign for a certain system but am unsure ..read more

The PCs are visiting a halfling community. They’re everywhere. And then one of the players wants to talk to one. No problem, you prepared for that. Then they want to talk to another one. And then another one. You did not prepare three rando halflings. You could punt, and tell Dave not to be a wiseass. But don’t let Dave throw you off your game! Just roll 4d20 and consult the Quick-Work Halfling table. You’ll make quick work of finding a full name for your background halfling, their non-adventuring job, and some character hook that you can play up—all in the time it takes for your players to g ..read more