Kobold Guide to Plots & Campaigns

by Margaret Weis, Wolfgang Baur, Jeff Grubb

The Best Role in Roleplaying! Whether you're a new gamemaster or a seasoned vet looking for a new angle to shake up your game, these 19 essays by expert gamemasters help construct your campaign from the ground up--and keep your players engaged until the dramatic conclusion. Kobold Guide to Plots & Campaigns shows how to begin a new campaign, use published adventures or loot them for the best ideas, build toward cliffhangers, and design a game that can enthrall your players for month or even years. Want to run an evil campaign, or hurl the characters into unusual otherworldly settings? Want to ensure that you're creating memorable and effective NPCs and villains? We've got you covered. Complete with discussions on plotting, tone, branching storytelling, pacing, and crafting action scenes, you'll find all the tips and advice you need to take on the best role in roleplaying--and become an expert gamemaster, too! Featuring essays by Wolfgang Baur, Jeff Grubb, David "Zeb" Cook, Margaret Weis, Robert J. Schwalb, Steve Winter, and other game professionals.

Genres: Role Playing Games, Nonfiction, Writing, Gaming, Dungeons and Dragons, Games, Reference

126 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 29, 2016

About the author

Margaret Edith Weis is an American fantasy and science fiction author of dozens of novels and short stories. At TSR, Inc., she teamed with Tracy Hickman to create the Dragonlance role-playing game (RPG) world. She is founding CEO and owner of Sovereign Press, Inc and Margaret Weis Productions, licensing several popular television and movie franchises to make RPG series in addition to their own.
In 1999, Pyramid magazine named Weis one of The Millennium's Most Influential Persons, saying she and Hickman are "basically responsible for the entire gaming fiction genre". In 2002, she was inducted into the Origins Hall of Fame in part for Dragonlance.

Reviews

[Diz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book offers general advice for planning campaigns for tabletop RPGs. As with most guides of this type, it would be of more use to those who are new game masters (GMs). Those with more experience will likely know most of the advice given here. If it's your first time to run a campaign, you could get a lot of useful advice from this. One nice thing is that this book is not tied to a particular system, so you could use it with any system. However, be aware that it focuses primarily on the fantasy genre, so if you are going to be running a game in another genre, you might not get what you're looking for here.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

This system-agnostic Kobold guide continues their series of books on RPG theory, with essays from experienced RPG designers. The subject is near and dear to my heart because I feel I could really up my game when it comes to creating my own adventures and campaigns. There's a total of 19 essays in the book, and all of them were interesting to read, if maybe not fully applicable to my interests.

My favorite essays were Choosing an Ending First by Wolfgang Baur, Beginning a Campaign by James Jacobs and When Last We Left Our Intrepid Heroes by Clinton J. Boomer. I really enjoyed them, because I think they will help me with setting up a cinematic campaign. I think I'll be able to take something with me from all essays. I also enjoyed that the essay on improv sessions is followed up with an improv style adventure. Nifty!

If you enjoy reading essays about pen&paper RPGs and are a GM, it's a great guide. I will have to check out the other guides as well.

[Ableabelian · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Kobold's books are collections of essays. Don't get me wrong - they're interesting essays. Fundamentally, however, each essay is mostly self contained, save for some later-addition cross references between them. They talk about a simple topic, or maybe give you a take-away like "here's some steps to sharpening your hooks." It didn't strike me as anything I couldn't find on the myriad gaming blogs out there.

Feel free to pick up the book for the essays if you like - they're neat and fun little conversations into certain topics. If you were hoping for a comprehensive book that is organized around a few key points so it can expand on those points in great depth? Look elsewhere.

[Mathieu Robichaud · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great advice.

[Pål · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okey, so this one is pretty neat. Regardless if you are a newbie or an oldtime you will find useful tips - or at least reminders - of ways you can set up our game. I plowed through this book as I was setting up a new game for my tired old campaign, and got lots of ideas.

It is perhaps a bit pricey for a book that reads like a collection of blogs, the book is short and sweet, but it all good. Its also nice to see old favorites like David Zeb Cook, Margaret Weis and Jeff Grubb back on the credit list. Highly recommended - any GM should find something useful here.

[Josh Rensch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some great advice in this book. It’s a series of articles covering a range of topics on campaigns. I’ve been GM/DM/MC/etc for 20 plus years and I learned a few things from this book. Highly recommend if you like essays.

[Honesty · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's a lot of great advice for first-time GMs.

[Alec Maes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Solid matwrial

Very insightful

As a new dm, every detail has me hooked. I definitely recommend this for new dm's or people writing their own campaigns

[Me · Rating 4 out of 5]

Since I have undertaken the role of father, bring an old DnD geek as well, I'm going to introduce my kids to the game that, even after so many decades of not playing, I fondly enjoy.

So along comes this little book. Cold guide to plots and campaigns. A collection of short articles written by some of the industries biggest writers and game designers. Meant to be a refresher course and how to run games, I found the book very very good and timely.

Well done kobold press.

[Carolann Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some Great Ideas

So far I've gotten a lot out of all the Kobold guides. This one in particular gave me some wonderful ideas for my new campaign

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very informative. Recommended for GM's looking to improve their game.

[Simon Keast · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid advice for creating memorable games and campaigns..