Wolfgang Baur is at it again. Previously known for his work on the Planescape setting, various articles in Dragon Magazine and the Wizards of the Coast website, and independent titles like Five Fingers: Port of Deceit (from Privateer Press), Mr. Baur has been hard at work doing something a little different lately: Open Design. His brainchild, which involves creating RPG content for groups of private patrons instead of trying to mass-market to a rather small market niche, appears to be working well for him, and has spun off into a small but fierce independent magazine, Kobold Quarterly.

The premiere issue arrived as a PDF in my inbox Thursday morning, weighing in at 8.03MB, with 34 pages of insight and entertainment. Wolfgang calls upon the talents of a handful of fellow RPG industry freelancers for prose, art, an interview, and D&D-centric rules. I’ve been straying from Dungeons and Dragons recently, having used the system extensively and almost continuously since the d20 system was released, but Kobold Quarterly doesn’t lay it on too thick. The article on alternate rewards for adventurers was insightful and appropriate in length. The piece on Titivillus, the Scribe of Hell, is a promising opening salvo in a series on the various princes of hell. The Ecology of the Derro article did far more to pique my interest in this odd little Underdark race than any previous works have.

The tail end of issue 1 was significantly more crunchy than the beginning. I don’t need new d20 character classes for the Far Darrig if I’ll be incorporating them into a future game. Heck, any game I play in the near future that may incorporate material from this or other magazines will probably use the FATE game mechanics. I suppose it’s too much to expect a start-up like Kobold Quarterly to stray too far from the mainstays of d20 publishing fare: new feats, new classes, new spells, new races…

Kobold Quarterly is available by subscription for $16.00 for PDF-only, or $36.00 for both PDF and paper. As the name indicates, it is currently intended for four releases per year. Upcoming issues will feature content from such luminaries as Ed Greenwood (of the Forgotten Realms) and Nicholas Logue (of Eberron fame).