Kobold Quarterly Get Wicked

July 21, 2009 2 comments

Kobold Quarterly magazine, available in both print and PDF, is very 3.x fantasy-centric, which is why I haven’t picked up an issue until now. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I’ve got stacks and stacks of old Dragon and Dungeon magazines that I haven’t mined all the ideas out of, and I’m not currently running any sort of standard fantasy game let alone one using the 3.x rules. That said, this really feels like an old issue of Dragon magazine, and I mean that in the best possible way. The cover art is gorgeous. Monte Cook has an article about Old School gaming, and if that’s not Old School enough for you, it’s got an article by Ed Greenwood and an interview with Jeff Grubb. It’s got a lot of ads, but that was actually one of my favorite things about old Dragon issues and how I learned about a lot of new games and accessories back in the day. All it’s really missing is a more extensive comic strip section.

So why am I excited about this issue, if it’s just high quality more-of-the-same? John Wick. I’ll admit it, I’m a Wick fan and will read just about anything he writes. This issue he begins Wicked Fantasy, an ongoing feature where he and co-author Jess Heinig present alternate takes on standard fantasy races. They start things off with the haffun, a twist on halflings that really feels more like an interesting take on gnomes. They first appeared 200 years ago in a mine, tunnelling to escape from somewhere or something that they don’t ever talk about. They rapidly took a role as servants to humans, and quickly engrained themselves into human society. And while they seem to simply be servants, they’s got their hooks in. I’m reminded of a number of old movies where the butler is the guy really in charge of things, manipulating the lord of the manor. That’s the haffun. There’s an implication that they were bred to be servants, and managed to escape, and are simply utilizing those innate talents to their own benefit. They’re also subject to a peculiar curse, wherein they can be compelled to aid others even if it’s against their best interests.

If you’re familiar with Wick’s recent opus, Houses of the Blooded, you’ll feel the Ven influence here. The Ven, after all, were servants of the sorcerer-kings and raised up their own society when those decadent masters fell. There’s that sense of irony as the servants slowly become like the masters they despised. There’s also a heroic quality, albeit a dark heroism, of a people trying to find their way and make their own place in the world while at once embracing and uplifting their status as outsiders and second-class citizens. The article is also full of those wonderful Wick-words, like ghuva and talda and yffur, that mean very specific things to the race and provides them with not only vocabulary and touches of culture but verisimilitude.

Stats for the haffun are provided for both OGL and 4th edition D&D. Crunch aside, there’s enough fluff to adapt them into any sort of fantasy setting, and I would. That’s the best praise I can give for an article in a gaming magazine: I would use this in my own game, and I’d go out of my way to find a way to use this in my own game.

So cynicism about the stack of old magazines in the corner aside, I’m probably going to get a subscription to Kobold Quarterly. Yeah, Wick made me look, but the other articles were good enough to keep me reading and make me interested in coming back for more. I’m giving the magazine a Good Touch.