Kobold Guide to Magic

by Wolfgang Baur, Tim Pratt, Kenneth Hite

The popular and wildly useful Kobold Guide series tackles the biggest subject in Magic! What makes a fantasy fantastic? Magic, of course! Whether it’s unearthly beasts, scheming sorcerers, legendary swords or locales that defy logic and physics, a compelling fantasy story needs magical elements. The tricky part is that in order for the story to work, you have to get your reader or player to believe the unbelievable. The Kobold Guide to Magic takes you behind the scenes to learn the secrets of designing and writing about magic from 20 top fantasy authors and game designers. Find out how to create more compelling, more interesting, and more playable magic at your table or in your stories—with the word from some of the most talented creators working today. The topics are wide-ranging, from the secrets of Irish magic to tricks of impractical magic, from how to generate a sense of wonder at the gaming table to how to rejigger the teleport spell for stronger adventures tohow to sell a character's soul and how to run a game with visions and prophecies. There's even sections on the magic of J.R.R. Tolkien and the tools available to a game master for making magic their own. This essential companion for fantasy gamers and readers alike feature essays This latest volume in the best-selling and award-winning series of Kobold Guides tackles the mystery at the heart of the fantasy genre. Improve your game and expand your magical power with the Kobold Guide to Magic ! This book ships early in 2014 and will be in high demand. Don't miss out, and get it in print before everyone else!

Genres: Role Playing Games, Nonfiction, Gaming, Writing

160 pages, Paperback

First published March 6, 2014

Reviews

[Dinah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not much in this one for me, as it was solidly focused on the same kind of storytelling as the oldest D&D books: conquest, hack n slash, mind-control magic. Pulp adventure. I'm trying to tell stories with more shades of gray, with something beyond a good-evil binary, without intelligent peoples whom it's just OK to kill and take their stuff. In other words, I'm looking for ideas that break into new territory beyond the old unconsciously colonialist, sexist, racist tropes of the 70s and 80s.

This book doesn't leave those old stomping grounds and maybe that's fine if you want to play some nostalgic, brainless fantasy gaming without worrying about subtleties of character. Unfortunately the writing quality is generally only adequate, so there's not much reason to dig into it unless you want to run a very standard old game style from decades ago.

There is one exception and that is the 5 star essay 'Selling Your Soul: A Guide' by F. Wesley Schneider, which is perhaps worth the price of the book by itself. If you're running a game with devils, demons, or other soul-dealers this extremely well-written essay is required reading. Just gorgeously crafted and clever, full of great ideas for GMs. (You can skip the rest of this book.)

[Shane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read an essay or three a night for a couple of weeks to get through this wonderful compendium by Kobold Press. If you've been tabletop roleplaying for a long time (like me), it's easy to fall into repetitive tropes and assumptions. This is my first perusal of a collection custom-made to work on that problem, the system-agnostic Kobold Guide to... series.

This one, Magic, does not disappoint with a couple dozen or so brief essays by well-known names in the field. While some are better than others, the thoughts these contributions provide collectively really get the gears turning with ideas about how what is old can be made new again. There are so many fresh ideas here, from new ways of thinking about spells to injecting weird, collaborative magic, and so much more. I will definitely be reading the other books in this series.

I highly recommend this book anyone looking for some sage advice on putting the spring back in the step of the magic practitioners of all sorts that populate the worlds of their imaginations.

[Thomas Van Boening · Rating 5 out of 5]

As an author myself, I read plenty of books on the craft of writing. Only a few how-to-write books talk about fantasy. And fewer still talk about crafting magic systems in such detail. This book does precisely that.

With plenty of good writers in the genre giving their approaches, these essays on the craft will inspire and make you more confident in dreaming up a fantastic tale of your own.

4.5 Stars, only because I wanted more, but you can still round up to 5.

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A sourcebook for worldbuilding, mostly focused on RPGs (but as several of the authors point out, the advice works just as well for writing fantasy fiction as RPGs). Not a lot of "crunchy" how-to lists. but rather some inspirational thoughts and examples that encourage the reader to think out their own "philosophy of magic," so to speak. This book would be useful for RPG Game Masters/Judges and fantasy writers of any sort.