Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding, Volume 2

by Gail Simone, Ray Greenley (Narrator), Keith Baker

The Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding, Volume 2, features fifteen stars of tabletop roleplaying games and fantasy fiction, such as Gail Simone, Keith Baker, Veronica Roth, Ken Liu, Kate Elliott, Mike Shea, Tobias S. Buckell, Shanna Germain, Gabe Hicks, the Dungeon Dudes (Monty Martin & Kelly McLaughlin), Jeff Grubb, and more.

Middle-Earth, Faerûn, Westeros, Eberron, The World of the Wheel, Exandria … these richly-detailed fantasy worlds have captured the imaginations of legions of fans worldwide. These settings offer worldbuilding that launched a thousand—or a thousand thousand—dreams.

Whether you’re worldbuilding because you want to write the next Game of Thrones, intend to build a rich, vibrant world to enthrall the players of an upcoming tabletop RPG campaign, or you’re just curious to find out how all these creators did it, the Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding, Volume 2, puts a team of master world-architects at your side.

Featuring practical essays and roadmaps for the intrepid worldbuilder to follow, this anthology shows you how

- create a pantheon of gods

- incorporate technology into your fantastical environments

- build great settings that look beyond our own history and cultural expectations

- design a world in just thirty minutes

- leave space when building a world so the characters can help bring it alive

What worlds await? Let’s find out!

5 pages, Audible Audio

Published December 27, 2022

About the author

Gail Simone is a comic book writer well-known for her work on Birds of Prey (DC), Wonder Woman (DC), and Deadpool (Marvel), among others, and has also written humorous and critical commentary on comics and the comics industry such as the original "Women in Refrigerators" website and a regular column called "You'll All Be Sorry".

Reviews

[Mathieu Robichaud · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great advice.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Kobold Guide to World Building (volume 2) is an interesting insight into some big names in fantasy, comic books and role playing games and how they curate their worlds. Packed with advice, the guide is a useful resource for fleshing out any created world to ensure it feels alive but has enough space to breathe.

Personally I'd have liked a more structured approach, as the broad spectrum of essays often interlink and repeat themes. I would recommend this to any aspiring novelist, games master or hobbyist who enjoys creating and telling stories in fantastical worlds.

[Eric O · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s a very niche book that has a different approach for every kind of GM to improve their TTRPG. There are no tables or rules, but one still walks away teeming with ideas.