Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding

By: Scott Hungerford, Jeff Grubb, Michael A. Stackpole, Chris Pramas, Keith Baker, Steven Winter

Narrated by: Ray Greenley

Length: 4 hrs and 42 mins

Publisher's Summary

The essential elements for building a world.

Roleplaying games and fantasy fiction are filled with rich and fascinating worlds: the Forgotten Realms, Glorantha, Narnia, R'lyeh, Middle-earth, Barsoom, and so many more. It took startling leaps of imagination as well as careful thought and planning to create places like these: places that readers and players want to come back to again and again.

Now, 11 of adventure gaming's top designers come together to share their insights into building worlds that gamers will never forget. Learn the secrets of designing a pantheon, creating a setting that provokes conflict, determining which historical details are necessary, and so much more.

Take that creative leap, and create dazzling worlds of your own!

Essays by Wolfgang Baur, Keith Baker, Monte Cook, Jeff Grubb, Scott Hungerford, David "Zeb" Cook, Chris Pramas, Jonathan Roberts, Michael A. Stackpole, Steve Winter, Janna Silverstein, with an introduction by Ken Scholes.

Nominated for two Ennie Awards: Best Writing and Best RPG-Related Book.

©2012 Open Design LLC (P)2017 Open Design LLC

Awesome world building tool.

This is a great tool for any word builder. I make home brew worlds for RPGs and while listening to this it just filled me with more and more ideas. I will continue to come back to this book whenever I am preparing to create a new world. The narrator was very engaging. The way he read kept my attention which, I'm my opinion, is what you need in a compilation of essays.

2 people found this helpful

A must read for World Builders

The essays here are fantastic and well worth the time. many game concepts are discussed in detail, putting voice to some things that I had already been thinking.

1 person found this helpful

Great for a dm, player, or writer

World and character building tips from someone who has done it for years. You can always learn more.

A must read for Game Masters

This is a great set of reports that can help any GM grow their games and worlds. They cover everything from drawing maps, to building societies and factions, to licensee work. 10/10 I’ll read again and again.

Insightful for writers, Gms, and designers

A short but sweet info packed book full of knowledge and experience from some of the game industry's finest. This book is handy for anyone looking to build and manage worlds- nor just gamers.

Exactly what i wanted it to be. Well done.

all of the essays in this book we're very informative. Somewhere more relevant than others to me but I imagine that many would be relevant to all. All of them sparked the imagination. well worth the money and time

Great for building a strong foundation.

Whether your project is a D&D game, a novel, movie script, or video game; if you are building a non-historical Earth for your setting this book helps you set a solid, realistic foundation to develop upon. Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding helps you consider details and situations that might not seem important at the beginning of your project, but may become tools for your players or characters to use upon later development of the story, such as; neighboring political systems and interactions, geography and the weather is creates, trade goods and local economies, and how magic or technology may change and interact with these systems. If you have a project in the works, this book is totally worth your time. Audible 20 Review Sweepstakes Entry

Some good ideas, some wasted space

The actual worldbuilding essays are great for that most part. Not sure why they devoted a chapter to licensing when like 0.005% of the readers will find themselves in such a situation, not to mention the implied pro-copyright tone that's sure to chafe gaming fans. Mediocre effort.

Nothing helpful here

Everything here is rudimentary and obvious if you’ve spent more than 100 hrs writing or world building. If there is any need for this book it would be only the most uninitiated.

The performance was off putting as well. It is read with a smile, like an infomercial. Sounds weird considering the advice on epic feats of world building and majestic pantheon creation.

Only the second half is good

I nearly abansoned the book during the first half because it didn't say anything useful, only filler and stories.
After 1 and a half hours or so it started saying more useful things, and altogether, I felt like most of the relevant information was crammed into the second half of the book.

geared towards D&D campaigns.

I was expecting it to focus on worldbuilding in a general sense, but instead every chapter seems to have the players and how your world relates to them as the focus. Not good for writers or authors looking to get some tips on how to deepen their world. GMs might find it quite useful though.