I, like most D&D players at some point or another, have heard a lot of praise for Kobold Quarterly. I'd always thought of KQ as Dragon's little sister, providing similar articles on a quarterly time frame. That was back when Dragon was still published in dead tree form by our friends over at Paizo. Well, I just got my hands on a review copy* of KQ #11, and let me tell you something: little sister's all grown up, and she's looking pretty hot.

The magazine has content for players of both 3.5 and 4e D&D, as well as one Pathfinder-specific article. As readers of this blog probably know, I'm a 3.5/Pathfinder guy, and I went not knowing what to expect in the way of support for my favorite edition. The first time I read through the magazine, I actually felt like there was more 3.5 content, and I only realized how evenly the content is distributed between the editions. No matter which way you swing, though, each article is clearly marked with the edition it's written for.

There are several timely articles for DMs planning on running horror adventures during the spookiest month of the year. If you run a 4e game and, like me, enjoy inflicting mind-bending horrors from beyond the cosmic veil of reality on your players, you'll enjoy the sanity rules. There are also articles (for 3.5) on two staples of horror: One on werewolves, detailing Savage Species-style monster classes for PCs who gain the lycanthropy affliction, and one on the ecology of vampires with tons of great information on the lords of the night. For DMs looking to add a grittier tone to their games, there are the simple but effective rules for torture. Finally, there's a short article on the mad derro city of Farragum which is accompanied by a beautiful map (I'm a sucker for cartography).

This issue of KQ also features a number of other great articles as well, including a fresh take on dwarves by John Wick (part of a series called Wicked Fantasy which I am definitely looking in to), a medley of monstrous weaponry (SPOILER: One of them is a ballista-sized six-shot crossbow, all six shots of which can be fired at once), and a "spell-less ranger" variant of the Pathfinder ranger core class that, in a nutshell, is sort of a mix of the old ranger and the rogue and actually made me want to play a ranger. There are also several DM-centric advice articles and a interview column with input from 16 pro DMs.

...And that's not even all of what's in there. Having been a longtime fan of Paizo's Dragon I feel like Kobold Quarterly has picked up where Dragon (in its previous form, of course) left off. Great artwork and interesting content, the two never fail to inspire me.

I'd rate this tome as an 8 on a d10. With the print copy priced at $7.99 (and the PDF priced $2 less), definitely consider checking out this issue of Kobold Quarterly.