Game Design News – Northlands, Monster Vault 2, & More

I’ve got a few pieces of game design news to share this week. 

Firstly, the Northlands Kickstarter has launched. This is a setting of epic, rune-driven adventures across a northern realm of giants, gods, and reavers, designed for Dungeons & Dragons 2024 and Tales of the Valiant. 

I worked on this awesome project from December 2024 to March this year, and had several fun meetings with lead designer Brian Suskind discussing the expanded Northlands setting. 

I wrote nine new heroic and dire factions for Chapter 3 of the Northlands Worldbook. Some are heroic factions for player characters to join, like the thrill-seeing Fellowship of Wyrm Slayers, the valiant Shield Maidens of Sif, and the trusted guides of the Lodge of the Dancing Bear. Others are villainous and evil, such as the Cult of Ragnarök (which plays a key role in the Northlands Sagas adventure path), the vengeful giants of the Blood Reckoning, and the murderous Storm Reavers.

Each faction has a full description, key NPCs & locations, goals, values and status (as found in the Tales of the Valiant Game Master’s Guide), sample members, and adventure hooks. It was great to be working on Midgard material again and I loved writing these factions.

I’m very excited to see the rest of the Worldbook and the adventures too – the overall storyline is great!

---

In the past few days Kickstarter Backers of Monster Vault 2 have started to receive their books, and I’ve had a PDF copy of the book for a while now so I could include some of the monsters in an upcoming redacted Kobold Press project. 

I wrote ten monsters from the book and am very happy with how they’ve turned out. The art is, of course, amazing! My monsters are:

Archangel Ratatoskr, the OG ratatosk. Brian Suskind is almost as big a fan of squirrel as he is of mimics, so I made sure to get his seal of approval before turning this chap over to the editor 🙂

Aquan Behemoth, a gargantuan water elemental shaped like a shark, big enough to swallow ships.

Broken Fixer, a gangly, malfunctioning construct designed by mechanists to maintain other mechanical creatures. Prone to attempting repairs on things that don’t need fixing, including adventurers.

Drenqatu, a spiky, brutish demon, used by Void cultists to destroy worlds.

Eldritch Sable, a magical mustelid that steals luck often used by witches and warlocks as familiars.

Fey Chamberlain, a snooty seneschal for fey nobles in the Summer Lands and other faerie realms. Abilities include Withering Look, Take Out the Trash, and Stinging Reprimand.

Fiery Phantom Troll, an undead troll, still surrounded by the flames that burned it to death.

Hobfoot, a large, slightly goofy, ogre-like fey that often serve as groundskeepers in the faerie realms. Their good intentions often get them into trouble.

Negalzyn, aberrant humanoids, corrupted and twisted by the Void; found on dead or dying worlds throughout the Labyrinth.

World Tree Sapling, a mobile, juvenile world tree, grown from a seed by a druid and looking for the ideal spot to take root and become a full-sized World Tree.

If you missed the Kickstarter, Monster Vault 2 will be available to buy soon from the Kobold Press store or your FLGS.

---

Finally, this coming weekend is Tabletop Scotland (5th–7th September) at the Royal Highland Centre, and three new Murghôm adventures that we wrote for D&D Adventurers League have their official premier. 

If you’re going to the convention, and playing or running Trouble at Kobold Crown, please let me know how it went.

Buy tickets for Tabletop Scotland