Game Design News – Death on the Styx, Underworld & More

Last week, Kobold Press released their new Tales of the Valiant adventure book, Death on the Styx in print and PDF. This is a collection of nine interlinked adventures spanning 3rd to 11th level (tiers 1–3) that take place in the many worlds of the Labyrinth that connect to the River Styx. 

I was the lead designer on this project, writing the expanded outline for the book, and also contributing the final adventure Escape from the Void, where the PCs face off against a devious villain and (hopefully) make it back to the tranquil waters of the River Styx. I had great fun incorporating many of my favourite characters and places from the Labyrinth setting and past Kobold Press products into the adventures. The Bubbler, of course, makes an appearance – the opportunity to have a group of PCs lick the sweat off his skin to travel where they need to go in the Labyrinth was too good to miss!

It’s always exciting to see things that you wrote published in a finished book with cool maps and art, and Death on the Styx looks fantastic. It’s brilliant to see the characters I created brought to life by Kobold Press’ amazing artists. 

The other fun part of being lead designer is seeing what my fellow freelancer writers – the super talented Phillip Larwood, Basheer Ghouse, Jeff Lee, John Joseph Adams, Bryan Camp, and Wolfgang Baur – did with their adventures. I was delighted to see that one or two NPCs have a connection to Parsantium, and particularly enjoyed meeting hapless bard Biminy Sottz!

Death on the Styx is available now from Kobold Press and Drivethrurpg.

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My next Kobold Press project, Underworld, is launching on Kickstarter soon. I started working on this at the end of 2025 and turned over my draft at the beginning of May, writing 30,000 words of setting material, including Underworld peoples and societies, gods, cities and realms, factions and villains.

I’ll be able to say more when the project has launched. In the meantime, you can download a preview from the Kickstarter page.

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I recently received my print copies of the Northlands books. I’d had the PDFs for a while but it’s great to have the physical books in my hands. I wrote the Factions of the Northlands chapter for this book back in late 2024 / early 2025 and I’m very happy with how it’s turned out. You can read more about the factions in this post.

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Finally, next weekend is Tabletop Scotland and my two D&D Adventurers League adventures set in Murghôm, Trouble at Kobold Crown and Secrets of the Brightsmiths, are on the schedule. If you end up running or playing either of these adventures, I’d love to hear how it went!

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