Full Disclosure: I received a free PDF copy of the Midgard Bestiary after providing feedback and a playtest report of the draft version.

Kobold Quarterly and Open Design should be familiar to a lot of you by now, and those kobolds just keep going! Currently underway is one of their biggest projects ever: the Midgard Campaign Setting. If you’re interested in collaborative worldbuilding and shaping a new setting, you should check it out.

Lots of Open Design projects in the past have been for the Pathfinder RPG, but Green Ronin’s AGE system (used for the Dragon Age RPG) is enjoying a surge of popularity these days too. Hence, the Midgard Bestiary. It’s packed full of 50 monsters and adversaries newly statted up for the AGE system and is a very welcome addition to any AGE GM’s tool kit. I highly recommend it. Read on for the full review.

I just finished playing the demo for Dragon Age II and I found it had an interesting take on storytelling. Gameplay was sometimes cut with scenes of a character, in the future, talking about the hero. It was interesting because a) the storyteller was alluding to events that had yet to unfold, and b) the storyteller sometimes lied. What was cool, though, was that you played those lies and then played the truth. This technique is a kind of frame narrative (a story within a story), and twists on storytelling like this can be interesting in pen and paper roleplaying games too.

• Pledge to back #HumanContact and get an exclusive #ApocalypseWorld character playbook: the Quarantine! Best offer ever! http://bit.ly/c7slqj
• New Pyres Post: Free Exclusive Apocalypse World Character Playbook http://wp.me/pS7pB-zx
• RT @DriveThruRPG DriveThruRPG Doctors Without Borders Flood Relief for Pakistan $25 for over $700 in RPG items – http://bit.ly/d2kyxD
• So, my estranged Internet has finally returned to me… but for how long?

• Reveal of psychopathic split-personality BBEG in #pathfinder game made my entire group recoil in chairs and go “Ohhh… $#&%!” I love GMing!
• RT @mouseguard Mouse Guard RPG boxed set includes the main book w/ minor corrections, a supplement w/ new rules for mounts, additional weapons, &adventures
• More about the Mouse Guard RPG boxed set. Pawns, dice, cards, a map, a new supplement, and more! http://bit.ly/99J7d1
• I discovered an awesome site today: www.creaturespot.com Excellent source of creature art. Great for reskinning #rpg monsters.

I think we’ve stumbled across RPG rules before that we really wished worked differently. And everyone loves free stuff, right? Playtesting RPGs is a great way to get a nearly complete game or supplement for free. It also allows you to provide feedback directly to the creators of the game so that they can consider the problems you find.

That’s the great thing too, it’s not just typos and calculation errors you can report on, it’s how powers and abilities work, how a certain rule plays out in game, how things are balanced, and so on. Right now there are some great free playtest PDFs you can get your hands on, letting you try things out early and help shape the way the final products work. Let’s take a look.