When a character in D&D hits level six, they get to pick the Leadership feat, and a few weeks ago my group was having a discussion about whether or not a couple of characters in a game should take it.

The big advantage of the feat, given a sufficiently high charisma attribute is the cohort who is just a couple of levels below the character who takes the feat, but it also comes with a wagonload of minions who would go squish about five minutes after you take them into a dungeon. They aren’t much good for anything other than looking after the character’s manor / castle / secret underground base.

In the traditional generic fantasy campaign (at least in my, fairly limited, experience), if a character actually manages to get their hands on a nice base of operations then it is usually acquired through some means such as Lord Caractère de Non-Joueur waving his sword about and saying:

“I dub ye Sir Épéiste Crédule and grant ye the lands bordering the Orc infested hills of the west to defend on behalf of the crown.”

I apologise for the dreadful quality of my French names, which were provided with the aid of an online translation service.

I mentioned ‘fairly limited experience’ earlier. Typically the games I’ve played in have involved just following along with the GM’s plot and character backgrounds (with a few exceptions) not coming into it a great deal. That isn’t the case with this game (which is a good thing, I’m enjoying it more then I’ve enjoyed a campaign in a long while, although other factors are involved too) which makes me think that if the party decides to aim for acquiring (for example) a castle, then it might just happen.

That would make the Leadership feat rather cooler then a simple source of an extra sword arm, healer or spellslinger.

The first issue of Kobold Quarterly turned up in my inbox this morning. I haven’t finished reading it yet (I’ve got a weekend ahead of me for that), but my first impressions are favourable.

It has a fair bit of crunch (game mechanics), but most of the content is fluff (setting information) which is how I like it. I have access to more then enough D&D game mechanics already so I’d rather have inspiration for plots then anything else (and I’ll confess to finding fluff more enjoyable to read than tables of combat statistics).

Having a high fluff content has the added bonus of making it handy for people who are running non-D&D games with a sword and sorcery setting (I know at least one person planning a RuneQuest game in a D&Desque setting).

One feature I’m happy to see is the Ecology of series, which was one of my favourite bits of the late Dragon magazine.

If you like RPGs then I suggest you pick up a subscription. At $16/year it is pretty inexpensive and is aimed at both DMs and players (although, it seems slightly more suited to the former).