Hey, cool cats! Senior designer Celeste Conowitch here, beaming in to tell you about our company history from 2021 to NOW!
You never quite realize the scope of how much you’ve accomplished until you sit down to plot it out on paper (like, for let’s say, a blog article). This isn’t even everything that Kobold Press did in these five years! But here are some highlights that come to mind as I pick up the baton from Brian in 2021.
2021: Golden Age of Games
I was still a regular freelance designer for Kobold Press this year, which was a wild one for the industry. Folks continued to deal with pandemic concerns and still needed entertainment they could play with friends and family over virtual calls—a weirdly golden time for making TTRPGs.
This year saw the release of some instant KP classics, such as our mega dungeon, Scarlet Citadel, and our magic item trove, Vault of Magic.
2022: Dark Dungeons and Shadow Planes
I joined in May of this year, just in time to watch the backstage action as the hit of the year: Tome of Beasts 3, was unleashed! And, just in time to fight those terrifying monsters, fan favorite Tome of Heroes rolled out to the public, a book that combined all the best our freelancers had ever made (including a few gems from yours truly) into one master compendium of options.
For me, however, the most important release of this year was Book of Ebon Tides, the book I co-wrote with master worldbuilder Wolfgang Baur! Ebon Tides was the first truly meaty hardcover assignment I’d gotten as a Kobold Press freelancer. And considering I was hired full time just a few months later, I like to think my work paved the way for a bright future with the company (on the back of a shadowy-dark-dripping release, of course).
2023: OGL-pocalypse
We can’t talk about this year without mentioning the great Wizards of the Coast Unforced Error of January 2023. If you don’t remember this, Wizards of the Coast briefly tried to drive professional fifth edition publishers (such as Kobold Press) out of business by charging an exorbitant licensing fee to use their updated System Resource Document.
This event set the industry on fire. Fans hated it as much as we did. In response, we were forced to imagine a future in which we couldn’t use the Open Gaming License to create books that are compatible with fifth edition. You can revisit what we did in real-time on the blog with the Black Flag tag.
When I was hired, conversations about what became the Tales of the Valiant RPG had already begun. Our own implementation of 5E had been lurking. But the scare of WotC functionally revoking our access to 5E dumped rocket fuel on the concept. The work began in earnest!
I was so deep in ToV early dev and public playtesting efforts that I barely saw what was happening on stage. The Kobold team valiantly (heheh) dealt out a slew of killer 5E releases while we worked.
We released the first of our Campaign Builder series, Campaign Builder: Cities & Towns! And the celebrated gift to harried GMs everywhere, Prepared! The Expanded Collection. This was also the year my very first full-time KP project came out: Deep Magic Volume 2, alongside the revisited, reorganized, and expanded Deep Magic, Volume 1.
2024: Year of the Valiant
The team’s efforts manifested with the dual release of the Tales of the Valiant Player’s Guide and Monster Vault. We did it, and it was glorious. Even though WotC’s OGL stance had softened, we all felt better having a foundation that was truly ours—a future to be proud of.
And if dropping a whole new game system wasn’t enough, followed up with the release of the Tales of the Valiant Game Master’s Guide just a few months later this same year.
I turned in Player’s Guide and the next day moved the pen straight onto Game Master’s Guide. I had maybe two months to finish GMG, and I still think it’s somehow the best thing I’ve ever made. Thank goodness for the Kobold team and the army of brilliant freelancers who keep coming back to work with us.
2025: Ten Thousand Releases
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we make a lot of stuff. It’s not even a brag (just a fact) when I say we publish more hardcover books in a single year than some studios do in three. 2025 is all the proof you need as we pumped out a masterful set of ToV support products: The Old Margreve reenvisioned, Book of Blades, Monster Vault 2—and of course, our first Tales of the Valiant campaign overlay: the Labyrinth Worldbook.
But we didn’t stop there! In a brave new world, we were emboldened to try new things! That year, we released Necromancer, our first-ever card game of cartoonish necromancers battling for dominance. We also launched RiverBank, our cozy RPG of manners and chaos, totally separate from our D&D roots. It was a year of beautiful harvest.
2026 . . . NOW!
Okay, first of all, as I’m writing this, I can’t believe we’re already three months into 2026—because when you’re working backstage with a pencil glued to the page, time is an abstract, distinct concept. We’ve continued to be busy as we work towardsever-faster turnarounds from Kickstarter launch to delivery.
The big love of this year, of course, was the promised child: Tales of the Valiant Player’s Guide 2! We knew we had to get you a fresh plate of player options as soon as possible to keep your ToV games burnin’ bright. Also, we wrote so much stuff that we couldn’t fit in the initial Player’s Guide release.
So here we are. My pen continues to fly, and our team continues to deliver the best to you despite many challenges facing the industry at this moment. As long as the Warrens stand, we’ll be here, continuing to make magic for you.
The past five years have been a lot for everyone—in every sense. Games are more important than ever. Games bring joy in times of stress. Games facilitate community in times of isolation. Fantasy teaches us how to cope with fears of the present so we may dream of a better future.
So, honorary kobolds everywhere, join me in saying—here’s to another 20 years!
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