T. Alexander Stangroom is Chief Operations Officer (COO) at the tabletop roleplaying publisher Kobold Press, best known for the Tales of the Valiant RPG and the Tome of Beasts monster book series. Alexander is also a TTRPG designer whose credits include titles by Kobold Press, Modiphius, and Wizards of the Coast, as well as a professional GM with over two decades of experience. Originally from the United Kingdom, he is now based in Seattle.
Daily Dragon (DD):Please tell us a little about Kobold Press.
T. Alexander Stangroom (TAS): We are a bunch of scrappy Kobolds who have been publishing tabletop content for the last 20 years! We’ve supported a host of different systems over the years including Pathfinder, Call of Cthulhu, and D&D 5e, and more recently we’ve released a Daggerheart campaign frame.
DD: The Kobold Press site mentions winning 9 ENNIE awards and one Origins award. Would you like to tell us about one of these award-winning games?
TAS: The standout title for me is The Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding, which won 2 Gold ENNIES. It is a collection of essays from some of the top names in the industry, in this case focusing on the load-bearing concept of world design. What really elevates this is that it has made its way onto numerous university reading lists for degrees such as Creative Writing.
DD: Does Kobold Press have any involvement with local tabletop gaming communities?
TAS: We have a thriving Discord with many thousands of active users. We also participate in the national hobby store event “Free RPG Day” and have a bunch of free resources on our site for to help people set up their own game day at their local store.
DD: What does a gaming company COO do, exactly?
In a small company (like most TTRPG publishers are!), I am involved in a very wide range of areas. Everything from strategic planning with our Kobold-In-Chief Wolfgang Baur, dealing with physical manufacture of our books, and licensing, both external IPs and with partners looking to use the Kobold Press brand. Not to mention convention and trade show attendances.
DD: What’s the most rewarding aspect of being the COO?
TAS: In the time I’ve been at the company, which is only seven years, we have published more than 100 physical and digital products and have delivered more than 20 crowdfunding campaigns. However, these things aren’t just made to exist. What I really enjoy is seeing our books out in the wild and getting to talk to the people who enjoy them. Especially when I get to run convention adventures using our content.
DD: When did you first realize you wanted to design games, and was there a particular game that inspired you?
TAS: I started to design games unintentionally when my brothers and I would play the 1989 boardgame HeroQuest. We played so much and so often that we wanted to get more from it. So, we started house ruling. We made so many changes to it that our handwritten rulebook was pages and pages long. I was flabbergasted when I got my hands on a D&D 3.0 Player’s Handbook a decade later as I realized that I’d been trying to design my own version of D&D!
DD: What do you find most challenging about designing games?
TAS: If you are writing for a company, rather than for your home table, then writing to briefs from the project lead is a thing you have to learn. As excited as you might be to write on the subject, you still have to color within the lines set out for you, and within word count!
DD: What are some ways people can get into the game design industry?
TAS: Unsurprisingly this question gets asked A LOT! I’d recommend immersing yourself in the TTRPG space using any and all of the following: Join and participate in TTRPG company Discords. Read and play as much as you can. Attend panels at conventions. Write for fun. And then, when you’re ready, look at potentially self-publishing on sites like itch.io and DriveThruRPG. You can also find a number of panels on this topic on the Kobold Press YouTube channel.
DD: Kobold Press is running a number of Kickstarter campaigns. Is there anything you now know about using Kickstarter that you wish you had known at the beginning?
TAS: Crowdfunding has changed enormously over the last fifteen years or so. What was true then, isn’t true now. We’ve seen larger and larger scale projects from companies where the principal book is now just a small part of the larger campaign with dice, minis, pins, plushies, and a whole plethora of accessories. There are so many moving parts in a project that delays sometimes happen, especially factoring in overseas shipping. The crucial thing for any person interested in doing crowdfunding is to be honest and communicative with the people who are generously supporting your project. For the most part people are very understanding as long as they are kept in the loop.
DD: What’s next for you?
TAS: We’ve got so many exciting things in the pipeline, almost none of which I can talk about because of NDAs! However straight after Dragon Con I will be travelling to Florida to film All Access with Andy Garcia, which is doing a documentary about Kobold Press and the wider TTRPG industry. Maybe this documentary will finally help me explain to my mother what it is I actually do!
DD: For more information about T. Alexander Stangroom and Kobold Press, visit https://koboldpress.com.
