Robgoblin Reviews - The Monster Overhaul

I was going to write something about how game designers need to go hiking. But, actually, it turns out that a lot have. Fifth Edition's ludicrous statement that an average person can walk 24 miles a day whilst carrying a 150-pound pack is, fortunately, an outlier.

Best of the bunch, IMO? Probably AD&D 1st Edition, at least of the D&D variants. If you're still running 5e, for some reason, the AD&D rules are easy to steal for a house rule.

So instead, here's a review of The Monster Overhaul by Skerples.

Bottom line up front? It's excellent, go buy it now.

It is, in short, everything you need from a monster book. And nothing you don't need. Sure, bits are weird - it's Skerples, after all - but even the weird bits are useful. All the classic monsters are present: goblins, liches, dragons, and the likes. Usually with a unique twist, because nobody needs to see the same old statblocks again.

While the book is systemless, it's adaptable to some types of systems better than others. Any of the monsters could be run straight out of the book, if using Basic or Advanced D&D as your rules. I assume the same is true for GLoG. Fifth Edition, you're going to have to work at it - or take Skerples's advice, and use your existing rulebooks for basic statistics but use abilities from The Monster Overhaul. That's probably fair, and it's good that - despite the obvious, and explicit, old-school leanings - the book makes at least a nod towards what it calls 'games with a higher power level'.

And the abilities are fun as well as being easy to run at the table. No need to wade through spell descriptions for liches or druids, they have unique abilities there on the page. A dragon which breathes swords at you? Yes please. A centaur that's half centipede, half man? No thank you, I'd like to sleep tonight... but the stats are there.

Don't think that the book is just lists of monsters, though. There are random tables aplenty, for all sorts of things. Appearance. Motivation. Unique special powers. What flavour the monster is. Yes, really. Some of them give you interesting powers if you eat them. Most of them just taste horrible and will make you explode - or wish you'd exploded. 

Which is fair. I don't understand the fixation some people have for eating monsters.

And then there's the Oatmeal Raisin Cookie Golem. If you're eating that one, you're the monster.

Scattered throughout the book, at least one to a chapter, are generic locations: a Wizard's Tower, a Dragon's Lair, a Shipwreck. They're tropey. That's the point. When you draw up a map, and don't know what all the rooms are for? Go consult the models.

Even the indexing is excellent. There's the usual stuff: alphabetical, by HD, by typical dungeon level (or, in this case, by the type of room on that level). But there's also an 'Index of Monster Utility', for those times you need something to show up and tell the players to please stop eating Oatmeal Raisin Cookie Golems. And a surprisingly useful, and logical, Celestial Index of Benevolent Knowledge.

A few random highlights for me?

The Random Lifecycle Generator, for one. It's in the 'Strange Water' section, for weird sea creatures. But it works equally well for any other type of creature. Because why can't mature wizards have be sessile and reproduce by spore dispersal? What did you think those towers were for, astronomy?

Also, the Referee guidance. How to handle players receiving wishes (grant them, and embrace the chaos!). And how to handle evil in games. I will quote directly, because it's an important line:

You cannot mix the two options. Either Orcs are people, or they aren't.

Seriously, the book is almost worth it just for this section. Page 60, people, go read it.  

And finally, because I can't gush about this for too long, the actual physical artifact. This is a fantastic book. It is well laid out. Everything comes readily to hand; where a creature's entry extends over two pages, those pages are facing pages. The tables are clear. Even the inside endpapers are put to work. It feels nice and hefty in my hands, suitable for use - in a pinch - to bludgeon one's foes.

Though that would get blood on it, which would be a shame.

There are a few typos, but nothing major (I can't even remember them at the moment), and certainly don't detract from the text.

I look forward to running a game again so I have an excuse to use some of these monsters. They deserve to make some unwitting PCs lives miserable.