Monsternomicon

Overall score:

When it comes to RPGs you need three things: a rulebook, players and a book full of nasty things to kill them with. It comes to no one’s surprise about the shear number of monster books available for the D20 system, and subsequently Dungeons and Dragons (D&D), Wizard is about to release their 5th book in as many years and there are so many 3rd party publishers with their own books—so what’s one more?

That’s one of the big problems with these type of books, there are so many of them and on top of that they’re usually not very exciting reads. Mostly just stats, brief descriptions of the race as a whole and then combat abilities. So how do you get your book to stand out? By making each creature entry a story unto itself.

The Monsternomicon from Privateer Press does just that. Each entry is told from the account of a prominent NPC in the setting that happens to be an anthropologist (or the closest there is in the game setting of Iron Kingdoms) and each entry is told as a first-hand account, based off a fairy tale or other tall-tale that are so prominent in every culture. While not the only book to take the approach of using NPC accounts to describe each creature, the Monsternomicon goes further then that. Almost each entry has a Legends and Lore section, which tells the GM how hard knowledge about each creature is to know or obtain and those that don’t have entries are pretty much unknown in the world.

Information in the Legends and Lore section often contains ways to kill the creature, how they originally came to be or hints about treasure—which instead of having your standard D&D treasure system (where you roll in the Dungeon Masters Guide) many, if not most of, the creatures instead have their own detailed treasure lists. This can range from a few coins to what parts of the creature can be sold and what they’re used for in crafting. Lots of times there are adventure hooks given for a creature that sets up a basis for hunting them for their treasure or other reasons.

This combination adds to the Iron Kingdom’s very fleshed out and interesting setting. And how the creatures in Monsternomicon are presented give you a greater feeling of the care that went into not only this book but the setting—there are very few afterthoughts in this book. Each creature feels original and most are, even if they’re a slightly different take on an old classic (such as trolls or pretty much all the undead), due to the new powers and abilities.

You don’t get the feeling that the authors gave the creatures the powers they have because they’re cool or to frustrate players (like many of the Monster Manual books), but because the creature should have that ability. This is done purely by the presentation of each entry, which shows how a little extra time and thought can change a reader's perception of something.

While the new monsters presented are very well thought out and feel like they belong, the three prestige classes don’t feel quite as well planned. All three fit the setting, an adventuring scholar, and various monster hunters, but the classes stat wise don’t really hold up well. Maybe I’m just used to overpowered prestige classes from the complete series of books, but with the exception of the Monster Hunter class I can’t see players getting much use out of one and I can’t see GMs letting the players use the second (it can make really cheap buffing magic items, which is opposite of regular spell casters which have a harder time of it in this setting).

Even though the Monsternomicon is very setting heavy and many of the creatures presented may not work at first glance in your average D&D setting, most can be easily added into any campaign. If you do get it you’ll have a leg up on your players if they’re the type that buys every Wizards produced book and memorizes all the monsters in each one (you know you’ve all played with a person like that).

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Written by Spriggan on July 12th, 2007