INTRODUCTION
Awhile ago, in light of this First Edition AD&D exegesis thread I started, I was contacted by Jim Raggi, asking if I'd mind taking a look at his first foray into the indie game publisher biz, a little booklet he's done for generating new creatures for "classic" fantasy role playing games. I say sure. I'm always willing to do a review in exchange for a free copy of a game or supplement, right?
I warn him, as I always do, that if I agree, he needs to be prepared for me to review warts and all. He's fine with it, so he sends me the PDF and ships off the hard copy of...
THE RANDOM ESOTERIC CREATURE GENERATOR FOR CLASSIC FANTASY ROLE-PLAYING GAMES AND THEIR MODERN SIMULACRA
Wow. What a mouthful!
My review wasn’t 100% positive. While I felt that it was a solidly designed work, the book went a bit too much for shock value in the cover art, and was too full of overt distaste for a certain Big Player in the market. A good product, I decided, and worth the purchase price, but in need of improvement.
Flash forward. Months later, Jim contacts me again. It seems Goodman Games felt the same was as I did, and wanted to publish a cleaned-up version of the work. They want to know if I’d be willing to do a follow-up review on the book in its new, “Revised” incarnation.
Sure, why not?
Fair warning, however: textually not a great deal has changed in this product, so a lot of the text in this review is going to be repeated from my last one. The parts that are different will be the areas cleaned up. The good news is, it’s in no way worse than its original incarnation and is improved in almost every way.
THE GOOD
There's not a great deal to really "break down" about this product; it consists of a series of tables for randomly generating creatures for fantasy role playing games. The breakdown (following the obligatory and somewhat problematic introduction, which I will deal with later) is:1. Building the Monster: This section breaks down the format used in the booklet, explaining what each entry means and how it all works together. It gives you base values for AC, movement, and attack damage, from which the later charts will build. In other words, we have a basic creature that begins with the armor value of your standard unarmed man, movement equal to a normal man, and a single attack dealing 1d6 damage. From there, the charts will create a sort of template (in 3.x terms) that modifies these three basic stats, adds special attacks and abilities, and creates an entirely new creature.
2. Basic Body Shape: The tables here cover every imaginable type of body style from flat to formless blob to avian to humanoid to polyhedral. Yes, with this supplement you can end up with an angry, hungry 20-sided die to threaten your characters. And before you turn your nose up at that, let's not forget the mighty flumph.
3. Basic Characteristics: Here we have the basic characteristics of the creature, what standard abilities it has. These characteristics are combined with the basic body shape to come up with a more complete visual representation of a creature. Thus, rolling "Amoeba" on body shape and "Fish" on Characteristics gives you a basic jellyfish. Or rolling "amoeba" and bird gives you your basic flumph (Sorry; couldn't resist).
4. Size: Exactly what it claims to be: roll on a chart, determine how big your monster is, from tiny to Godzilla.
5. Movement: This section goes beyond determining base movement speed; it also includes special movement capabilities such as phasing, swimming, climbing, slithering, flight, tunneling, etc.
6. Attack Methods: This bit tells you exactly what kind of attack form or routine your creature has, and how much damage it does. If such attack methods are already informed by the creature's shape, the booklet suggests using this section to flesh out game mechanics for them; otherwise as with everything else you roll randomly.
7. Distinctive Features: This table gives sets of distinctive physical aspects beyond the basic shape and characteristics of a creature. For example, a creature who is quadrapedal in basic body shape and mammal in characteristics might here end up with a beak, tail and fin. You could then decide that the tail is flat and the "fin" is actually flippers. Voila. You've just created a platypus. Of extra interest here is the "Other" table, which grants access to a sub-table of "extra-special" features, everything from "has a pissed-off parent" to "Creature's death opens a gate to another plane." This overall table is designed to be used as many times as the DM likes, until the creature "feels" complete.
8. Special Abilities: This table has your basic special attacks and special defenses, such as ability and level drain, psychic attacks, spell-like abilities, etc. This table is extensive, requiring the roll of 2d% to use.
9. Delivery of Special Attacks: Are special attacks touch-based? Ray? Gaze? Breath weapons? This is where you figure that bit out.
10. Combat Tactics: In the author's own words, "This section is merely an aid to varying the combat tactics of individual creatures in order to give a referee something to riff off of instead of having the burden to invent every last creature’s combat strategy." It basically includes the creature's standard means of attack: does he go after the closest character? The one that presents the most danger? A random character? Non-humans? You get the idea.
11. Motivation: This explains why the creature does what it does. Is it hungry? Seeking a mate? Or is it just an unnatural abomination that hates everything natural?
12. Putting it All Together and The Effective Presentation of Monsters in Fantasy Role-Playing: These last two sections are basically advice on how to put everything you've just generated all together and use it in game. Some of this is old hat to those of us who have been running games for a long time (and let's face it; as fans of the "Classic" version of the World's Most Popular Fantasy Role-Playing Game, we're the target audience) but most of it is pretty good advice nevertheless, and it never hurts to have a refresher.
As a largely system-free work, this work is published without the use of any open or free license at all. The author expressly grants ownership of any creature generated with the use of this book to the generator; i.e. while the tables and methods remain in the ownership of the author, anything you create with those tables is entirely yours to use as you please, for profit or not. It's an interesting line he's drawn there, and one that makes the book even more useful for game designers.
THE BAD
The bad...honestly, I have no complaints whatsoever about this edition of the book that don’t boil down to nitpicking. Like its predecessor, the book is useful, not just for the oldest edition of Our Favorite Game, but for pretty much any kind of fantasy, horror, or esoteric sci-fi game you'd like, of almost any system out there. The overt hatred of the "megacorporation" later editions of the game (wisely never mentioned by name) is gone, thus expanding the appeal of the work across the board.If you put a gun to my head and forced me to find something wrong, it’d be that I could probably make up a monster off the top of my head faster than I could roll all these charts and put one together…but such a monster wouldn’t be nearly as detailed and likely wouldn’t be as original as one generated by this book.
THE UGLY
As most of you know, "The Ugly" in my reviews doesn't necessarily mean actual ugliness. It refers to art and layout in general. In the original version, art was a mixed bag ranging good and evocative to amateurish and overly controversial, as in the case of the original cover art, which presented a Photoshopped photo of an attractive, bare-breasted woman with deer antlers, praying mantis arms, fangs, and goat's legs. I felt it tried too hard to be as controversial as possible, an overt combination of sex and demonic imagery appearing as an effort to shock people out of the gate. The new version fixes this problem, with Goodman’s trademark set of Erol-Otis-inspired artwork throughout, giving a distinctly First Edition feel without going over the top with shock value. The art is of uniformly high quality and shows us some of the bizarre possibilities one can generate with this product. A personal favorite is the man-eating-10-sided-die on page 7.
CONCLUSION
I'm giving this product a 4 for Substance, as its utility is stellar, and a 4 for Style, as it’s been cleaned up in every way I had an issue with in my earlier review. This version is a worthwhile addition to the so-called “Old School Renaissance” which is taking place right now, and indeed can be every bit as useful for Fourth Edition fantasy as First. It’s a prime example of everything a revised product should be. Is it 100% perfect? Nope, but few gaming supplements are, and it’s difficult to put my finger on exactly where this falls short. It could be that as I said above it might take longer for me to generate a creature with this than it would to simply make one up off the top of my head. However, this work gives me options I might not otherwise think of, covering everything from basic shape to special attacks and defenses to number of limbs to how the thing eats and breathes, right down to its combat tactics. Indeed, special abilities such as “Magic Drain” aren’t things that immediately pop to mind…at least, not as commonly as, say, Energy Drain does.Two thumbs up for Jim and Goodman Games.
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