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The first supplementary release for Engel, Creatures of the Dreamseed is a book of monstrous foes and creepy crawling horrors for the winged heroes of the game of post-apocalyptic angels to face. With a heavy focus on narrative, tone, and feel, the book does a very good job of bringing the Dreamseed to life for the GM/reader. Whether or not it will succeed in bringing them to life for the players in game is another question.
The Book
A 128 page softbound book in black and white, Creatures of the Dreamseed is rather small compared to the monster manuals that many other companies put out. None-the-less it is a very well laid out book, following the tradition of the MRB, using evocative fonts in a pseudo-medieval-latinaic style as borders and headers, small but clear and mostly readable body-text, and many full page pictures of the nasties. The two problems I had with the layout were that some of the pages are a dark enough gray that it could be difficult reading them in poor lighting and some of the “handwritten” fonts were too cramped and difficult to read. Handwriting can add a nice touch, but it can also make you want to claw your eyes out with your elbow, and this font wove in and out between the two extremes.
The Rundown
Creatures of the Dreamseed has two general parts. The first part is a travel-journal style narrative of Friar Domenico’s journey to a Brandland and back. This section takes up the bulk of the book and is a good enough read that is full of details about the world of Engel and squeam-inspiring descriptions of the Dreamseed and a few other assorted horrors of that make the world so in need of angelic protection. This section is solidly and entirely narrative, with not a single game-stat or crunchy bit to be found.
The second, far shorter, section is a two chapter (well, three really, but the third “chapter” is just the OGL license) game section. The first chapter gives some very short and moderately useful information about using the Dreamseed in a game, with a very few words about how to maintain an aura of fear and mystery. The second chapter is the stats chapter, giving full writeups for 20 Dreamseed, 2 templates, and stats for 16 normal creatures from rats to wolves.
The Good
The tone and atmosphere of Creatures of the Dreamseed is very well created and maintained. From the dark-moldy greys used in the backgrounds, through the creepy art, and solidly horror-trope filled writing, the whole thing screams “NASTY EVIL INSECT DEMONS THAT WANT TO LAY EGGS IN YOUR EARS AND DEVOUR YOUR SOUL!” In many ways I was reminded of the early Tribe 8 books and their ability to create a feeling and view of the world through their use of narrative. So far as creep value for the reader goes, this book has few peers in the world of RPG books.
The one issue with this wonderful tone, however, is that it is very solidly based upon the book and the text itself. While running the game I had a hard time using extemporaneous speech to get across the real nasty horror vibe of the book. The pictures worked well, letting me show the players things that made them go “ewww.” The rest of the material, however, was more effective on me as a reader than for me as a GM.
The Bad
The focus on narrative had a price, however, and that was the relative lack of “crunch” in the book. There is a 20 page section of creature stats, which includes 6 pages of stats for normal animals and a few templates, but that represents the sum total of actual numbers based game material in the whole book. It is also, unfortunately, not as well laid out as it could be. Page-length stat blocks are often set so they flow over pages, meaning a lot of flipping if you want to use the book during game play. The stats are solid, however, and those that I ran against my players (Shadeshifter, Pseudo-Engel, Blight, and Changeling) all worked well and gave the right amount of challenge and threat for a creature of their CR. The main problem is that those 4 creatures represent 1/5th of all the stated beasts in the whole book – which may leave those wanting to run long term campaigns rather hard-up for new challenges.
The Ugly
The art, and I don’t necessarily mean that it was ugly in a bad way. The art in this book is very often creepy, disturbing, ugly, and unpleasantly surreal. Of course, it is art depicting careful illustrations of insectoid demons, living dead creatures being controlled by giant maggots, and vulvaish giant worm mouths that swallow you whole. Now part of my reaction is due to the fact that one of my few fears is spiders, and thus I have a general dislike of all insects and crawly things. None-the-less the art is very effective at conveying the nastiness of some really vile creatures, and is one of the best tools in the book for instantly creeping/grossing out your players. Be warned, however, that its probably not the kind of art you’re going to want to use as a desktop or poster – the less time I spent looking at it, the better my stomach felt.
The End
My initial review of Engel was not overly positive. I did, however, say that if the game got sufficient support from future products it could still be a success. Creatures of the Dreamseed is a step in the right direction for this program, but it is not a step taken far enough. Engel GMs still need more game-based support, or perhaps just the long promised English version of the Arcana rules. Without these I just don’t see the game being the breakthrough it could be.
However, Creatures of the Dreamseed is a more balanced work than the main book, and does a very good job of adding both depth of world, eeriness, and a small amount of numbers crunch. For those who wanted to give Engel a spin but were put off by the paucity of support in the MRB, Creatures of the Dreamseed may convince you to actually give the game a go.
For having creepy, ugly art, good writing, and the ability to create atmosphere Creatures of the Dreamseed gets a 4 in Style. For its small number of creature stats it gets a 2 in Substance.
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