Review of Field Guide to Monsters, Vol. 1: The Points Papers

This short digest sized booklet is a throw back to simpler days. Staple bound, B&W cardstock cover with text inside both covers. The cover art is quite good, gothic comic style, but the interior art is both small and amateur. The contents are intended to support Hex Game's Quick-Ass Game System (QAGS) or to kick off adventures for other rpgs, hence the QIK PAK designation.

This particular supplement appears to support QAGS' Spooky, CoC or Masque of the Red Death like, monster hunting horror game, taking place in the mid- 1800s. Fourteen entities/creatures are detailed, organized into five categories. The first are Unnatural Afflictions, mimicking diseases or illness. The second, Restless Spirits, details an assortment of ghosts. Torments, the third, are demonic horrors, including Succubi and "The Dark". Undead make up the forth category, providing only vampires and zombies. The last being, Other Earthly Peoples, where werewolves, jinn and frog-men are covered. None of the descriptions are lengthy, only a few are innovative and original, but they do provide the behaviors of their subjects and how they can be thwarted.

My favorite highlights include the following entries. The Devoured, who exist to be eaten and their taste causes an all consuming obsession to get more. No other food will do, once a person has a taste of the Devoured. Vermis Imitor, a normal looking slug which enters a person's body and grows to replace their internal organs. They absorb the minds of their host, and become them. When propagating their own race, they make the host look pregnant, a dead give away if the host is male. The methods for dealing with a zombie that don't require hacking it into little bits, great role-playing possibilities. Lastly, the Frog-Men of Bermuda, a horrific looking mysterious race of humanoid amphibians whose intentions for the human race can't be good.

The most interesting feature of the booklet is the lack of game stats in the text. All the stats and a few additional facts are provided in a pullout for the GMs eyes only. The text was written to be used by the GM, or the players as a prop. It presents itself as a Professor's research on the subject horrors. It all works very well and is a good a resource as any fancier larger text but it just isn't big enough. Even at $2.99, it is difficult to justify the purchase unless you actually want to play in a "Spooky" campaign using QAGS' rules.