Review of Monsters of Myth

Reviewing a book of beast is a bit of a tricky proposition. In general, there is no overall theme or idea upon which to focus; on the other hand, simply listing all the critters isn’t so much as review as a résumé. Nevertheless, these sorts of books are rather critical to most fantasy gaming. As has been noted many times before, there is some meaning to the fact that the first AD&D book to be published was neither the Dungeon Master’s Guide nor the Player’s Handbook, but the Monster Manual.

Monsters of Myth (hereafter MoM, which is just too nice to avoid) is the first bestiary for OSRIC. OSRIC, the retro-clone of 1st edition AD&D, rather presumes the possession of and familiarity with the 1st ed rulebooks. This gives me an angle to explore in this review: how does MoM serve as a successor to the original Monster Manual?

The original is, like many early D&D products, a delightfully idiosyncratic beast of book: hierarchically-arrayed humanoids (in surely the oddest use of that term ever), colour-coded dragons, colour-coded squishy-things, the metaphysical distinction between demons and devils, Mind Flayers, Orcus and his scrawny little chicken legs, and the list goes on and on. Of course, there are some folktale and legendary monsters therein, but even those have that weird, distinctive stamp of early D&D and it’s creators: golems that breath poison; unquiet dead in 31 flavours (ghost, spectre, wraith); Tolkien elves next to folklore pixies.

Encoded in a lot of this was a setting concept, if not a setting. The enmity between Displacer Beast and Blink Dogs being one of my favourites. Dragons another: if you used the MM as written, then in whatever world you were playing, the dragons were divided up into rival teams—chromatic bad guys on one side and metallic good guys on the other—each headed by a peculiar regent with a name (and not much else) swiped from mythology. Like it or hate it, that was the Monster Manual.

The first official successor to that book was the Fiend Folio. The Fiend Folio was, if possible, more of a mish-mash than the Monster Manual. It had more implicit setting, or rather, settings. From the Greyhawkian Princes of Elemental Evil to the wild fantasies of Charlie Stross, with the demonic, death-batrachian Slaadi and the astral geo(?)-politics of the Gith-races. But it also had both the Flumph and the Flail Snail. So…highs and lows.

Thus, for MoM to fully succeed, it needs to capture at least some of that seemingly unique spirit of the old days, while also being of practical use as a source of things for characters to kill (which generally occurs just prior to taking their stuff). Does it do this? By and large, it does, although I think it does a better job with folkloric and Sword & Sorcery creatures, than in the pure-D&D monsters.

I’ll note that this review is of a pdf, which was provided to me for review purposes on the understanding of an unbiased review. The pdf lacks the cover page, which has a rather keen, old-school picture.

Organization and Appearance

The book is cleanly laid-out in two-columns, with a goodly number of illustrations. It feels like an old TSR product, but much cleaner and more readable. The illustrations vary a bit in quality. I really like the full-page picture on p.5 of two warriors facing what appears to be the mother of all alligators (but which is really a Northland Wyrm, I believe). This art is not dungeon-punk or anime or, by any stretch of the imagination “cool”. Some of it recalls old TSR art in the not-good way: the illustrations of the Arrivaunt, the Sea-Mare, and the Ktthjj (don’t ask me; I’ll talk about that one later) remind me of poor Dave Sutherland being dragooned into doing art. But the art serves the purpose of showing us what the monsters look like and it is almost wholly successful at that (although the Magog Locust Swarm illustration appears to be a marshmallow roasted on a stick, which is a bit bewildering).

The game statistics for the entries couldn’t be more old-school and I love them for that: Frequency, Number, Size, Move, Armor Class, Hit Dice, Attacks, Damage, Special Attacks, Special Defenses, Magic Resistance, Lair Probability, Intelligence, Alignment, Level/XP Value, and Treasure Type. These are basically the stats from the Monster Manual with two minor differences. First, the Treasure Type is, for some reason, listed at the end of description, rather than with the other stats, and second, each treasure assortment is specific to the monster, rather than the old style of having ‘Treasure Type Q”.

All in all, the layout is clean, easy to digest, and you see what the monsters are.

Folks from Folklore

A real strength of MoM is its treatment of the faerie, a group which I always felt was poorly handled in D&D. Here’s one of my favourites, which, coincidentally or not, is the first entry in the book: Antlerin. Alright, the name isn’t too much to my liking, but the idea is. The Antlerin are a type of wicked fey, looking like human beings, but with antlered, deer-heads. They live in the woodlands, coming out to engage in occasional raids on human settlements. They have only two special powers: a piddly Magic Resistance and they leave no traces in the snow. That’s it. But, man, that sets my head to whirling with ideas. I start thinking of how human settlements in the northlands must live in fear of the winters, when the Antlerin creep out of snow-hung trees, knowing that they can’t be tracked. I wonder if they steal babies in good faerie fashion. I wonder if they have an Erl-King deep in the heart of the woods and if he has daughters; daughters who woo children in the snowy nights.. I wonder if a group of adventurers, stumbling into the fear-mantled village wouldn’t be blamed for the missing children, motivating them to seek out the fearsome Erl-King themselves?

That’s the stuff that a good bestiary does. It doesn’t just give you things to fight and kill; it provides you with the inspiration to tell stories (stories about things to fight and kill, maybe, but still).

Another evocative entry are the Grimlings, wicked faeries who look like children. Evil children are always scary. These will kill real children and infiltrate human communities, using their malicious cunning to wreak havoc.

On a somewhat similar note, MoM has nice entries fleshing out the related monster category of Hags, a monster-type I have always liked. We have the Bedlam Witch (who have a varied and random assortment of uniquely witchy items), the Bhannog (who have random spell-casting abilities and function as evil masterminds in nefarious schemes), and the Cave Witch (who can climb walls and do the Vader Force-Choke).

Finally, I like the Northland Wyrms. This is almost an anti-D&D take on dragons, bringing them back to the Teutonic sources. Each is unique (i.e. no colour-coding); they may or may not be intelligent or magic-using; they probably, but not necessarily, have fiery breath; they may have poisonous bite; and their heart’s blood confers the ability to understand animal speech.

Sword & Sorcery

Other good entries are inspired by the far-out side of trippy, 70’s Sword & Sorcery. This is especially true in the special section dedicated to the creations of Steve Marsh, an important figure in the early days of TSR. I cannot say that I agree with the reasoning for the special section: the rationale that they share certain idiosyncratic setting assumptions doesn’t make much sense to me. Indeed, it’s a bit odd since, on the one hand, the Monster Manual made equally idiosyncratic setting assumptions, and, on the other hand, the book’s Forward makes it clear that a design goal of the MoM was to present creatures adaptable to a wide-variety of settings.

Nevertheless, many of these strange beasts are good. The Riders of Yuun and their Yuunsteeds are a bit inspired by the People of the Pines from the second Corum series: humanlike yet alien riders whose steeds are the actual brains of the operation. Ghoul Monkeys are…well, they are monkeys who are ghouls, which is somehow scarier than human ghouls. The Magog Locust Swarm can be summoned by an evil sorcerer through a dark ritual and demonic pact: larva are pressed into service as monstrous locusts. Ulyulengs are Lovecraftian horrors that drive observers insane merely by the appearance. Velikuls are ancient, half-forgotten monstrosities who speak with the voice of a sweet child (a la several Moorcock characters).

Steve Marsh’s section gets even more out there with Kja Khada, who used to be aquatic before the seas rejected them and who appear either as men or giant, vampire cicadas. They are also the chaos-tainted relatives of the Couranth, who must have been inadvertently left out of the book, since I have no idea what a Couranth is. But perhaps they are something like the Shiressa, or “Sea Demons”: amphibious dwellers in the frigid depths, searching for their lost kin. When they find them, they mutate into giant, worm-like creatures.

But the wildest things here are surely the Ktthjj (and don’t ask me how to pronounce that; I thought “Hwamgaarl” was hard to say). These are “somewhat like huge, undead, magical leeches that walk on legs like those of spiders, men, or crabs.” I’m not entirely sure what that even means, but I sort of want to kill one, except that they never have treasure. These abominations are killers of the “drain levels with no save” variety that players everywhere abhor and which make a certain kind of malicious GM smile with glee. They feed off of magical energy and use it to create Dreamselves, which are half-strength duplicates; if they drain six levels, they can create replacement Dreamselves. They also have an elemental breath weapon. Oh, and they have random chances to possess other powers, such as poison clouds, spell-casting, and immunities.

Use at your own peril, malicious GM.

Animals, Giant and Not-So-Much

I am rather biased about animal entries in bestiaries: I don’t like them. They bore me. Regular animals ought to have 1-2 Hit Dice, do a few points of damage, and that about does it. I also find gargantuan version of animals generally uninteresting. A Giant Snake here-and-there is good for the S&S feel, but Giant Archerfish, Giant Stonefish, Giant Leopard Clams, or Giant Fiddler Crabs?

I do, however, appreciate that the entry on Monkeys mentions rumours of evil, intelligent monkey tribes.

Pure D&D

By “pure D&D”, I mean the kind of creature with no real roots in the natural world, folklore, or fantasy literature. They are monsters that spring up purely to serve some function in role-playing games (usually dungeon-crawls). These sorts of beasts are hard to pull off: I’ve met few gamers who actually like Shriekers or Piercers, for example. But they can work: Mind Flayers have become almost iconic. In general, I don’t find the Pure D&D entries in MoM too inspiring; many seem to possess random powers purely for the purposes of screwing with player expectations.

I do like the Arrivaunt, which is a globular mouth on legs, that guards treasure and leaps about like that creepy thing in the movie Dark Star. I also like the Oculethe, which is a take on the beholder idea, but who looks more like an eye at the end of a nerve. The Pod-Men and their wicked Shroom masters may be a bit silly, but are not at all bad for that.

I’m less enthralled by Ballista Beasts (large tortoises with built-in ballistae) or Cavern Glazers (big snails that leave slippery slime in their wake); Voudoun Golems (which have nothing really to do with voudoun and who reflect magical damage back at the caster) or Karkadann (like a unicorn, only bigger and evil). And is anyone happy to see the Black Shrieker, more powerful and more annoying than the original? I guess that someone must be.

Conclusion

I can heartily recommend MoM for anyone playing TSR D&D or variants thereof. A book of beast such as this is going to be a grab-bag of ideas and no one will like all of them, but any 1st edition gamer is going to find multiple entries of interest. The book succeeds at being a worthy successor to the original Monster Manual, demonstrating that the old-school spirit is alive and well.