OSR The Monster Overhaul

Whizbang Dustyboots said:

Which is one of those "duh" things in retrospect. I had been thinking of how to do the Deck of Many Things for Shadowdark and I'm embarrassed to admit this never occured to me. Leaving aside the merits of Skerples' deck, going this way means DMs have thousands (tens of thousands?) of decks to choose from for their own table.

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I mean, the tarot of many things was in Dragon magazine #77 and had a large number of results -- each card could be read upright or reversed, for different effects.

I also liked the tarot of many teachings, which was from RoleMaster Companion #7, where every card had 4 possible effects: positive, neutral, negative, and simplified. There was a full Tarot Mage class in the supplement for people who really wanted to delve into the potential of random magical chaos.

RealAlHazred said:

I mean, the tarot of many things was in Dragon magazine #77

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Any brain cells devoted to remembering that 1983 Dragon magazine article have since been destroyed by strong drink.

Whizbang Dustyboots said:

Any brain cells devoted to remembering that 1983 Dragon magazine article have since been destroyed by strong drink.

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I can't remember appointments, but I can remember old Dragon articles I last read thirty years ago. That's my stupidpower, I guess!

I'll have to check out that Dragon mag. I have the old archive files from the ancient times.

Micah Sweet said:

I'll have to check out that Dragon mag. I have the old archive files from the ancient times.

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Somewhere in my brain, I was at one point developing a post for my gaming blog tracing the history of the deck of many things through its various iterations. The two I mentioned were only two of the noteworthy variants, there are several more that I think are also interesting variants.

RealAlHazred said:

Somewhere in my brain, I was at one point developing a post for my gaming blog tracing the history of the deck of many things through its various iterations. The two I mentioned were only two of the noteworthy variants, there are several more that I think are also interesting variants.

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Found it! That is an awesome, very detailed article! They don't do it like that anymore.

On topic, but departing from the current Deck discussion (Decks are a fun item, they can really upend a campaign - sometimes in bad ways, often in good ones - and are fun to write. I wrote a short "hobo" themed one once I think). The Science Fantasy (for ASE) hobo's "Deck of Several Things" is at the bottom of this post:

Now a Question for the forum...

Monster Overhaul is I think the best Monster Manual to come out of the OSR/Post-OSR. It's an achievement... but personally beyond that I have no use for it. Horrible to say I know.

My reasoning is that monsters are largely defined by the location/adventure they are involved in, mechanically very similar especially in older/simpler systems. This makes them very easy to design or something that should be included in the adventure one is running, no a distinct manual. Monster Overhaul is one of the few manuals that addresses this to a degree, which is cool, but it also really highlights how to me the problems above and specifically how cliched fantasy RPG monsters are. Like you've always got your goblins (nasty little not-men) or your orcs (mean warrior not-men) and your beasts (bears, owlbears, superwolves whatever), your undeads, your dragons etc. They largely exist without being really tied to a setting beyond "It's fantasy" -- or if they are tied to it they still mostly exist as their cliches. I get that this serves a purpose in adventure length and system mastery - but I am not so concerned about that stuff.

So those questions again -- or finally.

1. Do these critiques of monsters/monster manuals feel true to others? (Or is this a just me being weird thing)?

2. Why do people who love Monster Manuals love them?

Also I want to repeat that this isn't intended to throw shade on Monster Overhaul - I really do think it's a triumph.

Gus L said:

1. Do these critiques of monsters/monster manuals feel true to others? (Or is this a just me being weird thing)?

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Well, if you're someone who makes bespoke monsters every time -- and I do a lot of this, myself -- big premade books of monsters can often be of less value, for sure. I think Monster Overhaul isn't primarily aimed at those people.

That said, as I've been pulling out as I work my way through it, there's a ton of interesting ideas in the book that are useful even for people who won't ever pull from the book directly. The dragon entry, for instance, cries out for coming up with more dragon types to put on its chart, now that Skerples has helped show how weird dragons can be.

For myself, my preferred OSR engine is Shadowdark and while it has a decent-sized bestiary, it doesn't have everything and many of its choices are TSR D&D flavored, which at this point, I find pretty vanilla and underwhelming. I like my OSR to be darker and weirder, and nearly every entry in the Monster Overhaul has at least a few nods in that direction. (The Monster Overhaul druid, for instance, I find to be completely compelling -- a wild man of the woods who is clearly dangerous to be around, even for "allies.")

Gus L said:

2. Why do people who love Monster Manuals love them?

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This isn't necessarily me. I have some very specific monster books (most of Cawood Publishing's Monsters of the ______ line, and a book of Latin American monsters), to flesh out specific campaigns I'm running. I'm also saving up my pennies to get Monster Manual Expanded to flesh out the 5E Monster Manual.

But I think most of the people who are bestiary collectors like seeing the wide variety of crazy ideas, partly for the inherent fun of it, but also to surprise players who tend to memorize the core monster book of the game they're using.

I love monster books because of the inspiration mainly, then the lore, and lastly the stats. I used to think (for an embarrassingly long time) that I liked them for the stats more, but only all-too-recently have I discovered that I don't like my games as mechanically complex as I thought I did. So I've got monster books for 5E for days, but ever since picking up Forge of Foes, I realized 98% of the stats in all those books are wasted on me; I just use the monster table on page 6 which presents the baseline stats. I make significantly simpler versions of the monsters using those baselines, pull some abilities from other chapters of Forge of Foes, and maybe an ability or two from all those other monster books, and go. My monsters are rarely more than about 2-3 sentences worth of info. (More importantly, I'm also completely burnt on 5E and complexity near that degree.)

Which leads us to Monster Overhaul. While I think it does prove a lot about how monster stats can be pulled together quickly out of a hat when you're experienced, I think that's less true for inexperienced folks. Moreover, for me, I reference it all the time, because the lore about each monster gives it more purpose than "thing to be killed," and the breadth of coverage and options for each monster means there's still a lot of stuff that is equally useful to me during prep and during actual gameplay, if I lean into randomness, rather than planning out every encounter (or even what creatures appear on random encounter tables). I don't know exactly how that lends itself to the specific question above, but that's my take, I guess.

Another Treasure Overhaul preview. They have a very strong Wandering Merchant (from Shadowdark) vibe, presumably because both are riffing off the same original source material I'm unfamiliar with.

Skerples said:

In the depths of a dungeon, in the desolate wilderness, adventurers may be lucky enough to encounter a Dungeon Merchant. They carry a limited selection of mostly mundane items, but occasionally have magic items and potions for sale.

If your players still have an “I stab the king” mentality, dungeon merchants probably will not work for your group. There are forces you meddle with, and forces you do not meddle with, and Dungeon Merchants are firmly in the latter category.

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And then there's 20 different merchants given. True to Skerples' whole vibe, most of them are pretty crazy.

Skerples said:

11. Braden’s Bulk Bin​

Appearance: a rusty iron cube. Speaking grill and item exchange chute. Flickering neon sign.
Voice: echoing, garbled, but youthful and bored. Sounds underpaid and fed up. Follows a script.
Covets: rare magic items.
Shrewdness: not paid enough to handle weird arguments. Do you want your torches or not?

Mundane items sold by Braden’s Bulk Bin are twice as heavy and occupy twice as many Inventory Slots as normal. They are usually badly painted custard yellow.

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