Crothian
First Post
I just did a Piazo book, I want to spread the love around a little before I do another one of theirs.
August RPG Book Club: Classic Monsters Revisted
- Thread starter Crothian
- Start date
I just did a Piazo book, I want to spread the love around a little before I do another one of theirs.
Angel Tarragon
Dawn Dragon
Okay, then how about Ptolus?
DM_Jeff
Explorer
Apparently born out of the sheer fun and great reesponse to the goblins of Pathfinder #1, I found the best part of this book was just its enjoyment-to-read factor.
Usually when settling down with a new game book, I keep a few core books nearby to double-check a feat, spell, creature power or whatever. No need for that here! This book was just a load of fun to take in. Add in a hammock and a tall glass of leomonade and I had a great reading session.
The goblins worked so well when I ran PF #1 I knew adding more personality to monsters was a key to making 'old battles seem new'. My player's responded, citing the goblins, ogres of PF#3, and even the ghouls of PF#2 just because of the new light cast on them in the story.
I have to admit I read Kobolds first. I always beleived they had more meat to 'em than meets the eye, and as expected they took the dragon roots theory and ran with it. They touched on the sterotypes but made them feel more grim-n-gritty in the presentation.
The Orc chapter was good. I didn't know what I was looking for going in, they didn't seem all that new but were still plentifully flavorful. It helped when I played an orc NPC at a bar one of my PF players tried talking up, he obviously stood out and raised some eyebrows at the table.
The Lizardfolk and minotaur sections were good, but my real eye-openers were for the awesome Bugbears, Gnolls, Goblins and Hobgoblins were spot-on what I needed to breathe new life into them during play.
For those of us still using the classic d20 system, small sidebars here and there suggesting new equipment or rules were just icing on the cake.
-DM Jeff
Usually when settling down with a new game book, I keep a few core books nearby to double-check a feat, spell, creature power or whatever. No need for that here! This book was just a load of fun to take in. Add in a hammock and a tall glass of leomonade and I had a great reading session.
The goblins worked so well when I ran PF #1 I knew adding more personality to monsters was a key to making 'old battles seem new'. My player's responded, citing the goblins, ogres of PF#3, and even the ghouls of PF#2 just because of the new light cast on them in the story.
I have to admit I read Kobolds first. I always beleived they had more meat to 'em than meets the eye, and as expected they took the dragon roots theory and ran with it. They touched on the sterotypes but made them feel more grim-n-gritty in the presentation.
The Orc chapter was good. I didn't know what I was looking for going in, they didn't seem all that new but were still plentifully flavorful. It helped when I played an orc NPC at a bar one of my PF players tried talking up, he obviously stood out and raised some eyebrows at the table.
The Lizardfolk and minotaur sections were good, but my real eye-openers were for the awesome Bugbears, Gnolls, Goblins and Hobgoblins were spot-on what I needed to breathe new life into them during play.
For those of us still using the classic d20 system, small sidebars here and there suggesting new equipment or rules were just icing on the cake.
-DM Jeff
Garnfellow
Explorer
I just finished Classic Monsters Revisited, and on the whole found it to be a very nice little read. Like all Paizo books, it looks great and has terrific production values. And the writing is strong throughout, even though it appears that several different authors were working on this one.
I think the goal of this book, as articulated in James Jacobs' foreword, to be most laudable:
The genius of Paizo has always been the ability to take classic IP from the game's history and give it a new, vibrant spin. In many ways Paizo has proven to be a much better appreciator of Wizards' own IP than Wizards itself. I don't know if it's an Anxiety of Influence hang-up or what, but throughout much of 3e and into 4e, the WotC designers seem to possess a tremendous ambivalence about their IP inheritance, as if it were all some weighty burden or embarrassment: they just didn't seem to know what to do with all that wonderful stuff. So all-too-often when they weren't ignoring the classic IP they were busy taking a wrecking ball to it.
At the other end of the spectrum you might imagine the idolatrous veneration of old material, which is the doom of fandom. Basically, a paralytic terror of changing anything because somewhere, somehow, one might actually . . . invalidate canon! (Cue ominous organ chord.)
Paizo has always been able to deftly maneuver between these two extremes, using the old material respectfully but not slavishly, making this material new and interesting but without completely rewiring it. (I'm reminded of how Alan Moore was able to take tired old DC characters and, while keeping everything that made those characters what they had been, with just a couple of twists showing us those same characters in an entirely transformed light.)
When Paizo lost the magazines (and with them, official access to all of WotC's historic, closed IP), I confess I also thought they had lost the one thing they did better than anyone else, and that this loss might cripple them.
But Paizo has adapted well to the new world order, and has done a great job of mining open gaming content for classic goodness. Classic Monsters Revisited is certainly in this vein, full of sweet little shout-outs to the game's history, as well as exciting new perspectives on familiar monsters.
Although my overall impression of this book is pretty bullish, there are a couple of problems I want to call attention to. Both of these probably won't bother most readers in the slightest, but the people who will be bugged by these things will be really bugged by them.
First is Paizo extremely dissapointing OGC declaration. I've looked at the declarations in a lot of Paizo's books, and frankly they are all over the map in terms of their clarity. Classic Monsters Revisited may have the worst yet, recalling the muddled declarations from early on in the d20 era: Product Identity includes "all trademarks, registered trademarks, proper names, dialog, plots, storylines [to this point, everything is pretty reasonable], language [WTF?], concepts [WTF?], incidents, locations, characters, artwork, and trade dress [well, these last five are pretty reasonable]."
That sounds like covers just about everything under the sun, right?
Vague, overly broad declarations like this are worthless and I had hoped a relic of the past. But wait! Check out the Open Content declaration: "Except for material designated as Product Identity . . . the Appendix of this Paizo Publishing game product is Open Game Content."
Groovy, except there is no appendix!
If Paizo really wants to be a leader in the new open gaming movement, they'll need to do a helluva lot better than that. I understand if, as a largely crunch free book full of new IP, Paizo wants to protect as much content as they can. But what is open should be clearly stated as open. This not rocket science, and in 2008 is not a new consideration. For many years Green Ronin and Necromancer have provided outstanding examples of how to clearly designate open content, and Paizo should follow their lead. I'm not sure if this is just sloppiness or what ("This Paizo Publishing game product" reads like boilerplate that never got updated.) At the very least, it seems like the monster stat blocks should all be open.
Which brings me to my next problem: the stat blocks themselves. Each re-envisioned monster features a full stat block treatment in Paizo's vastly superior new format. Huzzah! But the stat blocks are plagued by niggling little typesetting errors and inconsistencies. Boo!
It looks like just plain old sloppy work in converting SRD entries to the new format, and while I might turn a blind eye to such things from smaller publishers, frankly I hold Paizo to a higher standard than that.
Most of these glitches are pretty picayune individually, but collectively become very unfortunate. Take the goblin entry, for instance. There's no Space or Reach details (though they are given for other monsters), and the goblin's Skill block (describing racial bonuses) is not included. And although the Paizo developer did catch the nasty errors with goblin's skills in the SRD (too few points) I believe the Paizo developer turned around and then gave the goblin too many.
For the record, I think the goblin should have (1+3)*(2) = 8 skill points, which could be spent like this: Hide +6 (2 ranks, +1 Dex, +4 size, -1 acp), Listen +3 (2 ranks, -1 Wis, +2 Alertness), Move Silently +6 (2 ranks, +1 Dex, +4 racial, -1 acp), Ride +5 (0 ranks, +1 Dex, +4 racial), Spot +3 (2 ranks, -1 Wis, +2 ).
None of this should affect the playability of the stat blocks, but would probably result in a flunking grade from John Cooper. And an unfortunate consequence of these errors is that I start questioning everything else about the stats.
For example, the Paizo bugbear is listed as CR 3, as oppossed to CR 2 in the SRD. Was this a conscious choice -- did the Paizo designers really think the bugbear was too tough for CR 2? Or is it just a typo?
I think the goal of this book, as articulated in James Jacobs' foreword, to be most laudable:
And largely, I think they were successful.James Jacobs said:
The genius of Paizo has always been the ability to take classic IP from the game's history and give it a new, vibrant spin. In many ways Paizo has proven to be a much better appreciator of Wizards' own IP than Wizards itself. I don't know if it's an Anxiety of Influence hang-up or what, but throughout much of 3e and into 4e, the WotC designers seem to possess a tremendous ambivalence about their IP inheritance, as if it were all some weighty burden or embarrassment: they just didn't seem to know what to do with all that wonderful stuff. So all-too-often when they weren't ignoring the classic IP they were busy taking a wrecking ball to it.
At the other end of the spectrum you might imagine the idolatrous veneration of old material, which is the doom of fandom. Basically, a paralytic terror of changing anything because somewhere, somehow, one might actually . . . invalidate canon! (Cue ominous organ chord.)
Paizo has always been able to deftly maneuver between these two extremes, using the old material respectfully but not slavishly, making this material new and interesting but without completely rewiring it. (I'm reminded of how Alan Moore was able to take tired old DC characters and, while keeping everything that made those characters what they had been, with just a couple of twists showing us those same characters in an entirely transformed light.)
When Paizo lost the magazines (and with them, official access to all of WotC's historic, closed IP), I confess I also thought they had lost the one thing they did better than anyone else, and that this loss might cripple them.
But Paizo has adapted well to the new world order, and has done a great job of mining open gaming content for classic goodness. Classic Monsters Revisited is certainly in this vein, full of sweet little shout-outs to the game's history, as well as exciting new perspectives on familiar monsters.
* * * * *
Although my overall impression of this book is pretty bullish, there are a couple of problems I want to call attention to. Both of these probably won't bother most readers in the slightest, but the people who will be bugged by these things will be really bugged by them.
First is Paizo extremely dissapointing OGC declaration. I've looked at the declarations in a lot of Paizo's books, and frankly they are all over the map in terms of their clarity. Classic Monsters Revisited may have the worst yet, recalling the muddled declarations from early on in the d20 era: Product Identity includes "all trademarks, registered trademarks, proper names, dialog, plots, storylines [to this point, everything is pretty reasonable], language [WTF?], concepts [WTF?], incidents, locations, characters, artwork, and trade dress [well, these last five are pretty reasonable]."
That sounds like covers just about everything under the sun, right?
Vague, overly broad declarations like this are worthless and I had hoped a relic of the past. But wait! Check out the Open Content declaration: "Except for material designated as Product Identity . . . the Appendix of this Paizo Publishing game product is Open Game Content."
Groovy, except there is no appendix!
If Paizo really wants to be a leader in the new open gaming movement, they'll need to do a helluva lot better than that. I understand if, as a largely crunch free book full of new IP, Paizo wants to protect as much content as they can. But what is open should be clearly stated as open. This not rocket science, and in 2008 is not a new consideration. For many years Green Ronin and Necromancer have provided outstanding examples of how to clearly designate open content, and Paizo should follow their lead. I'm not sure if this is just sloppiness or what ("This Paizo Publishing game product" reads like boilerplate that never got updated.) At the very least, it seems like the monster stat blocks should all be open.
Which brings me to my next problem: the stat blocks themselves. Each re-envisioned monster features a full stat block treatment in Paizo's vastly superior new format. Huzzah! But the stat blocks are plagued by niggling little typesetting errors and inconsistencies. Boo!
It looks like just plain old sloppy work in converting SRD entries to the new format, and while I might turn a blind eye to such things from smaller publishers, frankly I hold Paizo to a higher standard than that.
Most of these glitches are pretty picayune individually, but collectively become very unfortunate. Take the goblin entry, for instance. There's no Space or Reach details (though they are given for other monsters), and the goblin's Skill block (describing racial bonuses) is not included. And although the Paizo developer did catch the nasty errors with goblin's skills in the SRD (too few points) I believe the Paizo developer turned around and then gave the goblin too many.
For the record, I think the goblin should have (1+3)*(2) = 8 skill points, which could be spent like this: Hide +6 (2 ranks, +1 Dex, +4 size, -1 acp), Listen +3 (2 ranks, -1 Wis, +2 Alertness), Move Silently +6 (2 ranks, +1 Dex, +4 racial, -1 acp), Ride +5 (0 ranks, +1 Dex, +4 racial), Spot +3 (2 ranks, -1 Wis, +2 ).
None of this should affect the playability of the stat blocks, but would probably result in a flunking grade from John Cooper. And an unfortunate consequence of these errors is that I start questioning everything else about the stats.
For example, the Paizo bugbear is listed as CR 3, as oppossed to CR 2 in the SRD. Was this a conscious choice -- did the Paizo designers really think the bugbear was too tough for CR 2? Or is it just a typo?
Last edited:
Rodrigo Istalindir
Explorer
August is coming to an end. Any suggestions for September? The book I had in mind I wasn't as thrilled about when I read through it so I'm looking for something people will like and want to talk about!!
Monsters and Other Childish Things?
Crothian
First Post
It is tempting choice. I'll have to reread it this weekend and see. I am hopefully getting a box of stuff today and was thinking of using something in there once I see what is in there.
demiurge1138
Inventor of Super-Toast
Yeah, that one stuck out at me too. I asked James Jacobs on the Paizo boards, and he said yes, it was an error.
I didn't notice the missing Space/Reach in the goblin entry. Odd.
Garnfellow
Explorer
That's a shame, then.
James Jacobs
Adventurer
As for the Space/Reach thing... we generally leave out the line if it's just the same old 5 ft. space/5 ft. reach. So looking at it that way, the stat blocks that HAVE the line in there for normal old Medium and Small creatures are the ones in error.
That said... thanks for all the kind words about Classic Monsters Revisited; it's good to see that people get a kick out of the book, even if there are a few warts in there like typos and the like! Grrr. Typos.
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