Favorite/Least Favorite Monster Books

[mattcolville]

Well, if you have the new issue of campaign, you'll see that it's not two filled out pages. It's one page, and one page of illustration. If asking about Soverign Stone...

Well, yeah. You said the Soverign Stone book had bad art and it bugged you that each monster was two pages. You didn't mention Campaign magazine.

What was there about SovStone's two pages per monster that you didn't like?

 

[JoeGKushner]

Well, yeah. You said the Soverign Stone book had bad art and it bugged you that each monster was two pages. You didn't mention Campaign magazine.

What was there about SovStone's two pages per monster that you didn't like?

The creatures in the new Campaign are an example of the style that the monsters follow. Page of text. Half page illustration. Pretty empty looking. Art okay, not my style.Looks like a lot of white space.

 

[mattcolville]

The creatures in the new Campaign are an example of the style that the monsters follow. Page of text. Half page illustration. Pretty empty looking. Art okay, not my style.Looks like a lot of white space.

Ah, ok. <wipes brow> The Liber Bestarius, which I developed and wrote most of, gives at least two pages to each monster. But there's very little white space, the art isn't oversized, it's just a lot of text.

 

[Nightfall]

I don't think you have to worry Mat. While I don't think I've slobbered much for Liber Beastius, I have TRULY enjoyed the excerpt that was on there for it. Definately one of the more interesting monsters I've seen.

 

[mattcolville]

Well it should be in stores. . .like. . .tomorrow. Or soon thereafter.

 

[Nightfall]

Well think I need to rob another armored car fellas.

 

[Eridanis]

Re: Look at the Minotaur illo

Wow, you mean _besides_ the horrible art? Half the book looked like it was done by somebody who "learned to draw the Marvel way". The TonyD stuff was nice, but come on--the book on whole is laughably bad!

That's because it *was* done by someone trained the Marvel way - Jeff Butler. He did all the illustrations for the first Marvel Super Heroes game, and the presence of his artwork is the only downside to the great 2nd edition Monster Manual.

As for 3E, I've purchased MM, Legions of Hell, Minions, and the two Creature Collections. I'll be selling the latter on eBay pretty soon, and don't expect to get much for them; the novelty of having a monster book out before the real MM, I think, drove most of the sales for that very poor book. Really, I'm looking forward to Tome of Horrors to fill in the gaps for my own campaign; while the MM's layout is irritating, the monsters within are essential. It's just that not everything I would use is in it!

And don't even get me started on Minions' artwork. The monsters were interesting, but it hurts my eyes to look at the blotchy amateur artwork that makes all the creatures look alike...

 

[Desdichado]

Although in many ways I like it, the Creatures of Rokugan book is flawed in that you seem to need the Rokugan campaign setting book to use it fully. I bought the thing hoping it would be more "plug and play." Some of the illustrations aren't as good as I would have liked either, but others are nice.

As for my favorite, probably the Book of Fiends Vols. 1-2.

 

[Stormprince]

The creatures in the new Campaign are an example of the style that the monsters follow. Page of text. Half page illustration. Pretty empty looking. Art okay, not my style.Looks like a lot of white space.

We actually chose to do that lay-out wise on purpose, dedicating at least 2 pages to each monster. Why, you might ask? Because, it's a hell of a lot easier to show players a picture of what they're facing with our book, without them really seeing any damaging game-information.

On top of that, not all monsters have "white-space." Quite a few, in fact, have the art imbedded into the text, ala MM3. We wanted each monster entry to begin on the left hand side, to make it much easier for a GM to flip through in the middle of a gaming session.

As for Andy Hopp's artwork, it's a hit or miss whether you like his style or not... however, at least we were consistant and used a single art-style throughout, without mixing and matching between a bunch of different artistic styles.

You want different, badder dragons than any other world? Pick up the Bestiary and read the Dragon entries in the appendix.

Each and every monster in the book was designed so that they would tie in with the world of the Sovereign Stone campaign setting, yet could still be used in other campaign worlds by simply adding an Alignment (since we don't use them... yeah, I know, I can hear the hollers beginning already) and swapping spells for spells.

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OTOH, I have Denizens of Darkness and I quite liked it I'm a big ol'Ravenloft fan from way back and I think they managed to do a half-way decent job with what they had to work with. Hell, just by them putting in the Emordenung (one of my all time fave monsters) in, it was a guaranteed winner in my mind ;-)

CCI did a good job with what they had to work with. Considering they were out fast, first out of the presses and working with only a preview of what would become D&D3E, I think they did an incredible job... and CCII proved they could do great work (even if there are a lot of Blood and Bone monsters!)
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[Desdichado]

I'm surprised at all the vehement outcries against CC1, myself. I like it. It's got some great concepts. Nobody much argues that. It also has some really silly concepts that I'll never use. It has some great artwork. It also has a few pieces of really awful artwork. You'd think from the critics that all of the art looked like the really bad stuff. It had some CR problems. You'd think from the critics that this makes the creatures unusable.

CC1 is still one of my favorite monster books. Sure, I won't use a lot of it (and I don't play Scarred Lands anyway) but I like the book.

Then again, I like monster books in general, so maybe I'm biased...