And now we come to the first monster book that's full of original monsters, developed for a campaign setting that debuted in AD&D 2nd Edition instead of being a 1E update. That's right, we come now to
MC7 Monstrous Compendium Spelljammer Appendix, or at I like to call it, the book of monsters...
IIIIIIIIIN SPAAAAAAAAACE!!!
Now, I promise I'm not trying to turn these MC retrospectives into excuses to wax nostalgic about their respective campaign settings, but given how many of them are campaign-world specific that oftentimes can't be helped. Particularly so when it's related to the ever-present issue of trying to balance that specificity with making the monsters usable in most other campaigns (either homebrew or official).
Spelljammer, however, is different in that regard (albeit not unique), because much like the planes of existence, it's sort of a "meta-setting," making up part of the background that virtually all campaign worlds will have. Sure, you might not ever have your PCs ever venture into space...but who can say that your next session won't be one where the party gets it in their heads to fly (or teleport) to the moon, and suddenly you're scrambling to figure out what's there. At least with MC7, you'll have something to draw upon.
Of course, whether or not that
something will be worthwhile is very much a different issue.
All of which is to say that the monsters in this book are
weird. Not necessarily bad, mind you, but strange. Depending on what you think of space adventures, this is either this MCs greatest feature or its fatal flaw. Personally, I get a kick out of this; there are too many monsters that try to fill the same relative niche (we're barely over a half-dozen monster books in, and I've already lost count of how many goblinoids we've seen), so it's nice that this book really tries to mix things up...at least mostly; try as it might to fool me, the space mimic is pretty much just a normal mimic with a tiny bit of magical ability and a somewhat phantasmagoric stellar makeover.
Most of these other creatures, however, are essentially minor adventures unto themselves. I mean, take a look at
SJR8 Space Lairs; most of what's there just slaps an introduction and resolution onto a random encounter with some of these creatures, along with a mini-map (okay, that's an uncharitable way to describe SJR8, but it's not
that much of an exaggeration).
And really, that's
sort of how it should be. The way I see it, this monster book is basically adhering to the "Star Trek" style of weird monster encounters, where the adventures are episodic in nature, often themed around running into some strange new creature that you've never encountered before, and never will again. I mean, how many gorns did we see after the first time Kirk fought one (gold star to the first Trekkie (Trekker?) who can answer that!). Same thing here, just with an albari, or a blazozoid, or a misi, etc.
What's funny about this is that it
almost seems like a deliberate rejection of the idea of "traction" that's been talked about previously in this thread. The vast majority of these monsters aren't very memorable, but I could kinda sorta see myself being talked into maybe thinking that was possibly the point. I mean, there's virtually nothing here that you could build much of a campaign on (though Teldin Moore of the Cloakmaster Cycle of spelljammer novels would note that the reigar can, at the very least, kick off a campaign), but by that same token if all you need is an evening's weirdness, just open this MC to a random page and odds are you're good to go. Sure, you'll need to do a little more than "you see a strange monster; roll for initiative!", but again, if you play up the investigative/diplomatic aspects of what most of these things bring to the (game)table, you can absolutely get a session out of the majority of these monsters.
Of course, there are a few breakouts. For instance, my honor as a gamer won't let me fail to mention how the giant space hamster (quite possibly the only "normal animal, but bigger" monster that anyone actually liked) originated here. Yeah, sure, we all know Boo these days, but he's just one of the many, MANY variant types of GSHs listed here! When the carnivorous flying giant space hamster goes for the eyes, cyclopes everywhere whimper in terror!
Slightly less ridiculous were the major expansions that the beholders got here. While these don't represent the full range of eye tyrant-related monsters that you'll find in
I, Tyrant, these were where the ideas of beholders having their own "castes" (for lack of a better term) which collectively made them a major threat to the space-lanes got started.
And of course, here we find the monster entries for the hadozee (whereas the PC rules were in
CGR1 The Complete Spacefarer's Handbook). Nuff said.
I should also point out that several of the monsters here seem to wear their inspirations rather openly. Now, that's not
too unusual, given that space travel/exploration has "traditionally" been the province of science fiction, which is fantasy's slightly-more-respected cousin (the use of sarcasm quotes around "traditionally" is to indicate how they were, until relatively recently, the same genre), and so there are many inspirations at work, ranging from the classical to the esoteric. Hence, if you know what to look for, the templates which derived these creatures looms large. The clockwork horrors, for example, are
von Neumann probes. The murderoid is (basically) that thing that
tried to eat the Millennium Falcon in
Star Wars. The lakshu are from the anime
Legend of Heavenly Sphere Shurato, as
@AuldDragon so helpfully
informed us.
Of course, in a few cases, the obvious inspirations are wrong, even if they're no less hilarious for it. Just looking at the chattur, for instance, makes me want to make a crack about the High Evolutionary. I suppose "Guardians of the Crystal Sphere" doesn't have quite the same ring, though, does it?
But really, this MC is fairly tame in that regard. We'll get quite a few more "serial numbers filed off" monsters in the next Spelljammer monster book. But that will have to wait, because beyond even wildspace, comes the planes of existence...
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