Monsternomicon

[uv23]

I have thoroughly enjoyed the book. Good aspects are the layout style, the shilouettes for size comparisons (something I really hope becomes a standard), lore levels, and the beasties themselves. I really dislike the script font as its hard as a mofo to actually read. And there are some minor editing, layout and grammatical errors. I also found the chapter on monster lore quite confusing on first read so I'll have to go through it a couple more times.

Favorite beasties are dragons which is very interesting since I normally couldn't give a rat's ass about dragons, but IK has made them fresh again!, deathjack, cephalyx, pistol wraith. I like the new races of trollkin, ogrun, and gobber. Gives a really new perspective. But the Skorne fall flat for me.

IK rocks.

 

[Carnifex]

Jaldaen - once I've read through the entire book I'll give you some comments on those monsters!

I have to say, I do understand the complaints about the text, and I think the 'handwritten' bits could have used a more readable font as well. I've noticed a few oddities amongst the monsters - the dragonspawned sample creature doesn't follow the guidelines for them laid out on the previous page and those guidelines lack CR calculation, for instance. Overall it looks excellent, and I've decided that there'll be an Iron Lich appearing fairly soon in my campaign

 

[Katerek]

I have every monster book that has come out for d20.

Monsternomicon is my favorite thus far, taking the crown away from just recently published Liber Beastarius (sp?).

The price was fair.

The cover was traditional (or what has come to be traditional) yet fresh. The 'breakthrough' effect was once done to death but I liked the use of it here.

Some of the font's inside the book were a bit of a pain but not altogether intolerable. I liked what was attempted witht he 'handwritten' portion, but quite frankly the font was a too confusing.

The size comparison pics were amazingly useful, something I haven't seen since the days of the old cthulluh books. I too would like to see this standard.

The artwork was superb for the most part, there were a few pics that were a bit too busy, but overall I enjoyed it. I like seeing the monster's in question 'in action' as it were, and this provided that visually more than once.

The actual monsters were solid through and through. Anyone not wanting steampunk elements in their game can easily just call the steampowered automatons golems and get on with it. In fact, I do just that, and my players never questioned it.

The approach on tomes was neat, it would be better served if it slowly became an industry standard. This too harkened me back to the days of cthulluh.

While I myself won't use every monster in there, there were no monsters that I looked at and said "Now that is just silly."

Normally I am hyper-critical of monster books, and for my money almost everything published thus far has been a turd. That is only my opinion, however, and is not meant as a challenge to anyones belief or favorites.

I was very satisfied with monsternomicon, the only real regret I have about it is that it wasn't in color.

I look forward to additional volumes.

 

[Crothian]

The approach on tomes was neat, it would be better served if it slowly became an industry standard. This too harkened me back to the days of cthulluh.

What do you mean by this?

 

[Katerek]

The tomes section that went into more detail on lore and what the different levels of lore meant. It outlined a few tomes of monster lore that were out there and available.

I think it would be cool if the legend and lore portion of this book and this approach to designing tomes that contain lore would be included in other publications, as much as can be legally done anyhow.

It kind of reminded me of the books of magical lore that one could find in CoC, I dunno why, it just did.

Hope I answered your question.

 

[Carnifex]

Well, I'm nearly finished the monsters section of the book - and am very impressed so far! Not one monster that I thought 'that's completely useless'.

I like the idea of the unique grymkin like the Old Man of the Swamp (I think he's of the swamp, can't remember). But equally, I think the creature(s) I'm least fond of are Gristle and Flay, so far.

 

[jaldaen]

Jaldaen - once I've read through the entire book I'll give you some comments on those monsters!

Thanks a bunch...

Jaldaen

PS: Thus far (still reading everything) my favorite things about the monsternomicon are: The size comparisons, treasure sections, legend and lore sections, and most of the art...

 

[jaults]

    I've paged through this one two seperate occasions, and it looks great. I really like the way they've laid each monster out, with all of the additional "fluffy" info. Makes for a well integrated monster.
    It is on the top of the list of "stuff to buy" when I have the money to buy it...

    Jason

 

[Hand of Evil]

I like it a lot. There are two things in the book that are simple pleasures that really push the book to the top of my monster book list. The size charts and the lore. It is amazing what these two item add, sure they are not important overall but they are just nice and add flavor.

Like I said, a simple pleasure.

 

[Undead Pete]

I just got it today and it met my extremely HIGH expectations.

Iron Kingdoms tops my list of campaigns.

The only thing I din't like in the book was the artwork for Gristle and Flay. It seemed to be much more amateur than the rest of the stupendous illustrations

Admittedly that's a very minor complant.

So..... when's Volume 2 coming out?? And are you taking submissions??