Introduction
Here is my review of the BX Advanced Bestiary Volume 1 from Thirdkingdom Games for the Old-School Essentials ruleset.
(NOTE: Beware, there a lot of images in this post, and you’ll have excuse the quality. I do the best that I can, but I’m not a photographer.)
Acquisition
I received this book because I backed the Kickstarter. I figured a GM can never have too many monsters on hand to torment players with, and besides, I really liked the concept of doing a deep dive into the existing monsters that were already provided as part of the Old-School Essentials game.
The Book
The book has a good feel to its 134 pages, and uses good quality offset printing and paper. Unfortunately, mine got a ding in the edge of the front cover from shipping, but it just gives it some character.
The book is built to last with smyth sewn binding, and it even includes a sewn in crimson ribbon to help keep your place. From a construction viewpoint, this book is constructed to last and to be used heavily. I’ll admit, I particularly like books with smyth sewn bindings, it shows that the people behind the book care about the usage.
I can never say this enough. I wish more Kickstarters would have smyth sewn binding at a minimum, and the other aspects such as sewn-in ribbons as part of their stretch goals. I see these as things that truly add quality to the product that they are producing.
The Material
This book takes the monsters provided in Old-School Essentials and expands on them. The sample spread above expands on the description of the carcass crawler. It provides a listing of special qualities, and then progresses through some variations of the monster. In this particular spread, those variations are the carcass worm, the nidhogg, and the shagluihu. As the cover indicates, Todd Leback gives this wonderful treatment to the critters alphabetically from A to D.
All of this served as inspiration to me on my own monster write-ups where I try to provide variation options for others to play with, and some actual variants of the core monster.
Additionally, Todd then also includes an appendix with information on animal training, an alchemical substance called crocodile tears, awakened cave locust, his own spin on changeling, cyclopskin, dragonborn, and genasi (shown in the sample spread below).
At several points he references his other works, such as Into the Wild, or his various Hex products (some of this is available for free, some you will need to pay a reasonable price). In the introduction of the book, Todd outlines some variations and alternate rule options that could be used by you, and some reference his other works, providing full product names to assist in the usage. Key among the information in the introduction, is the information necessary to making full sense of his monster entries.
Conclusion
In summary, this is a well written book with plenty of inspirational and straight up useful material. I do recommend including this in your Old-School Essentials (or BX variant of your choice) gaming library. So this book is definitely in the category of recommend for others, and I’m hoping Todd continues the series. I’m curious to see what he does with some of the remaining critters and what kinds of things he adds in for the future appendices.
You can get your own copy at Thirdkingdome Games.
Go have fun and game on!
Den of Games 