Thursday, February 21, 2013

Review: Teratic Tome


The Teratic Tome

The Teratic Tome is an "old school" monster book for OSRIC or any old School "Advanced" version of the game.  What do you get?  Well a lot.  Let's start with some of the things that others have not all mentioned first. This book is 100% OGC.  So if you want to use one of these horrors in one of your products go right ahead. Just abide by the OGL.  There are a lot of reasons why you might want to use these monsters too.  They are some of the most original horrors I have seen outside of indie horror games.

The layout and feel is evocative of those "monster manuals" of old. It does quite a nice job of it too.  The art though is much better than what you would have seen circa 1980.  The art varies in style, but all of it is quite good.   Now is a good time to point out that the art and the monsters they depict are not for the faint of heart.  There is a lot of "body horror" here.  The grotesque mixed with the commonplace or even the erotic.  The feeling is more Clive Barker than H.P. Lovecraft and I think that was a great direction to go.

Truthfully I would have picked this up for the demons and dragons alone, but there are 120 pages worth monsters here. Even the halflings are evil little buggers in this tome.

If you like horror and new creatures, and your players can handle it, then this is a great monster book.
If you like horror and monster books in general, then this is great to have as well.

Plus who can argue with a $6.66 price tag?

Who should not get this?  I don't know really.  I mean I am not going to use any of these creatures in my games with my kids.  So that does lessen the utility for me, but I can still use some ideas. And that is just as good.

A lot of people like to call this the "LotFP Monster Manual" but that is not being fair to this book to be honest.  It really is more than that.

You can learn more about the book at the author's website: http://rafaelchandler.com/rpgs.html

Or you can pick up a hardbound copy at Lulu:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/rafael-chandler/teratic-tome/hardcover/product-20695443.html
If you buy the PDF first then you get a discount on the hardcover.  Not a bad deal really.

2 comments:

Keith Davies said...

And if you buy the hardcover, the thank you note from Lulu includes a link to a PDF download, so you'll have time to read that while you wait for your mail.

Works out the same, and this might be simpler.

Timothy S. Brannan said...

Also if you buy the hardcover book you can get the PDF for free.

So not a bad deal really.