Monstrous Mondays: New & Old School Monster Books; Where the Basajaun lives

Basajaun

Today I want to talk about a few monster books coming up and their intersections and why that is all great.

I recently featured two new Kickstarters on my Kickstart Your Weekend post.  They are Twilight Fables and A Folklore Bestiary for 5E and OSE (less than 72 hours to go on this one!).  Both are for 5e with the Folklore Bestiary also for OSE.

Both of these books look fantastic and you should back them both.  

But you may ask, will there be overlap? Will I end up buying the same monster twice? And the answer to this is "Yes. Yes, you will."  This is not a bad thing.  Going through the two publicly available lists of the monsters both have the Bukavac and the Basajaun.  I'll even go a step further and point out that my own Basic Bestiary also has a Basajaun. 

That is three different versions of the same monster. I have seen the one from Twilight Fables and you have all seen mine.  They are very different from each other. While obviously the same creature, they do slightly different things. In truth, it is very much like how old bestiaries would describe animals. Even known animals would get slightly different treatments depending on the observer.  And these are not even the only ones. AAW Games has a monster card for the Basajaun for both 5e and Pathfinder. There very well could be a lot more.

The Basajaun here is a good example. This is a monster that exists in folklore and by all rights has a home somewhere in a fantasy game but has little coverage to date. That will change and he will get more exposure. If each monster book is like a medieval bestiary (and that is my starting point for the Basic Bestiary) then it makes sense there are differing views.  

To take it a step further, Twilight Fables uses the conceit of Rod Waibel's point of view character the sophisticated Gnoll Fleabag as the chronicler of these creatures. Likewise, I use my iconic witch Larina as viewed from notes from her Journal.  These two would obviously have different points of view on the same creature.

I have pretty much purchased every monster book I can for all versions of D&D and many for other games.  I always find more room on my shelves for more monster books.

Some monsters appear so often that I have no choice but to compare them. The Orc is a great example. Others also appear rather frequently. The Type I to VI demons from the original Monster Manual appear so often in demon books (thanks to the OGL) that I have been calling them "The Usual Suspects" as a nod to their frequency and to the 1995 film. 

For me, there is always room for more monsters and more monster books.