Fantasy Fridays: Forgotten Realms Book of Lairs

 Working through my Forgotten Realms books. I’ve been wanting to put in some time with the Forgotten Realms reviews. In part because I have a pile of them here staring at me. Taunting me. 

The one for today is an odd little utility book of the sort TSR excelled at in the late 80s and early 90s.  Don’t expect a campaign-shaking mega-adventure or a big boxed set. Nor is it one of those "here is an entire country, good luck" affairs. It is far more straightforward. "Here are some monsters and their lairs. Go on and have an adventure."

Book of Lairs [Forgotten Realms] (2e)

1994. By Nicky Rea and Sam Witt. Cover art by Larry Elmore, interiors from Valerie Valusek, and cartography by John Knecht and Rob Lazzaretti. 96 pages.

For this review, I am considering my PDF and PoD versions from DriveThruRPG.

This book follows the previous Book of Lairs format TSR has put out in the past, only this is tailored for the Forgotten Realms and for AD&D 2nd edition. Inside you will find 35 short scenarios, each with a monster at its heart. The product copy touts "over 30" adventures for a single session full of danger and humor and the like; I would say that is as apt a description as any.

One thing I do want to point out right away in reading this. Hidden in the math is an ersatz or even proto-Challenge Rating. Each monster lair listing has recommended total levels and recommended average party level. Divide the total levels by 6 to get close to the average party level. It works much in the same way Monster Mark did, and Challenge Levels do. We almost had this in 1994. 

Also note that this is not a monster book, nor an adventure book in the full sense. It is a collection of mini-situations and encounters. And that is where you will find both the merit and the flaw in it.

They do make some assumptions about your library, namely that you have the Campaign Setting and the Monstrous Compendium appendices for the Realms. The latter is key.

You won’t be looking at the usual suspects. We have alguduirs, asperii, beguilers, belabras, bhaergala, bichirs, cantobeles, cildabrins, crawling claws, crimson death, dimensional warpers, dracoliches, fachans, firenewts, frosts, hauns, inquisitors, loxo, monkey spiders, morins, orpsus, revenants, saurials, sha’az, silver dogs, thylacines, wemics, and so on. This is strength really. It makes this a Realms book and not the same as the previous Book of Lairs. IT does mean you need the Forgotten Realms Monstrous Compendium pages, though.

With the old Monstrous Compendium type books/pages you are given some wonderful, oddball creatures and left to your own devices. I don’t mind that; I enjoy my monster books for the reading. But a monster ought to have context, a place in the world, something more than a roll on the random encounter table to justify its presence.

Book of Lairs provides that. Each entry is brief, a page or two at the most. There is the creature, the setup, the lair, a few complications. You can run it with hardly any prep. You will find another reviewer has it right: the bulk of the encounters in here run to 2 or 3 pages and are drawn from the monsters in MC3 and MC11, the appendices for the Forgotten Realms Monstrous Compendium. It is a quality that makes the book feel like something you can put to good use at the table.

Then again, not all of them are "Realmsy" (if you want to call it that). You could take some of these and put them in Greyhawk, Mystara, my own Mystoerth, or wherever your world is with no trouble. I would say that is the best way to employ the book these days. Sure, it is a 96-page tome of weird AD&D monster encounters and a product of the Realms, but I can make use of it anywhere. My oldest is currently using it in his own world using AD&D 1st edition, so it has flexibility. 

The setting does make its presence known. You will come across Harpers, Zhentarim, Tyr, Moander, places like Westgate, Yhaunn, Calaunt, the Shining Plains, and Sembia. But do not expect the kind of lore you get in The Code of the Harpers; this is a working DM’s book. I think that is why I like it.

My only real gripe (and this is a minor one) is with how it is put together. An alphabetical list by monster is well and good when you have decided on a dracolich or revenant, but what if you are looking for something to throw at a 5th-level party in a swamp? So an index by level or difficulty (dare I say, Challenge Rating) would be great.

But then, it is 1994 TSR. This is the sort of thing you were meant to read, mark up, and leave next to your DM's screen. Find an encounter, make it your own, and be done with it. There is a very AD&D sensibility to that.

In many ways, the Realms at this time still has that huge, messy quality to it, with things left unexplained. I see that as a feature, not a bug. The Forgotten Realms is at its best when it seems you have only seen one inn or one haunted ruin, and there are a hundred other things about to step out of the torchlight. This book gives you that sense.  I mean, despite the fact that we are now sitting on the other side of 40 years of published Realms lore, I am still new to all of this.

There is your dracolich lair, the big ticket item, but I am more inclined toward the odder, smaller fare. A silver dog, a saurial, a wemic, or the thylacines (I am a fan of The Howling III, and I think at least someone on the Realms staff is as well.). They are the kind of creature that tells you the Realms is more than generic fantasy with Elminster tacked on. These are places where oddities have families, enemies, and a history.

That is what the book is worth. It shows you a monster is not a stat block. It has a place, a situation, and motivation. And the lair itself is often the adventure.

Sinéad, Nida, Arnell, Jaromir, and Rhiannon

Since my characters are still heading east, this book is immediately useful to me. I could drop one of these encounters into their path without too much trouble. A strange beast on the road. A ruined tower with something nesting inside. A village dealing with a problem that is bigger than they understand. That is exactly the sort of thing this book is built for.

I don’t know that Book of Lairs is essential Realms material. If you are building a Realms library, you want the boxed sets, the regional books, the big lore books, and probably the deity books before this one. But if you are actually running AD&D 2nd Edition Forgotten Realms, or any old-school fantasy game, this is the kind of book that earns its keep.

It is not flashy. It is not a grand tour of Faerûn. It is not going to explain the Time of Troubles or give you the secret history of the Harpers. It will give you a monster in a lair and a reason for the characters to investigate. Which, honestly, is how most good monster encounters should work.

The PDF and PoD are both legible and easy to read for a scanned product.

The PoD suffers from faded text typical of a scan, but this one is a little better than most, to be honest, and unless you are looking for it, you might not notice it. 

All in all, pretty happy with my purchase.