OSR Commentary On Castles & Crusades Monsters & Treasure For The Castles & Crusades rpg

 "Beasts of legend and myth, monsters great and small, these are the minstrel’s fare: dragons, giants, orcs, foul-minded fey, the dreaded hydra, the riddling sphynx, the naga, wyverns, griffons and so very much more."

"Monsters & Treasure contains over 400 monsters for your Castles & Crusades game. Each entry consists of an in-depth description of the monster, along with its nature, habits, the territories they occupy, their predilections, and all other relevant material. Each entry contains all the statistical information required to run the monster at any game table."

"Including mountains of treasure, both magical and mundane, as well as how to roleplay monsters, handling combat with monsters, creating monsters and defining and awarding treasures"

Castles & Crusades Monsters & Treasure was on my desk last night. It's been while since I've cracked open this C&C tome. One thing I've noticed is that even though all of the classic monsters are here. The organization of the Monsters & Treasure is done in such a way as to make it advantageous for adventure construction. The thing I started noticing is that Monsters & Treasure is laid out like a tool kit. You have a certain way that the monsters are placed with the right amount of likely treasure & the advantages the monsters have over the PC's. Is Castles & Cruasades Monsters and Treasure classic OSR?! Yes and no, Yes this book certainly fits the asthetic of modern rpg system but uses the trappings of old school gaming. So much so that Gary Gygax endorsed Castles & Crusades when he was alive. 
Castles & Crusades Monsters & Treasure fits the asthetic of the old school by providing the full gamit of horrors and monsters for your C&C adventurers to run into in the dungeon. 

There's enough generic bent to the monsters that they can fit into an any OSR or old school rpg campaign that is using the Castles & Crusades rpg system. For example we ran a Greyhawk C&C campaign. The Monsters & Treasure book was essential to running Greyhawk especially since it was such an unstable time in Greyhawk's history. 
Now we're talking about when there were a ton of raiders and barbarians during this time in Greyhawk's history. Therefore the Monsters and Treasure were essential to this core of this campaign. Why because of the number of treasures that had been looted from the countryside. Every small kingdom & village had a small treasure or artifact that seemed to wind up in the hands of every petty tyrant, king, dictator, and warlord in the region. 

This was a time in Greyhawk's history when monsters were outta of control and they were a part of the dark forces of Greyhawk. Our adventurers  came in as survivors of the purges and raiding from various villages or outlying regions. This again is where Monsters & Treasures came in handy as both reference and guide for our Castles & Crusades campaign back about two years ago. To me Castles & Crusades Monsters & Treasure is one of the C&C essential books and very well done in my humble opinion.