Review & Commentary On Book of Lost Beasts By Joseph Bloch From BRW Games For Adventures Dark And Deep Rpg & Other OSR Games

 "Nearly 200 new monsters for your old-school campaign!" 

From the massive prehistoric ambelodon to the terrifying plague zombie, within these pages you'll find a bevy of new monsters to use in your campaign. There are angels, bladegrass, undead dragons, rakshasa nobles, and much more! Creatures found in dungeons, wilderness, the prehistoric past, the sea, and even alien planes of existance are within." 

Joseph Bloch's  Book of Lost Beasts was a present from my wife last year for our anniversary. It was on the review pile and then with Wizards of the Coast's OGL debacle 'The Book of Lost Beasts' got put on the back burner of the review pile. But I'm determined to get this review done! 'The Book of Lost Beasts' is a really nice addition to the grand edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons first edition style games. 'The Book of Lost Beasts' follows the Monster Manual I & II school of layout and stat blocks but cleaner. She comes in at 132 pages of old school monster filled horror to inflict on your players.

Personally, my wife invested in "The Book of Lost Beasts" because it works with old school Advanced Dungeons & Dragons or with a little tweak Troll Lords Castles & Crusades with a collection of 205 monsters. Now what "The Book of Lost Beasts" does is to help fill in some of the gaps found within the Monster Manual I&II. And what makes it useful is the fact it helps to fill in some of the ranks of monsters from Jeff Grub's Manual of Planes. Because 'The Book of Lost Beasts' gives us something  new are the ranks of nobility of the Dao, Djinn, Effrti, Madrid, and Rakasha.

What makes "The Book of Lost Beasts" worth the price of admission is the fact that there are  205 or so monsters that  are  followed by appendices on Treasure Types and a random Creature for the Lower Planes generator. These remind me of  the ones found in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide again all in line with Jeff Grubb's Manual of the Planes. And many of the articles of the planes found in Dragon magazine. But is the "The Book of Lost Beasts" worth the price of admission?! In a word, yes the quality and care for the book is there. "The Book of Lost Beasts" is a perfect book to add into your archives for running OSR games. 

OSR Commentary - Greyhawk Grognard's Sword of Cthulhu rpg Kickstarter

 Three or four weeks ago I put money down on BRW Games, LLC's Swords of Cthulhu OSR rpg supplement kickstarter! And I can't wait to grab a physical copy of this Lovecraftian puppy! So why the blog entry after the Kickstarter?! Because I'm way behind on the blog entries folks. Joseph Bloch does amazing good rpg writing &  design work. So why put money Swords of Cthulhu? Because of something that jumped out at me; "Everything in Swords of Cthulhu goes back to the original stories by H.P. Lovecraft, plus select others that are in the public domain."

So I can't wait for Swords of Cthulhu to be in my gruppy hands.Can't wait to release the wraith of the Old Ones on my players! So how will this book be different then say Labyrinth Lords Realms of Crawling Chaos;'That's an excellent question. I happen to be a big fan of Dan and Mike's book, but went out of my way to avoid a pure redo of what they had written. However, it's inescapable that, because we're working off the same source material, there's going to be overlap.

Both books have half-Deep Ones (their "Sea Blood" and my "Deep One Hybrid") based off of the story The Shadow Over Innsmouth. They don't have any new character classes, however, and the number of new spells in their book is much smaller than in Swords of Cthulhu. There's some overlap in monsters, but they have some that I don't, and vice versa (I think because I cast a wider net in terms of sources). They also included psionics, which is absent in the Adventures Dark and Deep line as a whole (although I do have in the back of my mind an idea to "do psionics right" someday in its own dedicated book)." 

So now its a question of sit back, relax, and wait for Swords of Cthulhu rpg to show up in the mail! Swords of Cthulhu will be available through BRW Games, LLC's Drivethrurpg point here