Volume 2 Monsters &
A downloadable monster manual
"Luke Gearing dissolves the oldest monster manual to question how we present monsters and where they come from. The result leaves only bones and negative space.
Bonito's presentation reinforces the themes and leaves space for the reader to further interrogate the contents"
A physical is available from Exalted Funeral.
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Winner of An Award 2022.
As part of this, an anonymous judge said:
"It can evolve and change with play in a way that the Wizards of the Coast Monster Manual never could, all while articulating its own worldview for the players to engage with and even challenge. It’s a special product that is a joy to read and just demands to be played."
"Object-oriented game design?
For one thing I am at debt with &Monsters: I will never confuse again gnolls and hobgoblins, merfolk and lizardfolk."
Purchase
In order to download this monster manual you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $8 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Comments
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Hi Luke. Any chance we could get a text or markdown version of the monster manual?
What does AC as Armour mean?
I've got this because it reads like poetry, but understanding mech probably wouldn't hurt.
I'm new to this, not 5e or rules-heavy person and plan to read some osr books. Some guidance about which to read first to make sense of mechanical parts of this book would be welcome.
For now I just consult with glossaries.
I've only ran Cairn and EZD6 and plan to read Black Hack and White hack to learn about bare-bones osr approach, Basic Fantasy to learn about what community can achieve and Shadowdark to learn at least one 5e-adjacent system that's not slow, bloated or corporate.
AC as Armour simply means the Armour Class of the creature being described is equal to whatever armour that individual is wearing - likewise for Damage as Weapon.
This was originally written for use with Original Dungeons & Dragons (OD&D), using the retroclone Delving Deeper which is a cleanup and restatement of the original text. You can find digital copies of Delving Deeper online for free. Notably, OD&D and many of its derivatives use a d6 for all HD and most damage - any increase beyond a flat d6 represents a monster able to deal damage beyond the limits of a human.
Additionally, my own work, Wolves Upon the Coast, uses this as the only monster manual.
Hope this helps!
thank you a lot, of course this helps!
do you have any specific reason for choosing Delving Deeper over infinite amount of original books, retroclones and other osr books?
reading rulebooks without running them is meaningless and too abstract for the newcomers and I'm trying to be very deliberate in my early influences and commitments because I'm probably building the core that will inform how I see what will happen next.
I'm very happy to have "Monsters &" as my first monster poetry book and I picked up the demo of your grand campaign just to learn how to write. I choose to have Amanda Lee (you got a job on the garbage barge), Zedeck Siew (decolonising D&D, who gets to be a human) and you as my guides into the writing for the adventures, but I have never heard about Simon J. Bull until now
personally i find Delving Deeper an extremely clear and runnable version of OD&D - i've been using it "in anger" for a few years now, and have only made minimal mechanical changes. it represents a very clear and concise package. i think there is a huge amount of value in going through the original OD&D books and "working it out yourself" but more as a philosophical exercise rather than seeking something you can use right now to run a game.
A video talking about the book!