Monsterarium Review — Two Handfuls of Monsters, One Handful That Is Useful

Monsterarium is a short monster book from Knight Owl Games, written by Ahimsa Kerp and illustrated (and written) by Nahid Taheri. Although usable in pretty much any OSR game, it's really meant for Lamentations of the Flame Princess and so the creatures tend to be low powered, with most hit dice being 5 or less.

The eighteen monsters are a mix of real work monsters from Persian folklore as well as some made up stuff and some re-imaging of existing monsters (the faun and night hag).  They are separated into two different sections, "Monsters" and "Creatures of the Wood", the first being likely encountered anywhere while the latter are in an enchanted forest type deal. Though there is some overlap, a "Peri" from Persian folklore is in the "Monsters" section, but its rules is in the "Creatures of the Wood" section.

Maximum Mayhem Dungeons: Monsters of Mayhem #1 Kickstarter

While his stuff is a little pricey for me, Maximum Mayhem is one of the only remaining lines of OSRIC/1E products these days. This time with a monster book

It's also got that gonzo, Heavy Metal sort of style that I like

Creature Compendium Review—Must Buy Monster Book

 You can never have too many monsters, or for that matter, too many monster manuals. Some say you should always make up your own original monsters, but to be honest, I think most people's creativity is naturally limited in scope. At least I tend to think along certain lines, and one of the reason I like other people's monsters, characters, and places is that they are things I wouldn't have thought of.

When creating new monsters, the catch is, all the easy monsters have been created. D&D borrowed quite a bit from folklore and fantasy fiction, not always describing things true to the source, but the inspiration is often recognizable. It also had many original items that really captured the imagination, despite being somewhat silly in nature. The owlbear and gelatinous cube for instance. It can be a hard act to follow, as Fiend Folio showed...

Creature Compendium from Richard LeBlanc and New Big Dragon Games is a really good try, featuring 200 new monsters for old school D&D. Some are taken from folklore (some pretty obscure), one is from a movie, but I think most are original. It has an almost ludicrously low price of $2 in PDF, which is even more astounding given that it has a lot of original artwork by the author.

Creature Compendium released

From New Big Dragon comes a book of monsters, statted for both 0e/1e and B/X, all for a staggering low $2.

ABYSMAL • ADARNA BIRD • AIRWALKER • AQRASETH • ARASSAS • aziza
BAT, ARCTIC (ICE) • BAT, DEATH • BATAR • BEETLE, GIANT FLAYER • BESTIAL BEAST •
BILOKO • BLOODBEAST • BLOODGILL •
BRAIN BAT • BRAINCRAB • BURU
CACTUS CAT • CACUS • CADEJO •
CALYTAUR • CENTAUR, CYPRIAN •
CHÖTGÖR • COW DEMON • CYCLORC
DEVIL MONKEY • DINGONEK • DJETABI •
DOBARCHÚ, GREATER • DOBARCHÚ, LESSER •
DONESTRE • DOVER DEMON • DRACOPEDE • DRAGI • DRAGONBOAR, WOOLY • DRAUGR • DUNTER • DWARF, BLACK • DWARF, RED • DZEE-DZEE-BON-DA
EAGLE HOUND • ELEMENTAL, MUDMIST •
ELEMENTAL, SAND • ELEPHANT, WHITE •
ELOKO • EMERALD STINKBUG

Updated Cthulhu Bestiary available

The somewhat prolific author Leonaru first produced this free supplement a couple months ago, but now has released an updated version over at Lulu. Covers a lot of ground.

Blood & Treasure Monster Tome now on sale at Lulu

Blood & Treasure Complete or the GM's Guide actually already came with 500 monsters, basically everything in the SRD and more, but in case you want even more mones, here's another 250. Right now, only in hardback form for $22, but you get the PDF for that if you email him the receipt.