Great Monster Manual-like book. I love the hardcopy hardback as well. Great way to liven up monster encounters.

My players asked me for a heist, which isn't exactly what they were expecting, but they were willing to try. We are using the DCC system, so I had a bit of work on converting a few of the creatures, but really there isn't much combat so that was the easy part (I just used black knights from the Hubris supplement for the main baddies). The HARD part is keeping track of where everyone is at or doing... I ended up making a 4 page spreadsheet with each character/castle room with a slot for each time of day. It was a lot of work for me upfront, but it was worth it. It took us 3 sessions (about 8 hrs total) to get through the material. The open ended structure was tricky for my players at the start, but once they started to learn more and formalize a plan, things started running much quicker. My advice, be generous with information, the players already have a lot to think about. If I were to run it again, I'd create some sort of web of NPC relationships too. We had fun, they succeeded.

I wish all monster manuals set themselves to this standard.

Simply put, this is my favorite Bestiary, ever. Every monster is an old favorite, but each one has been re-approached with a sense of flavor and design that feels under-developed in other books and better yet, all of the tools and flavor has been executed with GM agency in mind and ease of use.

This is true for Skerples other book as well, Magical Industrial Revolution but the formatting of Monster Overhaul is just a joy. Information is dense but readable, with nice thick margins meant for writing notes and leaving sticky notes. This is a book meant to be loved, and I do, so much.

I'm running an OSR campaign now, and the Monster Overhaul is the first book I refer to if I have something conventional in mind. Goblins? definitely need to look, there might be something good, there always is. Dragons? of course. Even when I want to run something like a bugbear, I'll flip to Orcs and see what this book has in mind.

The art is also some of my favorite in any book. each section seems to have a different artist and each artist has their own unique style but none of those styles betray the old school flavor of dungeon crawling. Every picture conveys a sense of mystery, danger, and curiosity. some of it's dirty, and some clean, but all of it is amazing.

I really enjoyed playing this module. I was finally able to find a good DM online who had time to run this for me with 3 of his friends. We finished it tonight after 3 sessions for a total of about 10 hours. You could probably spend multiple times that amount if you wanted to unearth every secret. And while we didn't experience every aspect of the tomb, it was great exploring and working together with my party which is exactly what I was looking for!

Our DM added his own twists and content to the story, but on its own, it has traps, monsters, treasure, a boss, and some interesting lore about The Tomb of the Serpent Kings itself. Perfect!

I can't speak to the specific mechanics of the game or critique it like some seasoned connoisseur of RPGs; I just know I had fun playing it. Everyone else on my team was really impressed with it too.

I hadn't played D&D since the TSR Hobbies Red Box edition in 1983! For me, it was a nice return to a classic dungeon crawl. Highly recommended.

Absolutely incredible feat of worldbuilding and a capture of a city teetering on the precipice of a new (and potentially alarmingly short) age. The people of Endon careen toward their apocalypse with the absolute confidence of someone whose civilisation has never ended before.

Full from page 1 to page The End with useful tables, monsters with stories and details that are helpful for running a game, any game. Big recommendations all round. Art from many excellent people only adds to the character of the book.

What I thought I was getting was a pre-apocalyptic setting, of magical wonder where the lights were just about to go down. What I got was essentially a fairly standard British satire of Victorian London with almost nothing original about it (and I hadn't intended to buy a parody in the first place, let alone one with jokes older than Monty Python's routines). The apocalyptic issues were pretty stock and mundane, as well as taking up a very small section of the book, and they didn't feel well-integrated into the rest of Endon.

The best and most useful monster manual I've seen in decades.

magnificent! i regret i only have 5 stars to give, this book is vital for ttrpg play imo

An incredible resource! Mountains of monsters presented to spur the imagination and help out a DM in a tight spot.

The art is fantastic, the tables are so evocative and creative. The "how does the giant crab react" table is so good it makes me want to fit a giant crab into my next game. There are enough ideas in here that it is great reading as is.

Kickstarted this lil' critter and have really been looking forward to its release. I've been using the pre-final printing for some stocking ideas for my "dungeon 23". All around a great tool, broadly useful, but opinionated enough in it's decisions to avoid being a milquetoast kind of generic. One of the few monster books that covers the entire "generic fantasy rpg" gamut, while being actually a useful tool.

To make best use of it you will probably want to be playing a Dungeons and Dragons style game, but I think even if you're running something like a pulp or sci-fantasty type game you'll be able to get mileage out of it.

Just a really bad adventure. I'll go into more detail later, but this is NOT an adventure for beginners, both beginning players and especially beginning DMs. Large parts of it are boring and give no hints or telegraph that there are secrets; the players are just expected to "read the DM's mind" to find the secret. As far as DMing goes, there are several room descriptions and traps that just don't make sense and that the DM will have to fix beforehand. It does an active disservice to the OSR hobby by advertising itself as a teaching dungeon. And there's no illustration or description of what a snake-person looks like! What?? The only nod to that is the lich which has a snake bottom and a human top, which is exactly the opposite of what I was thinking the snake-people looked like. Seriously, this is not a fun adventure and it's not fun to DM. Mine it for the barred-door-and-hammer trap, but it's so sparse, mistake-filled, and full of holes that you should really avoid DMing this one. If this is the fourth time the author has tried to fix this adventure, they need to chuck it.

Great beginners guide to old school adventuring. This one is already a classic.