An Endzeitgeist.com review

This bestiary clocks in at a massive 52 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC, 1 page advertisements, 1 page SRD, leaving us with a massive 47 pages of content, so let's take a look, shall we?

I've scarcely been this conflicted about a review I've written, so I figured I'll break my usual format for reviews with this one and instead provide you with an insight into the two hearts that alas, beat in my breast regarding this one.

White EZG:

Just take a look at this beautiful pdf - Rick Hershey really knows his job. The artworks are glorious, even though you might know some of them from other 3pps using his work. His distinct style really makes those creatures come to life and the gorgeous full-color layout also helps. Add to that the excessive bookmarks and BAM - this rocks, especially from a bang-for-buck ratio! Great formal production values! And then there are the short pieces of prose to describe the critters - aptly written and nice for less eloquent DMs. Of course, the coolest components would be when the critters tell a story - take the clockwork children, invented to help grieving parents over the death of a child and then abandoned. Tragic, creepy, awesome. These critters almost universally are high-concept - take e.g. the articans that can turn into snowstorms - yeah! Or what about mechanical steeds? Or certain, deadly small flying spheres, paying homage to one of my all-time favorite b-movie horror series? Yeah, that's what I'm talking about! People should get this.

Black EZG:

Urgh, yeah, the concepts are cool - want me to actually analyze them? You won't like what you find. There are a bunch of creatures where not even the BAB is calculated correctly. And don't get me started on subtypes. If you use a subtype and then systematically ignore ALL qualities of the subtype, why use it in the first place? The math is so flawed, I can point towards a whole array of creatures that are so wrong you only have to look at a given attribute score to realize that BAB, CMB, CMD, atk. etc. are not correct. Read up those cool, unique signature abilities and you'll immediately realize that they could have used a proper rules-editor - hard. You liked the artican? Well, he's got this Brand-ability that channels cold damage and provides fire resistance to those stuck with it - but the friggin' creature never specifies how to actually get the brand! I assume by being hit, but good monster design this is not. What about abilities that inflict conditions, but fail to specify how long they last? Obvious mind-influencing or poison-based abilities that are not classified as such? What about a vast number of DCs just being WRONG? There are glitches is just about EVERY creature! You can't, for the life of you recommend this! It's just sloppy! And as for the writing: The intro-texts may be solid. But the text of the monsters, where existent in the first place, is not exactly a joy to read with primitive subject-verb-object-full-stop sentences strung together quite a few times.

White EZG: I don't care, the potential is there! One can see that these guys want to make cool critters and they have grand ideas.

Black EZG: Yeah, but the execution is capital "F" flawed and while I sometimes shut up regarding small glitches in statblocks, there simply are TOO MANY here.

Conclusion:

So how do I unite these two positions? Honestly, whether this is anything, at all for you depends very much on what you expect from a monster book. The price-point is low and if you don't care that the math is terrible, go for this. Seriously, I am positive that you'll have a good time with it. On the other hand, if you insist on solid crunch to back up your critters, then this won't do for you. There are far too many glitches in here, obvious ones that could have easily been caught. We're not talking Rite Publishing-level complexity statblocks here, after all -and to make that clear: Rite usually manages to get these monster statblocks right. For you, this is a steer clear file. My final verdict will fall in-between at 2.5 stars, rounded up by a slight margin to 3 due to being an inexpensive file that can be glorious for a limited demographic, but which exhibits deep flaws.

Endzeitgeist out.

To be open and honest, I was allowed a copy of “Fat Goblin Travel Guide to Horrible Horrors & Macabre Monsters” to check out and do a review. And thank you to Fat Goblin games for allowing me to do that.

I really enjoyed this book. The first thing that stuck out in my mind is that every monster entry had a full color illustration. This is fantastic. Most of the art is from Rick Hershey and it is very cool. I said to myself, man I want this as a print book.

I must admit I am a print copy guy. I fully understand that pdf is a very affordable and solid option for 3rd party companies, but with this book especially, I thought the art looked so high quality, that I wanted to own a print book of this product.

As far as the monster content goes, it has a large collection of varying creatures. I believe its 47 new monster entries. As I looked through the pdf, I kept thinking to myself, okay I want to use that monster, or oh that would be very cool in a Vathak campaign. For those who do not know, Fat Goblin games also produces a campaign setting called Shadows over Vathak, and with this pdf, I might very well be running my next campaign in the Vathak world. A lot of the entries seemed to fit very well in Vathak. This is not to say that they couldn’t be used in any other campaign world.

I am not a huge fan of monster books, mostly because I usually run pre-made adventures, but with this pdf, I could easily see myself wanting to write up an adventure or two using these monsters. Great Job guys.

Complete with a beautiful fat goblin in hiking gear on the cover, this book contains nearly fifty of the most horrible and depraved monsters you've ever wished not to meet when out for a stroll.

Each monster comes with full-colour illustration, complete stat block and comprehensive notes to aid you in situating it appropriately and running it in combat... most are not the sort to consider a chat over a drink with passing adventurers. Even the sentient ones tend to the ferocious and hostile and as for the rest - well, the Bone Gorger is just after your bones, for example, and is none too particular whether you are alive or not when it gets to eat them.

There are some innovative constructs here, too, like Clockwork Children and the Arc Hound. There's a sad tale behind Clockwork Children. They were created originally to ease the grief of those who lost children to accident or disease - but some abandoned them once they had come to terms with their loss.

Clockwork Dead, on the other hand, are an horrific combination of corpse and construct, moving jerkily around and created by the collaboration of necromancers and artificers to serve various ends, none of them particularly pleasant.

Many of the monsters herein are well suited to 'jump-shock' horror, surprising unwary travellers and proving themselves to be just as unpleasant as they look at first glance. Yet watch out for that nice young lady in the tavern - she might be a Masked Ghoul, poised to resume her normal form and feast upon you rather than with you.

Conveniently, most are contained on a single page, so you can print out just the monsters you need.

An excellent collection, and you can never have too many monsters, after all!

I am associated with Adventureaweek.com, were I operate as the main PDF monkey. My reviews are written with a desire to remain unbiased as many of the designers, writers, artists and publishers are considered friends to me. Having said that I am first and foremost a reviewer, and in respect to these people and their product I intend to evaluate this product honestly and fairly.

Fat Goblin Travel Guide to Horrible Horrors & Macabre Monsters.....wow that is a serious mouthful of a title. 52 pages, in full bleeding color populated with 47 entries from the minds of Jason Stoffa and Rick Hersey, all crafted to life with the art stylings of Mr. Hershey. Format follows the standard format for creature statblocks from Pathfinder, with the creatures kept to a single page per creature. Personally, I love the idea of single page creature entries, as if I want to print out a few critters for a session they tend to look far more cleaner when they are not sharing half of a page with something else.

The range of creatures here are quite varied, with some things in this collection that will easily make a playgroup work for their lives, with others leaving them scratching their heads wondering if perhaps you have lost your mind, lol....but we'll get to those soon enough. The majority of what you will see here is new art in this collection, with a few pieces that have appeared in other products Rick was involved in one way or another. There are a few pieces here from the Creaturedaily collection, and I am thrilled to see them come to light for all of those who might have missed these creatures the first time through. There are a few editing hiccups, the Table of Contents lists 48 creatures when there are in fact 47 (Stonework Guardian was separated into two words and listed on two different lines), and the bookmarks could possibly use a polishing (spacing, capitalizing and several two word names split into separate bookmarks). So, all of that out of the way, shall we take a look at some of these critters? It is the reason we are here, right?

The Artican will start us off, a variant giant with some seriously unique abilities that allow it to transform into a living snowstorm. How freaking cool is that. Their skins are branded with rune shaped coverings that give them not only great resistance to heat, but leave them conducting cold as well. Am loving this giant variant, a great design paired with an awesome piece of art that I can guarantee will be finding themselves at my table to menace my players. The Blighted Creature is a great template for giving a GM an instant variation to what their group might be used to facing. Created by exposure to those spaces we all know not to dwell for long, the blighted creature comes with a d10 random table for quick and easy creation of the new version of the base creature, with an art piece that is freaking great, although shows the creature with an apparent breath weapon, or perhaps ate really strong chili for lunch, lol...either way, a great and easy to apply template.

Clockwork Children, all that needs to be said here. Creepy, very very creepy. Druboar answer that question for us, If human stock gave us the minotaur, what would orc stock give us? Not going to lie, I'm digging it. Offering essentially another creature to take the place of the standard minotaur in an encounter that will present you with something perhaps your players haven't already fought a thousand times before, not to mention that its new tactics and ecology give more options for how to utilize it in the encounter. Oh, and for the record, Rick? Get to work on getting miniatures freaking licensed, seriously, this thing needs to be available as a miniature.

HagWasp Swarm just might be my favorite addition to the creatures presented here. A swarm of lethal wasps that can bring the pain with their Nightmare Fever poison, these freaking winged killers bring something far more dangerous to the game, Hag Servant. Able to be used as a familiar by a coven of hags, this freaking swarm takes on an entirely new level of dangerous, very quickly. Didn't I mention that these are on my top list? There is just so much win here for an evil GM to devastate for fun....ah, the screams and lamentations....sweet music to the ears......ah, sorry, didn't realize you are still here...ahem..so, moving on...

The Imperial Cannon reminds me a lot of the canon golem, albeit far more refined to its shape, and purpose. A very cool idea, both in design and visual presentation (OK, seriously, will someone out there with some sculpting skill (or knows someone working with one of these smaller mini companies) get a hold of Rick and do some talking about licensing some of these into minis, please!!). Mousling, remember I mentioned a few that might leave people scratching their heads. So, an anthropomorphic mouse, standing at around 4 to 4 1/2 feet in height, with the ability to take advantage of their capacity to share space with others of their race. OK, at face value it would be real easy to look over these creatures, but when you slow down and look at them, and what you can go with them, suddenly they are not so cute and funny looking, they take on an entirely different light and threat.

Going to end this with the Wing Worm. A tiny flying critter that tend to travel in groups of 100-1000, and eat anything in their path. Their bite comes along with an acid that plays havoc on the best defenses, along with a bore and infest ability. A tiny cloud of fyying worms with the capacity to devastate an entire community if not dealt with properly. Just another reminder to your players that they are not the end all be all, and there are still things in the universe waiting to eat them lol.

So, one page for an ad for another line carried by Fat Goblin Games and the OGL and we're out of pages. So, wrapping it up.....the minor issues with the editing are all fixable, which is always a good thing. The creatures lend themselves to feeling like things a GM will want to use, and the design is solid to support the concepts. The art is visually inspiring or making one want to use the creatures. Yeah, am having a real hard time coming up with anything to really complain or whine about here, lol....perhaps the fact that I want a miniature or two made? The fact here is that this is exactly what you want to see in a bestiary, and am impressed with what the Fat Goblin Games guys have produced, this is an excellent collection of creatures. A solid 5 star rating, and well worth the price of admission folks. And guys, get this into print, I want it on my shelf.

edit- all corrections required to handle the TOC and the bookmarks wre handled within minutes of the Fat Goblin crew having it brought to their attention. This is the mark of people who care, and are willing to fix things. Thanks Rick!