Wow.
Simply fucking wow.
The Teratic Tome is a monster manual of sorts for OSRIC - that's if you took Lovecraft, Barker, King and our own +James Raggi , put them in a blender with the piss of a virgin and performed some unholy rituals that shall forever remain nameless.
The art is amazing. The art is disturbing. The art has lots and lots of boobs, and at least one female-like monster with the following accurately portrayed:
Where its genitals should be, it sports a glistening mass of foot-long tentacles that end in barbs and hooks. Its skin smells of lavender.There is so much in here that I want to drop into my AD&D 1e / OSRIC romp through Rappan Athuk - thankfully BTB went out after the first session ;)
The descriptions are great. They literally have story hooks right in them for the most part. The default world that these creatures frequent must be one notch worse than the 3e Midnight Campaign.
I felt disturbed reading parts of this and uncomfortable in others, much like a good horror fiction novel. And yet I kept flipping the virtual pages. Like an addict. There can be no higher praise.
As a side note, it appears the art and the stat block for the Audience on page 9 are missing. Or maybe I'm blind just like the Audience is ;)
The price of $6.66 is total appropriate.
From the blurb:
This enchiridion of entities should only be used by DMs inclined towards malfeasance, sadism, and base wrongdoing.
Torn from the pages of the Books of Pandemonium, these horrific fiends -- including the grotesquely talented Curhadac, the sadistic Eremite, and the death-singing Acronical -- will test the mettle of any adventuring party.
Teratic Tome is an OSRIC-compatible bestiary featuring:
* Strange variants: Brine orc, gelatinous pyramid, and azure slime
* Undead: Ivory banshee, demimondaine, ash ghast, and verminated zombie
* New threats: Remnants, karkinoi, pontiffs, craanoi, and ingenues
* Unique entities: Baskra, Lunamic, Malchior, Pantagruel, and the Seamstress
Thank you so much for the review! I'm at a loss for words because I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed. The response to this book has been great! So... my gratitude!
ReplyDeleteAs for page 9, the audience section is an overview, and then the next three entries (Discerner/Onlooker/Witness) are the actual monsters -- a bit like how there's a Demon section in the Monster Manual, followed by subsections about each individual demon. Hope that makes sense!
Lovecraft + Barker + King + Raggi + piss of a virgin + unholy rituals = The highest praise I have ever received. Thanks again!
It looks really cool! I wish it had a print option though.
DeleteHi, Doc. The print version is here:
Deletehttp://www.lulu.com/spotlight/pandemonium
that is an insanely rad cover! I'll pick it up tonight and see how likely it is that I could print it at work and not get fired for boobs...
ReplyDeleteDid I do something wrong?
ReplyDeleteI bought the pdf but there is no cover. I even opened it in another program to see if maybe I had set cover pages to not display somehow.
Hi, Eldric,
ReplyDeleteA few people have mentioned that. The cover image is here, if you'd like to print it.
http://rafaelchandler.com/ttlogo.png
I'm going to add a high-rez version to the PDF this evening. Initially, I left it off, because I'd heard that most people prefer not to have the cover embedded in the PDF, but it appears that I was misinformed! So I'll remedy that posthaste, and if you re-download the PDF in a few minutes, the first page will be the full-color cover. Sorry about that!
Thanks for the quick feedback, Rafael.
ReplyDeleteWhere would be a good place to send typos or questions? For example, the Onlooker on page 11 is missing a TAZ value and there is a minor typo in its description ("if it feels that the enemy is a dangerous enough to warrant it").
I use gmail (rafaelchandler at) -- and thank you!
ReplyDeleteHoly shit, that sounds totally wicked!
ReplyDeleteThe reviews and .pdf preview sound great. I just have one question:
ReplyDeleteWhat percentage of the fiends presented are appropriate for lower level parties (1-3)?
Good question! out of 114 monsters, 22 of them are level 1-3. So that's about 20%.
ReplyDeleteAs for the rest, 34 are level 4-6, 25 are level 7-9, and 33 are level 10.