Volo's Guide to Monsters
Volo's Guide to Monsters is a Dungeons & Dragons book that is intended to give a lot more detail to the more iconic monsters of the setting. Well, the Forgotten Realms setting, at least.
It starts off covering a few of the bigger species in detail, from Beholders to Yuan-Ti. There are lots of random tables for varying monster personlities and appearances, and a few maps showing example lairs, but most of it is given over to describing the lifestyles and motivations of the creatures.
And here's where being Forgotten Realms-centric is bad. Most of the monsters are described simply as mindless servants of their gods. The various races of goblinoids war and enslave only because their own gods were conquered by another. Orcs live only to destroy in the name of their gods. Gnolls go a step further, not even being a naturally born species, but one whose new members are transformed from regular hyenas.
They certainly do a good job of de-humanising the creatures - they are unmistakably monsters, with no fear of moral worries over sluaghtering them as a hero. Good in some ways maybe, but it kinda makes them all run together. Gnolls, orcs and goblins are all god-driven warmongers. Not much room for distinction between them.
The details on giants are interesting, but a lot is stuff that was already covered in the Storm King's Thunder adventure, so why they didn't just fold it into there are give a bit more space to some of the other monsters, or add another, I don't know.
There are some new player races described in the book, of two types. Some are fully written up, others are half-hearted write-ups of monsters - so orcs and goblins are here, but not given as much attention as goliaths or aasimar. A bit weird that lizard-men get the full treatment though, even when the text itself goes to great length to say how their 'reptile brain' makes them incapable of properly functioning with warmbloods!
One point worth noting: the kobold backstory in this book matches up with past ones, saying that they live in communities where they all work together for the greater good. There's even a mention in this book of how humans think kobolds are stupid when a single warrior will try and fight off superior numbers, when all they're really doing is buying time for the rest of the tribe to escape. And yet, under the kobold character creation bits: "Kobolds are fundamentally selfish, making them evil". Is a race where every member works together in unity, and is willing to sacrifice itself for its family, really something that we're meant to see as 'selfish'?
There are new monsters rounding out the book, both expanded examples of the monsters that had the big write-up, as well as some other weird ones (froghemoths and flail snails?). The formatting in this book is horrible. In some cases, the descriptive text for one monster will run over next to illustration for the previous creature and the stat block for the following beast! How hard is it to ensure that text, numbers and picture all match up on a page?
I can't hep but compare this book to the 4th edition Threats to the Nentir Vale book, which had a similar intent. But rather than give general overviews of species it gave detailed write-ups on specific groups in the world, with locale and motives, named leaders... All fit to distinct pages, to boot! Much more useful for creatures that could be slipped into a campaign.
Neogi are in the book. But as a final insult, this line is included: "Ships that sail between the stars? Next ye will spin tales of a talking hippopotamus that walks on two legs and carries a bow." Bah! So, the froghemoth is a legitimate, serious monster to include in the book (which also has cat-people and mer-folk as player races) but hippo-dude gifs are too silly? Bah!
Speaking of silly, the reason for that 'ye' in the quote is that the book is peppered with comments from Volo and Elminster. The latter, being an annoying wizard that no-one likes, uses 'ye' a lot. Neither adds much to the book, and for Volo having his name in the title, he doesn't contribute a lot. The book is not written 'in-universe' at all, but from the usual omniscient GM voice. Volo, if his lines were all compiled, might be able to fill just two pages. None of it as funny as intended.
It starts off covering a few of the bigger species in detail, from Beholders to Yuan-Ti. There are lots of random tables for varying monster personlities and appearances, and a few maps showing example lairs, but most of it is given over to describing the lifestyles and motivations of the creatures.
And here's where being Forgotten Realms-centric is bad. Most of the monsters are described simply as mindless servants of their gods. The various races of goblinoids war and enslave only because their own gods were conquered by another. Orcs live only to destroy in the name of their gods. Gnolls go a step further, not even being a naturally born species, but one whose new members are transformed from regular hyenas.
They certainly do a good job of de-humanising the creatures - they are unmistakably monsters, with no fear of moral worries over sluaghtering them as a hero. Good in some ways maybe, but it kinda makes them all run together. Gnolls, orcs and goblins are all god-driven warmongers. Not much room for distinction between them.
The details on giants are interesting, but a lot is stuff that was already covered in the Storm King's Thunder adventure, so why they didn't just fold it into there are give a bit more space to some of the other monsters, or add another, I don't know.
There are some new player races described in the book, of two types. Some are fully written up, others are half-hearted write-ups of monsters - so orcs and goblins are here, but not given as much attention as goliaths or aasimar. A bit weird that lizard-men get the full treatment though, even when the text itself goes to great length to say how their 'reptile brain' makes them incapable of properly functioning with warmbloods!
One point worth noting: the kobold backstory in this book matches up with past ones, saying that they live in communities where they all work together for the greater good. There's even a mention in this book of how humans think kobolds are stupid when a single warrior will try and fight off superior numbers, when all they're really doing is buying time for the rest of the tribe to escape. And yet, under the kobold character creation bits: "Kobolds are fundamentally selfish, making them evil". Is a race where every member works together in unity, and is willing to sacrifice itself for its family, really something that we're meant to see as 'selfish'?
There are new monsters rounding out the book, both expanded examples of the monsters that had the big write-up, as well as some other weird ones (froghemoths and flail snails?). The formatting in this book is horrible. In some cases, the descriptive text for one monster will run over next to illustration for the previous creature and the stat block for the following beast! How hard is it to ensure that text, numbers and picture all match up on a page?
I can't hep but compare this book to the 4th edition Threats to the Nentir Vale book, which had a similar intent. But rather than give general overviews of species it gave detailed write-ups on specific groups in the world, with locale and motives, named leaders... All fit to distinct pages, to boot! Much more useful for creatures that could be slipped into a campaign.
Neogi are in the book. But as a final insult, this line is included: "Ships that sail between the stars? Next ye will spin tales of a talking hippopotamus that walks on two legs and carries a bow." Bah! So, the froghemoth is a legitimate, serious monster to include in the book (which also has cat-people and mer-folk as player races) but hippo-dude gifs are too silly? Bah!
Speaking of silly, the reason for that 'ye' in the quote is that the book is peppered with comments from Volo and Elminster. The latter, being an annoying wizard that no-one likes, uses 'ye' a lot. Neither adds much to the book, and for Volo having his name in the title, he doesn't contribute a lot. The book is not written 'in-universe' at all, but from the usual omniscient GM voice. Volo, if his lines were all compiled, might be able to fill just two pages. None of it as funny as intended.