The Bestiary | ||||||||||||
Dragonlance: Fifth Age Dramatic Supplement | ||||||||||||
TSR/Wizards of the Coast, 239 pages | ||||||||||||
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A review by Don Bassingthwaite
In essence, this is the Monster Manual of the
Dragonlance: Fifth Age game. Its basic purpose
is to catalogue and give statistics for monsters using the
SAGA game rules. There's the usual big assortment of
creatures inside, all of the old standard AD&D favourites
plus the more atypical creatures native to Krynn, the world of
Dragonlance. In the best Monster Manual
tradition, every creature has a write up and a table of stats
and an illustration... this is the type of product that has the
potential to degenerate into lists of names and numbers really fast.
Guess what? It doesn't! The Bestiary is very well written
and beautifully illustrated. The numbers and game stats
are -- hallelujah! -- secondary to descriptive text.
The book is cast as a reference text created by Caramon Majere,
one of the Heroes of the Lance, based on his adventures. Most of
the description is in his voice, with occasional asides from a
scholar of the Great Library of Palanthas. This means that the
description is not only interesting to read but also reflects
directly on Krynn. These are not generic entries. Many descriptions
say where the creature can be found -- not just "among mountains"
but "atop peaks in the Worldscap Mountains" -- and relate it to
particular events in the history of Krynn or in the adventures of Caramon.
The other effect of having the book narrated in this way is that
it gives the information an apocryphal feel. In a few places,
the narrators say flat out that the information they have is
unreliable or conflicting. In others places, information that
they swear is true will ring off-key with experienced
gamers. This gives the book a totally authentic tone -- and leaves
a way open for the game narrator to play nasty tricks
with a creature's abilities. Heh-heh.
The book has an authentic look to it as well -- it's printed on a
nice buff coloured paper, giving it a fantasy feel without being
over the top. What really brings the whole thing together though
are the illustrations done by Rebecca Guay and Matthew
Mitchell. Matthew does pencil sketches, Rebecca does watercolours
(correct me if I'm wrong, but that's what they look like --
either way, I love them) and the effect is spectacular. This maybe
the best match of artist to product since Tim Bradstreet met
White Wolf. The art is consistently excellent from beginning to
end. There's no visible effort to force the art into boxes, so
the layout on the page is clean. In fact, the overall design of
the product is simply brilliant.
Gamers will find hard stats in boxes accompanying each creature's
description, along with a short hook for an adventure involving
that particular creature. Other game-related materials -- lists of
ability effects, creatures by habitat, and a summary table of
stats and abilities -- are printed at the beginning and end of
the book (on white paper with an attractive green border, setting
them off from the rest of the book). A particularly handy inclusion
is the section on converting standard AD&D creatures to
the SAGA setting. By the way, if you're coming to SAGA
from AD&D, watch out. Monsters you may be used to thinking
of as nuisances or cannon fodder can end up substantially
tougher under SAGA rules.
The Bestiary is the best game product I've seen this
year. The layout is good, the writing is fantastic, the art
is great -- and most importantly, it's a useful game product. If
you play Dragonlance: Fifth Age, I don't
see how you can get along without this. Buy a copy now!
Even if you don't play, wrangle a copy and read it -- it's
fun on its own. I thought I knew everything there was to know
about AD&D-based monsters, but I still found myself reading
The Bestiary cover-to-cover and loving every word.
Don Bassingthwaite is the author of Such Pain (HarperPrism), Breathe Deeply (White Wolf), and Pomegranates Full and Fine (White Wolf), tie-in novels to White Wolf's World of Darkness role-playing games. He can't remember when he started reading science fiction, but has been gaming since high school (and, boy, is his dice arm tired!). |
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