Monsters and Animals (1985) is the bestiary for the Palladium Role-Playing Game, consisting of about 100 pages for the former, 60 for the latter.

Let’s talk about the animals first. It is a weirdly exhaustive list. I am not sure I need stats for the goldfinch, despite it being the state bird New Jersey, but they’re in there. And lots of other birds, and other animals too, nearly none of which seem like good opponents for players. But I guess it is nice to know there is a small region in the southern portion of the continent where koalas live. Love a koala.

That’s another idiosyncratic thing for this book. Nearly all the creatures are accompanied by a small map of the continent with their range shaded in. I certainly don’t mind this sort of information, but I do kind of wonder if anyone was ever so in sync with a setting as to worry about whether monsters were in their proper geographic region. I can’t imagine playing a game where that would be a factor.

The monsters are a good mix of classics from folklore (a proper manticore!) and weird creations (Horse people with peacock tails? Sure, why not.) I think the Owl Thing is maybe my favorite. I have to say, the pencil work here is pretty outstanding and all by Kevin Siembieda. I’m not used to him delivering in this style, and at this level of realism. Not so into his cover for the first edition, though. The revised second printing cover is a strong improvement, and I love that manticore (the critter on the first printing isn’t a mistakenly winged manticore—rather, it matches Siembieda’s basic design for the sphinx).