I love monster books, and this week is mostly about monster books! And, if you’re a listener of the Vintage RPG Podcast, you know how much I love our first monster book, Skerples’ The Monster Overhaul (2023).

The subtitle is “A Practical Bestiary,” as it aims to be usable right at the table, on the fly, thanks to lots of tables and good thinking regarding the design. It’s a very usable book and, when not in play, it rewards browsing. The book is divided into 20 categories (each illustrated by a different artist, give or take) of monster, each containing ten monsters that hew to a theme. The categories are unusual: there is “Dragons,” of course, but also “Summer” and “A Wizard Did It.” Summer monsters include the Froghemoth, Mandrake, Chaos Frogs, Pryomancers, Tunnel Hulks and more. Some of these may sound similar to classic D&D monsters, others are entirely new. In addition to the core ten, each theme is supplemented by ten monsters from other themes in the book (for instance, the supplemental Summer monsters include Treants, Catoplebas and Fairies). Tables galore help build and flesh out encounters. Summer includes a set of generic swamp hexes, other entries have lairs and dungeons. There is an entire flowchart table for populating a megadungeon.

Basically, every page of this book makes you think about monsters. How do you make them new, recontextualize them, find different pairings for them, stick them in unusual environments, subvert player expectations of them? Like all great RPG supplements, the book not only offers a set of answers for all these questions and more, it also teaches the reader how to continue answering them long after these published tables and suggestions are exhausted.

Pardon the pun, but a monstrous achievement that should be on every GM’s shelf.