News for the News God

After twoish very, very long weeks, I have managed to finish importing nearly all the posts from Instagram to vintagerpg.com. I didn't bring over the weekend magazine posts and I dropped stuff by garbage people like Petal Throne and passed over a handful of filler posts (real short ones were tricky to reformat and in the scope of the project, not usually worth spending the time on them). All that stuff still exists in the Tumblr archive, and on the Instagram itself, though, if something you are looking for is missing.

What this means is that you all now have a massive repository of my writing on tabletop RPGs at your fingertips, in a fairly user-friendly format (Have you ever tried to look up one of my posts circa 2018 on Instagram? Impossible!). That amounts to 585,803 words and 10,000-ish photos (using Monsters, Aliens and Holes in the Ground as a unit of measure, you're looking at the equivalent of 3.25 MAHGs). It's a lot. And it's all for you! Dig in, and let me know if anything is funky (there are some "been working on the site" issues that cropped up, including the fact that most of the images in the previous newsletters are no longer there -- I'll fix that soon!).

Oh, also, we're at 304 subscribers, which is more than I expected so soon. Thank you for coming along for this ride!

Monstrous Compendium, Volume Two (1989)

Long time coming for this: this week, Monstrous Compendiums! (It took me a while to get replace the covers, dang — the danger of loose leaf!)

So the first Monstrous Compendium included a big binder but really only half the monsters you’d expect. Gorgons, hags, kuo-toa, leucrocotta, mimics, otyughs, ropers, rust monsters and more were in Volume Two, conveniently offered for sale at the same time! The sheets are laid out such that they can be inserted into the binder pages seamlessly, almost as if at one time they were all together. Hm.

I have great affection for this one in part because the plastic wrap had a tear, and I could flip through the pages ahead of the Christmas for which it was intended as a gift. James Holloway does a lot of the art and that is fine, but the Daniel Horne illustrations are my favorites, and a clear, semi-goofy contrast to the art in the old Monster Manuals. Look at the myconid! Or that Ettercap who looks weirdly like Grandpa Al Lewis. Horne’s monsters have an excess of misproportioned personality and I love them for it.

The Easley cover painting is fine. It’s definitely not as impressive as Volume One, but the Ettin is suitably lumpy and the gargoyle is OK. I don’t love that non-feathered griffon, though?

(click the pics for more pics)

Monstrous Compendium, Volume Three (1989)

Volume Three of the Monstrous Compendium (1989) is dedicated to monsters from the Forgotten Realms. It’s the first to be referred to as an Appendix, which to me implies it should be filed at the back of the main work, but in fact, you can file the individual pages into the alphabetical arrangement of Volume One and Two without issue. So that’s what I did. This is not true of any further Compendiums to my knowledge.

Three has one of my favorite Easley covers of the run. I don’t think that is a particularly good rendering of a thri-kreen, and I’m neutral on the revenant. That cloaker is tops, though, and the color scheme of the grouping is really nice. Inside is where I first made the acquaintance of Tom Baxa. It took me a while to really GET his artwork. I don’t think the juxtaposition of Mark Nelson, with his welcoming use of zipatone, did Baxa any favors.

These days, I blame my ambivalence to Baxa here on the monster selection. It ain’t great. A lot of these don’t feel particularly “of the Realms” to me. Dinosaurs? For real? Some, like the dracolich, sure. But there is an odd prevalence of critters that are just slightly monstrous animals. There is also, ironically, a concentration of monsters that previously appeared in the Fiend Folio, a book Ed Greenwood reviewed for Dragon Magazine and hated.

Anyway, not my most referenced of the appendices.

Monstrous Compendium Kara-Tur Appendix (1990)

If I didn’t use the Forgotten Realms Appendix very much, Kara-Tur (1990) made it to the table never. Was never really my thing, generally. In the year of our lord 2024, I am not sure I would put a vampire with yellow skin, a yellow dragon and yellow text on the book of Asian-inspired monsters, but maybe that’s just me (it isn’t just me, this is pretty thoughtless). There is a lot of “this is an Eastern variety of X” in the text, too, which ain’t great either.

I’m not a fan of Kara-Tur, but looking through this now, there are still some good monsters here I might use. Kappa are always fun (and the entry mentions cucumbers, which is rad) but the tengu are underwhelming. I like the race of intelligent octopuses, but am legit not sure if I love or hate the fact that they’re called tako, the Japanese word for regular octopuses. I did the Krakentua, too, and the spirit centipedes are fucked up (I hate centipedes).

Baxa does all the interior art and does a pretty solid job with it, but is again undermined by the designs of the monsters.

Monstrous Compendium Forgotten Realms Appendix (1991)

This is the second monster appendix for Forgotten Realms. It’s much better! Like the first, Tom Baxa and Mark Nelson provide the interior illustrations; this time they’re joined by Valerie Valusek, who was one of the primary artists for FR supplements at the time. There’s even an uncredited Tim Bradstreet in there (the deep dragon). The mix of monsters is more exciting and weirder too. We get the fachan (a one-armed, one-legged, one-eyed goblin), the very FR feyr, the undead inquisitors, dark naga, Jorge Luis Borges’ peryton, the gloopy skuz and the creepy scorpion folk. Oh, and the dino-people, saurials. Its a good selection that better represents the monsters of the Realms, I think.

The Easley cover is pretty good, too, depicting a peryton, a feyr and a saurial. Enjoy that the feyr is acting as an armrest.

Monstrous Compendium Greyhawk Adventures Appendix (1990)

This is the Monstrous Compendium Greyhawk Adventures Appendix (1990); jeeze, what a mouthful. Another solid Easley cover, depicting a sword wraith, a sea zombie and a…mist wolf? Sure, I’ll take it. Interiors are by the tag team of Tom Baxa and Mark Nelson again. I think Nelson was rubbing off on Baxa. There are a number of illustrations where I don’t know which of the artists are responsible, partly because Baxa’s leaning into zipatone here.

Solid selection of odd and formidable monsters: Shadow dragon, grell, norkers, hook horrors, yeth hounds, sons of Kyuss, necrophidius and slow shadows are all faves and get regular use in my homebrews. Do they feel like they are somehow indelibly Greyhawk? Not to me, but your mileage may vary.

Side note: is the sea zombie the first overt reference to a John Carpenter movie in D&D (The Fog)? I suspect so (though I believe they first appear in Greyhawk Adventures, 1988).

Yes, that Julian Cope. This is one of two books he's written on neolithic sites, The Modern Antiquarian (1998), a field guide to neolithic sites in the British Isles. There's a follow-up that tackles similar sites on the Continent. There seems to be a touch of oddness in the commentary (I can't speak definitively, I've only skimmed so far) but even if it is full-on wingnuttery, the book is worth it for the photographic survey of 300-ish sites. I knew there were standing stones in the UK, but I had no idea there were so many beyond the well known ones (Stonehenge, Avebury, maybe the Whispering Knights?) and that they are so varied (and, honestly, to an American, in such a relatively small area). Hard to find, but worthy of the trouble, I think.