The Mystara Monstrous Compendium Has Been Released in PDF!

Being a Mystaraphile, it should come as no surprise to any of my readers that, in my opinion, one of the BEST Monstrous Compendiums to ever come out of the 2nd Edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons was the Mystara Appendix. Wizards has finally released the PDF on DriveThruRPG. Being designed for 2E, it is readily compatible with Labyrinth Lord and Castles & Crusades, so you should definitely check it out if you want a collection of weird and interesting monsters!

I've included the info from the DTRPG listing below. I gotta say that I really enjoy the historical info on all the new PDF releases from Wizards.

Monstrous Compendium - Mystara Appendix (2e)

Rare dragons, wondrous giants, bizarre humanoids... For years such creatures have filled classic D&D campaigns set in the world of Mystara, along with the exotic hivebrood, rakasta, thoul, and many more.

Now, for the first time ever, more than 100 of Mystara's unique and most popular creatures have been developed and defined in AD&D game terms! This must-have volume will delight and horrify players of the new AD&D Mystara campaign as well as any fan of the all-time favorites within.

Product History

The Mystara Monstrous Compendium Appendix (1994) was produced by John Nephew, Teeuwynn Woodruff, John Terra, and Skip Williams. It was published in August 1994.

Moving Mystara. In Dragon #197 (September 1993), Bruce A. Heard announced that the Known World of Mystara would "be granted much greater attention and support as a major TSR line." To allow for this, Heard said that the Known World was "graduating" to the AD&D game. According to TSR's original plans, the new line was to kick off with a Monstrous Compendium, a dungeon adventure, a Castle Amberville Gazetteer, an almanac, new novels, and a new accessory about the Savage Coast.

Fans were a bit shocked, and some protested that AD&D didn't need another game world - and they were right there, as TSR's proliferation of game worlds was probably already causing them economic problems. What they didn't realize was that Basic D&D had been losing ground to AD&D for over a decade, and that TSR had been flailing about trying to find some way to support Basic D&D since 1990 - without success. The Classic Dungeons & Dragons Game (1994) would end up being the last release for TSR's introductory gaming system. If Mystara hadn't transferred over to AD&D, the world would have died.

Although TSR supported Mystara for only three years as an AD&D game world, from 1994-96, along the way they produced some handsome boxed sets and largely fulfilled their original plans. It all kicked off in August 1994 with two releases - Karameikos Campaign Setting and Mystara Monstrous Compendium Appendix.

Sources. The Mystara Monstrous Compendium is a rather impressive collection of almost 15 years of Known World material. It contains numerous monsters from the core sources that you'd expect, including the first four BECMI boxes (1983-84), six B-series Basic adventures, almost every X-series Expert adventure, three CM (Companion) adventures, and two M (or Master) adventures.

It also goes further afield, reprinting monsters that appeared in the DA (Blackmoor), XL (Licensed), XS (Solo), and O (One-on-One) series, as well as monsters from some later releases like Wrath of the Immortals (1992), Champions of Mystara: Heroes of the Princess Ark (1993), and "Rage of the Rakasta" (1993).

Prior to the publication of the Mystara Monstrous Compendium, Known World monsters had largely been collected in three volumes. Monsters from the rulebooks had been compiled in the D&D Rules Cyclopedia (1991) while monsters from adventures were compiled in AC9: Creature Catalogue (1986), which was later revamped as DMR2: Creature Catalog (1993). The Mystara Monstrous Compendium largely supersedes those previously compilations, though it of course updates everything to AD&D.

Because the Mystara Monstrous Compendium is such a comprehensive sourcebook, it also brings together some previously separated classes of critters, such as the living statues, the spider-kin, and the worms. (Yes, for some reason the Known World has tons of worms.)

Monsters of Note. This compilation is most notable for the deeply Mystaran creatures that it brings over to AD&D, among them the hutaakans of the Hollow World, the tentacular kopru, a variety of lizard-kin and spider-kin (the latter including the popular aranea), the lupin of the Savage Coast, pegataurs, the racoon-like phanaton, and the cat-like rakasta.

The Mystara Monstrous Compendium also includes several interesting typed creatures, most notably the unique drakes and crystalline dragons of Mystara - though the sapphire dragon was sadly misplaced. There are also some new inhabitants for the elemental planes, including Mystara's sentient answer to the quasi-elementals, which mix Law and Chaos with the standard elements, and a set of weaker elemental fundamentals.

The most infamous monster in this book is doubtless the decapus, which caused some problems in its original appearance in B3: "Palace of the Silver Princess" (1983).

Sadly, very few of the monsters from Mystara have influenced more recent editions of D&D. The bhut, the Neh-Tallgu brain collector, the choker, the frost salamander, the athach giant, the mud golem, the kopru, the nightshade, and the aranea spider-kin are the only monsters to appear in major Wizards of the Coast supplements for third edition. Several more iconic monsters like the lupin and the phanton showed up in Dragon or Dungeon magazine thanks to interest at Paizo.

About the Creators. This creatures in this book were originally created by a variety of authors over a 13-year period, then revamped and edited by freelancers and TSR staff alike. No doubt this overhaul was a major internal effort at Wizards!

About the Product Historian

The history of this product was researched and written by Shannon Appelcline, the author of Designers & Dragons - a history of the roleplaying industry told one company at a time. Please feel free to mail corrections, comments, and additions to shannon.appelcline@gmail.com.

Click here to go to the Mystara Monstrous Compendium on DriveThruRPG

[Southland] New Version of Outdoor Survival Map

When I need to get my game on, but can't really concentrate on writing and can't get together with anyone to play, I draw maps. Call it a kind of occupational therapy, if you will.

Once upon a time I did that by hand... but now I mostly use Hexographer. Going through  my "Campaign Setting" folders, I stumbled upon the work done on Southland, the post-Blackmoor setting Dave Arneson used after his group essentially trashed the original campaign. The setting used Avalon Hill Game Company's Outdoor Survival map, as was mentioned in The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures booklet in OD&D. Robert Conley created a fine Judges Guild style version of the map long ago. 

I decided I wanted to play around with the map, maybe make a few variants, so I put together a base, "original" version of the map. My version does not include the "Encounter Areas" that Rob's does, but is otherwise pretty close. Later variants will develop the region more, and include different climate versions.

If you want a larger PNG or the original Hexographer file, drop me an e-mail...

Click to embiggen...

[Defiance] An alien cuckoo?

Something bothered me about Alak Tarr from the moment I saw him...

He doesn't look anything like his mother or father. And it is not just the hair (which is likely dyed).

It is his eyes...

Click to embiggen...

Note the description of the Castithans from the Defiance site:

Although they are conservative with regard to tradition and language, Castithans tend to be very liberal with their sexuality. Sex is as much a tool of political agenda as it is an expression of love. Castithans have zero reservations about using sex as a means to an end. That’s not to say that Castithans don’t also enjoy sex to the extreme. Many of their most cherished ceremonies involve expressions of passion and desire.

I get the feeling that along with this goes the cultural reality that, as far as society is concerned, "the children of a man's wife are his children, regardless of their actual genetic parent." How else could it work in a society so worried about caste and social class?

The show very purposefully put together a group of actors who very much looked alike, and "pure" to the Castithan type, especially so in the case of Datak and Stahma... 

So... who is Alak's father? And is he even a Castithan? Could his father be human?

Though Datak very much emphasizes "my son" several times, even when with Stahma... could it be that Stahma is not his mother? Hmmm...

[Defiance] More thoughts on the Votan...

Now I may be reading even more into this, but... all the the Votan races have some analog in myth, legend, cryptozoology, or ancient astronauts. When, say, the Votan-Atlantis fell, the various races that remained on Earth retreated to their natural haunts or, in the case of the Castithans and Irathients, were eventually assimilated into the broader Human/Votan line...

Click here to check out the descriptions of each race on the Defiance web site...

Castithans = Nordic Aliens/Elves

Indogenes = Grays/Reptoids

Irathients = Firbolg

Liberata = Dwarfs

Sensoth = Sasquatch/Yeti/Woodwoses

Volge = Fomorians

[Defiance] Thoughts on Defiance...

I watched the premiere of the new show the other day, and I have to say that, though it is a relatively derivative mash-up of Star Trek, Mad Max, Thundarr, and Shakespeare, it has caught my attention. A few things that come to mind on where the story is coming from are noted below…

Mad Max meets Thundarr...

It must be noted that the Votans cannot be from the Perseus Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy; the Perseus Arm is no less than 6,000 to 13,000 LY distant from Sol, which is in the Orion Arm (which may be a spur of the Perseus Arm). They have to be from somewhere in the direction of the Perseus Arm. They traveled for 5,000 years on slower-than-light arks. They must have been slower-than-light arks; otherwise, with their ability to Terraform (Votaniform?) planets, there was no reason for them to travel more than a few score light years away from their own system (the Votanis/Sulos binary system). So they must be within, say, 100 light years…

I’d say they were from the Algol system, around 95 LY distant, in the direction of the Perseus Constellation and the Perseus Arm. Algol is (today) a trinary system, linked with “ominous legends” going back into ancient history. Let us say that prior to 5000 years ago, it was a binary system; when the stellar disaster struck, the rogue star remained in-system, transforming it into a trinary system. The Votanis system was not destroyed, though the planets around Votanis (Algol B) were; Casti, around the star Sulos (Algol A) was almost destroyed...

My theory is that Casti, and more than enough of the Votans living on Casti, survived…

So now you had two populations of Votans – those on the Ark Fleet, and the survivors on Casti.

The survivors on Casti had every reason to hate those who left them behind…

Those of you familiar with the Wait Calculation may see where this is going…

To sum up, there are many odd things mentioned and seen in the first episode:

First, the St. Louis Arch. It is no coincidence that it resembles the shape of the Votan Ark Ships…

Second, the fact that there is an alien “artifact” buried in the mines in Defiance (St. Louis)…

Third, the fact that humans and Votans can, apparently, interbreed with minimal problems (at least, in the case of the Irathients and Castithans)…

Finally, the Votans did not expect to find *any* civilization on Earth when they arrived. Their observations from 3,000 BC would not have seen much of any sort of civilization, perhaps primitive villages at best. But no real “civilization” as they would have known it…

So what ties all this together?

See, what happened is that the surviving inhabitants of Casti developed some sort of space drive that let them get around the light-speed limit. Not a true FTL drive; more of a worm-hole drive, or a jump drive, that let them get from star to star.

And so, as part of spreading to the stars, they also gained their revenge. They arrived on Earth millennia before the Ark-based Votans (whom they could not interrupt, as their way of getting to the stars required jumping from star to star). Once on Earth, they set about building a civilization to fight against the Ark Fleet. These are the aliens of Erich Von Däniken… it is no coincidence that the Indogenes look not unlike the Grays, nor that the Castithans looks not unlike the Nordics (or elves, for that matter), or that the Sensoth look not unlike the Sasquatch… the Votans already arrived, thousands of years ago. They were Zecharia Sitchin’s Anunnaki of ancient myth and legend. They used their technology to interbreed with and uplift the humans of that era, and started them on the long climb to civilization. Perhaps they even built a high civilization long ago, a Votan-Atlantis, and lost it all in their own hubris…

 

But even after that disaster, they remained, and have guided Earth in the millennia since. What the artifact found under the Votan-like Arch in Defiance is… I’ve no clue… but there’s a bigger conspiracy wrapped in an enigma going on here…