<< 1 >>
Rating: Summary: Poor quality book Review: First off, let me say that I was very excited when I first heard of this sourcebook...I was very, very wrong. This book is unprofessional, dull, and poorly written. It has terrible art, possibly the worst I have ever seen in a sourcebook, in black and white (most of it derived from other sources, looking like cave paintings). The monsters in this book are unbalanced, obviously not playtested. The sourcebook has creatures pulled from all sorts of mythological sources, managing to find all the ones that resemble each other, and even trying to replace their monsters with the ones in Monster Manual (such as the Rakshasa) About half of the book has creatures that look, and are written as, just about the same monster. Think of them as fillers. As I previously stated, it has only mythological creatures, and doesn't even bother to change the flavor text to match normal fantasy. The writers ignored the feel of real fantasy and decided to make the "demons" and "devils" peasant scaring myth rip-offs. All in all, this is the WORST d20 supplement I have EVER bought. Every part of it is terrible, from the art to the writing. Save your money, please.
Rating: Summary: Demons & Devils vol 1 Review: This book is fascinating both from a D&D viewpoint and on its own. Unlike other monster collections, every demon and devil in this book is based on a creature of mythology. To quote from the preface: "Remember that for every demon or devil presented here, someone, somewhere once regarded them as absolutely real. They have been feared by living, breathing human beings. Some are probably still feared by someone, somewhere." Certainly they have been adapted, but the few I am familiar with appear to be true to the original material. Thus, many creatures that would probably never have been thought of by gamers (e.g. household demons) are here as well as demi-god level critters. Now the downside. Many gamers aren't really interested in creatures that affect the day to day lives of the peasants. The material tends to be a little haphazard and not extremely well integrated - remember that it is coming from a whole lot of different cultures. Lastly, some Christians won't like adaptations of their pet demons. The only other comment I would make is that I, personally, thought the art work was not especially good. While this doesn't matter very much to me others might be more critical. Overall, this is a very good work and the base material is far more varied than any work of pure imagination I have currently seen out there for the D&D / D20 world.
<< 1 >>
|