FELL BEASTS AND WONDROUS MAGIC Review
Reposted from the Decipher board:
Got the book yesterday. Haven't read it cover to cover by any means, but my first impressions are, thankfully, more favorable than Colin Chapman's, whose recent review threw this forum into a paroxysm of wailing and teeth-gnashing.
Let me start by saying I agree with Colin that the book is too thin--especially for the retail price. I expect 128 pages, at least, for 25 smackers. There are glaring and curious omissions in the bestiary (Great Eagles, Neekerbreekers, Giants, and Bats (although they provide Swarm of Bees?!) being chief among them, that could have added some bulk. Too, since "Wondrous Magic" comprises fully half the book's title, it's a bit of a surprise that the chapter of the same name comprises less than 15% of the book. There is a bit of repetition, although I must point out that Decipher rightly chose not to give us another description of the One Ring. Also, many of the "repeated" bits feature significant new expansions, like the Black Easterling Nazgūl, the many breeds of trolls and sub-species of orcs, et al.
Like all the LotR books so far, this book is too gorgeous for its own good. Given the amount of redlining I had to do in the Core Book, I have a dim view of white type reversed out of a black background for text-heavy pages. Makes it impossible to correct your own book. Too, the glare off the glossy paper makes the many stills from the film look great, but makes the text harder to read in many lighting conditions (particularly on those pesky black backgrounds). Although Colin didn't care for the illustrations, I don't really have a problem with them. In fact, I'd say they're as good or better than the vast majority of RPG product out there today. The Dragons do owe a lot to D&D dragons, but so what? Tolkien didn't exactly describe them in great detail. What'cha gonna do--they're dragons.
Anyhoo, the contents look pretty useful to me, overall, and probably makes this volume the first "must-have" book for Narrators since the Core Book--unless they have a lot of time on their hands to create their own critters from scratch. Players should not buy this book unless you have money to burn; there's nothing in it for you, and plenty that your Narrator probably doesn't want you to see!
Both "Fell Beasts" and "Beasts of the Land" are described. The Fell Beasts list includes three brands of Balrog; undead, like Barrow-wights, Ghosts, Nazgūl, and Vampires; three demon variants, three kinds of Dragons; Ents and Huorns; three types of Giant Spiders; two Kraken; Oliphaunts; five species of orcs, including half-orcs and Uruk-hai; five kinds of Trolls (including the debut of the Cave Troll--much tougher than the generic troll in the Core Book); and Wargs and Werewolves. All of these offer lots of detail and tips on how to use them in your chronicle. Unfortunately, many of them aren't "chunked" together, as I just did above, but are instead listed alphabetically. So, the Kraken aren't together, the Demons aren't together (if you consider Balrog and Werewolves demons, which I certainly do), the undead aren't together, the--well, you get the idea. This follows the frustrating trend which began in the FELLOWSHIP tome; it would've been much better to organize the characters therein by race, too.
A couple of oddities: the Cave Troll is the only Troll listed as "Mammoth" in Size, which make him twice as fast as all the other Trolls. I thought the "War Trolls" the Olog-hai were the biggest and baddest of the Troll race, but maybe its just me. Secondly, the Vampire stands out as very un-Tolkienesque to me--the illustration depicts him as one of Gary Oldman's BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA incarnations--the ancient withered grandfatherly type. I was expecting something much more demony, all bat wings and iron claws and slavering fangs, but maybe its just me...
The "Beasts of the Land" section covers most of your mundane critters, from Badgers to Wolves. Sure there's a Wolverine included, and I guess the illustration is of an "American" badger, but I ain't losing any sleep since neither will probably ever make an appearance in my chronicle anyway. Shrug.
Speaking of creating critters from scratch, the book has a whole chapter on how to do just that, providing good advice and some nice tools to help you make your own monstrous mayhem. This covers everything from Creature Advancement picks to Giant Creatures, to Creature Packages to Creature Attribute Modifiers to Movement Rates (although I must confess I don't understand the Movement Rates at all--they're based on the critter's Size, so a turtle is faster than a squirrel--huh?). I'll be posting a fell beast of my own manufacture as soon as I've polished it a bit.
The magic section, though short, has some cool stuff, most notably some non-canonical items (like specific "Lesser" Rings of Power), greatly expanded powers for Wizard's staves, and just about every magic item described in THE HOBBIT and LOTR. Cool. Short, but cool.
Overall, this is the most satisfying LotR support book to date. One gets the sense that Decipher is listening to us after all, since extensive playtest credits appear for the first time. THE FELLOWSHIP SOURCEBOOK is really only useful if the characters and places therein figure prominently in one's chronicle. This book has something for every Narrator. You might not agree with everything in it, but it's a heck of a lot better than making all this stuff up yourself.
Is it worth $25? Well...to me it is. But then, $25 isn't a lot of money to me in the grand scheme of things. Do I think it's overpriced? Yes. Definitely. I would have considered this book a good value at $20. Maybe you can find it at Amazon for something closer to that price, and without sales tax.
Best,
T.
