Courtesy DriveThruRPG
Dr. Michael C. LaBossiere, the unstoppable author of many modern Call of Cthulhu scenarios, must have realized he had a goldmine of material to draw from. So instead of reinventing the wheel, he took every monster, item, and spell that featured in all his collective scenarios and put them together in this book – the only installment despite the title's implication of future volumes.
Dr. LaBossiere's critters have never been his strong point. We have animating slimes, swirling blood elementals, beasts similar to John Carpenter's The Thing, a lot of indescribable blots of darkness and evil, zombie variants, ghost piranhas, skeleton variants, worm monsters, vampire variants…you get the idea. A few stand out – the Oblos, which features on the cover, is suitably alien, as are the Creepers. Very few of these beasts have direct ties to the Mythos, invented whole cloth for the purposes of the scenarios where they first debuted. And that's the thing -- these are bog standard variants of monsters you already know. Where Dr. LaBossiere excels is in presenting these beasts in a modern scenario. Stripped of their surroundings, most of these monsters are merely mediocre.
The technology section is small, consisting of just three items: a Greater Soul Battery, Lesser Machine, and Soul Battery. I was hoping for some Mi-Go technology but no such luck.
Like the beasts, the spells are specific to scenarios and lose much of their relevance listed in encyclopedia format. The majority of the spells are involved with binding, commanding, creating, dispelling or summoning the aforementioned creatures.
Dr. LaBossiere's contributions to the modern Cthulhu are significant, but this collection doesn't do his work justice. It's just a rehashing of what's already been published in other sources, without much in the way of illustrations or additional content. Keepers looking for non-Mythos beasts may find it valuable, but they're better served by seeking out the scenarios available for free at Yog-Sothoth.
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