Strange and Unusual Monsters ...
"Strange and Unusual" monsters are now in print, including mine!
Happy New Year! The hotly anticipated 2024 is finally here, and so is my hardcover copy of the Battlezoo Bestiary: Strange and Unusual, featuring the winning monsters from the 2021 edition (!!!) of RPG Superstar.
You may recall that I posted about my 2x winning entries to this competition when the medals were first announced in April 2022. Well, it turns out books take a long time to make! Especially coming out of the pandemic era when commercial freighters get swallowed up by the Eye of Abendego and shipping containers remain unopened for weeks or months at sea.
After much waiting, this bad boy finally arrived on my doorstep yesterday:
It’s quite a lovely book at 224 pages, full of community-created creatures from Level -1 (the mindless Carnivorous Chapeau construct) to Level 24 (the legendary sahkil deity Zakurak).
On the topic of being legendary, please earn yourself a Hero Point by poking that heart button up top. I have no idea what it accomplishes, but legend has it that …
And the illustrations are stunning: part of the fun and excitement of seeing my monsters in print is discovering how the illustrators have incorporated my art direction notes and made my creations manifest. Here’s the Emperor Shark Penguin in all its sadistic, razor-toothed glory:
How about this eerie Bathtub Ooze, sloshing out of a clawfoot bathtub:
I had a fun time paging through the illustrations with my four-year-old daughter, who was proud to see my work in print but even more excited to check out all the funky creatures: we talked about how they were all make-believe, and some were friendly to our heroes while others were villains! Her favorites were the Crystalline Owl by Katrina Hennessy, and the Fetchfisher by Alex G. Friedman.
So now it’s time to set the clock ticking for the publication journey of Battlezoo Bestiary: Elemental Storm, the follow-up book from Roll for Combat featuring winners of the 2023 edition of RPG Superstar. As mentioned in the previous edition of this newsletter, my kunthalaka rakshasa won a Silver medal and will be appearing in the new book!
See you in 2026? Hopefully I don’t have to wait quite that long …
THE MINI AND THE DICE
A random collection of ooze-tinted d6s accompany the rubber duckie from my daughter’s dollhouse, in honor of this terrific lore sidebar written to accompany my Bathtub Ooze entry, titled “The Float Test”:
Bathing with a duck figurine is a treasured tradition in many cultures, its graceful form bobbing upon the surface of the water with nary a care in the world. Coincidentally, the float test is the quickest method to determine if the water in a tub is merely dirty or an ooze sleeping off its last meal. Drop a duck on an ooze, and it quickly sinks, pulled in by the ooze’s voracious body. Drop a duck in dirty water, and it gently floats, silently judging your poor hygiene.
Ernie would be proud!
SCREENSHOT PRESENTED WITHOUT CONTEXT
That’s it for this edition, a short but sweet one to ring in 2024. Ding dong! And so, as I say at the end of every Pathfinder module I run: this has been Ambush Tactics. I’ve been your Game Master. I hope you had a fun time.
Adventure!