The Monster Alphabet

The Monster Alphabet was written by Jobe Bittman and Michael Curtis, with a Foreword by Frank Mentzer and additional writing by Steven Bean, Daniel J. Bishop, Jon Hook, Edgar Johnson, Terry Olson, and James Edward Raggi IV. Art is by Jeff Easley, Fritz Haas, Jim Holloway (including cover art for the color edition), Doug Kovacs, Diesel LaForce, William McAusland, Brad McDevitt, Peter Mullen, Erol Otus, Russ Nicholson, Stefan Poag (including cover art for the gold foil edition), Chad Sergesketter, Chuck Whelon, and Michael Wilson. The publisher is Goodman Games.

Disclosure: I did some additional writing for this product. Specifically, I wrote "C is for Celestial".

"Make Monsters Mysterious", said Joseph Goodman in the Dungeon Crawl Classics core rulebook. But did he provide the resources for doing so?

Yes. Yes he did.

Not only does the core rulebook contain excellent tables for making creatures like humanoids, un-dead, demons, giants, and dragons unique, but it points you towards The Random Esoteric Creature Generator, also published by Goodman Games. The Monster Alphabet is more of the same - a bunch of tables to help make your monsters different.

This book is similar to The Dungeon Alphabet, and is largely system-neutral. However, where rules are referenced, they are the rules for Dungeon Crawl Classics. For instance, under "N is for Noxious", spell checks are mentioned. People wanting to use this resource with other game systems will not generally find these references difficult; those hoping for complete statblocks, however, will also find nothing of the kind. This book is more of a resource to spur your creativity, and certainly to create unique monsters, but you will have to put the descriptions into game terms (where necessary) in the vast majority of cases.

Herein you get:

• A is for Aquatic
• A is also for Android
• A is also for Armor
• B is for Blood
• B is for Breath Weapon
• C is for Celestial
• C is also for Construct
• C is also for Crossbreed
• D is for Dragon
• E is for Eyeball
• E is also for Extraplanar 
• F is for Flame
• F is also for Frost
• G is for Geas
• G is also for Giant
• H is for Hoard
• I is for Infernal
• I is also for Insectoid
• J is for Jurassic
• K is for Kryptonite
• L is for Lair
• L is also for Lycanthrope
• L is also for Lore
• M is for Minions
• N is for Noxious
• O is for Ongoing Damage 
• O is also for Ooze Lords
• O is also for Ordinary
• P is for Psionic
• P is also for Plant
• P is also for Possessions 
• Q is for Quill
• R is for Reaction 
• R is also for Revenge
• R is also for Resistance
• S is for Sorcery
• S is also for Sonic
• T is for Tail
• U is for Unexpected
• V is for Vampire
• W is for Weird
• W is also for Wings
• X is for Xenotransplantation
• Y is for Yuck
• Z is for Zombie
• Z is also for Zoomorphic

The book also contains a Random Monster Drop Table to help you generate unknown critters (or modify those which would otherwise be known).

It should also be noted that, at the time of this writing, The Monster Alphabet is an add-on to a kickstarter for a revised printing of The Dungeon Alphabet. You can check that out here. In fact, since some of the interior pages of The Dungeon Alphabet are reproduced, you can get a pretty good idea of how glorious the artwork is in both volumes. I assure you, The Monster Alphabet is just as good!

Get It Here!