A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement Bizarre Bestiary

Bizarre Bestiary by Travis Legge is a role playing game supplement published by Onyx Path Publishing through the Canis Minor Community Content Programme for use with Pugmire. As such, it is covered by the Open Game License and some parts are considered to be Open Game Content as a result. This is a bestiary of new monsters for the game.

This is an eleven page PDF that is available from DriveThruRPG for $1 but was purchased at a reduced price of $0.40 as part of a special bundle. Two pages are the front and back covers and two pages are the Open Game License. The supplement comes in two versions, a normal one and a printer-friendly greyscale version lacking page backgrounds.

The first page simply has some in-character introductory text about the monsters.

Next are the new monsters. There are nine monsters, although one is actually a type with four individual monsters in it.

Black Ichor is a corrosive black goo found in underground areas – a black pudding.

A Canitaur is a type of centaur (not a minotaur) but with the torso of a dog not a human.

Chimeras have a dog, cat and rat head.

Elementals come in the four normal types

The Gibberish Growler is a protoplasmic mass of eyes and mouths that gibbers – a gibbering mouther.

The Owlbear is a standard monster.

The Shamblebrush is an animate pile of plant matter – a shambling mound.

Trapestries are enchanted tapestries that envelop intruders – trappers.

Wisps use a glow to lure dogs to their doom – will o’wisps.

Bizarre Bestiary in Review

The PDF lacks bookmarks and, despite its length, these would have been useful. Navigation could be better. The text maintains a two column full colour format and appeared to be free of errors. There are a number of illustrations, four in colour – earth and wind elementals, gibberish growler and owlbear – and one black and white one, the canitaur. It would have been nice to have illustrations for every monster, but this is rare. Presentation is decent.

The supplement basically converts some standard D&D monsters to the Pugmire system, with more modifications in the case of the chimera and the canitaur. A decent job is done of this and the feel has been altered slightly as well. One thing that is missing is descriptions; none of the monsters have one. Some have images and some appearances can be inferred, but there aren’t any outright descriptions. Overall, for the price, this is very good value for money. Bizarre Bestiary can be found by clicking here.