A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement New Golems of the Labyrinth

New Golems of the Labyrinth by Derek Holland is a role playing game supplement published by Skirmisher Publishing for use with Labyrinth Lord and other OSR systems. Although it is written for use with Open Game License rulesets, it does not appear itself to be covered by the OGL. The supplement is a collection of ten new golems.

This is a ten page PDF that is available from RPGNow for $0.99 but was purchased at the greatly reduced price of $0.01 as part of a special bundle. Two pages are the front and rear covers, one page is blank, two pages are the front matter and one page is an ad for other supplements.

There are ten new types of golems – a lot for the number of pages but stat blocks for OSR-based games are much, much smaller than those for more modern games – all of which are made from different materials to the standard.

Cerebral Golems are made from brains and can cast spells; the better the brain, the more powerful the magic.

Ectoplasm Golems are made from the essence of ghosts, can pass through solid matter, detect the living and require magic weapons to hit.

Flesh-and-Blood Golems are worn and bind to the user’s flesh. They extend the user’s life, can heal damage, eliminate the need for food or sleep and have an improved armour class.

Gas Metal Golems are made from gaseous metal and cause heat damage to those within, although some may cause electrical or cold damage.

Leaf Golems help nearby plants and plant-creatures grow and heal.

Lightning Rod Golems absorb magic and can cause damage with absorbed spells. They are quite powerful, but can be shorted out by too much magic, otherwise they would be really overpowered.

Magic Golems are made from magic itself, have access to some spells and can be given the ability to turn undead.

Particulate Golems are related to Gas Metal Golems, but are weaker and made from different particles. They can inflict suffocation and heat, electricity or sonic damage.

Shield Golems produce a Wall of Force variant that deflects ranged weapons, hostile magic and the undead.

Water Chariot Golems are land vehicles for aquatic races.

New Golems of the Labyrinth in Review

The PDF is bookmarked, although only for each page rather than for each individual golem. Navigation is still decent for such a short supplement. The text maintains a two column format and appeared to be free of errors. There are illustrations for five of the golems – all would have been great, but not expected – and four of these have miniatures at the back. Presumably the fifth doesn’t because of lack of space on the page, although placing all the miniatures on another page would have got around this.

Even at full price, this would have been an inexpensive collection of creatures. At the price paid, it was nearly given away. The golems are all rather different to the more typical golems; this isn’t simply a collection of existing golems ported to OSR. Some of the golems looks more practical than others, and some may be a little overpowered. New Golems of the Labyrinth is a generally nice collection of new golems that can be found by clicking here.