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Call of Cthulhu RPG
Malleus Monstrorum: Creatures, Gods, & Forbidden Knowledge
Chaosium Stock #23102
LORE OF THINGS FROM BEYOND ? Gathered from every professionally-published Call of Cthulhu book and scenario, Malleus Monstrorum is the most comprehensive collection of gods and monsters ever assembled for Call of Cthulhu. Entries for the monsters have been tweaked, edited, updated, and corrected. A few have been significantly expanded from previous descriptions.
LORE OF THINGS FROM BEYOND ? Gathered from every professionally-published Call of Cthulhu book and scenario, Malleus Monstrorum is the most comprehensive collection of gods and monsters ever assembled for Call of Cthulhu. Entries for the monsters have been tweaked, edited, updated, and corrected. A few have been significantly expanded from previous descriptions.
295 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2005
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July 26, 2023How? This is a review of the 2006 book and of the 2020 two-volume reissue, both of which I picked up online. (Where do I keep picking these books up? Some from eBay, some from a private auction group on FB, some from Goodwill.)
What? The two versions largely cover the same territory: monster and gods in Cthulhu Mythos+. So this isn't just a collection of the entities that Lovecraft created, or even the ones that his friends and collaborators came up with; but this also includes monsters/gods created in the history of the game, gathered together here for ease of reference.
(These books also include sections on describing the indescribable, monsters of folklore (vampires, werewolves, golems, etc.), and animals.)
Yeah, so? First, I have to take a moment to acknowledge the huge amount of love and work that obviously went into creating a catalogue of weirdness of this size.
Second, I have to acknowledge the gameplay reasons and market forces that make "monster manual" a reasonable book to put out -- even as the codification of, say, the avatars of Nyarlathotep feels fundamentally wrong for a game about the unknown. That tension is there, there's no way around it.
Third, I want to talk about one difference between the 2006 and 2020 versions: the 2020 has RPG art, the kind of thing that is in all of Chaosium's books (and the books of other companies); the 2006 book takes the (probably cost-saving) method of touching up archival cultural works to include some weirdness. So they take Gustave Dore's engraving of a Black Sabbath and add a hint of tentacles to the sky; or they take a picture of an ancient Greek vase and give a hint of tentacles. I mean, the formula is kind of always "add tentacles" -- but it works in a way that the standard RPG art doesn't: it makes this weirdness a part of the world we live in.
Fourth: Flipping through this book, you'll see a lot of monsters/gods. On one hand, it almost feels like too many, like every single river has its own local monster, and everything is weird geometry and fungi-like. But on the other, as much as I love the big names -- and I do love all the avatars of Nyarlathotep, though I'll always be a Hastur-boy at heart -- I started to feel an itch about exploring some of the minor figures here.
So, all together: I enjoyed flipping through this book -- and I love the "clear credit" section that Chaosium always does these days, trying to give the creators the credit/responsibility they deserve. It did do the job of starting to fire off some neurons in my brain, but partly my interest in some of the minor figures is because they haven't been seen that often before and might still have a frisson of the unknown around them, which goes back to that central tension when describing/codifying the indescribable.
What? The two versions largely cover the same territory: monster and gods in Cthulhu Mythos+. So this isn't just a collection of the entities that Lovecraft created, or even the ones that his friends and collaborators came up with; but this also includes monsters/gods created in the history of the game, gathered together here for ease of reference.
(These books also include sections on describing the indescribable, monsters of folklore (vampires, werewolves, golems, etc.), and animals.)
Yeah, so? First, I have to take a moment to acknowledge the huge amount of love and work that obviously went into creating a catalogue of weirdness of this size.
Second, I have to acknowledge the gameplay reasons and market forces that make "monster manual" a reasonable book to put out -- even as the codification of, say, the avatars of Nyarlathotep feels fundamentally wrong for a game about the unknown. That tension is there, there's no way around it.
Third, I want to talk about one difference between the 2006 and 2020 versions: the 2020 has RPG art, the kind of thing that is in all of Chaosium's books (and the books of other companies); the 2006 book takes the (probably cost-saving) method of touching up archival cultural works to include some weirdness. So they take Gustave Dore's engraving of a Black Sabbath and add a hint of tentacles to the sky; or they take a picture of an ancient Greek vase and give a hint of tentacles. I mean, the formula is kind of always "add tentacles" -- but it works in a way that the standard RPG art doesn't: it makes this weirdness a part of the world we live in.
Fourth: Flipping through this book, you'll see a lot of monsters/gods. On one hand, it almost feels like too many, like every single river has its own local monster, and everything is weird geometry and fungi-like. But on the other, as much as I love the big names -- and I do love all the avatars of Nyarlathotep, though I'll always be a Hastur-boy at heart -- I started to feel an itch about exploring some of the minor figures here.
So, all together: I enjoyed flipping through this book -- and I love the "clear credit" section that Chaosium always does these days, trying to give the creators the credit/responsibility they deserve. It did do the job of starting to fire off some neurons in my brain, but partly my interest in some of the minor figures is because they haven't been seen that often before and might still have a frisson of the unknown around them, which goes back to that central tension when describing/codifying the indescribable.
December 3, 2022
Good, but it's got a lot of somewhat useless creatures or deities which are not especially useful and the 7th edition version of the supplement has rendered it redundant. Full review: https://refereeingandreflection.wordp...
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