Book of Beasts: Monsters of the Shadow Plane (PFRPG) (based on
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Jon Brazer Enterprises
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The Book of Beasts: Monsters of the Shadow Plane details the deadly and frightening monsters that go bump in the night. More than 50 brand new monsters for your Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, these monsters will frighten players and challenge their characters in new and exciting ways. This monster book is the latest in the award-winning Book of Beasts series and is the bestiary to the Shadowfall series, premiering in 2012.
If this is only half as good as the Book of River Nations, we're in for a treat!
Yeah, I am THRILLED that this stuff is finally coming out! I can't wait until people get to really start digging into all this great shadow plane material!!!
Dale: I am curious what inspiration might have gone into your understanding of the Plane of Shadow. I recently read Zelazney's first Amber series and Gygax's Gord novels, and I couldn't help but wonder.
Dale: I am curious what inspiration might have gone into your understanding of the Plane of Shadow. I recently read Zelazney's first Amber series and Gygax's Gord novels, and I couldn't help but wonder.
Truth be told, the Amber series is sitting on The World's Greatest Girlfriend(TM)'s shelf and I have yet to read it. I've always wanted to but I haven't yet. I'll suggest it after we finish up Dresden Files: Ghost Story (which we're currently on). I read to the TWGGf(TM) every night before bed. You'd be amazed how much you can read by doing that.
My view of the Plane of Shadows comes more from my love of many different post-apocalyptic zombie books and movies. Few humans, lots of zombies, stuff just hanging around with no one claiming ownership, people more worried about basic survival than getting rich, zombies, protected cities, large stretches of land without any countries protecting it or even pretending they own it, etc, still more zombies. A few of my favorites include: The Walking Dead (both the graphic novel and the tv show), Appleseed, Planet of the Apes (novel), Trigun, Dawn/Shawn of the Dead, Jeremiah, Resident Evil, and 28 Days/Weeks Later
From there it involved adding fantasy in the appropriate mixture. Pathfinder's Campaign Setting heavily influenced it, obviously, since I want to be easy for a GM to drop this in as Golarion's Plane of Shadows, but no direct references are made. Exalted actually had some good influences. There's an ultra-high magi-tech protected city and the magical items were great for inspiration. Avatar: The Last Airbender inspired a monster or two (my favorite of which was cut for space unfortunately, but will be in the PDF of other monsters that were cut).
I've never read Zelazney, so that isn't going to affect me. But the one thing I don't comprehend is the zombie / post-apocalypse fitting in to the plane of shadow.
I guess there's only one way to find out! I've appreciated Dale's River Nations releases, so I'm curious. :)
your doing a shadows setting, yet without having first read the second Amber series? Scratches head. Um ok.
The World's Greatest Girlfriend(TM) explained Amber to me as every world is a shadow of Amber. Amber is the true reality while our world is a shadow of it and some other is a shadow of ours. She described someone raising an army marching from that one shadow through another shadow to get to a different shadow. To me, that sounds like Planescape, specifically Sigil. From her description, I could see that being a major inspiration for a whole cosmology setting, but not for one single plane. But that's just my opinion. And her opinion as well.
Urizen wrote:
I've never read Zelazney, so that isn't going to affect me. But the one thing I don't comprehend is the zombie / post-apocalypse fitting in to the plane of shadow.
I guess there's only one way to find out! I've appreciated Dale's River Nations releases, so I'm curious. :)
The core concepts are simple. The universe is in balance. There are planes of Earth and Air, Fire and Water, Positive and Negative, The 9 Alignment planes. All of these keep each other in balance. They are equal and opposite.
So the Plane of Shadows must be the Equal and Opposite of the Material Plane. The Material Plane is lighted and warmed by the sun. The Plane of Shadows possesses little in the way of warmth and light from its dim sun. (It is not the plane of darkness but the plane of shadows. Shadows require a sun to create them so there is a sun, but it is rather dim.) The material plane is teaming with life. The Plane of Shadows, being equal and opposite, is teaming with unlife. The most common kind of life in most material plane settings is human life. Lets take that one step further and say it is a commoner classed human. So the most common kind of undead must be a human commoner's equal and opposite: a zombie.
In the same way that the material plane is a good location for living creatures to flourish, The plane of shadows is a good location for undead creatures to flourish. So zombies are the most common thing there. But just like how other humanoids, there are other types of undead. So the plane is filled with vampires, spectres, ghosts and much more.
So with this in mind, it became an exercise in how do living creatures survive there. We came up with a number of models: protected cities, highly mobile tribes, lone holdouts in a stable location, small groups of highly stealthy people. It didn't take long to realize that all of these really had post-apocalyptic written all over it. Mind you, the single biggest difference here is that there was no stable civilization that got nuked and now we have few humans and lots of zombies. This would be closer to describe it as pre-civilization. However there is still a common language and enough tech to make swords and research magic. So pre-civ is not really an accurate description.
The DMG (since 3.5 was the predominant game when I originally started the whole project) said "The Plane of Shadow is magically morphic, and parts continually flow onto other planes. As a result, creating a precise map of the plane is next to impossible, despite the presence of landmarks." I altered that slightly to say that other planes flow onto it. This worked nicely with "lots of death" theme, so dead and forgotten parts of other planes find their way to the Plane of Shadows. You seldomly find whole intact buildings forgotten about. You typically find ruins (like post-apocalypse). Another staple of dead and forgotten parts of many campaign settings is a once powerful civilization where many of their powerful magic items are now gone. So they would find their way to the Plane of Shadows. So there are powerful artifacts that cannot be replicated with 20th level character, but a low level character can use (like post-apocalypse). A "strong man" type person can find one artifact and use it to keep the undead away and boss people around with no check on his power (like post-apocalypse). As we kept going, the parallels kept stacking up. So that was how we created it.
As soon as it goes from the printer to the warehouse then gets shipped off the distributors/Paizo, it will go on sale. I'm hoping for early Feb, but sometime Feb is the best I can nail it down.
The description given for the Plane of Shadow makes it sound like a great place for an adventure of the 'visit the creepy otherworld' variety. I'll be sure to get this when it comes out.
your doing a shadows setting, yet without having first read the second Amber series? Scratches head. Um ok.
The World's Greatest Girlfriend(TM) explained Amber to me as every world is a shadow of Amber. Amber is the true reality while our world is a shadow of it and some other is a shadow of ours. She described someone raising an army marching from that one shadow through another shadow to get to a different shadow. To me, that sounds like Planescape, specifically Sigil. From her description, I could see that being a major inspiration for a whole cosmology setting, but not for one single plane. But that's just my opinion. And her opinion as well.
Another interesting book to give ideas for how the plane of shadows might look/feel/work is Sergei Lukyanenko's Night Watch tetralogy. I recommend reading the books rather than watching the movies. The Movies (Night Watch and Day Watch) loosely follow two of the episodes from the books, but the books tie together a lot of loose strings. They have an interesting system of magic.
The Twilight (all seven levels of it) is an interesting analogue to the Plane of Shadow. Especially the concept of being able to move faster in the Twilight than in the Material Plane, and the idea of the material plane being present but in a different way in the Twilight (ruins instead of buildings, etc).
As our final preview, we've put our Table of Contents up so you can see exactly what monsters are in there, what CRs they are and how long their entries are.
Also, we announced that we're increasing the number of Shadowsfall: Temple of Orcus adventures we're giving away on Free RPG Day. There will be 3 adventures in every box!
I must say, it's very cool seeing the finished product. I was a member of the editorial team, and working on it was a lot of fun. My one regret was that I didn't get to work on the great dodo ;) That critter definitely took me by surprise!
Just picked this up, and I have to admit that I felt rather jipped when first going through it. I had just read up on the Shadowfall Legends about a half-vampire girl taking on the monsters of the shadow plane, and I honestly thought I was going to find a half-vampire template in the book. Mostly because that's what I'm looking for, for next campaign. Of course I did not as it's not in there.
Overall, not too bad for the price, and I might use a couple of the creatures from it, but that's about it. I probably wouldn't have gotten it as early as I did if I'd known ahead of time what I know now.
I honestly thought I was going to find a half-vampire template in the book. Mostly because that's what I'm looking for, for next campaign. Of course I did not as it's not in there.
The dhampir is very important to Shadowsfall and will be receiving considerable support in our next book (Shadowsfall: Player's Guide to the Shadow Plane). We've got race-based archetypes and other player oriented crunch coming up for it. But the Book of Beasts is just a book for ... well ... beasts.
I just got my print copy in the mail today! I am loving the heck out of this book. My definite favs are the blackworm, the death hand and the memitim psychopomp. I can't wait until the player's companion and the gazetteer come out!
Dark_Mistress
Marc Radle
Crimson Jester
