There is not a word wasted in this book. The introduction tells you what the book is for and gives some advice on how to use the book and build interesting and thematic encounters.

Then we get to the meat of the book, the beasts, monsters and villains. As with all things 13th Age this book gets to the nub of the matter, only presenting information that will be useful to you, whether that be the monster backgrounds, plot hooks or the stat blocks themselves, everything is geared towards being useful, and fun.

Each creature entry has the following:

• Creature background / ecology / names
• Building battles - using the creatures in combat encounters, usually suggesting pairings with other creatures that make thamtic sense, but may not be obvious
• Relationship to the icons
• Adventure hooks
• Things that you find with the creature (in their lair/in their general environment/things they carry)
• Stat blocks - usually multiple variants of a creature type (such as the four variants of the black dragon - Catacomb, Gorge, Void and Empyrean)
• Nastier Specials - options to make creatures different from the norm and make them even nastier! (This is not present on all creature entries)

The creature ecologies and plot hooks are that awesome that even those that don't play 13th Age would find them useful (although I think it would be a bit of an expensive book just for those). The creatures feel like they are really grounded in a living breathing world, without it ever becoming too restrictive on the DM to have to use them in "one true way".

The sidebars suggesting variants from what is presented, the suggestions of how to relate the creatures with other creatures and the adventure hooks, means that there is no way any two games are going to have exactly the same experience with any monster in this book.

The book ends with a detailled look at how GMs can create their own monsters. A brief description of reskinning monsters, a bit more in depth about how to tweak exisitng mosnters and then a detailled explanation of how to create your own monsters from scratch.

All in all, if you run 13th Age - buy this book. If you run 4th Edition D&D it would probably be useful as the monsters shiould be relatively straightforward to convert. If you run any other fantasy RPG, then it's certainly worth a look, but may be wait for a sale to buy it rather than purchase it at full price as while it is an awesome source of inspiration you may not get full use of the book.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?380366-13th-Age-Bestiary/page3#ixzz48cHYclNm

DISCLAIMER I was given a free copy of this to review. However, I ended up buying it as it is such good value for money that I felt guilty about cheating the author out of a sale.

SUMMARY This PDF is a collection of urban legends, myths and strange facts presented in the style of an encyclopaedia. It is intended as a source of inspiration for fantasy and/or science fiction creative writing (including RPGs).

CONTENTS 2.5 pages of dedications and table of contents. 208 pages of entries organised alphabetically that contain all of the weird and wonderful facts, myths and urban legends that serve as the inspiration for the reader. 0.5 page afterword 36 pages of references

REVIEW This pdf weighs in at a mighty 247 pages and is full of obscure facts, out there myths and urban legends. These entries provide a treasure trove of inspiration for writers, RPG Games Masters and anyone else who is creating fantasy or sci-fi content.

With so many entries, there is bound to be something that a reader will not be aware of that would spark their imagination. And given the low price point I think that this should be in the library of anyone that is looking for inspiration.

Having said that, the PDF is not perfect, it goes straight from the contents page to the actual entries themselves with no introduction, which I found a bit jarring. I think the afterword should actually go between the contents page and the entries as it would serve as a nice introduction to the PDF.

The presentation of the PDF is definitely a case of functional over beauty. Apart from the front cover there is neither colour nor any pictures in the PDF. And the formatting clearly isn't professional. However I am OK with this as any effort spent on this would have inevitably bumped the price up and the biggest selling point for this PDF is the amount of content for a cheap price.

My only other complaint is that the text of the entries can be a little dry at times, which is in keeping with the encyclopaedic nature of the PDF but some more purple prose may have helped even more to fire the reader's imagination.

However, these negatives are far outweighed by the cheap price and sheer amount of content you get in the PDF and I would recommend this to any creative person to have in their library.

Full Disclosure: I am thanked in the credits for this product for giving feedback on an early draft of the product.

This product presents a city that stands at the crossroads of major trade routes and is a melting pot of different cultures and races. The book does a great job of making the city seem like a living breathing city.

The book contains 7 chapters:

• Introduction
• City at the Crossroads
• Life in the City
• Running a Campaign
• Gazetteer
• Organisations
• Religion

The Running the Campaign chapter is well thought out, suggesting themes for campaigns and other DM advice. Having all of this information in one chapter will make it much easier to run a game in the city and I love the random events table to help keep the city moving even when the PCs stand still in a campaign.

The gazetteer is the real meat of the book, being 70 pages long and is a joy to read, offering great descriptions of the city (a "First Impressions" section and also a "Passers By" section both of which are useful for immersing the in the world). As well as these, there are the obligatory NPCs and adventure seeds.

Don't let the Pathfinder logo on the front cover put you off. I've never played Pathfinder but will use this in my 4E campaign at some point as the amount of Pathfinder centric information is relatively small and what there is, is almost entirely descriptive enough to easily convert to your favourite rules system (the one exception for me, being the "Medium Items" available and "Major Items" available in the city's stat block).

All in all, this book is a great resource which can be dropped into an existing campaign world or mined for great ideas. Exactly what you want from a sourcebook.