Reviews for Van Richten's Monster Hunter's Compendium

The average rating for Van Richten's Monster Hunter's Compendium based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-12-04 00:00:00 Max Bart I never actually got around to playing (A)D&D in the 2nd edition times, other than computer game adaptations, but I enjoyed reading the background material. This is one book that I would have loved to make use of to create stories as a DM. It really contains three books, Van Richten's guides to fiends, Vistani and witches. The books are written interestingly and rather intelligently as if they were written inside their fictional universe by Dr. Rudolf van Richten, a learned, practially experienced and intelligent sage and monster hunter who nevertheless can't know everything - but with out-of-universe interjections that give the definite information on how things really are, complete with game rules and statistics. All three books contain a wealth of interesting material for adding a certain element into a game world. Due to the subject matter, the first one about fiends was by far the most interesting to me, describing the standard AD&D fiends chillingly in terms that made them into very serious horror genre flavoured adversaries. The guide to Vistani is about the Ravenloft magical gypsy equivalents. The guide to witches is about both literal and benign magic-using witches on one hand, and the monster-witch-creatures called hags on the other, again making them sound much more scary than their Monstrous Manual entry does.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-05-08 00:00:00 Charles Ice Well, my gaming group loved the Sunless Citadel and the Forge of Fury, so we are continuing with the set and moving on to the Standing Stone. Can't wait to see what they come up with! Game has started with much fun had by all. I did change up a couple of things in the ending (for one, I am not making my guys go through a maze, I changed it up with some traps and a "decoder" door riddle. However, for the most part, this is a great campaign.