As always I am going to cut to the chase: The Monster Overhaul is fucking garbage written by an idiot. Everyone who likes it are mindless shills or armchair gamers who only judge things on layout. The same kind of brainless nutbags who think OSE is good even though you can get the B/X Compilation for free elsewhere and it's functionally identical.
Nowadays I tend to be very selective on what I buy, as we now live in a post-ShadowDark world where stupid, low effort, unplaytested, woke garbage is lauded as long as the art isn't terrible and the proper people get free advance copies. What is the Monster Overhaul? Is it like the Random Esoteric Creature Generator or the Monster section of the Tome of Adventure Design? No, it's far stupider than that.
It is billed as a revolutionary new yadda yadda pragmatic and perfect for at-the-table whoopie di do. Supposed to be the best monster manual ever full stop and push your kids out on the highway because you don't need them any more, this book is your future. So of course with accolades like that, it's a fucking woke dumpster fire.
For one, there are no new monsters in it. This is not a complaint, "overhaul" implies that it exists to fix up existing monsters. It doesn't do that. What it does is add a bunch of completely pointless tables to the few dozen traditional monsters it does have. These tables change, seemingly, absolutely nothing. They have no value because they do stupid shit like explain the motivation of PCs to kill said thing. The motivation is not necessary. PCs are adventurers, monsters are their adversaries, this is not complicated. An 8-year-old kid can play this game without questioning it.
This book sends thanks to Mike Mornard (well, it thanks a bunch of morons and weirdos too, but Mike is as legit a source as they come). Why do I bring this up? Because he once famously said something to the effect of "If you have an issue with something, the creators of D&D likely already thought of it, weighed it, measured it, and went the way they did on purpose." Long story short game design is not that hard, and your original thoughts are hardly original.
I've held on to this for the decade plus so since I read it on RPGnet before they went stupid. This author obviously hasn't read this quote and doesn't understand it's significance, or he would not have bothered to write this book.
Some quotes to prove how stupid it is:
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"LEVEL DRAIN AND XP DEBT
Some monsters traditionally remove levels of experience from PCs. This powerful effect is a nightmare from a bookkeeping perspective, and is more frustrating than terrifying.
In this book, these creatures instead inflict XP debt, increasing the amount of XP needed to reach the PC’s next level. Instead of draining a PC’s current abilities, they drain hope and confidence.
XP debt is not insurmountable, but a PC saddled with several levels of XP debt may consider a somber retirement instead of further adventures." - pg 4
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This was the first entry I saw in the book of any interest whatsoever. And as far as player coddling goes, it's actually sorta light on it. Instead of the fear of diminishing power, you have the fear of diminishing accumulation of power. Doesn't quite feel right, but it's better than some other options I've seen. But it's wholely worse than having level drain be... level drain. And because most things don't accumulate with levels in D&D, it's actually rather easy to account for a level drained. Roll the PC's Hit Die, subtract that many permanent HP, take the Level number down 1, drop XP down to minimum to achieve said level, and verify effect on attack bonus, saving throws, thief skills if applicable, spells if applicable, and make a note of the lost level. Then you're done. It's not a "nightmare from a bookkeeping perspective" because getting that level back usually only happens the hard way. If it doesn't, do the thing in reverse and give them minimum XP to achieve the level they lost.
The real question is, if they get their level back the hard way, can they be restored to a new, higher level? The answer is no. If you have the resources to get restored, adventuring in the meantime is entirely a waste as none of the XP counts. And ALL of this is the beauty of undead. They are scary. To the Players. Who cares if the characters are scared. In old school, everyone pisses their pants when a vampire shows up, regardless of level. The more you have, the more you can lose.
Not understanding that the point is to make the players scared of the monster is the issue the author has and will never assuage throughout the rest of this review. This dude doesn't "get it".
Here's another failure to get it:
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"A GM is free to tell a player that their PC has died, lost a limb, become a Vampire, collapsed from fatigue, or remembered a detail about a rare herb, but telling a player that their PC is experiencing an emotional state is something most GMs avoid. Supernatural spell-like fear is permissible; regular emotional fear never occurs unless a player decides it occurs.
This approach is both odd and limiting. The GM can, with caution, suggest emotional effects.
Telling a player, after a failed Save against fear, “Your PC is afraid. What do they do?” leads to interesting results. PCs can often act like heroic automatons; fear reminds the player that their character is both mortal and imperfect.
Fear is especially useful for new players, who may not realize that running away is a viable strategic option and not an admission of failure.
A GM should, as always, listen to appropriate counter-arguments. The player knows their PC best; there might be a perfectly logical reason why they wouldn’t feel fear under a given situation." - pg 4
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Most fear is a monster effect. So GMs asking for rolls is just applying the monster effects from the world to the PC. If you're pushing past that into "suggest emotional effects" you're straight up going over the line. This is a dumb idea written by someone who has bad players, and has become a bad GM in turn. While saves vs fear are a thing, as a GM it's not up to you to determine the character's state in any way.
That being said, also once fear takes hold (the save is failed) it's not up to the players how the character reacts. Much like poison or charm, failure means things are not going the player's way. Most of the time failures actions are self-evident (fail a Ghost's fear check and flee for 2d6 rounds). In any times where it's not obvious likely a roll is made to determine the character's actions (fleeing, jibbering helplessly and falling prone, going catatonic with trauma, etc), so that it's not the GM actually taking the character over but rather the roll of the dice. So this quote is double dumb.
The next section is when I knew this product was complete garbage. The author went from what I estimate was 100 IQ gamer (after the first half of page 4) to a 80 IQ gamer (after the second half of page 4). The very next page made me realize this is a 40 IQ gamer.
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"A game consisting entirely of randomly generated locations, plots, and monsters will feel thin and meaningless. Random generation can supplement a GM’s plans, and provide a source of surprise and wonder, but it cannot entirely replace planning.
The most boring use of a random encounter is resource depletion, ritualistically filling time between planned events. The PCs travel between a safe place and an interesting destination. The GM rolls a few dice, consults a table, introduces 1d6 Wolves. The Wolves attack immediately and fight to the death. The PCs, unless they make some truly appalling mistakes, do not risk death or even serious inconvenience. The only interesting choice is whether to use limited spells or abilities now, or save them for a later encounter. If there is no later encounter, the choice is meaningless. The game, or at least what the players consider the game, is paused for the duration.
Alternatively, the GM rolls an Ancient Red Dragon, who casually vaporizes the party and flies away without any interaction." - pg 5
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So the problem with this GM is that he has plans. This is a rookie mistake. Having plans is for idiots. IE the players. The players can have plans, and should share them prior to a session, but what the GM has is a world. Not a plot. Not a book. Not a storyline. Not a story to tell. Not a series of events. They have a world. This is a fundamental problem and why this book is stupid. It's a book written by a 40 IQ gamer written for other 40 IQ gamers.
Random encounters are supposed to be mostly boring, needless, pointless resource depletion. The reason why is that they show the life in the world that doesn't revolve around the PCs. If you go to the Dark Spider Woods and don't ever run into any spiders because it would be "boring", then the world is not alive and the forest is named badly. If I read this book and took it to heart it would require that if I wanted a random encounter in a spider wood to feature spiders I would need a proper motivation for the characters to want to kill the spiders (other than these dumbasses willingly went into a woodland named Dark Spider Woods) and probably one of the characters would have to have some backstory of a spider beating him up in middle school and stealing his lunch money.
The funny thing is, at least part of this is somewhat known by the author as they explain it in the paragraphs immediately following this one. Which makes me question why they bothered with these paragraphs in the first place? Padding?
Because I feel like I'm starting to pad this review, I'm going to skip ahead to a monster. Let's pick one out of a hat that hasn't been a hot topic recently... The Orc! That's the ticket. Even a 40 IQ woodbrain couldn't get the entry on The Orc wrong. It's the default baddie of D&D! And this book is supposed to have OSR sensibilities even though it's never correctly expressed them yet.
Uh oh:
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Morality: pragmatic, but when you are prepared for violence, problems seem to find violent solutions.
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Firstly that there's a "morality" section on a monster stat block is bad. This is unnecessary text. The flavor underneath is similarly bad, but that's not what I'm going to highlight. Next we have a table on "Reasons these Orcs Must Die". Which is a pointless table. Next to it is a short list of orc names and "cultural positions" These are also flatly unnecessary. Orcs traditionally have 3 positions: Grunt, Chief, and Shaman. This chart uses SUPER generic terminology as to not be offensive. They include shit Orcs flatly don't do, like Swaggering Layabout, Ally Liaison, and Critical Trader. Other than the name Ormsk Headbreaker, it's useless.
The next table under this is the closest to useful. Titled "What Are These Orcs Doing?" One of the entries has to be a joke: "Discussing the moral relevance of humanity." Two more are functionally identical, two more are really human tasks, so it's actually a d6 chart with extra steps for anyone who actually knows how orcs should behave.
Lastly a short table at the bottom is a d10 table which produced clan names, features, unusual abilities, and lastly skin tones (which seems to be all the author cares about). Of the unusual abilities, roughly 6 will never ever ever come up under any but the most stupid circumstances. So that part's a d4 chart. d5 if I'm stretching it. None of this is actually why I picked Orcs though. This book is prescient, or perhaps the morons writing 6th edition read it (it came out in 2023). I flipped the page when I was skimming and found my huckleberry.
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"THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
Orcs are the archetypal “other.” They are often depicted as barbarians in the classic sense; those outside a civilization, who exist only in relation to it, and who want to destroy and despoil it. Some authors use allegorical Orcs to talk about real-world cultures. The association is rarely favorable." - pg 60
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The reason why this author doesn't name which "some authors", is that he doesn't want to be sued for the libelous nature of this comment. It's also just stupid. He's talking Tolkien because they all talk Tolkien, even though Tolkien's orcs are entirely fantastical creatures created as twisted mockeries of elves and come into the world as an adult. They are a servitor race created specifically to bring an end to the world of men. They are manufactured, not born. The actual outsiders that have a human counterpart in LotR are the Easterlings. We aren't given enough insight into their culture to know if the evil ones we see are just a subset. It stands to reason that as a people, they have good and bad members. We see the bad members invade Middle Earth.
Continuing on with our regularly scheduled idiocy:
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"Since Orcs come with a lot of assumptions, a GM should think about how they fit into a setting. There are 2 options.
Option 1: Orcs are inherently and immutably Evil. They are soldiers in the battle against cosmic Good. They are made, not born. They do not really “want” anything. A Good Orc is as impossible as a square circle. Orcs cannot be PCs. Allying with them puts you on the same side as Evil. Words like “Evil” and “Civilization” get capital letters and have the same force and universality as mathematical laws.
Option 2: Orcs are people, with all that implies. They make war for the same reasons people make war; treasure, glory, necessity, boredom, etc. Their adversaries might demonize them, but Orcs have as rich and as varied lives as anyone else in the same circumstances. Orcs can be PCs. Words like “evil” and “civilization” are just words. People use them to describe other people. Our leader; their warlord. Our civilization; their horde. Our homeland; their wastes.
You cannot mix the two options. Either Orcs are people or they aren’t. People do not need many excuses to commit atrocities or slaughter each other. No pseudo-scientific nonsense about “warrior races” or “martial spirit” or “inherent violence” is required, though it might be applied by enemies to the Orcs, or even by Orcs to themselves for inspirational purposes. It is easier to justify killing your enemies if you do not think they are people, or if you think you are a superior kind of person.
Tables in this entry focus on Option 2. The material in Chapter 1: People (pg. 8) may also be useful." - pg 60
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Spoiler alert: You can mix these two options, or do a multitude of other things with orcs. You can have orcs be born and still be evil. You can have them think they have some sort of noble culture and still be a twisted mockery of human culture and still be evil. Players are more likely to play half-orcs than full orcs (or only be allowed to as full orcs are evil), their human (mother's) side being the one that gives them the option. You can do all this without even having alignment be a thing. This book pretends half-orcs aren't and can't be a thing, and instead presents just the two options because he's scared of evil actually being evil and therefore doing evil acts and one of the products of those evil acts could result in a PC.
I'm not going to say the entirety of this book is just awful. It has interesting ideas sprinkled here and there. They are few. They are far between. It's not worth the price of admission. And it's not worth the price of admonition.
Remember: if it's sold at Exalted Funeral, like a gay dude, it's fucking ass. This rule has yet to be broken.
