Other than almost being the name of an interesting independent film of a few years back, Gods and Monster are two fairly recent releases in the one-word-title line of d20 support from AEG, as is War. Gods and Monster are interesting when you look at them together, since they are two of the first d20 supplements that beard Wizards of the Coast in its own lair, so to speak. By that, I mean that they cover topics that Wizards also plans to cover in forthcoming sourcebooks (Deities and Demigods and "Tooth and Claw" -- although I believe the latter has been renamed and pushed back on the Wizards schedule). So far in the d20 saga, publishers have steered clear of taking on Wizards eye to eye, which is an interesting turn. Back at the start, one might have predicted the opposite, particularly with the precedent of Sword & Sorcery Studios publishing the Creature Collection before the Monster Manual came out.

But enough d20 history. What about these products? Are they as great as Magic of Rokugan and Creatures of Rokugan, both also from AEG and both rated very highly in my last review?

Well, in a word, no. Unlike the amazing Rokugon material, War and Monster don't possess a strong spark of innovation and frequently lapse into poor mechanics. Gods, the best of them, provides some good, imaginative ideas, but the overall package is less than great. All of them have a long-winded, padded feel, as though the writers were trying to fill pages. This makes the books difficult to read from cover to cover without getting a bit bored.

Gods
Gods is better than Monster or War. Gods contains 14 chapters of information on specific races and their gods and worship. There are chapters on barbarian tribes, bugbears, dark elves, deep dwarves, giants, gnolls, goblins, hobgoblins, impossible things (aberrations, mostly), kobolds, lizardfolk, minotaurs, ogres, orcs, sylvan forces, and trolls. Each chapter discusses the gods of these races, but focuses on providing a new domain, prestige class, magical items, and sample holy site for each group. A fine approach, I think.

But the execution is sometimes slapdash. Gods has some great ideas, like a magic item that gives a destrachan new powers, or a chaos crusader prestige class for ogres that's a bit of an unholy champion with a real ogrish slant. But the follow-through falls flat. For instance, the book says non-destrachans usually destroy the periapt of the destrachan when they find it (because it's so evil) but gives the item a price anyway. However, the beholder's eyestalk rings, just two items earlier on the page, is not given a price -- for the same reason. Likewise, while the chaos crusader is cool, it's a little too good for purposes of balance. Further, it contains power description that say, "A chaos crusader can cast dispel good once per day," then proceed to take four paragraphs to restate the spell description of dispel good, even though it's right in the Player's Handbook. Not a huge problem, to be sure, but it is slapdash.

I make use of those examples because they convey my overall opinion of Gods. If you're looking for some nice ideas, particularly if you're interested in intriguing ways to make the religion of aboleths different from the religion of kobolds (or whatever),you might get a lot out of this book. Be prepared, however, to do some cleanup work. On the other hand, if you're not ready to read what very well may be more than you'll ever want to know about the worship practices of goblins as opposed to hobgoblins, this book might provide more than you can really use.

Monster
Monster is somewhat similar to Gods in that it examines the outlook of a troll as distinguished from, say, a goblin. The two books actually work well together in that regard. But Monster isn't as well done.

Monster takes on the Herculean task of telling you how to play monsters as PCs. It covers plenty of old favorites, like minotaurs and trolls, but it also presents new monstrous races like the black orc -- a skinny, dexterous, intelligent orc -- and the ferris, which resemble really big bipedal rats. And there are many more. Each is written up in the form of a race found in the Player's Handbook.

It's Monster's game mechanics that I have the most problem with. Cutting to the chase, the hardest part about playing monsters as characters is determining what level the monster is equivalent to. In an effort to make monsters easier to play in a standard campaign, the book attempts to make "young" versions of various monsters, like minotaurs and ogres, that equate to an elf or a dwarf. Thus, you could play them as normal 1st-level characters. An admirable goal, but the authors don't quite get there. Take the young ogre, for example. His +4 bonus to Strength and +2 bonus to Constitution might balance out with penalties to Dexterity, Intelligence, and Charisma, although your typical ogre fighter will hardly miss them. But on top of that, the race is size Large. That gives the character reach. Reach all by itself makes the character way better than any other PC race. Way better. And then there's the +3 natural AC bonus (remember, that stacks with normal armor) and 8 extra hit points right out of the chute. Given the choice, are you going to play a half-orc or a young ogre?

As in many of the one-word-title AEG books that have come before it (Evil, Dungeon, Dragon, and so on) Monster contains long discussions about roleplaying a monster, the outlook of the various monsters, and so forth. Some of this is interesting, but I think it frequently goes on at too great a length. In the end, these discussions seem to prove that the d20 System has far too many evil, bestial, monstrous races, and that they all seem to blend together, despite the best efforts of the authors of this book. Worst of all, we get these sections over and over again. One might be called "Playing a Monster." Later in the book there's a section on "Wearing a Monster's Skin." The section on alignment tells us again what it's like to be a monster. There's a section called "Monstrous Culture" and another called "Monstrous Society." And so on. The large number of authors, all clearly writing concurrently, really shows.

Monster also has a number of new spells, magic items, and prestige classes, all for monsters. These are fine, but nothing to write home about. Lastly, the book has MM-style write-ups for all the new races including, you guessed it, yet another author's take on each race's history, background, society, and so on -- just like at the beginning of the book, where they were written up as races. The MM-style entries, ironically, even talk about the specific monsters as characters. But isn't that what this whole book is for?

War
War suffers from many of the same problems as Monster, only more so. It clearly had too many authors, all writing the same stuff at once, with the editors including all of it, no matter how redundant. There are, literally, two different and complete sections in War about what the various Player's Handbook races do in times of war. There are multiple editors listed in the credits. Perhaps no one person actually saw the whole book before it was done?

War is, not surprisingly, about war: staging a war in your campaign, siege tactics, magic and war, and so on. The problem is, the information is more like "some thoughts on war" rather than really usable advice on how to stage a war practically in your campaign, or what it might mean to your character to have been in a war.

For example, the beginning of the book talks about causes for wars and events can trigger a war, but where's the actual DM advice to help me choose the best one to start my campaign's war? Which of the countries in my campaign would get involved, and why? Of course the book can't give me specifics on my own world, but there aren't even any guidelines to help me make the choices myself. And what are the repercussions of my choices? War doesn't tell me.

The section on magic on the battlefield is not quite two pages long. This, I would have assumed would be a meaty topic in this long-winded book, but it was not. It provides such insight as "healing spells also have obvious uses in a military environment." Where are the lists of spells useful in a large-scale war, and how they might turn the tide of battle when used? This could have been a very useful section on how the PCs can affect a large battle (the PC wizard casts prismatic wall on the enemy's flank -- what happens now?), but instead, we're left with virtually nothing new. Of course, there is a chapter later on, called "War Magic," which offers most of the exact same information, plus a bit more. It's better, but still too general to be of much use. (And when you get to it, you say to yourself, "Haven't I read this already?")

There's a section on sieges that offers an expanded list of siege engines based on those in the DMG. It's worth looking at, but it offers only a bit more than you could get in the core rules. I did like the different types of catapult ammunition and the rules for dropping boiling oil and whatnot.

War includes some war gods and their domains, as well as a reprint of most of the domains available in the Player's Handbook. And of course it provides a few new spells and magic items, plus some feats and prestige classes. These run the gamut from adequate to not so great. The feats (and some of the spells) don't have anything particularly warlike about them, other than the fact that you could use them in combat (which makes them just as appropriate for a book about dungeons, because you fight there, too). Most of these elements are fine in broad concept, but no real player would choose them for their character -- like Improved Balance, which makes you a bit harder to grapple or bull rush. The prestige classes are poorly designed. For example, the beast handler gets to add a new feat to an animal (not a beast -- but that's a nitpick) every level. That's it. That's the class' whole power. Other classes are as lackluster as the footman, the mercenary captain, or the shieldbearer. These stretch the definition of "prestige" to me -- in 1st and 2nd Edition, we called them "hirelings." A few of the prestige classes, though, like the gutter fighter and the spellbreaker, are pretty interesting and worth a look.

The editing is terrible in War. Magic items change name in mid-description. The book is full of organizational problems. I found it hard to use even writing this review (let alone using the book in a game) -- I'd remember reading some passage but I couldn't find it again, because any given topic is covered multiple times in different chapters. Indexes are a pain to do and thus you rarely see them in d20 products. However, doing one for a book like this at least would have presented the editors with the fact that similar information seems randomly scattered throughout the book. For example, new feats appear in Chapter 2, along with new uses for old skills and prestige classes. Then, for no apparent reason, a few new skills pop up in Chapter 5, which is about putting a war in your campaign and mass combat guidelines. All right, you get the point.

Lastly, there are some suggestions at the end of the book that sort of serve as a mass combat system. These aren't rules at all. If you were thinking of buying War because D&D needs a mass combat system (and it does) and you figured this was your best shot to get one, think again. These guidelines are so vague and generalized, so unmodifiable and ill conceived that I can't imagine anyone attempting to use them. I recently had need for a large-scale battle between two forces in my own game, but the rules here were no more detailed or useful than if I'd just rolled a die to see who won.

In summary, then, Gods is worth a look, Monster probably isn't, and steer well clear of War. Did I mention how much I like those Rokugan books? I like what AEG can do, especially if they decide to take the extra time with each product to attend to the issues of overlapping and redundant content. I'm looking forward to delving into their new hardcover, Spycraft -- I have high hopes for that one

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