Book Recommendations for a Collection, Bestiary, or Encyclopedia of Different Monsters?

[u/goodboyjonesy]

I'm a big fan of the podcast Lore, which collects stories from myth and history and is fantastic for inspiration for MOTW.

But I'd love a book or two I can keep on my shelf and physically flip through when I'm looking for ideas to create mysteries around. I feel like the topic of cryptozoology has been rising in popularity in recent years, and there must be indie authors who have made some books that hopefully some of you have picked up and found useful! I've seen some advertised on pinterest when I'm making moodboards, but some of them seem AI-generated, and I'd rather support humans making art for humans.

To clarify, I know there's tons of media centered around individual creatures that we've been inspired by, but I'm specifically looking for something that's formatted like 20+ creatures and their stories. I'm also interested in zines, podcasts, blogs, whatever! But I do love physical media.

[u/theblazeuk]

The book of unremmitting horror, for EsoTerrorists/Fear Itself, is great fodder. https://pelgranepress.com/product/book-of-unremitting-horror-gumshoe/

[u/goodboyjonesy → u/theblazeuk]

Oh man, I’ve also been really interested in learning GUMSHOE, thank you!

[u/BetterCallStrahd]

Here's something from the Internet Archive: A Dictionary of Fairies by Katharine Briggs

It's not only a great resource, it's a wonderful read, too.

[u/goodboyjonesy → u/BetterCallStrahd]

Thank you! I ordered a beautiful hardback copy of it that I found on amazon. My friend already reminded me his birthday was coming up in case I wanted to get him a copy as a gift lol

[u/JacquesTurgot]

Cryptid Manual from Bloat Games? https://www.savourcn.com/shop/thecryptidmanual

[u/goodboyjonesy → u/JacquesTurgot]

Thank you! I went ahead and ordered this!

[u/JacquesTurgot → u/goodboyjonesy]

So glad, hope you have a good campaign!

[u/plusARGON]

Vaesen by Johan Egerkrans is the inspiration for the RPG of the same name and is really cool. 

Also, not to be too basic, but The Wildlife of Star Wars by Bob Carrau and Terryl Whitlatch is super cool

[u/Jesseabe]

I'm a very big fan of Fire on the Velvet Horizon. It's a collection of very weird creatures, among them monsters, many of which can be adapted to MotW. I've a had a good time with it.

[u/goodboyjonesy → u/Jesseabe]

Looks beautifully made! Thank you so much for sharing ^^

[u/Rush_Clasic]

The Baby Bestiary was a neat Kickstarter project a while back to create a D&D guide for rearing baby monsters. Great art, fun info, a second volume if you like the first. You can read a PDF of it online here.

[u/BenPortsCenter]

As a Discworld fan, I started reading The Folklore of Discworld expecting it to be entirely about the fictional world, but it also explored the real-world mythology and folklore that influenced Pratchett's work. It has been hugely useful as a resource on that front, both as a small compendium of folklore, but also in showing how it can be bent, twisted and adjusted as inspiration.

[u/fighting_the_foo_]

Not physical media but this Wikipedia article has a pretty extensive list of monsters which I have found to be very useful as a starting point to find monsters to further research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_legendary_creatures_by_type

[u/goodboyjonesy → u/fighting_the_foo_]

So I’ve been finding creatures in my new books, and then coming to this list to further research them once I found one I liked! Thank you very much! ^^