Call of Cthulhu: Malleus Monstrorum: Cthulhu Mythos Bestiary

To be completely honest, this book is on my shelf almost exclusively for the art. When I run Call of Cthulhu, I almost never use official critters or incarnations of the Mythos. I sure as hell don't do a Mythos Hoedown, or say things like "there's a room full of Deep Ones." Call of Cthulhu would probably do better having a "how to craft your own..." section than having an actual official bestiary. But the industry is the industry. At least the art is pretty and the books are high quality.

The Malleus Monstrorum greatly expands on the creature and deity entries in the core book by presenting a hardback volume for each. I have not finished reading these volumes by a long shot, but the new format has already proved invaluable for a handful of game sessions in the month and a bit since my copy arrived. The most useful information for me has been added for monsters. There are recommendations on how they might be played as well as possible plot hooks for how to bring them into a session. I am still getting familiar with all the extra material on the Great Old Ones and more in the second volume. It has been great to see additional more obscure additions to the pantheon, but I find the best use to be to make sense of cultist motivations and overarching aims of the Mythos with regard to the players and humanity in a campaign or scenario. The additional information serves ideally to ensure the encounters retain a sense of the unknown and aid in evading cliches in describing cosmically horrific encounters in play. This will take me many years to get properly familiar with and I look forward to using it to prepare more sanity sapping grisliness for a plethora of unfortunate investigators.

Whether for your tabletop comic horror RPG or as reference for you writing, this two-volume set is really good. It's also got superb artwork. I am very impressed with it and glad I purchased it. -- 10/10. Recommended.

Arrived in very good state! :)

Books are very informative.

first book about monsters second book about gods.

Two volumes of monsters and elder goda for CoC. Tons more information than the core book. Definitely recommend the purchase.

Its a fun book and helped to add some npcs to my campaign