Picking up a new Dungeons & Dragons book is one of my favorite experiences. Opening it for the first time, the spine cracking a bit, the pages resistant to turning -- it all makes for a bizarrely tactile feeling that I look forward to each time. The Monster Manual type of books have always been my favorite to flip through, especially with the Fifth Edition version. Each creature comes with stat blocks to make them playable for your adventures, but it's always the story hooks that dig deep into me, helping me to conjure half-formed inklings of worlds and scenarios I can drag my players into. Wizards of the Coasts' newest book Volo's Guide to Monsters combines the granular nature of stats with even more narrative, and it's all the better for it.
Instead of being a collection of beasties ripe for plucking and placing into a campaign, Volo's Guide is presented as an in-universe text. Volothamp Geddarm, a traveling scholar who's known for not always being completely accurate in his writings, has collected his observations on monsters into a book. Elminster, the Sage of Shadowdale, isn't so sure that Volo's gotten everything right. Because of this, there's the D&D equivalent of post-it notes with Elminster's notes throughout the book disputing what Volo has to say. Unlike the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, the focus is still on material to improve your game, but these story blurbs add so much character to the book and make it a more entertaining read.
Volo's Guide is divided into three chapters: monster lore, character races, and a bestiary. The monster lore chapter is a sort of deep dive into some of the most iconic D&D monsters. Instead of just the few pages beholders have in the Monster Manual, they have thirteen. This allows for a more in-depth look at how eye-beasts reproduce, behave around minions, how they fight and live their daily lives. There are also rolling tables so you can make a beholder on the fly (traits like skin color, texture, eyestalk shape, and the like) and a sample map of one of their lairs. Seeing so much information on one subset of enemy really got my creative juices flowing, and I almost want to make a beholder campaign now. Also included in this chapter are giants, gnolls, goblinoids, hags, kobolds, mind flayers, orcs, and yaun-ti.
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