It’s been one of those weeks but you don’t here to listen to me whine about real life. Instead I offer some thoughts on a new product for one of new favorite games, Barbaric!

I’ve mentioned that Mark over at the Crossplanes Blog has written some pretty cool material for Barbaric! and it’s related games using the Quantum Engine. Now, he’s released his own little monster book, The Foelio. No, that’s not typo. Folio. Foelio. Get it? Actually, it does kind of make sense because from what I can tell that it’s mostly a conversion of the Foe Folio for BX Essentials (now knows as Old School Essentials). Which is not a bad thing. We need more monsters for Quantum Engine.

Like I said, Foilio is a monster book and it’s pretty darned good one. I count 27 monsters in there. And it’s pretty good selection of monsters. Sure there a couple that’s some well known D&D monsters with the serial numbers filed off. I don’t think that’s any sort of detractor. First, many players expect these to show up some time. And second, the whole Barbaric and Quantum Engine community is just getting off the ground, so there’s not that much out there, yet. So it’s nice to have at least one version of that available.

There’s some original monsters too. That I think are cool. I like the Cobriath for a good old sword & sorcery monster. Sure it may just a giant snake but it’s still cool. Umbrals which basically an undead assassin and who can’t use one of those? And the Upir which are just plain weird vampires that can only feed on their own families.

Of course, there’s even some Lovecraftian monsters in there too. The most useful ones like Byahkee, Deep Ones, and Hounds of Tindalos. Once again useful monsters.

Thanks to ease of the Quantum Engine, the stat blocks are easy to read. That’s one of my personal pet peeves. Cluttered stat blocks. They also have something nice that I often don’t read. And that’s the quick little fluff blurb about the monster. These are nice and just inspirational enough that you could squeeze some more lore into your own world. The monsters overall should be pretty challenging and interesting to most parties which makes Foelio a good addition to a referee’s tool kit.

You can grab the Foelio up on DrivthuRPG.