I was slightly worried when I first opened Stu Horvath’s Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground (Monsters from here) that what I had gotten all excited for was essentially an encyclopedia. Not that the existence of an encyclopedia of tabletop RPGs would be a bad thing, but they tend to be incredibly dry reading and I wasn’t excited to tackle one from cover to cover. Thankfully, while the format resembles an encyclopedia the contents are distinctly their own thing. The feeling that Monsters most closely evokes is that of having been invited into the basement of a genial but intense RPG aficionado to be walked through his collection one item at a time. The book oozes a sense of familiarity and enthusiasm that make coverage of even the driest, or most bizarre, RPG supplements a fascinating trip down a branch of the hobby’s history.
The pictures are all of the actual copies in Horvath’s collection, something that it is easy to overlook but every so often there is a real gem that shows how these were played with and not just left on shelves in pristine condition. Sadly the mystery of who Kalvan the Sinister was remains unsolved.
Monsters doesn’t just focus on main series books or the advent of a new system or edition of a beloved classic. The coverage devotes just as much time to individual adventures as it does to entire systems and is determined to capture a more holistic view of how the hobby has developed than just leaping between names most of the readers will have already heard of. In particular, I really enjoyed the attention in the early sections devoted to the development of the published RPG adventure as a concept, with the emphasis on how TSR initially neglected this by now standard part of the hobby and how other companies filled that void. Generally, this wide focus allows Horvath to pay attention to many of the smaller names that nevertheless made the RPG hobby what it is today rather than dwelling overlong on Gygax, Arneson, et al, who are arguably better covered in other monographs.
The book’s contents are grouped by decade and within those sections further grouped by year of publication. RPGs from the 1970s through the 2010s, with a few cheeky 2020 games, are covered within its covers. The distribution is far from even across those decades, with the 1980s being by far the largest section and the 2000s the shortest. Each decade has something of a theme drawn out of the many items covered within. The 1970s are the wild west when experimentation and attempts to “fix” original D&D are the order of the day. The 1980s are an extension of this early experimentation, with entirely new systems of RPGs being developed and a shift in how games are played taking place – slowly codifying into an RPG scene one might recognize even if, theoretically, they weren’t even born when it happened. The 1990s emphasizes the edgy punk/goth aesthetics and a new focus on storytelling and experimentation that produced some wondrous (and potentially unplayable) games. The 2000s is given the shortest time and both represents something of a fallow period in RPGs and the beginning of something new, which sets the stage for the wild experimentation and innovation of the 2010s.
The decades are lovingly color coded so you can see the distribution just by looking at the fore edge.
Not every RPG is included in the book – how could it be – and readers may note some few absences. For example, the 2000s section lumps the many OGL games that spawned off of D&D 3.0’s open license into one group and does not really dig deep into any one of them (sorry Dragonmech fans). It provides a similar treatment to the early retroclones, grouping many of them into a single heading and considering them more for what they share than for their individual aspects. This structure makes sense and avoids Horvath overly repeating himself, but I’m sure devotees of 2000s RPGs might be disappointed that their favorite obscure title is absent.
I admit I was a little surprised to not see any sections for the Burning Wheel system, although Torchbearer receives passing mention in discussions of other games, nor are there any examples of Modiphius 2d20 systems. The scope of Monsters is also limited to books that were published in English. When non-English systems are mentioned, it is either because they were translated into English later or because an English-language system was developed based on an earlier non-English ancestor (for example, Mutant Year-Zero). In both cases the books are placed in the timeframe linked to their English language publication, not their design origin.
It is worth reiterating that far from being a comprehensive listing of every RPG from the last five decades – the reading of which would be incredibly tedious – this is the author’s tour through his own collection and as such it is inherently his personal view of the RPG scene during that time and how it has developed. In that manner it is almost an oral history of the last five decades of tabletop roleplaying rather than a comprehensive academic survey.
Unfortunately, there are some some small errors in the writing, although these ultimately come down to an editorial error rather than an authorial one. I found a dozen or so instances of run on sentences, words that were probably meant to be deleted but were overlooked, and missing punctuation. Fortunately, the meaning of the text is never lost by these errors and the writing in general is smooth and easy to follow, with the overall effect (errors included) once again evoking the sense of someone spilling out their deep personal knowledge of the topic to you in person rather than in the form of a formal academic text. Similarly, while there is a lot here that historians of tabletop RPGs will benefit from, it is also not a purely academic book. There is a list of sources the author consulted, and a bibliography of games mentioned, but no foot/endnotes for individual entries. It is more a source unto itself, a primary account from someone who has lived through the development of RPGs, than it is an attempt at an objective account of that time.
I don’t want to sound overly critical – all of these elements are but minor nitpicks that I mention mostly to make clear what the scope of the book is and what it is not. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground and I expect I will be consulting it for many years to come. It significantly expanded my wish list of games I want to own and play (so be warned all who enter) but I can’t think of the last time I had this much fun reading an encyclopedic overview of a subject. I would gladly spend another book’s amount of time listening to Horvath’s opinions on yet more RPGs – but first could he point me to the stairs because I think I’ve been underground long enough and I’m not sure when I last saw the sun.