Nord Games
The Oracle Monster Generator Box Set
The Oracle Monster Generator Box Set
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The Oracle Monster Generator is a tool for game masters, writers, and storytellers looking for inspiration when creating well thought-out monsters. Its simple and dynamic design allows for maximum versatility and detail and a virtually unlimited number of possible combinations.
This box set contains 7 taro-sized decks based on environment including; Desert, Forest, Mountain, Swamp, Tundra, Underground, and Waterways. Each of these environment sections contains outcomes to identify a Monster’s Type, Behavior, Archetype, Special Ability, and Intrigue. Combining these five concepts together you’ll end up with a unique and well rounded monster every time you use this product. You can also mix and match outcomes from different decks as you see fit for even more variety.
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TLDR: If you're a newer GM and running a D&D campaign, this product could be worth your time. Even then, I'd recommend the PDF over the actual cards.
I love me some random generation creativity tools, but this one left me disappointed. It's not terrible overall, but there are a number of small things that added up to make this a fairly "meh" product for me in the end.
Let's start with the claims of "...for any fantasy roleplaying game."
This is technically true. You can take the concepts and ideas and convert them into something that is useable in any fantasy game, but this was clearly, overwhelmingly designed with D&D in mind. This is made abundantly clear in the "Monster Types" cards. The categories themselves are fairly generic and widely applicable, but then you look at the sub-options on each of the cards. Everyone of the options seem to be lifted straight from D&D sourcebooks. Some are generic enough to be overlooked (Naga, Sphinx, Giant Hyena, etc), but there are others that are highly specific to the system (the Eye Tyrant, Carrion Crawler, and Bone Devil just to name a few). Even the creatures that seemed original at first, like the Ravenala, only took a quick search to find in the Tome of Beasts.
Creating a long list of good, original ideas is hard. Trust me, I get it. But this just feels lazy to me. This extends to the other sub-decks as well, but is most apparent in the Monster Types and Archetype subdecks.
And the very design of the decks seems odd and redundant. Take the Archetypes for example. I haven't checked every single card, but as far as I can tell, the twelve archetypes are identical across all seven terrain types. That's 84 different cards where 12 would have sufficed. The more I look at the decks overall, I'm not sure why they were split into terrain types the way they were as there are plenty of other cards that appear multiple times in different sections. It feels like it was designed to maximize combinations with minimal actual content.
Complaints aside, this product is still usable and the Intrigue and Behavior sub-decks are a nice touch. Overall though, I don't feel it's worth the price tag. If you're curious, just get the PDF first and see how you like it
