This book, Mad Monks of Kwantoom is a tabletop rpg book that is not only for the usual group tabletop games, but also for solo gaming experience. You can play this game by yourself when you are feeling the gaming mood, but it is not time for the session or you don’t have enough players. In that solo gaming form, Mad Monks is an excellent primer and how to manual. It is my first experience with solo gaming and the book not only is tailor made for it, but it also teaches you how to play solo, step by step, throughout the book. The book itself is a superb introduction to solo gaming and taught me how solo gaming works. I feel confident that I could use the techniques presented in the book to have a smooth solo gaming experience with another game or system rather than starting from utter ignorance and not knowing what to do. Although I might not be a fan of solo tabletop-gaming, I would actually recommend giving this book to a young bookworm interested in Dungeons and Dragons. Although I myself do not know what is or isn’t appropriate for a younger person, so perhaps there are some things in this book you wouldn’t want your child to be reading if you are a parent. The Wah Tung monster manual is marvelous, possibly the best thing in the whole book. The Wah Tung monsters are based off of illustrations of the Wah Tung matchbox company, so I assume that the illustrations appeared on matchboxes. The illustrations themselves are gonzo bizarre, like Mars Attacks bubblegum cards filtered through Chinese people having fever dreams. The descriptions speculating on the nature of the monsters are astounding, perfect enough to give you an idea of the monster and be evocative, yet giving you just a tiny bit to still make them mysterious and unknown. The author seems to know his Chinese myth because the monsters feel like things out of Chinese mythology through the lens of old school Dungeons and Dragons, or rather, they also feel like monsters from old school D&D through the lens of Chinese mythology. You can use them in Kwantoom or plunk them into a typical western medieval setting, though I think they could work great in warhammer, being something that could make Chaos-spawn freak out and feel uneasy. Some people have pointed out that the Pagodas of Doom suffer a lack of distinct identity; I honestly don’t see where that criticism is coming from. Maybe the Pagodas are based off of the author’s previous work, Ruins of the Undercity, which I haven’t played. Perhaps they are complaining about that. However, my experience has been fantastic. I am a little worried about how it may go with a group, but I have been able to use the Pagodas of Doom procedure rules to create fantastic dungeons, and to my surprise, dungeon-Pagodas that make sense. For example, in a solo game, my characters met and befriended a group of brigands brewing healing potions and the entire dungeon became themed around the brewing potions brigands.
Maybe it’s the way I approach dungeons. For instance, I use monster reaction tables a lot because I assume that not every monster in the dungeon is utterly hostile to the players and I subscribe to the idea of the Dungeon as Mythic Underworld because if it is an alternate mythical plane, it doesn’t have to make sense. In fact, I had an amazing naturally occurring encounter in my solo-game where my players stumbled into a pitch-black room filled with treasure. Yet the treasure was guarded by otherworldly snake-folk and their giant serpents who kicked my characters’ butts in the first round and made them run screaming out of that doom pagoda, creating a very dream-like feeling of a chamber filled with gold and deadly serpent-monsters. That is something straight out of a Sinbad the sailor story or a creepy medieval folk-tale. What more could you want from a dungeon creation procedure? The only criticisms I have with this book is that the shops and areas of the city work well as a solo experience, however it might lack flavor for groups, such as NPCs or NPC generators. The book only gives you the shops’ names and the items they sell. However, with a bit of imagination, a creative GM could figure out the character of the shops and shopkeepers from their names and things they sell. However, that does involve legwork. There is no name generator for the setting. That is not a big deal though because you can simply find an Asian name to use for your character. Another criticism is that I am not a fan of special classes for Asian character archetypes and the options in the book are rather persnickety. I prefer just using the usual classes and making the archetypes from Asian stories work out of them. “You want to play a ninja? Alright, make a thief and put them in a ninja outfit.” Although I do love that you can play a Kabuki as a class. The Kabuki class in itself makes this book amazing. I guess that’s a matter of taste with me preferring character creation to be quick - - - 5 to 15 minutes at the most.

An Endzeitgeist.com review

This massive setting-supplement/adventure clocks in at 229 pages, 1 page front cover, 3 pages of editorial/introduction/ToC, 5 pages of SRD, 1 page advertisement leaving us with 219 pages of content. The pages are laid out for 6’’ by 9’’, meaning you can fit up to 4 pages on a given sheet of paper, should you choose to print this out and have sufficiently good eyesight.

This review was requested by one of my patreons.

Soooo…oh boy. Where to start? This is the second supplement by Patrice Crespin that can be used as a GM-less solo-adventure/campaign, so that would be the first use of the book. The basic formula of the engine of playing the game sans a GM, the best and most impressive aspect from “Ruins of the Undercity”, has been retained – here, the city is the eponymous Kwantoom, while the dungeon would be the 1001 Pagodas of Death. Since I already covered the mechanics and design-paradigms of GM-less playing in my review of aforementioned book, I am not going to bore myself or you by just repeating the same information with filed off serial numbers. Suffice to say, it works, from an engine stand-point, and admirably so.

That being said, the Ruins-book did suffer from a lack of distinct identity, details and usefulness beyond its procedurally-generated dungeon-aspirations.

I honestly did not expect this book to go to such lengths to change that. Mad Monks of Kwantoom does sport, again, like ruins, a single page of background, but proceeds to provide a potential for adaptation to a more Western medieval environment. As before, we assume Labyrinth Lord as the default rules-set – but this is where the similarities frankly end.

You see, this book, beyond its solo-play options, also doubles as basically a massive Oriental Adventures-style sourcebook for LL. This includes no less than 5 races: Bungayas, Kappas, Kitsunes, Tanukis and Tengus are covered – all with proper ability score modifications, minimum scores, level caps – the old-school gaming staples you expect. This would also be a good place to note that, yes, the red annotations are back – however, this time around, they actually are genuinely funny in many instances, providing a tongue-in-cheek commentary that made me smile time and again. Balance-wise, I have no complaints regarding the respective races and how they are presented.

A total of no less than 7 variant classes can be found in the book as well. If you don’t meet the minimum requirements, you just get them when using this in solo-play – and no, the monks don’t need to be lawful. They’re mad monks, after all! The variant monk provided clocks in with Str 12, Dex 15 and Wis 15 as requirement, and Wis as prime requisite. They get d4 HD and have a maximum level of 17. They do get a couple of restrictions and may deflect even magic and they even get a short-rest like, limited HP replenishment 1/day. When fighting without weaponry, they choose one of 8 martial styles, which modifies abilities, damage and AC. And yes, standard monk is still possible. 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 8th, 9th, 10th and 12th level provide unique abilities. All in all, the variant monk is a potent class as far as LL is concerned, but sports a surprising survivability and is fun and more precise than what I expected. I really like the fact that it sports some player agenda.

Fakirs would be ascetic monks who get limited cleric spellcasting at higher levels, as well as gaining control over weight etc. Kabukis are…well kabuki-ish monk performers. We also get notes on ninjas, ronin monks and shapeshifters (who later gain limited magic-user spellcasting), while swordmasters/kensai are basically the weapon-using monks. The rules-language for these variant classes (if you’re familiar with new school games, think of them akin to PFRPG’s archetypes in that they modify the rules-chassis of the class) is pretty precise and allows for a sufficient amount of choice and differentiation, which is really neat. Advice on increasing the power of monks, if desired, is btw. provided. We also get notes on multiclassing as well as a brief FAQ regarding these new rules-components.

Now, I’ve claimed before that the structure of this book is akin to “Ruins of the Undercity”, and while this is true, it is at the same time an imprecise generalization. You see, the city of Kwantoom is actually much better in differentiating its sections – it is not abstract to the same point: You choose a district, check for encounters and events, check search chances for shops, availability, recruiting and then rinse and repeat, as required. So yes, we’re actually differentiating between different subsections of the city, which contributes a lot to making the city-section feel more organic, alive, and less redundant. In short: The replayability is not simply based on generic set-pieces, there is simply more soul here. And yes, we get a full-color map of the city. The scope is also different: There simply is much, much more going on per district. This goes to the point where, honestly, this makes for a great setting supplement for dressing in Oriental Adventures-style settings. Similarly, returning for leveling also includes notes on purchasing houses, etc. and 20 different special events that may happen upon returning to the city, making the experience more modular.

In fact, this unique and intriguing component of the pdf, the honestly interesting quality of a sourcebook, also extends to the magic items. For example, there are 4 unique crickets. Yes, crickets. Yes, live crickets. There also are 6 different magical fortune cookies. And jasmine bows. Magic masks and puppets…so yeah, this is amazing. Honestly, I’ve seen a TON of WuXia-themed gaming sourcebooks, but the focus on unique ideas here is amazing and I’ve seen most of these item classes never before. So yeah, impressive. Now, it should also be noted that the book introduces lucky charms – no less than 100 of them. They have a break condition, and when a character violates it, they cease to function. Moreover, they can take a multitude of shapes – a table of 25 entries, with sub-entries, ensures that lucky charms will remain unique and engaging.

Now, as far as the exploration of the basically infinite, procedurally-generated dungeon goes, it does follow the same paradigms as Ruins of the Undercity – we get starting geomorphs (12, this time around), monster matrix, and tables upon tables to determine chambers, corridors, etc. – so the structure per se is different. However, there are two crucial differences that adds an impressive amount of unique character to the dungeon as you generate it. The first of these would be the massive Wah Tung Match Co. monster manual: The aforementioned company created cult classic, colorful renditions of monsters and characters on their matchboxes – no less than 48 unique creatures are provided for select pictures taken from these, all sporting pretty detailed background information.

The section on personal goals for characters has been greatly expanded, and we once more get a table f quirks and former backgrounds. There is more that sets this apart from its predecessor, namely the fact that we actually do get a secrets-chapter. This chapter contains basically exciting boss-encounter/special rooms – some of which sport subtables, while others significantly modify the sequence of events encountered thereafter. This chapter provides some really cool components, and builds on the gloriously weird angle some of the entries sport.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are very good – apart from a few minor hiccups, I noticed no serious glitches, with rules-integrity being surprisingly concise for the amount of content provided. Layout adheres to a 1-column b/w-standard with red annotations and is printer-friendly. The full-color cartograhy of Kwantoom is nice and the use of the Wah Tun matchbox pictures for monsters is genius and flavorful. Big kudos there. The pdf comes with nested bookmarks, though they could be a bit more detailed. I can’t comment on the print-version, since I do not own it.

Patrice Crespin’s Mad Monks of Kwantoom make good of the promise of “Ruins of the Undercity” – the book is an actually engaging GM-less solo-adventure, courtesy of the amazing backdrop, the bonkers ideas, gonzo components and vast amount of internal differentiation options. The book doesn’t become redundant and the unique secrets and more detailed goals help further to make this work as an engaging module.

Beyond that, the book actually manages to excel at being an amazing GM toolkit for old-school Oriental Adventures as well. Instead of just retreading the same old tropes, the book takes the high road and embraces the gonzo aspects of the mythologies and its tropes, succeeding in actually providing a distinct voice that goes beyond a simple retread of the same information we’ve seen time and again.

In short: This is somewhat of an “eierlegende Wollmilchsau” – an egg-laying wool-milk-pig; if you’re not familiar with the German expression, it’s used to denote a non-existing über-animal that serves all functions. This book is just that and works surprisingly well on many levels: The variant monks and races should work sans snafus in all LL-campaigns; the monsters are unique and the magic items creative. The tables and dungeon-generation aspects can be used by a GM for random dressing and loot and the secret-section basically provides set-piece encounters. Kwantoom as a city is also interesting – in spite of mostly existing in tables and stuff that happens. In short, no matter how you look at this book, it delivers.

It also manages to secure its own flavor and identity, which is another big plus. In short: This is an inspiring book well worth the asking price. My final verdict will clock in at 5 stars + seal of approval.

Endzeitgeist out.

This is a book that can be thought of in two ways as one a complete tool kit to run an incredible kick ass oriental adventure campaign & it contains everything your going to need run this for yourself as a solo player. And it does contain Ninjas as well. The book is jam packed with everything you need to generate a ton of lost pagodas, a ton of oriental monsters, new PC classes and right now its five dollars. Is this title worth it? Yes, and then some. Mad Monks is well written and perfect for the retroclone and traditional OD&D style gamer. The material is really a labor of love on the author's part and I'm happy to have taken a look at this one. So what's in it? Well according to the Drivethru Blurb: In a nutshell, Mad Monks of Kwantoom features a wondrous Asian setting with new character races and classes, crazy unique creatures inspired by matchbox pictures coming straight from ancient China, alternative petty magic items, tables for random dungeon generation and simple house rules for all of this to run smoothly. In addition, you'll find campaign rules to help you flesh your characters out and embed them in the setting, which they can change and mold according to their whims as they proceed to glory, prosperity and — who knows? — immortality.

This material will work easily as well for both Advanced and Basic D&D quite easily. The author manages to capture the look and feel of a Far Eastern setting with an equal mix of panash and style in equal measure. This is an expansive campaign tool box with lots and lots of bells and whistles to play with. The fact that's its a labor of love is really something that shines through and a lot of effort went into the setting and background. And all of this is at your finger tips in spades. The appendixes, background, monsters, dungeon elements add to this one with a twisted sense of a nod and wink to the DM to put this material to good use. The author knows the ins and outs of dungeon design and the workings of the Old School asthetic and how to use them to best effect. There isn't a sense of , 'You must use this material this way'. Instead we are given an expansive palatte of old school goodness to design everything you need for a variety of old school far Eastern adventures and an entire campaign setting which you can fill in and DYI to your heart's content. A very well done and fantastic product. This book needs far more attention and is really my go to source for all things Oriental in D&D lately. Do yourselves a favor & grab this one!

Un excellent supplément pour de l'OSR. Que ce soit pour se faire des parties en solitaire de pur hack'n slash, ou pour intégrer des donjons surprises dans une campagne, c'est un outil au poil !

C'est, selon moi, un complément idéal pour du Scarlet Heroes en solo.