This short supplement is all about what it says on the tin: making a group of murderous undead monster PCs to go do what murderous undead monsters do. The basic idea is set up as a hex crawl, and encourages you to go get some basic rules for hex crawling if your D&D variant doesn't support them. Your PCs start out somewhere with whatever grave goods they could reasonably have been interred with, and the world is their oyster to devour. There's some guidelines for random opposition, in that your monsters have a basic 'heat' system based on their actions - the more powerful you are, and the less circumspect in your atrocities, the greater the odds that populated hexes will evacuate in part or whole before you arrive, and the greater odds that a group of heroes will be waiting for you there. Sometimes both of these things will happen. It encourages you to base the hero's capabilities and gear loadout on whatever they could logically figure out about the PCs prior, and to escalate from there - so if the PCs took out a prior group of adventurers and the new opposition could figure out how they did it, they'll come prepared for that eventuality. It's a nice touch to call it out, and even for a non-evil campaign (undead or otherwise) it's a decent idea to run with. Evacuation is a poor thing for your undead PCs, because one of the rules presented is that they only gain XPs from killing 'living' things at a flat rate of 10 per HD split among the group and applicable NPC allies. This is one spot where the language falls down, in that it calls out demons/devils/angels/etc. as not 'living' things when they technically are. However, indirect kills are allowed, so fires, well poisoning, and the like all count. It also explicitly states that your PCs can't recover HP naturally, and every undead class has a different HP recovery mechanic. Oh, the classes. This is simultaneously one of the best and weakest parts of the book. Each class represents a specific monster trope, all of them following on some form of consumption or corruption and bringing its own capabilities to the table. They're meant to model specific monster categories, but they're actually a bit more interesting taken as their own things. Revenants are the hack-it-to-bits-to-stop-it monsters. Their strengths base around their body parts, and at least one intact part means the Revenant is still alive...though you could end up being The Leg Of Vecna if things go badly, so I hope you have friends! Your parts determine your capabilities, and drastically affect task resolution - you base your rolls and capabilities on how powerful your parts are, and there's a risk of damaging yourself depending on the rolls. You heal by swapping parts (you don't specifically have your own HP, it's all parts based) and can upgrade by just chowing down on a corpse instead of borrowing parts. Oh, you're also a one-XXX-and-you're-hooked undead plague spreader, potentially. Vampires are what you'd expect, pretty much. They can pass for people without too much trouble, and gain HP by draining targets of blood as well as potentially getting extra XPs, increasing their statistics, or getting a target's special abilities on a particular roll. They gain additional benefits as they level up, though these are counterbalanced somewhat as they also rack up a random weakness of mostly traditional varieties. Ghosts are also pretty close to what you'd expect. You're naturally incorporeal (though you can't fly or airwalk) and are very hard to hurt by most means. Your main ability is to possess people (up to two per Ghost level), and that includes monsters and other non-humanoid things that could be possessed. Very powerful as you level up (your success chance is based on 1d20 + CHA + Ghost level VS 1d20 + WIS + HD of target) but in order to keep your thralls under control you need to keep them fed. In an amusing touch, you can feed them raw meat even if they explicitly can't eat it normally (like cows, for instance). You regain HP automatically at sundown, which makes sense as you have little direct attack capability. Necromagus is the 'caster' class...kind of. You're a brain eater, and can interrogate a brain you've eaten for three questions (which the brain won't lie about, but will answer for what it BELIEVES is true). Alternately you can gain the spells a brain had, or some of their supernatural powers as one-and-done 'spells'. Instead of casting these normally you can also convert them into Cure and Inflict Wounds spells to heal yourself (that's your healing method) and other undead or harm the living. You can memorize a spell one time per Necromagus level, which basically makes it permanent in your arsenal and useable 1x/day per Necromagus level refreshing at sunrise. Dead Lords make zombies. Every hit they do with their bare hands (I'd assume natural attacks in general should work but RAW it only says hands) inflicts permanent debuffs (!) on the target and will animate them if you kill them. They animate as a 1 hp Zombie, with a limit of Dead Lord level + CHA to control at any one time. Interestingly they don't attack separately - they act as a buff to your own melee damage (+1 per zed) and also act as temporary hit points (again, 1 per zed) on the basis that they're attacking simultaneously with you and getting in the way of incoming attacks. You can do things with them out of combat, but they're exceedingly stupid and can't be commanded separately. Your healing method is gaining XP, any time you do you heal that many HP. The Necrotic Ooze is a mass of rotting matter that absorbs things. Unlike the revenant, you have your own HP but have no maximum - you add the max HP of a dead creature you absorb to your own, and have the chance to gain a special ability/skill/supernatural power from the victim. The more HP you have, the bigger you get, but explicitly MUST burn at least one HP on EVERY roll you make. You shrink as you lose HP, going to Tiny at 1 HP.

Every one of these uses the established progression of a base class (Revenant is the exception for HD) for things like skills/saves/attack bonus/proficiences/XP progression/etc. All undead can multiclass with Fighter or Thief, but not with other undead classes. FINAL THOUGHTS: This one is a blend of interesting and frustrating. The best parts of this are the recommendations for hex crawl opposition and the majority of the undead classes. Even if you weren't using these as PCs they would make solid villains to fight. However, their mechanics are all over the place, and the Necromagus in particular is a sore point for me - the other undead do their thing out of the box, but Necromagi are dependent on being able to take down one of the more dangerous NPC opponents you can face to actually USE their class features. And they can't heal until they do this, BTW. The Necrotic Ooze, RAW, could kill itself by day-to-day operations if it's not always eating. The others are pretty solid, though IMO Vampires are probably too powerful in the end, and the Revenant is mechanically wonky and could benefit from some examples of how it works in play. The rules given are probably best used as supplements or guidelines for when your own system doesn't have explicit callouts, and in particular the XP system should be used as supplemental or modified to allow rewards for overcoming non-'living' opponents (possibly half the XP per HD), otherwise that's frustrating for your players in an unfun way. Overall, this is a decent springbox for ideas, and provides some non-standard concepts to spice up some villains for your campaign even if playing Return Of The Living Dead isn't your cup of brains. You could readily play this from the other side, as fledgling heroes surviving the initial attack (the 0th level funnel, everyone's favorite!) from the evil undead and hex crawling to level up and muster forces to stop them. That would provide a different kind of time pressure, because every day you spend getting more powerful levels your enemies as well and loses you territory as they go from hex to hex chowing down and converting the locals (either to their cause, or to food, same difference!). As this is a PWYW title, I'm comfortable enough to call it three stars as is. It could make a good four star with some rules refinement.

This one is a bargain for the price. You're getting 400+ pages of complete game, and while it's technically a during-through-after-the-apocalypse setting it's got a VERY broad scope. Even if you never play the game straight, it's got more than enough ideas to plunder for your own campaigns.

This is, perhaps, the most apocalyptic and non-survival-oriented RPG I've ever seen. Takes some cues from The Hateful Place, and a lot of inspiration from Silent Hill and Alan Wake (among others - the front page is pretty explicit about the inspirations). Just like it says on the tin: one day, the lights go out. All of them. No moon, no stars, no electricity - the only light available is via natural sources (like fire and the chemical reactions that allow glowsticks to work). 1/3 of the people in the world went insane immediately, violently so, and tried to kill everyone around them with degrees of success, but this problem self-corrects soon enough. There are other things in the darkness, though, and they're much better at killing people than people are at killing them. That's not even touching on the environmental hazards, too...why are the squirrels looking at you so hungrily?

The game is harsh, with death and maiming coming very easily and recovery slow if at all. Starvation and dehydration are constant concerns, rest is a precious commodity that is difficult to obtain, and the Dark is inside you as well as outside you in the form of recurrent nightmares and barely suppressed insanity. You start with one, and can easily get more with bad rolls. You check when you meet a new type of monster for the first time, and if you make that roll you don't have to worry about rolling again thereafter for that type of creature. Mundane horrors (like swarming roaches or bloodthirsty skitters of squirrels) don't inspire a check at all.

PCs are fairly normal humans, but there are a smattering of supernatural abillities available at character creation in the vein of sense/hide/manipulate at great investment in points. As said previously, the Dark is inside you too, and you can potentially make use of it. Other, more potent supernatural powers are available, but only with experience - good luck surviving to get it, BTW. The most promising one, Alchemy (technically a skill rather than a power, using parts of monsters and the odd fungi and other growths that are beginning to supplant normal plant life in the smothering darkness to be able to make useful substances with supernatural or at least useful properties), is sadly not fleshed out at all and waits for a supplement to take advantage of it.

Monsters are tied to a Darkness Level, somewhat similar to a Fear Level from Deadlands, ranging from 1 to 9. Monster level is tied to Darkness level, so less than 3 means normal threats like hungry packs of small animals and the like. It takes a Darkness Level of 3 for actual monsters to beging spawning, and a Darkness Level of 4 to get a Guardian class monster (a boss-type creature) to spawn. There are references to Dominators as the next stage up from a Guardian (big and lethal), but no examples given nor any indication as to how they spawn. In the event that you can kill a Guardian, it resets that area to Darkness Level 1, leaving it (somewhat) safer to rest or scavenge in for a while. PCs don't know the Darkness Level of a given area, and can't find out without successful Sense Dark skill checks. Darkness level is variable, but the rise and fall of it is influenced by the presence or absence of people. This means permanent camps and large settlements are right out, and getting much larger than your group of PCs is begging for trouble on multiple levels. Oh, and gunfire can and will draw the attention of monsters from a great distance, and potentially draw in adds to an already existing encounter.

In terms of monsters, there's not a lot on display, but what is there is promising. There's basic lurking horrors that are more dangerous in numbers than solo (on the cover, in the back), spidery things that set up shop in buildings and lure prey to them, that charming fellow centered on the cover who is a filed-off-the-serial-numbers Pyramid Head, and a few others. There's also mundane hazards in the form of roach swarms (enlarged and given acidic saliva by the Dark - not directly dangerous to your players, but will destroy supplies and make resting even more difficult) and "squirrels". I put that last part in quotation marks because it's something of a catch-all for wildlife that has gone bad due to the Dark and has decided that humans are on the menu. "Squirrels" lurk around the edges of a light source, and while they don't attack groups a lone traveler will be jumped as soon as enough of them gather to feel confident in attacking. Examples of "squirrels" are squirrels, pigeons, and of all things...Deer. The mechanics are set up for small swarmy critters, BTW, so good luck getting the image of deer dogpiling someone out of your head...But more to the point, it's pleasant to see more abstract and squishy horrors on display than a standard pastiche of vampires/werewolves/etc etc etc.

All in all, an interesting game. Biggest critique would be that it's too lethal as things stand. I understand and appreciate the nature of the setting they're going for - this isn't post-apocalyptic, this is the apocalypse, and it's not supposed to be easy to survive. That being said, there's just way too much stacked against players between the need for light sources ("you will be eaten by a grue" if you don't have one, what do you think the "squirrels" are for?), great difficulty to rest and heal, and other mechanics. It'd be great for a one-shot or several day convention scenario where you don't have long-term aspirations for the game, not so much beyond that without a fair amount of setting and rules tweaking. Still, this has some great ideas and makes for excellent inspiration. Keep an eye on it.

This is a solid take on a zombie plague for a sci-fi/supers setting. The premise is summed up nicely in the description, with an alien vessel from one of the Psi-Watch setting's nastier species crashing to Earth and letting out an extremely dangerous bioweapon (or an unfortunate combination of several different bioweapons - no one is sure exactly what the original cargo was, so it's quite possible the results of the wreck aren't what anyone intended). The disease from the wreck comes in two flavors - a weaker, airborne strain (dangerous to normal humans, but superhumans are extremely resistant and can shrug off the effects with minimal effort), and the far more potent direct injury/contact variant (which is the one that can infect superbeings and potentially make special infected out of them). In true horror movie fashion, things go pear-shaped immediately as everyone underestimates how fast the disease can spread, and the results are nothing short of apocalyptic. The basic zombie from the disease is Resident Evil/Left 4 Dead type bullet fodder - animalistic, not terribly fast, and extremely vulnerable to damage. How vulnerable? Well, this was made back in the 3.x/d20 modern era, and the zeds still have an explicit critical hit vulnerability that stacks on extra damage. The special infected are a different story. They retain various degrees of intelligence, along with most of their original class/race/superhuman abilities, and stack extra capabilities on top of it. These vary from the traditional Tank/Brute type of heavy hitter up to the Lancer (an undead superhuman with a built-in ranged attack of energized pus). They're decently tough as is, but do require some tweaking. The downsides to this supplement are as much due to editing and rules consistency as anything. Concept wise, things work great, but there are references to Alpha zombies (implied to be a tougher form of the regular zombie but not quite on the level of the special infected) which aren't statted up later. The race that made the bioweapon in the first place is implied to be immune to it, but this is only referenced offhand and is never explicitly stated. The special infected have a couple of wonky bits in their stat blocks that don't really line up with other information in the supplement.

SUMMARY: This is still a great supplement for the price involved. You'll have plenty of stuff to work with here in terms of ideas and mechanics, but some assembly will be required to make it fit for your particular game world. Tweaking it to Pathfinder 1st or Starfinder won't be too much of a problem, and if you still play 3.x/d20 modern it will work as-is. The author has indicated he plans to revisit and update this supplement eventually. If he does, other than cleaning up the rules language and consistency, I'd recommend expanding the types of special infected as well as adding in charts for additional random mutations that can affect both special and regular infected (that way, it covers the ground for the other types of special zombies seen in various survival horror games, with tentacle or blade arms, etc.).

This one is a little hard to rate, because the niche it fits is a strange beast indeed. There are a comparatively small number of settings using Pathfinder or some variation to simulate non-swords and sorcery type worlds, at least in comparison to the VAST number of supplements that support a default high magic medieval fantasy setting. This one targets an even more tight niche: superheroes, a realm that 3.x and Pathfinder have always struggled with handling. So, bottom line, there's nothing to compare it with out there. However...with that being said, this book is wildly creative. It provides statistics for a very wide variety of adversaries, from anti-mutant activist humans with guns all the way to godlings and cosmic threats. There's something for damn near everyone in here, and despite having a focus on comic tropes from the 90s there's more than enough love shown to other comic eras that you'll get a smile out of the references (hell, one list of minions outright arms them with Kirby weapons).

PROS:

There's have you evern wanted to throw your PCs up against Dr Manhattan? Or Captain Atom, or Firestorm? Want a quick Ozymandias style mastermind served by legions of self-destructing ninjas, engaged in a war with an evil Superman analogue and his codenamed, tights-clad superhuman servants? These are all options, and there's plenty more. While focused for a modern/superheroic/sci-fi campaign, any GM worth their salt can simply file off the serial numbers and reskin them for their own game. Further, there's a mix of humanoids (and others) with prebuilt class levels alternated with 'monster' statted superhumans (see the Codenames referenced above), which in turn lend themselves to Simple Class Templates or the like. And, on top of all that, there's multiple variants of many different enemies, sometimes reskinning one stat block to function as a different enemy faction altogether. And that's not getting into the templates in the Appendix. Basically, if you're running a game that has modern or high-tech influences, you'll find something useful in this book for you. Oh, monster statistics for vehicles. Want to fight an aircraft carrier? Have a raging barbarian leap from a skyscraper onto an attack helicopter? Got you covered. And on top of all that, there are a handful of enemies that play with the conventions of the genre in interesting ways. The Eugenecist Demons, for instance, are evil outsiders with a specific focus on mutants. That's an amazing idea that exploits the intersection of superheroics and fantasy tropes in a great way. After all, if you had Abyssal legions or the Daemonic servants of the Four Horsemen in a superhero world, there's absolutely no reason they wouldn't have specialists who focused on specific power types.

CONS:

Some of the enemies have problematic abilities. The Fallen Paragon (evil Superman analogue, though the flavor text is really more Supreme from 90s Image comics than Supes) is the standout in my mind - it has an ability that allows it plot-level strength to lift/crush/destroy whatever drama demands it be able to do, which is fine in and of itself. But it also specifies that it doesn't fail combat maneuver checks. That's a HUGE problem, because it means the thing can simply swat weapons out of your PCs hands nonstop. I would probably modify that to 'doesn't fail defensive combat maneuver checks', so it's well-nigh impossible to knock something out of its hand or trip it yet it 'merely' has a huge Strength and Dexterity bonus to its already significant CMB. Similarly, some cyber-implants for various enemies allow outright immunity to a kinetic damage type (bludgeoning/piercing/slashing, though never more than one), which to me is a bridge too far outside of slimes or truly amorphous opposition - I'd probably houserule those into DR/15 against their particular type, which would mean average folks couldn't hurt them but PCs would be able to breach. A lot of the equipment and cyberware references Technology Unleashed (another sourcebook from Skortched 'Urf). You don't necessarily need that book, as the stat blocks give the pertinent information to use the gear (kudos, Mr. Fields), but some references may lose you or not make sense otherwise. Also, these are built more on a D20 Modern/3.x framework as opposed to the Pathfinder Technology Guide setup, so

OTHER "YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY" COMMENTS:

Mr. Fields is definitely more conversant with 3.x/D20 Modern than Pathfinder, as some of the enemies here are upconverts from those sources. I'm the same way - just too much 3.x material on my shelves to abandon it. But it does lead to some design decisions that Paizo wouldn't do. Again, not a problem per se - things can be altered on the fly without too much trouble. Also, the section regarding using Millitary Installations as an enemy is a little funky. I LOVE the idea of abstracting built-in defenses and hordes of 1st level grunts as attacks and spell-likes, kind of like a giant construct with a built-in swarm encounter and a lot of special abilities, but it feels weird on some level. Might be better served as a sort of event-type encounter like the Manifestations of the Great Old Ones are in Sandy Petersen's Cthulhu Mythos are. But that's an entirely personal observation.

SUMMARY:

It's creative, it's more than a little gonzo, and it should give you ideas for days. This is definitely recommended if you even have the slightest use for enemies above the basic tech level of a medieval fantasy world. Heartily recommended.

Niche bestiaries can be a hard sell, but no one gets tired of giant monsters (seemingly no one, anyway). The Colossal Creatures Bestiary does exactly what it says on the tin: it provides 81 creatures of the largest size category in game for your use and abuse.

PROS:

• Every creature type gets represented here. While there are plenty of dragons, animals, and such available, there's definitely enough variety for your particular game.
• In a similar vein, the Challenge Ratings are distributed enough that you'll have something oversized and angry to throw at your PCs no matter their level. And on the other side of the scale, some of the higher CR monsters make more than adequate campaign ending threats. It would have been fairly simple to overstack with excessively high CR monsters, making things less useful for your average (mid-level) game.
• If you've been itching for certain cinematic experiences to make an appearance in your game, you'll be satisfied. In addition to Dracozilla and Kongimus Rex, you'll find other monsters suspiciously similar to various Toho creations and B-movie atomic horror staples. The latter is especially satisfying.

CONS:

• Most of the monsters here are direct physical combatants. They have stacks of hit points and good damage dealing capabilities, but low intelligence. Great for direct confrontation, but harder to justify clever tactics or best use of their capabilities. One or two more 'smart' kaiju would have been nice.
• I'm not going to lower my rating for this, but it does bear mentioning that there isn't a lot of original interior artwork. The pieces used are thematically matched up where possible, but you'll be going theater of the mind (and the descriptions) when using these beasties. Again, not deducting points from the score for this - I understand why the book was put together that way, and I'll take good content (which we get) over art. Just keep it in mind.

USES:

Well, what do you use giant monsters for? Epic battles! But the odd thing is, creatures like this are reasonable candidates for templates. Because they're already pretty beefy for their level, the slight CR bump and capabilities involved are just gilding the lily. That makes a handy way to turn a Bearhemoth, for example, into the personal pet of a duke of Hell without having it overmatch your party. In a similar vein, Mythic ranks can put the fear of the gods into your players when applied here.

CONCLUSION/FINAL RATING:

This gets a solid 4.5, rounded up to 5 for providing a solid value for your money. Again, it would have been too simple to front load this with higher CR monsters that most groups could never face in a fight, but you'll have something for basically any level up your sleeve.