The underlying concept of the Lazy GM series is to provide complete stat blocks for use as opposition during your game. Most of the preceeding volumes have explored a single creature in depth, but this one consists of a trawl through the Monster Manual, presenting many familiar and favourite creatures all ready to square up against the characters. Now they already come with stat blocks, so why bother? you may ask. The added value here is that stat blocks for different Hit Dice, with various appropriate templates applied, and even - when the creature is capable of it - with class levels and abilites added. So it's not just yet another gargoyle, maybe this one is a vampire and knows how to use a crossbow!

But it's not just page after page of stat blocks. The Introduction explains the underlying processes used in their construction, so that the not-so-lazy GM is empowered to tweak them to suit his needs, or even apply the same concepts to a monster not covered here.

The monsters are indexed both by name and by Challenge Rating, so that if you know you want an assassin vine you can review the options; or if you know the level of opposition which you need to supply you can check what's available. As a further refinement, they are also classified by type - mode of behaviour or attack method - so that you can survey all those creatures which, for example, like to grapple and pick out the one which best fits your adventure.

This isn't a good afternoon's read, nor is it intended to be - it is a very useful tool for the DM who likes proper stat blocks for the monsters he plans to use, but would rather spend his preparation time on plotline and other creative aspects of adventure design.

Even before I started reviewing Creative Conclave’s work, I knew that their “Lazy GM” series of books was aptly named. It’s not that GM’s are an inherently lazy bunch, but rather, the amount of work that any given GM has to do for even a single adventure is strenuous at best. Even if you’re running a pre-generated adventure, it’s no picnic to prepare and run, and if you’re running an original adventure, well…you’ve got your work cut out for you. Nowhere is that more true with making appropriate encounters. After all, the d20 System allows for incredible flexibility when advancing or otherwise altering monsters, but you better be prepared to sit down and work out the math in painstaking detail…for each creature. Here, however, Create Conclave saves GMs from such burnout with their Dungeon Beasts product, covering a rather wide variety of monsters from the SRD.

Here, we find forty monsters are presented, none of which are humanoids of any basic sort (that is, don’t expect to see trolls or giants here). Each creature has a series of variant stat blocks; all have advanced nature Hit Dice presented, and then various combinations of templates, class levels, and/or size alterations (and, sometimes, natural Hit Dice advancement in conjunction with one of these). There’s no particular rhyme or reason, that I could see at least, for how these latter sections go. Some creatures got skeleton and zombie templates applied, others had fighter levels, some had advanced Hit Dice with the half-dragon template, etc. The variety is enough so that even if you don’t find something exactly like what you’re looking for here, you’ll find something close.

Lest this sound utterly dull, the book doesn’t just throw stat blocks at you and walk away. It opens with a brief introduction, goes over the format of the stat blocks and how to alter them as you see fit, and then has a hyperlinked listing of each stat block by CR, letting you zip to exactly where you need. There’s also a discussion of what monsters work best in what roles (e.g. flyers, guardians, etc). Each monster is presented in alphabetical order, and begins with a short paragraph describing them (and covering their variants). The only drawback that I could find here was that there was no way to zip straight to the entry for a particular monster, whether in bookmarks or a hyperlinked table of contents. This was corrected in their later book, Savage Creatures, but it would have been nice if they’d gone back and added that feature here too.

That said, the truly staggering number of stat blocks here is a great advantage for any GM that’s having a hard time making themselves wade through the sea of numbers that comes with advancing creatures. Rather than going to all that trouble, why not just look here and pick up an advanced monster that’s already been formatted for you. These Dungeon Beasts won’t let you down.

It can’t really be denied that 3.5 is a game system that requires a fair amount of work to run. Whether it’s calculating the Encounter Levels in your homebrew adventure or building a high-level PC, there’s a lot of numbers to take into account. Nowhere is this more ubiquitous than when designing a non-standard monster (“non-standard” here meaning a monster that differs from how it’s presented in its source material). Luckily, the guys at Creative Conclave are taking care of that for us with the latest addition to their Lazy GM series: Savage Creatures.

The book takes just over forty monsters from the SRD, and introduces myriad variant stat blocks for each and every one. Advanced (and sometimes diminished) natural Hit Dice, templates, class levels, and combinations thereof are given for each creature. Some creatures have only a half-dozen variant stat blocks while others have over a dozen. Each entry also has a brief paragraph discussing the creature (and occasionally offering a variant idea or two) and also lists the unaltered stat block for the creature just to be helpful.

What impressed me most about this book, however, was that Creative Conclave didn’t just throw the stat blocks in here and leave the GMs to figure out what to use. Instead, after a hyperlinked table of contents of creatures, there’s a handy introduction that discusses the various aspects of the stat blocks in terms of how they were made and tips for making your own alterations. There’s also a hyperlinked of creatures by CR, and beyond that, a breakdown of creatures by the roles they play (e.g. “guardians,” “ranged attackers,” etc.), and an index of the variants used. Creative Conclave clearly understood that in a product like this, cross-indexing is king.

It’s almost impossible find fault with a book like this. It does the heavy lifting on one of the most mathematically-intensive aspects of the game, and does it very well. There are hundreds upon hundreds of stat blocks in here, which means that even if you only use a fraction of those in your game, you’re saving yourself a metric ton of effort. Even if you still want to make an altered stat block, using these as a baseline can still save you quite a bit of work. There’s really no downside to this book; just a list of different ways it helps you out.

Does it job. Not particularly exciting, but if you want a nice lizardfolk tribe, this is the resource to buy.

In a way, I guess all of us Gamemasters are lazy about one thing or another. I know some guys who love to nitpick and assign every single skill and feat for every single creature in their game. I on the other hand have players whom could care less or not if the Fire Giant blacksmith had craft skills. For this type of lazy GM, whom would rather do other things that stat up creatures, The Creative Conclave presents the Lazy GM: Dungeon Beasts.

Dungeon Beasts ventures into territory that many publishers have done with NPCs. Instead of rehashing the same old monsters, it takes a few dozen monsters and incrementally advances them, providing the reader over 400 varieties of creatures for their game.

The book goes about this by presenting a creature, a brief description and several advancement. It also presents several templates applied to the creature. It is a very simple and effective approach. Whereas most of the 146 pages of the book contain monster entries, the first few pages detail the types of monsters found in the book and reference pages for them.

The book is very simple in its layout, so much so that it becomes its biggest negative. There are no bookmarks or navigation tools and the statblock format is neither the new or old form.

For the DM Can not say I have ever thought about zombie Bulettes before, but I sure will use one in my game now.

The Iron Word I would hope to think that the second thing someone thinks of when creating a reference book is navigation (the first being the actual reference material). Still, Dungeon Beasts simple layout and descriptions overcomes this faux pas and feels like one of those books that you should have on file in your laptop for just in case incidents. It is an excellence monster source.

One of the great things about the d20 core rules is that they're expandable and customizable, and for monsters that is a real treat. With templates, advanced monsters and other means around, the DM can create a treasure trove of wild beasties to throw at their players. No two monsters of the same species need to be the same, and the flexibility this allows is huge. In fact, some of the best books for the d20 market out there have dealt with templates. Part of the DMs job is to create fun and challenging encounters, and customizable monsters offers a powerful tool in doing just that.

The Lazy GM: Dungeon Beasts is the latest product from Creative Conclave and the 5th product in their Lazy GM series (6th if you count Creative Conclave's free Halloween release last year). This product show cases (within the limits of the core d20) the power of customization of monsters. In the pages of this product 40 dungeon beasts have been turned into over 400 through the use of advancing, templates and the like. As the name suggests, this product is about dungeon beast, essentially all the creatures with the magical beast or aberration types. The Lazy GM: Dungeon Beasts presents 146 pages of stat blocks of every CR allowing the DM to pick a dungeon beast to suit his needs without any hassle. This product is compatible with the revised d20 core rules.

This product comes as a single easy-to-use pdf file. While there are no bookmarks, the product allows you navigate at the click of a creature's name, meaning with the extensive table of contents you can go wherever you want within the pdf. Layout is in a single column, with the various monsters sorted alphabetically throughout the product. Like the other products in the series, the stat blocks are impeccable, and with over 400 stat blocks in this product, that's saying something. The product also includes an extremely useful introduction, as well as handy tables to sort creatures by role, such as ambushers, guardians, and relentless hunters. This is a very well presented pdf, with excellent mechanics.

The Lazy GM series is all about providing DMs with scores of pregenerated stat blocks of various creatures in a large number of different variations. Dungeon Beasts features creatures such as: ankheg, grick, rust monster, hellhound, choker, basilisk, owlbear, manticore, chimera, gorgon, and numerous others. Naturally these creatures have been expanded and advanced in numerous ways, and templates such as zombie, skeleton, vampire, paragon, phrenic, fiendish and pseodonatural have been applied liberally to each creature, creating a vast quantity of creatures of every CR. Some creatures have class levels as well, where appropriate, for example, with a blink dog. And speaking of CRs, the CRs range from 1/3 for the lowly dire rat, to 35 for that paragon purple worm. The majority of the creatures fall in the region below CR 10, but there are a fair number of scores of creatures in the higher CR ranges.

A product like this is a huge undertaking, particularly if you want to provide huge variation and get the details right. Creative Conclave have once again succeeded at this, creating an extremely useful document for those that don't really like generating creatures or typing out stat blocks for various creatures. It's one thing to create a product with 40 stat blocks, and quite another to do that for 400 accurate stat blocks. This is a valuable resource, and along with the other four products so far in the series, almost means you'll never really need to create another stat block again. Creative Conclave have produced an impressive product. While it doesn't bring anything new to the d20 arena, its utility is enormous and as such a product that many DMs wonder what they did without it. This product can shave hours off preparation time, particularly if combined with other products in the series. I, for one, am looking forward to seeing what's next for The Lazy GM series. Excellent product.

The Lazy GM: Goblinoids is a 119 page d20 pdf product and the first product from a new pdf publisher, Creative Conclave. This product is the first in the Lazy GM series in which each product presents hundreds of pre-generated NPC statistics from different monsters. This first product features goblinoids, and includes such creatures as goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears and related creatures such as worgs and dire wolves. The product contains over 360 different statistics blocks, all fully compatible with the revised d20 core rules.

This product comes as a single pdf file. There are no bookmarks, but the extensive table of contents, which lists full creature details by CR, is 'clickable' and therefore allows you to quickly find any particular creature, although it only takes you to the creature page, not the position of the actual stat block on the page (and it increases the zoom on the page which can be quite annoying). The product includes a simple cover with some goblin silhouettes, but there is not other art to speak of in the product. General editing is good, although there are a number of statistics blocks that end in commas rather than full-stops.

This product is exclusively about providing stat blocks for various goblinoids, so you have to ask what the mechanics is like. I have to admit that I didn't check all 360 odd statistics blocks, but those dozens I quickly checked were pretty much impeccable. This has got to be one of the most impressive displays of actually getting the mechanics right. I did find one or two omissions (a +3 not listed in the hit points section for the Toughness feat, for example), but otherwise these are as correct as they come. Well done, Creative Conclave. In fact, they've even set up a forum for readers to inform them of any errors. They obviously take pride in their mechanics, and so they should, judging by the high standard of correctness. Presentation-wise what you would expect from a pdf detailing hundreds of statistics for creatures. Decent layout, excellent mechanical editing, and solid product.

The product starts by providing a brief introduction to the book and an explanation of the way they've formatted it and done the various statistics blocks. The stat blocks generally follow the standard format found in the d20 system, although here and there some additional information is provided. For example, the skills section includes information on the armor check penalty as applicable to certain skills. Following this introduction, the product jumps in and gives over 360 stat blocks for goblinoids. The CRs range from 1/4 for the zombie goblin, to CR 18 for a hobgoblin lich cleric. The majority of the creatures (~90%) are CR 8 or below making this product extremely useful for low level games and presenting cannon-fodder for higher level PCs.

There is quite frankly an enormous variety of different goblinoids in this product. The standard goblinoids are all presented in numerous different flavors, such as archer, heavy, standard, fiendish, defender, scout etc. These flavors are varieties in weaponry, armor, feats, skills, classes and the like. Not only that, but the product also uses extensive material from the OGL Unearthed Arcana from Wizards of the Coast to include information on other goblinoid species such as aquatic goblins, fire hobgoblins, and artic goblins. The level variety is excellent as well, with most creatures having class levels in a variety of different classes at different levels. It's probably impossible to cover every eventuality, but this product takes a very good stab at doing just that. Included are not only goblinoids, but a variety of support creatures such as worgs and advanced worgs, dire wolves, and numerous undead goblinoids and wolves such as ghost worgs, skeleton goblins, and zombie dire wolves.

This is a very impressive product, not only in its sheer volume and number of creatures, but also in the variety and correctness of the stat blocks. As such it's an extremely useful resource, and easy to just take what you want from the product and use it with confidence. The stat blocks are written in such a way as to make it as easily as possible to modify, and hence many additional modifiers are included. If you want to modify a creature's armor, for example, it has the armor check penalty listed to update skills and the armor bonus next to AC to the modify that. Other factors are generally just as easy to modify, and hence this product is easily expanded to cover many other creature possibilities. The Lazy GM: Goblinoids is an excellent and extremely useful product and I'm looking forward to seeing future releases in the series. If want a bucket load of different goblinoids for your game, this product will not disappoint.