From the nerds who bring you KNOCK! magazine, here comes A Folklore Bestiary, a 160 pages hardback book full of whimsical, spooky creatures inspired by actual folktales and superstitions.

We’ve got giants, we’ve got faeries, we've got weird magical beasts. And we’ve got more than one titanic beast that’ll get the Tarasque run for its life! But more importantly, we have the tales these monsters come from. For every one of them, we’ve included one to three pages of gameable material: adventure hooks, magical items, spells, dungeons and hexcrawls, and more!

We all know that for a gamemaster, having an encounter is better than just a monster. But we Mushfolk are of the opinion that an adventure is better than an encounter. Our bestiary gives you exactly that: enough material to design whole scenarios around each monster.

Once upon a time, back when The Merry Mushmen were working On KNOCK! issue 2, Olivier was inspired to write a character from Basque folklore into an interesting monster, with enough material to use the character as the focus of one or more sessions. From there, we had the idea of creating a whole book based on folklore from around the world.

More than all the sourcebooks that clutter our shelves or even all the novels presented in DMG appendixes, folk tales and superstitions are an inexhaustible source of inspiration. They are countless, coming from all cultures and all countries. They were told to us when we were kids and we will pass them down to our own children.

In retrospect, there is a big gap in the original Dungeons and Dragons menagerie. The game drew on the science-fiction and heroic (or pathetic) fantasy of the twentieth century as well as on mythology before moving more towards Tolkien’s vision of fantasy, feeding on itself like a nerdy ouroboros. D&D never really stopped to explore the weird corners of folklore tradition. 

What, Who, When, etc.

The book is 160 pages (A5 format:  5.9’ x 8.25’, slightly bigger than digest size) in beautiful full colour, printed on quality paper (coated 130 gr, with a hardback cover) by Olivier's neighbours in Bilbao, in the Spanish Basque country. The cover is matte finished hardback and it's sewn bound.

Contributors are:

Alexandre ‘Kobayashi’ Jeanette - Diogo Nogueira - Islayre d’Argolh - James Holloway - Jean-Marc ‘Tolkraft’ Choserot - Jonathan Wyrmblood - Nicolas Dessaux - Paolo Greco - Steve Dempsey.

And all of the art is done by the wonderful Letty Wilson. You may have seen their work in KNOCK! before. They're producing full-page illustrations for:

Angelhead - Aragousset - Bad Patxi (extended from KNOCK! #2) - Basajaun - Boitatà - Bukavac - Cama cruse & Braca cruse - Cauquemar - Cephalophore - Corpo-Seco - Cuca - Curupira - Dahu - Donestre - Dybbouk - Folk of the Holy City - Gayant - Gnoles - Green Children of Wolfpit - Gumberoo - Hellwagen - Hou Yi - Jack-in-Irons - Jiu Wei Hu - Kabouters - Kratt - La Velue - Le Drac - Lou Carcohl - Lou Pétassou - Mapinguari - Monaciello - Mothman - Perelesnyk - Piot Chant - Queen of the Fallow Field - Scucca - Serpent of Isaby - Tartaro (extended from KNOCK: #3) - Wolves of Ossory.