Van Richten's Guide to the Created discusses the manufacture of golems in detail, touching on material procurement, mental development, and brain transplants. A section on "Body Parts and Decay" tells how long it takes a corpse to rot under various climatic conditions; for example, a brainkeptindoors should stay fresh for a couple of days. The "Nutritional Requirement" rules advise that a thoughtful master should feed his golem a suckling pig at least once a week.
Rick Swan reviewed Van Richten's Guide to the Created for Dragon magazine #207. He reviewed this book with the adventure Adam's Wrath, and commented that the "AD&D game meets Frankenstein in these first-rate supplements for the Ravenloft setting." He commented on the "lurid detail" on golem creation: "What makes this the most memorable entry in the Van Richten's line is Woodruff's gleeful commentary about the, er, visceralconsequences."