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D&D Older Editions
Looking back at the Monstrous Compendia: the MC appendices, Monstrous Manual, and more!
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<blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 9037473" data-attributes="member: 8461"><p>Confession time: I missed the three-ring binder era of AD&D 2E monsters...mostly.</p><p></p><p>As best I can remember, I got into Dungeons & Dragons thirty years ago this month, and while I started with the 1070 <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/5-fun-facts-about-the-1991-d-d-black-boxed-set.685296/" target="_blank">black boxed set</a> and the <em><a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17171/DD-Rules-Cyclopedia-Basic?affiliate_id=820" target="_blank">D&D Rules Cyclopedia</a></em>, I quickly made the jump to AD&D 2E. After all, it was “advanced,” not like that kiddie “basic” D&D I’d been playing around with. Given that, the <em>Monstrous Manual</em> was already out when I started buying my first set of the three Core Rulebooks.</p><p></p><p>Looking back now, that might have been for the best; there’s a reason why TSR stopped with the loose-leaf format. It was still around by that point, but the appearance of the perfect-bound Monstrous Manual was the writing on the wall that they were backtracking on not having their monster books be actual books. At this point we’re all familiar with how the purported “mix-and-match the pages to make your own custom monster book for your campaign” idea didn’t really work out, what with different monsters being on each side of the same page more often than not.</p><p></p><p>Having said that, I’m glad that I got started with the Monstrous Manual for another reason: it was a surfeit of riches compared to what <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/183092/MC1-Monstrous-Compendium-Volume-One-2e?affiliate_id=820" target="_blank"><em>MC1 Monstrous Compendium Volume One</em></a> offered.</p><p></p><p>Don’t get me wrong, this first compendium was fairly substantial, being one hundred forty-four pages long. But for a book that was meant to be the opening offering of monsters for an entirely new edition of Dungeons & Dragons, some of the choices for what went into this volume were rather surprising.</p><p></p><p>For one thing, there’s a lot of monsters that aren’t here. Again, the first monster book is the one that presents the edition’s face to its fans, so you’d think that there’d be a lot of extremely iconic monsters in these pages. And to be fair, there are: you’ve got the beholder, the chromatic and metallic dragons, the mind flayer, and numerous classics from orcs to iron golems to medusas to wights.</p><p></p><p>But there’s several omissions that caught me by surprise, too. The drow, for instance, aren’t here. Sure, in 1989 we had only just gotten started with the Drizzt Do’Urden novels, but these guys were still the stars of several <a href="https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/110321/GDQ-Giants-Descent-Queen-series-1e-BUNDLE?affiliate_id=820" target="_blank">very popular modules</a> up until that point, yet they don’t even merit a mention under the “elf” entry. There’s no sahuagin to be found. No planar creatures beyond the imp and quasit, the four basic elementals, and three of the four genies (they kept the dao, djinn, and efreet; alas, the poor marid!). The Tarrasque isn’t to be found either!</p><p></p><p>Now, in hindsight some of this was because these monsters were being saved for later. The drow were second-stringers, appearing in the MC2, and the planar monsters were being put in their own volume later (since TSR was apparently still trying to think of how to rename demons and devils). Even so, no rust monster, mimic, aboleth, etc...it makes the current me shake my head.</p><p></p><p>Of course, part of the reason for that is because quite a few of the monsters that <em>are</em> here are genuine head-scratchers. While (almost) nothing’s here that ended up on the list of <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20080716105222/http:/www.headinjurytheater.com/article73.htm" target="_blank">very stupid monsters</a>, a lot of these choices prompted me to snicker and wonder “what were they thinking?” Did the korred really need to be front-and-center in AD&D 2E’s debut monster book? Was the jackalwere really not something that could have waited until MC2? Or the mud-man?</p><p></p><p>And don’t even get me started on how many normal animals are here. I get that the paladin needs stats for his warhorse, and that every adventurer starts out killing giant rats, but an entire entry for “animal, herd” which covers camels, cattle, buffalos, antelopes, and sheep? Or the jackal having its own entry, apart from the entry on hyenas and hyaenodons? Really? And it’s not like these are exceptions; you get entries for bats, centipedes, hornets, owls, dogs, cats, and snakes; why did it have to be snakes?</p><p></p><p>It helps that a lot of these at least add giant versions, and a few fold in entries for magical creatures (e.g. blink dogs are in there with their non-blinking counterparts), but I still question the usefulness of these. There’s a difference between monsters that you need to have because they’re too cool to do without, and monsters that you <em>think</em> you need to have because the background creatures of the game world need to be represented (which isn’t to say that’s not a valid concern, but you don’t need to have stats for freakin’ <em>cattle</em> in the very first volume!).</p><p></p><p>I’d be remiss if I didn’t admit that there’s at least a few entries that straddle that line, however: those for (demi)human NPCs. Not only do we have monster entries for elves, gnomes, and halflings (yes, dwarves are missing; no, it’s not just my copy, as I checked around), but “Men” get four whole pages covering an astonishing <em>twenty-four</em> different entries! Again, the utility is blended with background information of questionable use; having entries for bandits, knights, and barbarians makes sense. Entries for “gentry,” “merchant sailors/fishermen,” and “pilgrims,” not so much.</p><p></p><p>Of course, I’m overlooking that the reason for a lot of these seemingly “useless” entries is at the back of the folio, with tables not only for summoned monsters, but also for every kind of terrain imaginable. Yes, it’s random encounter tables! I’d actually forgotten how much I missed these; the “implied setting” was much stronger back then, and these tables speak to it strongly; If you’re adventuring on a temperate plain, then if the DM’s 2d10 roll comes up as a 4, you’ve just met a brown bear! Far better than if they’d rolled a 3, and it’s a wyvern (10% chance of being a gold dragon instead!).</p><p></p><p>I have to make a special shout-out to the final page, where it gives brief descriptions of the various city/town encounters. A lot of these seem to be lifted almost verbatim from the 1E DMG, like how a ghast/ghoul – which you’ll encounter <em>in a city</em> at night, mind you – says that you’ll encounter them “near charnel houses, graveyards, etc. Ghasts number 2-8, while ghouls number 4-16.”</p><p></p><p>Gary Gygax may have been gone from TSR by the time MC1 was written, but his spirit lived on.</p><p></p><p><em>Please note my use of affiliate links in this post.</em></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Alzrius, post: 9037473, member: 8461"] Confession time: I missed the three-ring binder era of AD&D 2E monsters...mostly. As best I can remember, I got into Dungeons & Dragons thirty years ago this month, and while I started with the 1070 [URL='https://www.enworld.org/threads/5-fun-facts-about-the-1991-d-d-black-boxed-set.685296/']black boxed set[/URL] and the [I][URL='https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17171/DD-Rules-Cyclopedia-Basic?affiliate_id=820']D&D Rules Cyclopedia[/URL][/I], I quickly made the jump to AD&D 2E. After all, it was “advanced,” not like that kiddie “basic” D&D I’d been playing around with. Given that, the [I]Monstrous Manual[/I] was already out when I started buying my first set of the three Core Rulebooks. Looking back now, that might have been for the best; there’s a reason why TSR stopped with the loose-leaf format. It was still around by that point, but the appearance of the perfect-bound Monstrous Manual was the writing on the wall that they were backtracking on not having their monster books be actual books. At this point we’re all familiar with how the purported “mix-and-match the pages to make your own custom monster book for your campaign” idea didn’t really work out, what with different monsters being on each side of the same page more often than not. Having said that, I’m glad that I got started with the Monstrous Manual for another reason: it was a surfeit of riches compared to what [url=https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/183092/MC1-Monstrous-Compendium-Volume-One-2e?affiliate_id=820][i]MC1 Monstrous Compendium Volume One[/i][/url] offered. Don’t get me wrong, this first compendium was fairly substantial, being one hundred forty-four pages long. But for a book that was meant to be the opening offering of monsters for an entirely new edition of Dungeons & Dragons, some of the choices for what went into this volume were rather surprising. For one thing, there’s a lot of monsters that aren’t here. Again, the first monster book is the one that presents the edition’s face to its fans, so you’d think that there’d be a lot of extremely iconic monsters in these pages. And to be fair, there are: you’ve got the beholder, the chromatic and metallic dragons, the mind flayer, and numerous classics from orcs to iron golems to medusas to wights. But there’s several omissions that caught me by surprise, too. The drow, for instance, aren’t here. Sure, in 1989 we had only just gotten started with the Drizzt Do’Urden novels, but these guys were still the stars of several [URL='https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/110321/GDQ-Giants-Descent-Queen-series-1e-BUNDLE?affiliate_id=820']very popular modules[/URL] up until that point, yet they don’t even merit a mention under the “elf” entry. There’s no sahuagin to be found. No planar creatures beyond the imp and quasit, the four basic elementals, and three of the four genies (they kept the dao, djinn, and efreet; alas, the poor marid!). The Tarrasque isn’t to be found either! Now, in hindsight some of this was because these monsters were being saved for later. The drow were second-stringers, appearing in the MC2, and the planar monsters were being put in their own volume later (since TSR was apparently still trying to think of how to rename demons and devils). Even so, no rust monster, mimic, aboleth, etc...it makes the current me shake my head. Of course, part of the reason for that is because quite a few of the monsters that [I]are[/I] here are genuine head-scratchers. While (almost) nothing’s here that ended up on the list of [URL='https://web.archive.org/web/20080716105222/http:/www.headinjurytheater.com/article73.htm']very stupid monsters[/URL], a lot of these choices prompted me to snicker and wonder “what were they thinking?” Did the korred really need to be front-and-center in AD&D 2E’s debut monster book? Was the jackalwere really not something that could have waited until MC2? Or the mud-man? And don’t even get me started on how many normal animals are here. I get that the paladin needs stats for his warhorse, and that every adventurer starts out killing giant rats, but an entire entry for “animal, herd” which covers camels, cattle, buffalos, antelopes, and sheep? Or the jackal having its own entry, apart from the entry on hyenas and hyaenodons? Really? And it’s not like these are exceptions; you get entries for bats, centipedes, hornets, owls, dogs, cats, and snakes; why did it have to be snakes? It helps that a lot of these at least add giant versions, and a few fold in entries for magical creatures (e.g. blink dogs are in there with their non-blinking counterparts), but I still question the usefulness of these. There’s a difference between monsters that you need to have because they’re too cool to do without, and monsters that you [I]think[/I] you need to have because the background creatures of the game world need to be represented (which isn’t to say that’s not a valid concern, but you don’t need to have stats for freakin’ [I]cattle[/I] in the very first volume!). I’d be remiss if I didn’t admit that there’s at least a few entries that straddle that line, however: those for (demi)human NPCs. Not only do we have monster entries for elves, gnomes, and halflings (yes, dwarves are missing; no, it’s not just my copy, as I checked around), but “Men” get four whole pages covering an astonishing [I]twenty-four[/I] different entries! Again, the utility is blended with background information of questionable use; having entries for bandits, knights, and barbarians makes sense. Entries for “gentry,” “merchant sailors/fishermen,” and “pilgrims,” not so much. Of course, I’m overlooking that the reason for a lot of these seemingly “useless” entries is at the back of the folio, with tables not only for summoned monsters, but also for every kind of terrain imaginable. Yes, it’s random encounter tables! I’d actually forgotten how much I missed these; the “implied setting” was much stronger back then, and these tables speak to it strongly; If you’re adventuring on a temperate plain, then if the DM’s 2d10 roll comes up as a 4, you’ve just met a brown bear! Far better than if they’d rolled a 3, and it’s a wyvern (10% chance of being a gold dragon instead!). I have to make a special shout-out to the final page, where it gives brief descriptions of the various city/town encounters. A lot of these seem to be lifted almost verbatim from the 1E DMG, like how a ghast/ghoul – which you’ll encounter [I]in a city[/I] at night, mind you – says that you’ll encounter them “near charnel houses, graveyards, etc. Ghasts number 2-8, while ghouls number 4-16.” Gary Gygax may have been gone from TSR by the time MC1 was written, but his spirit lived on. [I]Please note my use of affiliate links in this post.[/I] [/QUOTE]
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Looking back at the Monstrous Compendia: the MC appendices, Monstrous Manual, and more!
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