AD&D 1E Best 1E AD&D rulebook?

[el-remmen]

Here is where I put my pitch for the Fiend Folio. Despite the fact that I still reach for the 1E DMG more than any other edition's DMG (despite having always run the most recent edition of D&D - save 4th), it would still come in second and the Fiend Folio is above all others.

I got both the MM and FF when I was still running B/X (and later B/X/C - never getting the Master or Immortals sets of BECMI when things switched over in the Basic game) and used them constantly. The FF was especially evocative, not only is the art still my favorite D&D art (Russ Nicholson primarily), but the very weirdness of the creatures in there (even the clunkers) and the source (curated monsters folks sent in to White Dwarf) encouraged homebrew and reimagining various monsters, their habitats, behaviors, and looks.

I call it the best AD&D book because I still love to page through it for inspiration, and it has remained useful through running B/X/C(MI), 1E, 2E, 3E, and now 5E.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'm very sad we didn't get a Russ Nicholson retrospective art book before he died. The best we've got is the Magic Realms book, but that's all of the Fighting Fantasy artists, and Nicholson only gets one section of the book, and a lot of the illustrations in the book are quarter pagers, rather than filling whole pages with their weirdness.

 

[Mannahnin]

Here is where I put my pitch for the Fiend Folio. Despite the fact that I still reach for the 1E DMG more than any other edition's DMG (despite having always run the most recent edition of D&D - save 4th), it would still come in second and the Fiend Folio is above all others.

I got both the MM and FF when I was still running B/X (and later B/X/C - never getting the Master or Immortals sets of BECMI when things switched over in the Basic game) and used them constantly. The FF was especially evocative, not only is the art still my favorite D&D art (Russ Nicholson primarily), but the very weirdness of the creatures in there (even the clunkers) and the source (curated monsters folks sent in to White Dwarf) encouraged homebrew and reimagining various monsters, their habitats, behaviors, and looks.

I call it the best AD&D book because I still love to page through it for inspiration, and it has remained useful through running B/X/C(MI), 1E, 2E, 3E, and now 5E.

There is a lot of cool stuff in there, and yes, the extraordinary Russ Nicholson art. There's a lot of dross as well, unfortunately.

In case you haven't seen it before, there's a 1E solo play campaign journal on Dragonsfoot in which the player uses the Fiend Folio tables for all the encounters. Which spices them up a good bit.

I'm very sad we didn't get a Russ Nicholson retrospective art book before he died. The best we've got is the Magic Realms book, but that's all of the Fighting Fantasy artists, and Nicholson only gets one section of the book, and a lot of the illustrations in the book are quarter pagers, rather than filling whole pages with their weirdness.

100%.

I'm still glad I got it.

 

[Mannahnin]

I have to say the DMG for 2 reasons: 1, it is a smidge closer to being a complete game than the PH; and 2 because it is the book where Gygax truly lets his freak flag fly. It has plenty of problems but it is magical.

This is basically why I voted for it.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

There is a lot of cool stuff in there, and yes, the extraordinary Russ Nicholson art. There's a lot of dross as well, unfortunately.

True, but its highs far exceed Monster Manual II, which feels very much like TSR playing it extremely safe with aggressively unmemorable monsters.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Here is where I put my pitch for the Fiend Folio. Despite the fact that I still reach for the 1E DMG more than any other edition's DMG (despite having always run the most recent edition of D&D - save 4th), it would still come in second and the Fiend Folio is above all others.

I got both the MM and FF when I was still running B/X (and later B/X/C - never getting the Master or Immortals sets of BECMI when things switched over in the Basic game) and used them constantly. The FF was especially evocative, not only is the art still my favorite D&D art (Russ Nicholson primarily), but the very weirdness of the creatures in there (even the clunkers) and the source (curated monsters folks sent in to White Dwarf) encouraged homebrew and reimagining various monsters, their habitats, behaviors, and looks.

I call it the best AD&D book because I still love to page through it for inspiration, and it has remained useful through running B/X/C(MI), 1E, 2E, 3E, and now 5E.

The Fiend Folio is pure concentrated AD&D weirdness. And it's got some game-defining entries. Drow and Lolth, Death Knights, Elemental Princes of Evil, Hook Horrors, Svirfneblin, Githyanki, Kuo-Toa, just to name a few. Without the Fiend Folio, the Underdark and Astral Plane would be very different places.

 

[Cadence]

DMG might be my favorite gaming book of any type. (Which is different from being a great book to use playing a game ..). But it has a bit of absolutely everything in it, from types of government to magic items to random thoughts on world building to all kinds of game rules I must have read before but are so ridonculous that I never used them and they don't stick in my head.

Deities and Demigods and Oriental Adventure would be 2nd and 3rd but I'm not sure in what order.

 

[Marc17]

I picked the DMG. There is still a lot to mine out of that book.

 

[Mannahnin]

The Fiend Folio is pure concentrated AD&D weirdness. And it's got some game-defining entries. Drow and Lolth, Death Knights, Elemental Princes of Evil, Hook Horrors, Svirfneblin, Githyanki, Kuo-Toa, just to name a few. Without the Fiend Folio, the Underdark and Astral Plane would be very different places.

TBF most of the monsters you just named originated in modules, and were later reprinted in the FF.

Even if the FF did introduce them to a wider audience, the Underdark had already been populated with all those iconic ones.

 

[Mannahnin]

True, but its highs far exceed Monster Manual II, which feels very much like TSR playing it extremely safe with aggressively unmemorable monsters.

No argument there. Arguably the most useful part of MM2 is the introduction of using d8+d12 for random encounter charts, which is a nice little tweak giving a flat center of equal probabilities to the bell curve.