How stellar was the old Fiend Folio!

[jaerdaph]

GithYankees Suck!

I always thought the githyanki on the front cover's batting stance looked very similar to Bucky Dent's...

No stats for the Green Monster though...

 

[Minicol]

I loved the old Fiend Folio. it was just great. Both me and my DM nemesis of the time borrowed heavily from it.

It was ... new, refreshing ... FAN CREATED !!!

I'm surprised that nobody mentioned that most everything inside came from a contest in White Dwarf ! to design D&D fantasy monsters when that mag was still a generic RPG mag.

So most of the monsters were some fanboy wild creation. If only I had known of it on time, I could have unleashed my Pumpkins of DOOM ! and FLYING CRABS !!!! on the D&D multiverse

Aaaahh ... these were the days

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

It's so full of possibilities.

--Also, many areas would reasonably have empty areas.

But you don't need the following in your published adventure:

10. Empty Room

This room is empty.

 

[Minicol]

But you don't need the following in your published adventure:

That looks just like the right place for a WANDERING MONSTER ROLL !

let's see what I can do :
(actually rolls a D100 for Dungeon monsters)

52 : KOBOLDS (D12 + 5) Attack you and it's a ... 6 kobolds.... NO ! MAKE THAT 17 KOBOLDS in your face !!!!!

You HEATHEN ! TAKE THAT !!!!

See, that room's not empty anymore !

 

[pawsplay]

But you don't need the following in your published adventure:

Is there some other way to write empty in a way that would be more aesthetic? Because, again, many dungeons would have empty rooms. Natural caverns would have empty rooms. Abandoned castles ought to have some empty rooms; not every room can reasonably be full of abandoned supplies or cursed beds or monsters. If absolutely every room has a notable feature in it, where do kobolds go for their morning walks? Where do things go poop? If you get into a running battle with orcs, how embarrassing would it be to back up into a room full of gnolls next door?

 

[WillieW]

I was thinking of dungeons "back in the day" which were published adventures and which had multiple examples of empty rooms.

Personally, I think it is highly more desirable to retreat to the very room where the monster is occupied in having his morning poop than finding a poopless, featureless, monsterless, treasureless room.

A room could indeed be empty, but preferably because the player characters went to a lot of trouble to empty it.

But that's heading way off topic. FF is still cool.

 

[darjr]

To me it's more that the room got keyed and text used for it, when it could have just as easily been unkeyed and the space in the text used for something else.

Empty rooms are great for putting FF monsters in when the DM deems it appropriate. Or rolls it up on a custom table.

I must be looking at the art through rose colored glasses. I can't see it as other than cool. I was trying to come up with some comparison to some other book or illustration type, but could not. Maybe that is part of the appeal?

 

[Raven Crowking]

I am a big fan of "empty" rooms. I believe that they are needed to create a sense of suspense, to give PCs a place to hold up, to make the place seem "alive", etc. No one ever falls for a wolf-in-sheep's-clothing if small animals like bunnies are never mentioned. No one ever falls for the trapper, the lurker above, or the stunjelly if they don't encounter empty rooms. Drop out the empty room, and hidden treasure is always found because, on a metagame level, something must be here.

Empty doesn't have to be boring. An empty room should always be a room that appears to be empty (but contains clues to areas around it, dungeon dressing, etc.), and more than a few occupied rooms may appear to be empty as well.



RC

 

[jdrakeh]

I must be looking at the art through rose colored glasses. I can't see it as other than cool. I was trying to come up with some comparison to some other book or illustration type, but could not. Maybe that is part of the appeal?

It's not just you. I think that the FF artwork is, by and large, much better than that in MMI and at least on par with that in MMII.

 

[Celebrim]

I think we have to separate empty rooms into two classes:

1) Rooms that don't contain monsters, traps, or treasures.
2) Rooms that have no description or features.

I'm all for #1 and think that they are absolutely essential to create a believable world. I despise #2 and consider it bad design. One of the first things I'll do when preparing a module for play is go through all the empty spots on the map and dress them with some sort of features appropriate to the setting so that I have a description ready. (The other thing I do is name all the unnamed NPC's that seem to provide some potential RPing oppurtunity, and add some stock NPC's where they are implied.) I don't consider the oppurtunity to do this to be a welcome one. I don't buy a module for the oppurtunity to do the work myself.