Re-Reading 1e

[RFisher]

You know, I’m not sure we ever actually used magic resistance in my AD&D days.

 

[Obryn]

So yeah. Monster Manual I is a classic. Monster Manual II has my favorite MM art, and is very fun and evocative.

Fiend Folio is ... bizarre. I love many parts of it, but then you have creatures like the carbuncle. And the dude with 3 sets of arms, Tri-something. And of course the flumph. Really, I think it was the product of drugs.

-O

 

[Delta]

Really, I think it was the product of drugs.

Or English pubbery.

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

Or English pubbery.

It was the product of allowing a bunch of British teenagers to design creatures for a magazine, then getting poor old Don Turnbull to go through the huge piles of creatures and keep the ones he thought sucked the least. Then he edited and revised them and made them better.

The thing is, the teens liked kewel powerz and special effects and weren't usually very literate in the fantasy genre, and they designed creatures so as to be memorable and weird, rather than to conform to expected fantasy tropes--and they often didn't give much thought to how their creatures would affect play.

A few of them are brilliant, most of them are goofy and the rest are downright silly. There's probably about ten pages of good stuff in the whole book--but those ten pages are inspired.

Other thing about the FF is the artwork. You either love it or hate it. I love it but I can see why others don't.

 

[RFisher]

and they often didn't give much thought to how their creatures would affect play.

If the creators of these monsters knew up-front that their creations would appear in an actual AD&D book published by TSR...

Better? Worse? I dunno, but I bet it would’ve been different.