Monster Manual (Advanced Dungeons \u0026 Dragons 1st Edition, Stock #2009) by E. Gary Gygax

Monster Manual (Advanced Dungeons \u0026 Dragons 1st Edition, Stock #2009) Reviews

• 
  Jason Koivu

  My favorite and most perused Dungeons and Dragons book of all time!
  
  From the meager kobold...
  
  …to the mighty Tiamat...
  
  
  …the Monster Manual provided a bevy of sword fodder such as goblins and orcs, as well as easily dispatched undead like skeletons and zombies:
  
  
  (I can't even begin to imagine how many orcs I killed. Stupid noisy pigs...)
  
  Not to mention trickier specters in the shadowy form of ghosts, ghasts and, well, specters with their ability to drain the life right out of the player’s characters:
  
  
  
  The book drew heavily from traditional mythological prototypes like unicorns, mermaids, minotaurs, and sphinxes as well as common place and less than terrifying giant badgers and beavers, right down to utterly mundane animals like deer, jackals, jaguars, wolves and whales.
  
  
  ***BEWARE THE SAVAGE BROWNIE!***
  
  However, it also introduced into the fray plenty of its own bizarre creations like bulettes, black puddings, and xorns.
  
  
  (I always felt like the Xorn was included just so they'd have something to put under the letter X.)
  
  Right before the unnecessarily large section on dinosaurs (probably due to an interest D&D’s creators felt was ripe at the time) was a fiendishly enticing section on devils and demons…oh boy the pants-dance that succubus made me do in my nethers! This was back in a time when naked boobies made it into illustrations made for adolescent eyes and no one – well hardly anyone – seemed terribly bothered.
  
  Even if maybe only half of them actually made it into the D&D games I played, all of these creatures populated the imaginative landscape of my youth during those rainy, pre-cable, pre-Nintendo days. Nightmares were packed with creatures right out of this book. The poor trees in the forest behind my house took on the appearance of ogres and giants in my mind and took a beating with my wooden sword (or a whiffle ball bat if my homemade Sting broke) as me and my buddy hacked off limbs while imagining ourselves as powerful knights or beefy barbaric warriors. Then my wife made me come in and do the dishes…I kid. Seriously though, my youth would not have been nearly as fun and exciting if it weren't for this game!
• 
  Lyn

  My ticket to being a cool dad because I own these "ancient" texts. Mine is a 4th edition 1979 with illustrations by David C. Sutherland III.
  
  The sub-title is “An alphabetical compendium of all of the monsters found in Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, including attacks, damage, special abilities, and descriptions.”
  
  Almost 40 years later and it is still fun. A quick reference for all things arcane, occult and monstrous.
  
  How many hit dice does Orcus (Prince of the Undead) have? 120 hit points.
  
  What armor class does a goblin have? 6
  
  What is the length of a purple worm (as seen on the back cover)? 50 feet long.
  
  
• 
  Mike (the Paladin)

  When I first found AD&D back in '78 I think that the Monster Manual may have been my favorite book to just sit down and read. In first edition i gave the books (Handbook and DM Guide) four stars, this one I give 5. It remains handy. You have to convert the monsters to use them in the other editions but that's not a big deal
  
  Do you write,...(be careful not to use copyrighted material), but thumbing through this book you'll come on classic creatures from mythologies around the world that you have completely forgotten about. Are you setting up a game world from scratch? Everything you need to populate a dangerous landscape and myriad dungeons is right here.Kudos on the research and writing, it's a flat fun book.
• 
  Taddow

  For me this was the book that started my obsession with role-playing games (RPGs). I still remember the day in elementary school when my best friend (who I still play D&D with) brought the book to school to show me. He didn’t play D&D (yet) but his older brother (who also did not play D&D) had bought it for him as a birthday present. My friend had seen the book at the local comic/gaming store and liked it because some of the artwork was “intriguing” to a boy that was starting to go through puberty.
  
  I didn’t know what D&D or RPGs were at the time, but I liked reading about historical and fictional knights and castles, wizards and dragons, and tales of King Arthur and the works of Tolkien. When I saw this book, I was immediately interested in it (for different reasons than my friend). It was an encyclopedia of monsters from myth and more. The art was amazing. It was the coolest thing I had seen, and then I learned this book was a supplement to a game you could play where you could take on the role of a knight, or a wizard, and battle these creatures. My head started spinning from the possibilities. The quests that could be done using your imagination. I wanted more of this.
  
  So began my journey. One that would take me through different worlds and genres of various RPG systems. One that would also get me into miniature war gaming. One that got me great friends and great memories. And the journey is still going...
• 
  Michael

  This was most likely the first book of the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (1st Ed.) rules that I owned or read, and it was an excellent place to start. A listing of more than 350 monsters, most of them illustrated, was a perfect book for a young person of my predilections. I didn't necessarily understand half of the data fields for each entry at first - being accustomed only to "Basic" D&D, but I understood the opportunity to people my fantasy worlds with a tremendous array of beasts. It may have both fired and limited my imagination in certain ways (to this day, if you say "troll" or "succubus," the first thing that comes to my mind is the illustration from the Monster Manuel). This was always the best listing of monsters, for it included so many that are well-known to fantasy myth, while later books included mostly made-up monsters. Even the original monsters here are wonderful, however, including the Rust Monster, the Lurker Above, and the Mind Flayer. Since the monsters are listed in alphabetical order, though, I could never understand the purpose of the Index in the back, which lists them in alphabetical order with the page # for their entry. How does this make it easier to locate anything?
• 
  Clayton Bye

  I have a 1st edition of this book. When constructing an 8 level dungeon with around a hundred rooms per floor, this book became an essential companion. My kids took over where I left off, so it's still being used today.
• 
  Scott Marlowe

  I still have this book and many of the original Dungeons & Dragons books in a box upstairs. It's been years and years since I've played, but looking through some of the Gygax titles sure brings back some memories.
• 
  Andy Howell

  In memoriam.
  
  --Naked Succubus on page 18.
• 
  Michael

  This will always be my favorite edition, full of awesome monsters and wonderful art.
• 
  David Sarkies

  The original collection of monstrous fiends
  13 January 2013
  
  Well, I can't say I actually read this book from cover to cover, though I do believe that I did own a copy of it at one time (though it probably disappeared sometime over the years). This is the third of the three main books for the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons game and while not necessary for running a game (the Dungeons Master's Guide contained a list of creatures in the back) it is still quite helpful since it contained pictures and descriptions of the multitude of monsters that one might encounter during the course of an adventure. Also it is really helpful when you discover a creature (such as an Otyugh) in one of the adventures, but no description of what that creature actually is or does - an Otyugh is a creature that lives in raw sewage, and it looks something like this:
  
  
  
  One of the annoying aspects of this particular edition though was the way they handled demons. Basically you would have a list of demons from type 1 to type 7 (or 8), and I can just imagine a group of adventurers wondering through a dungeon and stumbling on a demon (oh, I think it is a type 3 demon) and then flicking through the monster manual to try and work out what type it is. Mind you, ideally, the DM shouldn't actually be giving the name of the monster away because the adventurers, particularly when they have not encountered the monster before, would not actually know what that monster was (hmm, I have never seen nor heard of an Otyugh before, but I know it's name, strengths and weaknesses, how many children it can have, and what it likes to eat for dinner – though the dinner question is pretty obvious because the answer is usually adventurers).
  Mind you, it is all just a game anyway, and this book is helpful for creating adventures and sending the players up against the many different foes. Mind you, and this was one of the things I loved about roleplaying games, is that you need not limit yourself to what is laid out in the books (the creators didn't). These books are really only starting points for hours and upon hours of fantastic adventures, and the foes that would be encountered could be infinite in number. In fact, it was unusual for an adventure to be released without one or two new monsters, and then once there were enough monsters for a new book, they would release a new book of monsters. This book contains all of the traditional monsters, and the newer ones simply got weirder and weirder (which is not necessarily a bad thing, especially if you like weirdness). However, I still sometimes wonder who came up with the idea that a gorgon was some bull that breathed steam that would turn you to stone when in Greek Mythology they were basically what the game refers to as a Medusa (Medusa was the name of one of the Gorgons, not a race in and of herself).
  
  
  
  Oh, and there was also the succubus (and as tempting as it is, I won't be posting a picture here).
• 
  Jared

  You still can't beat this book and, to a lesser extent, the Monster Manual II for stimulating the imagination. I loved this book as a kid and I still look at it from time to time just for the nostalgia. This tome seems to capture an element of the fantastic that cannot be replicated by the overt visual (and superficial) stimulation of video games and movies.
• 
  Corbett Sparks

  I constantly refer to this book for answers.
• 
  Dan Ray

  ok, this is my favorite book of all time.
  I was in the 4th grade and found this at my school book fair for 75 cents. No idea what D&D was, no clue how the game was played, I just loved monsters and here was a book full of them.
  Also numbers and statistics, from which I derived the entire game and setting over the next several years by making up games for my brother and our friends.
  This book changed my life more than any other.
  
  I still have it, and I'm using it to make up bed-time stories based on the pictures to my 3 year old son.
  
  Best book ever.
• 
  Tony

  109 Pages cover to cover. This book is a reference manual for the tabletop AD&D Role Playing Game, but when I was 6, it was a textbook for everything you need to know in life. I have two copies of this book, and I love them both like children; more than children. This book taught me how to kill vampires, why you don't speak the names of demons and that there are better things to be afraid of than home-invaders- like mind flayers.
  
  This was one of the most important books of my childhood. Buy one for your kid too, unless you want him to end up like this guy:
  http://www.klas-tv.com/Global/story.a...
• 
  Carolee

  This manual ( & Monster Manual II) was one of my son's favourite books to sprawl out behind on the floor ... at the age of 5 / 6 this is what he really enjoyed reading ... pictures and gory details about all manner of beasties. My husband is a first generation D & D er ... I only came to the wonderful world of RPG in the late 90's ... Diablo for PC was the little game that 'bit me' and Baldur's Gate reeled me in! I know, I know, I'm not a true-blood ... but these manuals helped me and my band ward off many a fierce foe, and avoid certain death with its insightful tidbits.
• 
  Timothy Boyd

  What do ya use to keep all those heroes and adventures busy and out of trouble back in town? MONSTERS! that right you need something for them to fight. This is a great book of foes both great and small to pit your players against. Excellent reference book. Very recommended to gamers
• 
  David Winston

  One of the most used D&D books I own!
• 
  Danny Mason

  Some great monsters in this bad boy. Some of my favourites include "Black Pudding", "Gelatinous Cube", "Shambling Mound" and, of course, "Mold".
• 
  Stuart

  Full disclosure: Never really played AD&D except for a few ill-fated attempts in 5th grade. It's amazing how personalities can clash, especially with an incompetent DM. But it is just fun to read about all kinds of cool monsters and imagine pitting your toughest character against them.
• 
  Meadow

  Awesome pictures that still haunt me to this day.
• 
  Michael

  Best cover art.
• 
  Ivan

  And people wonder where I get my imagination from...
• 
  Francisco Becerra

  This book emanates magic. It's the inspiration and innocence of beginnings incarnated. A true treasure.
• 
  Scott Wiener

  My friends and I played the hell out of this when we were younger.
• 
  Francisco

  The first of what would become a DnD institution with every edition and also the first publication by TSR tagged as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, the First Edition Monster Manual is as would be expected a list of monster that can appear during D&D games and that you can use to populate your dungeons, now handily contained in a single volume, instead of spread around several magazines, brochures and supplements as was the case in Original D&D.
  
  This is a lot heavier on the mechanics and general description of the monsters than on lore. There was actually little lore at the time, most of the unique creatures would come from the Greyhawk or Blackmoor settings that were the home games of Gygax and Arneson, that where the Demogorgon or Orcus are coming from, for example. So there's a general description as well as attack stats and so on.
  
  By far the best thing about this edition, however, are the 350 illustrations included, which would have a life far longer than the edition itself. By the early 90s, the SSI D&D Gold Box video games would still be basing their graphics off many of the images that started out here, and this also gives us some of the first truly great D&D art. Other than the famously funny looking Beholder here you get a lot of art signed DAT, meaning David A. Trampier, and his stuff is amazing, his line drawings with thick black outlines would make for some great tattoos if anyone's interested. DAT also had a fascinating life, eventually disappearing without a trace for years. Really worth taking a look at.
• 
  J.R. Handley

  I've read this several times through as I play a campaign with James M Ward over on the SciFi Writers Playing Old School D&D. It's the roadmap to one heck of a good time!
  
  
  https://www.twitch.tv/oldschooldnd
• 
  Neville Ridley-smith

  See full review here:
  http://www.dndchronologically.com/add...
  
  A huge step up in quality from anything that went before it.
  
  So many illustrations that sparked so much imagination.
  
  A bit tedious to read straight through but that's to be expected. Still 5 stars.