Left is a first printing, middle is a UK soft cover, right is a more ubiquitous 4th (gamma) printing. And likewise, Mind Flayers “are rumored to have a city somewhere deep beneath the earth”. They purportedly dwell deep beneath the surface in a strange subterranean realm”. For example, under Elf, the Drow are mentioned in a very brief paragraph that says they’re “only legend. Of special note are the occasional hints at lore yet to be discovered/published. However, in amongst the boring stuff, there’s quite a lot of good flavour text. So, anyway, yeah, being a reference work, reading through every entry was at times a bit tedious.

Whereas the descriptions in Holmes basic are often straight copies of the text in OD&D, a spot check of the descriptions in the Monster Manual against OD&D shows them to be completely reworked. I’m talking about things like the Floating Eye, not a Beholder or Eye of the Deep, just an eye that hangs out in water. And I’m not just talking about the zillions of dinosaurs like the Archelon Ischyras. Also the Leprechaun – not only is one riding the nearby Giant Leech, one of them has tilted the organising title found at the top of each page on its side.Īs I read it, I was constantly struck by how few monsters I’ve actually encountered while playing. I like the occasional whimsy, eg the Tom Wham illustration of the Lynx. In particular, I never realised the Monster Manual doesn’t even include the XP worth of each monster! I think that’s because, funnily enough, we didn’t have the Monster Manual growing up, only the list of monsters in the back of the DM’s Guide, which has the XP amount. Shannon points out some interesting stuff on DriveThruRPG. It’s kind of funny that being Alphabetical is such a feature!

Then there’s all the illustrations and the general layout with nice use of white space Also the organisation and comprehensiveness. The Monster Manual is definitely a step up in quality – being hardback is the most obvious thing – a first for the role-playing industry, let alone TSR. But it makes all kind of sense to publish this first, as it could be used by existing players regardless.

D&d new monster manual