Customer Reviews

Advanced Dungeons and Dragons: Fiend Folio

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The AD&D Fiend Folio, is the most in demand book from the original 1st edition game. The reason for that is clear when you compare it with the two other Monster Manual book (I &II). The Fiend Folio's monsters are a lot more original than those of the 1st Monster Manual and the book has the cohesion that was missing in the interesting, but uneven Monster Manual II. There is a dark twist to the monsters included in this book that you wont find in most other monster compendium. Even the more recent Ravenloft monster compendium have not matched that dark spirit of creativity. This book shouldn't be the first monster manual a DM buys, but experienced players will certainly find it is the most rewarding of them all...

Here's the classic collection of monsters from the UK - also including the first hardcover appearance of many Gygax creations, such as Lolth, the Drow, Daemons, and more! Contains hundreds of illustrations, and many monsters that are hard to find these days - the Styx Devil, Elemental Princes of Evil, and many, many others. This tome was never matched for UK-style adventure hooks... highly recommended!

The Fiend Folio: Tomb of creatures malevolent & benign is a great compendium of creatures with well written and drawn descriptions of who the monsters are and why they do the things they do. This is a combination of the author's creations and the cream of hundreds of player's ideas that were submitted to be in the book. I especially like the fact that many of the creatures come from the minds of the people who play this game! It creates a wide diversity of creatures that are good, evil, and just plain strange.

Similar to the format of other 1st edition monster compediums Fiend Folio provides all necessary data on a wide range of creatures including x.p. (which is not featured in monster manual I) The qualities that set this book apart from MMI and MMII is both the style of the monsters in ability and design. There is a definitive eastern/egyptian flavor to this book. Even the creature renderings, though unimportant to some, is interesting. The monsters are original as well some being death knight, a personal fave, the infamous githyanki, the lizard king and the reptilian assasins whose name slips my mind. Unlike MMI I would say creature descriptions go into the same degree of detail but create more of an environment, i.e. culture, for the monster to live in which gives it more of a complete feel. Overall I'd say this is a must have for those of you old schoolers who still play 1st edition and even for those 2nd editioners have run out of original creatures to implement into their campaign.

This collection of monsters will always be a great addition to your collection of old school AD&D material. It comes from the UK and it's definetely not lacking in the weird or wonderous department! A lot of nice illustrations done in pen and ink make this one great pick up! Buy it dude! Did I mention the front cover yet?

When I first recived the book, the cover of it cought my eye, The monster on the front was mysterious to what i had normaly seen on the 1st and 2nd monster Manuals, and I was right-down interested about it, i flipped through the pages and saw many different, very descripive monsters, what there origin was, etc... and all most all of them had wonderful artwork to go with the monster. But of course this book is for experianced DM and Players alike, if you were to be starting out as a DM, then the older monster manual (1st) or the new book that has all 3 books combined, yet leaves out quite a bit of monsters, would also be very helpful to you. Remember though, as a DM there is never enough time to finish something, always have a backup module or something. -Berlo Silkshadows-