Customer Reviews

Official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual: An Alphabetical Compendium of all the Monsters Found in AD&D, Including Attacks, Damage, Special Abilities, and Descriptions

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More than the Dungeon Master's Guide, more than the Player's Handbook, this book is what made D&D the gaming force that it was for over a decade.

A complete listing of monsters for use in the game, the book ensured that every DM could craft an adventure that had new and exciting monsters to be vanquished, and the special powers peculiar to some creatures suggested story lines that were ripe for the picking.

This also set up for the first time a way to rate the strengths of various mythological creatures against each other. Can a Troll kill an Orc? Can a Dragon defeat a Water Elemental? How many Goblins does it take to make a fair fight against a Pegasus? Gygax carefully considered these questions and gave us a version of familiar fantasy figures that was grounded in concrete numbers.

The drawings are admittedly horrible, with many of them looking like study hall doodlings instead of the legitimate artwork that came to characterize later editions.

But the value of this book can't be overrated by a would-be fantasy gamer. The encyclopedic format opened the world of fantasy gaming to a world that was vast enough to include a universe of varied creatures, but cohesive enough to be thought of as a single reality.

Just surfing and had to say I love this book. I still have the dog-eared copy I bought in 1979 safely tucked away, 7th grade scribbles and all. I saved my paltry allowance for a month to buy this baby. This is one of those books that always has a place in your heart. Not really useful anymore though for the new gamer, go pick up the updated one (MM 3.5 edition version), but for us vets, back in the day it was all about this bad boy.

This first edition of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual was published in 1977. What a classic. It contains 350 monsters spread over 108 pages and has everything you need to know about all the monsters you'll encounter throughout the world of Greyhawk. Written by Gary Gygax, it also contains many great illustrations of monsters throughout. All the vital statistics on the monsters are included.

This book is a must-have for anybody who played Dungeons & Dragons in the good old days of pencils, paper, and your imagination. If you still play the pencil and paper D & D like I do, then get this book. NOW.

This book harkens back to the "good old days" when playing the paper and pencil D&D used to be new and fun. There have been several reincarnations of this manual and I've thumbed through them but they just don't hold a candle to the original, despite the fancier artwork. All the good monsters were there from the Umber Hulks to the Neo Oytughs. I am not at all happy with the direction TSR took after Mr. Gygax was booted out (or left, can't remember which) and one big loss was the original rule manuals. They are now up to version 3 something of the rules but I do not even know what they are because I just play computer games now. All I know about the new rules is that multi-class characters are easier to work with. It was an exciting time, a different era. I still have this manual and will always treasure it. If you can find one, pick it up just to see how things used to be done. Highly recommended.

This was truly one of the books that changed my life. When I first read it as a kid, to say it was a "revelation" would be an understatement. There really was nothing like it before...a wondrously detailed universe packed in to a hundred plus pages of statistics and captivating illustrations. It was almost too much for a little kid to take. Needless to say I probably flipped through those pages too many times to count and I can still recite by heart the armor class/hit dice/other stats of the Umber Hulk, Owlbear, Carrion Crawler, and more....

This right here is the 3rd component of true D&D! with this book I had monsters for 5+ years of gaming, if you went through this book faster then in all reality you were just hack and slashing, and not DMing. (imho)
get this book for the art and for the true game.

The first Roleplaying Book ever to be hardcover. That says it all right there. This is essentail to playing D&D 1.0. Buy it if you want to learn the best D&D system, or just if you want a peice of history. The only problem I have with this book is that the orinal printing didnt have the exp values for the monsters in the book. You would need to look it up in a table in the Dungeon Master Guid. They may have fixed it in the newer printing, when they changed the cover art. I recomend this book.

This book is the ultimate Monsters Manual, the first is the best. It gives you specific details on monsters. Being that I only have 2 hit points, I have to pick my monsters carefully. Once, while at Burgermaster, a kolbold threw a burger at me with his sling. He rolled a 20, a critical hit, and the burger did 2x the normal damage, knocking me out for 2 hp! As I lay unconcious, a gelatinous cube slowly slimed my burger and fries up. When I came to, I saw him slowly digesting my burger and fries and I exclaimed "How rude!" But the Gelatinous cube just rumbled his gelationous bulbous stomach at me. I would have kicked it's ass, but luckily the Monster Manual told me that would've been a bad idea to use my hands. So instead I used my bic lighter and he apologized for eating my combo#1.

I'll take good old 1st Eddition AD&D materials over any of the new *stuff* anyday.

The item was delivered as advertised and if possible in better condition. Packing was superb. All in all a worthwhile investment.