I am continuing my dive into the AD&D 2nd Ed Monstrous Manuals and today I am reviewing three that are nominally under the Forgotten Realms umbrella.
There is no doubt that the biggest game world for AD&D 2nd Edition was the Forgotten Realms. I was fairly anti-Realms back then. I felt it was a cheap imitation of Greyhawk and I was a little irritated that Greyhawk got pushed to the side. The 3rd Edition Forgotten Realms setting book did a lot to change that for me and now, especially with my investigations around my This Old Dragon posts, I have come to better appreciate the Realms for what they really are, not for what I thought they were.
That all being said I still bought Realms-related products like these because, well, I love monsters.
MC11 Monstrous Compendium Forgotten Realms Appendix II (1991)
My series This Old Dragon has served me well for this one since many of the creatures here have appeared in the pages of Dragon Magazine, most authored or edited by Ed Greenwood himself.
This PDF is listed at 64 pages + the dividers. The interior art is all black & white with blue accents. The list price is $4.99. There are a total of 76 monsters (with sub-types) here Alaghi to Tren (a troglodyte/lizard man crossbreed). The Peryton, one of my favorites from the original Monster Manual finally makes its 2nd Ed debut here. Likely due to the "Ecology of" article. I went back to look over some old favorites, namely the Saurial. I always kind of liked the Saurial since there had been some articles in pop-science magazines about what would a humanoid race evolved from dinosaurs look like. I was a big fan of the Silurians and Sea Devils from Doctor Who and this was the "Paranoid 90s" when X-Files was about to reign. So reptiloids, dinosauroids, and more were on my mind. The entry here says that "Saurials are not native to the Realms, but originate from an alternate Prime Material Plane." This reminds me of what authors would later do with the Dragonborn in the Realms; have them come from Toril's twin planet of Abeir. I see in more recent Realms lore they are still from an unknown realm but I like this idea.
While these monsters are "generic" enough to be used anywhere, most (like the Saurials above) are tied a little more to the lore of the Realms, so extracting them can be done, but they will need some edits.
MC13 Monstrous Compendium Al-Qadim Appendix (1992)The Al-Qadim Monstrous Compendium had been the only product I ever purchased for the Al-Qadim setting back when it was new. Again the reasoning was I loved monsters. But while reading it over I discovered there was a very interesting setting here.
Like the Kara-Tur setting, Al-Qadim was pulled into the Realms. It was added to the Realms quickly after its release but the campaign setting box was designed a bit more for a general placement anywhere.
This PDF is listed at 74 pages and has a $4.95 price tag. The art is typical for the time color covers and color dividers with black & white pages. Interestingly the accent color here is gold and not blue. Ravenloft used red so I wonder how it would have been if all the settings had a different accent color to help separate them. A dark-gray for Greyhawk, burnt orange for Dark Sun, and so on.
There are 58 monsters from Ammut to Zin. This includes a large number of various Genie/Gin types.
Divorced from their setting the monsters certainly lose some of their best flavor, but I do plan on using these in a desert-based campaign I have coming up and I think they will work fine.
MC6 Monstrous Compendium, Kara-Tur AppendixKara-Tur did not begin as a Forgotten Realms land. Quite the contrary it was designed to be used as part of Oerth in the 1st Edition Oriental Adventures. This Monstrous Compendium brings the creatures listed in the 1st ed book, and more, into the 2nd Edition game.
This PDF is listed at 64 pages (more with binder dividers) and a price tag of $4.99. The cover and dividers are full color (including Easley's Oriental Adventure cover) and the interior art is Black & White. There are 76 monsters from Bajang to the Yuki-on-na.
Interestingly enough the Eastern Dragons from the Original Fiend Folio are not here. They appeared in the MC3 Forgotten Realms one, but I thought they should appear here instead. Likely to solidify the claim of Kara-Tur in the Forgotten Realms or maybe to give the 3rd MC some popular dragons.
There are some very unique monsters here. This is one of the few that I keep separate and do not integrate into my larger monster sets.
We are at a point with the Monstrous Compendiums where we get a bit of overlap. For example, the Ashira (MC13) has a lot in common with the Hamadryad (MC11). And the Black Cloud of Vengeance (MC13) is very much a larger, more evil version of the Tempest (MC11).
Which is which? You tell me.
This is not a surprise, there are over 2100 monsters created for AD&D 2nd Edition, there are bound to be places where they overlap.
The scans for all are pretty crisp and clear. I certainly can see printed out a couple of pages and using them in a smaller binder for a specific AD&D 2nd Ed campaign. Like I have said before, these PDF are fulfilling the promises made by the Monstrous Compendiums in the 1990s.
