Keith the Thief wrote:(You know, in case the season goes badly.)
bamajon1974 wrote:Since your are in Huntsville, I take it you are either a Bama or Auburn fan right? 'Bama is ranked #2 preseason and loaded with talent and Auburn is coming off a National Championship season, so a bad season is hard to imagine!
bamajon1974 wrote:There are plenty of Monster Manuals, Fiend Folio Tomes, and Monstrous Manuals for sale and auction on Ebay at reasonable prices. There are plenty of Monstrous Compendium Appendices on Ebay as well but these are typically open items and may be marked and/or incomplete. New/SW items appear from time to time.
bamajon1974 wrote:Sword and Sorcery Creature Collections are dirt cheap and plentiful on both Ebay and Amazon. Necromancer Games Tome of Horrors are great collections of monsters but are more expendive and less common that the above books. How is that for a start?
Keith the Thief wrote:I'd forgotten about Fiend Folio until you'd mentioned it. For some reason that tome was underwhelming. Not sure why.
FormCritic wrote:1) Intensely English (Today, English art and lurid/grim English-style gaming are universal because the Games Workshop school of art became standard to games like World of Warcraft. In 1980 it was alien, and a jarring break from other TSR products.)
FormCritic wrote:1) Intensely English (Today, English art and lurid/grim English-style gaming are universal because the Games Workshop school of art became standard to games like World of Warcraft. In 1980 it was alien, and a jarring break from other TSR products.)2) Eccentric(Dedicated to gnarleybumps, screwdegiggers and midgikins...monsters made up by their authors rather than drawn from folklore and literature, and therefore unfamiliar and wierd.)3) Nothing to Kill(All those gnarleybumps and johnnysucks were low hit dice beasties that relied on gimmicks to even make the team. The few monsters in the Field Folio that were actually worth the time (slaad, death knight, githyanki, etc..) became RPG classics, used time and again. OR, they were monsters already well-known to gamers, such as the drow.)The Necromancer Games Tome of Horrors (all three volumes+) is available in pdf form, all re-written for Pathfinder. Find it here:http://www.talesofthefroggod.com/index. ... of-horrors
bamajon1974 wrote:There were a couple of binders that had loose-leaf sheets of the standard monsters. Prices range from generally $5 for opened folders or used collections to up to $50 for SW versions. If you don't want to keep up with tons of sheets, the Monstrous Manuals and Annuals had a large number of these beasts bound as books. You can buy these books for 5-10 dollars apiece.
clangador wrote:TSR must have had some say in it as that was the first monster book with the Drow.
Chainsaw wrote:These seemed like a good idea when I went to buy them, but they were crappy over the long haul. The hole punches usually ripped, the pages got lost, etc.
Keith the Thief wrote:The idea must've been to make a MM you could customize, eh? Plus, you wouldn't have to lug around 4 or 5 different books.
Chainsaw wrote:Oh, I agree, I totally agree. I bought several editions of the thing as a kid thinking that exact thing. I just found the format to be too flimsy and fragile to hold up to regular usage. Maybe I banged my stuff around more than usual, I don't know.
benjoshua wrote:My walk-in closet is also full, so that was a reality check.
FormCritic wrote:TSR was the source, but the Fiend Folio was mostly the work of the TSR UK Limited branch of the company. Donald Turnbull and WHITE DWARF.Most of the monsters had already seen print in WHITE DWARF, or other British publications.A few of the monsters had only been seen previously in TSR modules. The jermalaine (jermaline?) would be a good example. They were a Gygax creation that first saw print in the D series modules. Every nuisance monster created to annoy player characters was present in the Fiend Folio, which made for quite a few critters that occupied the same one-hit-dice-or-less-ah-crap-not-again niche...trying to strangle or rob player characters.There are only so many monster niches to be filled: Giant, troll, dog, dragon, goblin, lizard, wolf, lycanthrope, zombie, elf, skeleton, vampire, lion, faerie, demon, jelly/ooze, chimera, abomination, golem, sneaky git, etc... When these slots are filled (and variations added) it is tough to come up with a place for yet another gibberling, and how is a svart supposed to fit into the picture? What you get is a folio of one-shot freaks like the absorber, mudman, osquip, magic sniffer, lizard king, magmite and their ilk...including the ever-useful flumpf and blindheim. "Oh, look! Here comes an ogrillon! He's an ogre/orc/monkey/crab. Hooray! Our game is now refreshed!"DRAGON magazine actually ran a negative review of the Fiend Folio...which pissed Gary Gygax off and led to firings. I believe the title of the article was something like "Stale Taste Didn't Go Away," or some such. There were a couple of pieces of pretty good art in the Fiend Folio (warrior slays lizardman and Thor slays Jormungandr were two good examples) but the rest was alien to American eyes.Beyond the Fiend Folio, I got annoyed with new monster manuals that had to create supernatural horrors for all the different alighnments...thus the demodand, daemon, modron and their ilk. Then, of course, there had to be stats for diabolical overlords the player characters were never meant to confront and certainly not to kill. (Dang you Elric! Although, at least these guys are worth killing, so you could make a solid argument for their inclusion.) Even worse, there was all the wasted space with good, angelic creatures who aren't meant to be killed. (How many pretty dudes with wings to we need to lord it over us?) So, in that light, I guess the Fiend Folio was just one stinker among many....go figure.This has been fun. I love dissing on the Fiend Folio!
FormCritic wrote:DRAGON magazine actually ran a negative review of the Fiend Folio...which pissed Gary Gygax off and led to firings.
Xabloyan wrote:WG4 can be seen as Gygax's love letter to the FF. Taking a bunch of wacky monsters from the British fans, going through them and picking out some good ones (mountain giant, giant troll, norkers, grell, meazel, guardian daemon, shadow demon etc.), altering them to make them more playable or interesting in context (like doubling the number of meazels, or making a coffer corpse with 8 HD) and hey, instant module.
rhynne wrote:Hey benjoshua,Dare I ask for a picture of said walk-in closet? Best regards,Ronald
