Still, the Monster Manual was a fun and useful book. This was typical of AD&D - lots of charts for a DM to consult for something that (IMO) should have been included in the MM. This gave you a base XP along with bonus XP to add for special abilities and exceptional abilities. A monster’s stat column did include the number of hit dice, but the DMG was needed because a table titled Experience Point Value of Monsters (page 85) was needed. Instead of XP, the experience earned for defeating a monster was based on its hit dice. One bit of info, however, was not to be found - XP. Details about magic and special abilities would be found in the text description. Monsters did not have the six Ability Scores (Str, Dex, Con, Int, Wis, Cha) but the stats column did provide help for DMs by providing details such as Treasure Type (a letter that corresponded to a table in the back of the MM that provided gold/silver/magic item distributions), AC, damage per attack, and a number stating how many of a creature would typically appear together. Some creatures were extremely intricate (such as the Lizard Man, page 62) while others were almost too cartoonish (such as Larva, page 59) to take seriously.Īll monsters came with a statistics column followed by a paragraph or two of descriptive text - a few monsters, such as dragons and giants, came with lengthier details while others such as the Axe Beak consisted of 2-3 sentences. (Yes, the possessive apostrophes were missing in both books.) The book’s interior content was black-and-white only and consisted of a mix of creature images from a small group of artists with varying styles. There may have been earlier advertisements for the MM, but the earliest I can find is this December 1977 advertisement from Dragon magazine shown below.Īt $9.95, it was considered a supplement to the D&D rules and the first book released in the AD&D trilogy that included the Players Handbook (1978) and the Dungeon Masters Guide (1979). Unfortunately, most players I knew owned a copy, and it made it sometimes difficult to pull surprises - as a DM, I’d often describe a creature’s appearance if I didn’t expect the low level characters had encountered one, but sometimes a player would still recognize it. With over 350 monsters to choose from, there was always an opportunity to introduce players to a new nasty. My players usually dreaded seeing me pull the thin book out because it usually signified a special monster encounter versus one of the more common types (skeleton, orc, kobold, etc.) with easy to remember statistics. Released in 1977, the AD&D Monster Manual was one of the most recognizable RPG books with two-thirds of its front cover filled with a red dragon, a unicorn and centaur… and even stranger creatures in the subterranean realm making up the lower third of the front cover.