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Originally posted here: https://theotherside.timsbrannan.com/2022/02/monstrous-mondays-ad-2nd-ed-monstrous_21.html
I am continuing my dive into the AD&D 2nd Edition Monstrous Compendiums. Today I want to talk about the next three that were important to me in terms of what I call the "core" of the AD&D 2nd Ed monsters.
It is a commonly held belief that during the AD&D 2nd Ed era that settings were at their height. The remaining Monstrous Compendiums focused on these settings. For me it was a perfect systems really. I could keep monsters in with my core rules, like I did with Greyhawk, Dragonlance and Mystara. Or keep them with my boxed sets of campaigns, like I did with all my Ravenloft stuff. So let's go with the ones I integrated (to the best I could) into my core set.
MC5 Monstrous Compendium Greyhawk Adventures Appendix
Personally I always felt that Greyhawk should have had a Monstrous Compendium long before the others, but I can see why it came out when it did, given all that history. The Greyhawk Adventures book for 1st Edition had a "preview" of monsters in 2nd Edition format. I remember being quite excited about this and really liking the new stat block even though it was much larger than before.
More so than the other MC Appendices, I tried to integrate these monsters as much as I could into my "core" Monstrous Compendium. To me Greyhawk was the "home world" of D&D.
The PDF from DriveThruRPG is 64 pages, runs $4.99, and includes 63 monsters; Beastman to Zygom.
Many of these monsters have their origins in the AD&D 1st ed modules and Fiend Folio, but there are few others here from the Monster Manaual II. The only creatures here that really saw "Greyhawk" to me are the Grell, Greyhawk Dragon, the Sword Wraiths and the Drowned Zombies.
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