The full review, with pictures, can be read here: https://theotherside.timsbrannan.com/2022/02/monstrous-mondays-ad-2nd-ed-monstrous.html

In the waning years of the 80s, AD&D took a new turn. Much of the original guard was gone from TSR and a new edition of its flagship game was on the way. I was at University at the time, so for me, it was easy enough to move over to AD&D 2nd Ed. I was not playing with my normal group anymore (they were 200+ miles away) and it seemed like a good place to move on.

It was June 1989 and I was on what was to be my last family vacation to Harrisburg, PA. We were doing a big Civil War tour and my dad was meeting up with a bunch of guys he served with during the Korean War. I remember being on my own for a bit and I found a game and comic store not far from Gettysburg. I went in looking for anything new and anything to entertain myself. Much to my shock they had copies, released that week, of the new AD&D 2nd Monstrous Manual. I remember talking to them asking how business was for AD&D 2nd ed and they had said terrible that no one was buying yet. I am quite certain that changed later on. But that was also my first hint at anything like an "Edition War."

I got it back to my hotel room and I read that book cover to cover. I loved the idea of the 3-Ring binder and I loved how the monsters were all expanded to include the Habitats and Ecology. My first RPG love was the AD&D Monster Manual. This did not fill me with as much excitement (you never forget your first time) but it was close.

As time went on and I bought more of the Monstrous Compendiums the weakness of the format began to show itself. For starters you could never properly alphabetize the pages. One monster per page is great, unless the monster on the back of the page is more letters down the line. Also in normal use, the pages became tattered and torn; and that is if you removed the perforations right the first time.

Still, I loved the idea and still do it today.

MC3 Monstrous Compendium Forgotten Realms Appendix

For me, and many others I feel, AD&D 2nd Ed was synonymous with the Forgotten Realms. It was Ed Greenwood's "Ecology of..." articles in Dragon that gave us these expanded monster listings so the Realms and 2nd Ed are a perfect fit in my mind. Even if 90% of my own 2nd ed gaming was in Ravenloft.

This gives us monsters from Ascallion to Wemic. Some old favorites like the Eastern Dragons are here and lots of monsters appeared in the pages of Dragon and Forgotten Realms books, many as 1st Edition versions first.

The PDF makes good on the promises to allow you to organize things as your wish. This is particularly nice for me since I took some of these monsters and placed them in with the ones above in one binder as all the "common" monsters and then mixed the remaining with the other Forgotten Realms MC (MC 11) for "Realms unique" monsters.

The scan on this one is a little light, so printing might make some of the pages look washed out. BUT you can turn up your printer's settings a notch to make it darker. Not too much or the scanned paper will also show up as "background noise." But you can also print them out and touch up what you like with a pencil and not worry about marking up a 30-year-old book from your collection.

Final Thoughts

The PDFs from DriveThru are a fraction of the cost of the original and I can also buy a very sturdy binder to put them all in. The big issue is of course my own printer ink. But if I ever plan on running an AD&D game again I'll be using these and finally have them live up to the full potential that was promised to me back in Gettysburg, PA in 1989.