I still remember the winter of '94, when our long suffering DM allowed me to borrow and read his white cover Monstrous Compendium. I remember how the paper was so delicate it threatened to tear as I turned the pages, the strange sweet smell of the print, the glossy full color pictures. Possibilities dripped from every page. It was hard getting AD&D books in those days, there was a limited window to obtain the books before the print run ended, and then you just had to hope you'd trip over a copy on a shopping trip to some larger, more important city, marked down and forgotten in a bargain bin beneath dusty old copies of TORG. To have one, to hold it... it felt like pure, raw potential for adventure.

That reverence, that glee, came rushing back as my Monstrous Manual arrived by post. The smell was different - that odd sweet smell was gone, replaced by the soft sour smell of paper. The page size seemed different too, at least from how I remember it. But it never felt this thick, this heavy, even in the clunky old binder... I was reminded of a regional phonebook as I hefted it and felt the weight.

Visually, the book is beautiful. Other reviews speak of the blacks not quite being black enough, but I can tell you that as of June 2019 that problem is resolved. Black lines are bold and strong, colors pop, text is easy to read and despite a few editing quirks (the Dracolich entry describes rules regarding a "host" before explaining exactly what a host is one section later, for example) I've yet to find a single typographical error. The entire thing feels like it was made by someone who loved the game and wanted it to shine. The leather style cover is beautiful, although strangely devoid of the details a person might expect (no Wizards logo, no blurb on the back).

In terms of cost, this may well represent the best value for money out of any 2nd edition AD&D book on this site. I checked other titles and similar costings apply to books literally half as big or smaller, and usually with black and white artwork. Purchasing an original, second-hand copy of a Monstrous Manual, or worse, an intact Monstrous Compendium, is too rich for my blood - the cost of this item, the cheap rates of shipping, make it available to even the most hard-done Dungeon Master.

If I had to nitpick about faults - which I do, it's a review - I would say firstly that I'm a little crestfallen this title isn't offered in Hardback. It's a strange decision not to do so, as the Players Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide are both available in such a format. I certainly would have paid the extra $5 for it, and looking at the Discussion section, so would a lot of customers.

Secondly, there was a blank sheet included in the book in case an imaginative DM might invent a monster - a conceit that dates back to this book's early days as a three ring binder that a DM might add to as needed. The problem is that this page is no longer loose leaf, and is securely fastened to the binding. In order to photocopy it, I would have to bend the book so savagely it's spine would be broken... or take to my new book with a razor. I shall do neither, and so this page is wasted.

Finally, there were a series of Encounter Tables in the original Monstrous Compendium series, showing a series of simple dice rolls to determine what, if any, random monsters a party might enocunter whilst travelling through a desert, a forest or the open sea. A DM would simply look up the biome their players are travelling through, make some checks, look up the monster and roll for surprise. It seems strange to me, that the decision was made to keep the Monster Summoning tables in the back of the book as an Appendix but not those random encounter tables. Now, I fully acknowledge there is nothing stopping me from compiling my own tables using 60% Common monsters, 25% Uncommon, 10% Rare and 5% Very Rare as ratios, but many time-strapped DM's were helped out by having pre-prepared tables they could pick up as needed, and as DM's we buy resources like this to save us time.

Overall, though, I have no regrets purchasing this. I would go so far as to say this book is a must-have if you're planning to try out 2nd Edition AD&D.

Keep up the good work, Wizards of the Coast.

This book is an excellent resource for constructing para-intelligence organisations, shadowy government groups who investigate and supress stories of the supernatural. Three groups are given detail - NSA, FBI and CIA - with enough details on other organisations to get the imagination whirring. The character creation section is strong, and reading the book one gets the idea that running a Project Twilight chronicle as an introduction to the mechanics of the Storyteller system, without bogging the player down in all the detail they'd have to learn for one of the main three lines, would work both as a one-shot and an ongoing chronicle with nods to Kolchak the Nightstalker and the X-Files. It has the "three pregen characters" that were so obligatory back in these early WW titles, and although this wasn't advertised broadly, an adventure in the back that can be easily re-worked for whatever country or para-intelligence group the ST wants to run. In fact, although it's not offered as such, the adventure is flexible enough to function as the case that gets the players recruited into the para-intelligence community. The mosaic patterns in the graphics are barely noticable for a scanned-image book.

Now to the bad. The worst thing I can say is that the book contains many OCR errors, enough that even a cursory glance by an editor would have found them and corrected them, and some of them are quite jarring. The second worst thing I can say is that the adventure in the back throws child abuse, sexualised and domestic violence around liberally as part of the storyline, with the usual sensitivity that the WW crew exhibited in their younger, more sheltered days. As a result, the ST is forced to ask players about their personal boundariers and "off-limits" topics before even opening the book, but if you're playing World of Darkness you should be doing that already anyway.

Overall, this book is well worth having, and although it was released as part of Werewolf's catalogue, it works easily with any of the other gamelines as well as being strong enough to stand on it's own. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants their mortals to have a bit more clout.

Ostensibly a book for flavour and background fluff, the Book of Nod starts out strong, with a biblical tone and cadence to it, even including footnotes from the scholars that "researched" it; but ultimately suffers from a hideous mish-mash of artwork, as well as a lack of direction in some parts. The "words of Antediluvians" section seem especially ill-fitting and could have easily been replaced with a "proverbs" style section, like that which the superior Dark Ages book "The Erciyes Fragments" had. "Erciyes Fragments" also benefited from having a single illustrator, which felt more appropriate for a psuedo-religious text.

This is actually the third copy I've ever owned, the first two being the hard and softcover versions of the original White Wolf prints. I was disappointed that the leatherette cover which made the original Book of Nod so distinctive was left off this copy, as well as the formerly brilliant silver lettering on the cover and spine. The fact that the cover is a photograph of the original leatherette, combined with the more drab logo on the front, cheapens the look of it somewhat when compared to previous editions. It feels like a cheap knock-off of the older Books of Nod. There's not even a little red ribbon to keep your place like a prayer book anymore.

And yet, efforts have been made to make this version an improvement on what has come before. There are pages where the background image has been lightened a little in order to show detail or make the text easier to read, and this is a massive step up on the original.

I don't regret buying a copy, but I'm not as happy as I was holding an original print back in '97.