Monster Manual

• 1. Introduction

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  Monster Manual is the collection of creature rules TSR published in 1977 as the first hardcover book in the Dungeons & Dragons line. Games journalist David M. Ewalt called it 'a rush job' that nonetheless carried undeniable quality, and said it became 'a beloved companion to a generation of gamers, something they came back to again and again.' Alongside the Player's Handbook and the Dungeon Master's Guide, it stands as one of the three core rulebooks of the game. Before 1977, a curious player had no single place to look up a creature's strengths or its lair. What made this particular book so central that nearly every edition of Dungeons & Dragons since has needed one of its own? And how did a simple bestiary end up shaping the way an entire generation of gamers pictured their monsters?

• 2. A New Kind Of Bestiary

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  Book 2: Monsters and Treasure was where the earliest Dungeons & Dragons boxed set tucked its creature listings. There was no separate manual at all. Once the game split into basic and advanced lines, the basic game kept publishing in level-based boxed sets. These were named Basic, Expert, Companion, Master, and Immortal. Monsters scaled to each level appeared inside those boxes' rulebooks. Those scattered entries were eventually gathered into the Rules Cyclopedia, which replaced the higher-level boxed sets. A separate volume called the Creature Catalogue collected still more of them. Some of the creatures in these early lists came from mythology and folklore. Others were invented specifically for the game, a mix that would define the format going forward.

  Games scholar Jaroslav Švelch later compared the approach to medieval bestiaries, 'only with more precise figures.' He explained that medieval bestiaries tried to fit unknown creatures into the known order of nature. Dungeons & Dragons, he said, instead 'created simulated natures of their own and populated them with creatures that followed their artificial laws and conditions.' That distinction, inventing whole ecosystems rather than cataloguing a real one, is what a young Gary Gygax would soon formalize into a single book.

• 3. Gygax's Original

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  Gary Gygax wrote every entry in the book officially titled Monster Manual. It was the first of the core manuals for the newly created Advanced Dungeons & Dragons line. The finished volume ran to 108 pages and compiled more than 350 monsters. Some were brand new; others were revised from older sources including Monsters and Treasure, Greyhawk, Blackmoor, Eldritch Wizardry, The Strategic Review, and Dragon magazine. Each creature appeared in alphabetical order with a full description, game statistics, and in most cases an illustration.

  David C. Sutherland III painted the cover of that original printing. Games Workshop issued a softcover edition in the United Kingdom the following year, in 1978, alongside a handful of minor corrections to the text. When TSR reprinted the book again in 1985, Jeff Easley supplied new cover art to match an updated logo and house style. Through fifteen printings that ran until 1989, the interior otherwise stayed largely the same.

  Several of the female monsters in that first edition, among them the succubus, Type V demons, the lamia, and the sylph, were drawn topless. The same edition marked the first appearance of the mimic in Dungeons & Dragons. TSR brought the book back as a paperback reprint in 1999, and a further reprint followed in 2012.

• 4. What Critics Said

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  Don Turnbull reviewed the book and wrote that 'this manual deserves a place on every D&D enthusiast's bookshelf.' He praised its explanatory text as 'the most comprehensive listing of D&D monsters you will find,' though he flagged printing errors and some uneven artwork. Turnbull closed his review by saying, 'It is without doubt the best thing that TSR have produced so far.'

  Lawrence Schick, author of Heroic Worlds, offered a different kind of praise. He noted that because new monsters are easy to design, the Monster Manual 'has spawned a host of imitations.'

  Scott Taylor of Black Gate ranked the book eighth on a list of the best orange spine hardcovers illustrated by Jeff Easley. He described its cover art with a single question: 'Red Dragon fighting Pegasi in an air duel? What isn't to love about this one?'

  Writing in his 2023 book Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground, RPG historian Stu Horvath called the volume's interior art groundbreaking. He noted that David C. Sutherland III worked alongside illustrator David Trampier, whose clean lines often evoked medieval woodcuts. Horvath wrote that together they built a world where treasure chests can come to 'hungry' life. In a separate overview of the game's artwork, Witwer and colleagues reached a similar verdict. They wrote that the book's images became 'the canonical representations of these fantastic creatures for an entire generation.' The images served, they added, as 'an authoritative resource for countless subsequent fantasy games.'

• 5. Building The Bestiary Further

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  White Dwarf magazine's 'Fiend Factory' feature supplied most of the material for Fiend Folio, published by TSR, Inc. The rest came from various D&D modules and a handful of new originals. The book introduced several monsters that became lasting fixtures of the game, among them the drow, githyanki, githzerai, slaad, and death knights. It also included creatures widely mocked by players, most famously the flumph, one of the few non-evil monsters in the whole volume.

  Monster Manual II followed in 1983 as a 160-page hardcover, credited, like its predecessor, solely to Gygax. It detailed more than 250 monsters, most with illustrations, many of them pulled from earlier adventure modules. A large share came from S4: Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, and a dozen devils had first appeared in the pages of Dragon magazine. The book also included random encounter tables for dungeons and wilderness, drawing on monsters from the Monster Manual, Fiend Folio, and Monster Manual II together. Following the Fiend Folio's lead, it listed an experience point value for every monster entry. Alongside the first edition Unearthed Arcana, Monster Manual II drew heavily on monsters, races, and places from Gygax's own home campaign setting, Greyhawk.

• 6. The Binder That Broke

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  The second edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons replaced the Monster Manual with the Monstrous Compendium, a binder of looseleaf sheets. Its first two volumes covered the game's core monsters, and later appendices added creatures tied to particular campaign settings. Dungeon Masters, the idea went, could carry only the loose pages of monster statistics they actually needed for a session. Buying a core volume plus whichever appendices matched a chosen setting meant no more paying for monsters that never got used.

  Two problems undid the format. Looseleaf pages proved less durable than a hardcover, a serious flaw for a book meant to be pulled out at nearly every session. TSR also printed different monsters on opposite sides of the same sheet, which made it impossible to keep the whole collection in strict alphabetical order.

  In 1993, TSR replaced the binder with the Monstrous Manual, a 384-page hardcover edited by Doug Stewart. It compiled every monster from the first two Monstrous Compendium volumes along with many pulled from other sources. Further Monstrous Compendium appendices kept appearing afterward, now as paperback supplements to the Monstrous Manual, mixing updated reprints of old looseleaf appendices with new volumes.

• 7. Rebuilding For Third Edition

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  On the 1st of October 2000, the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons got its own Monster Manual, the third of its three core books. Monte Cook, Jonathan Tweet, and Skip Williams all contributed, with Williams credited for the book's design. Williams said the team began by 'combing through the game's twenty year collection of monsters, and deciding which ones were going into the book.' The design team, he said, chose to focus on creatures that fit classic dungeon adventures, with extra weight for monsters they felt the game needed. In 2001, the book won the Origins Award for Best Graphic Design of a Roleplaying Game, Adventure, or Supplement. A reviewer for Pyramid called it 'an essential reference book, and it is a bargain.'

  In July 2003, Rich Baker and Skip Williams revised the Monster Manual again for the D&D 3.5 rule set. The new edition split each monster's attack entry into separate attack and full attack listings. Baker said the volume of work was the real challenge. 'There are hundreds of monster entries, and each monster has a couple dozen data points to examine and check,' he said. Creatures from the Psionics Handbook and the third edition Manual of the Planes joined the revised book. Most monsters also gained an example of advancement, using either a template or added class levels. Many entries also came with instructions for using the monster as a player character. A premium reprint of the 3.5 Monster Manual followed on the 18th of September 2012.

  Monster Manual II and Fiend Folio returned as new, monster-only rulebooks for third edition. Most of their creatures were updated from earlier sourcebooks, though a few barely resembled their first edition namesakes. Neither book received a 3.5 update, though the publisher posted update errata online for both of them and for the original third edition Monster Manual.

• 8. New Editions, New Covers

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  Monster Manual III arrived in September 2004. A team of designers created it: Rich Burlew, Eric Cagle, Jesse Decker, Andrew J. Finch, Gwendolyn F.M. Kestrel, Rich Redman, Matthew Sernett, Chris Thomasson, and P. Nathan Toomey. This volume stood out for describing exactly where its monsters might turn up within the Eberron and Forgotten Realms campaign settings. Chris Perkins explained the approach: 'Almost all of the monsters in the Monster Manual III are new. We didn't want to give gamers a bunch of beasties they'd already seen, and we found several interesting monster niches to fill.'

  A Special Edition Monster Manual arrived in October 2006, the last in a set of special edition core rulebooks begun in 2004 to mark the 30th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons. Like its companion volumes, it was leather-bound with silver-gilt edges and a cloth bookmark. This edition added new information, 31 new illustrations, a new index, and every piece of errata collected up to its release date.

  The fourth edition Monster Manual arrived on the 6th of June 2008, released alongside the edition's other core books, with the demon prince Orcus glowering from its cover. Mike Mearls, Stephen Schubert, and James Wyatt designed the book. A sequel, Monster Manual 2, followed on the 20th of May 2009 with Demogorgon on its cover, and Monster Manual 3 arrived on the 15th of June 2010 featuring Lolth. Monster Vault, released on the 16th of November 2010, updated the original fourth edition monsters to the newer format introduced in Monster Manual 3. A companion volume, Monster Vault: Threats to the Nentir Vale, followed on the 28th of June 2011, adding a few new monsters alongside creatures tied to the Nentir Vale setting. Both Monster Vault books belonged to the Dungeons & Dragons Essentials product line.

  D&D's fifth edition Monster Manual followed as the second core book for the new edition, releasing on the 30th of September 2014. Lead designer Jeremy Crawford explained the staggered rollout: 'our small team couldn't finish the books at the same time and also ensure their high quality. … We could either stagger their releases, or we could sit on the books until all three were finished.' The finished book ran 350 pages, illustrated throughout, with Crawford and Mike Mearls co-leading the design. Its cover depicted the beholder Xanathar attacking a party of adventurers in the Underdark.

  Publishers Weekly placed the book at number five on its 'Best-selling Books' hardcover nonfiction list for the week ending the 13th of October 2014, crediting it with 16,956 units sold. Scott Taylor, reviewing it for Black Gate, called it 'a very sharp book in the gaming Big Three,' adding that anyone taking on fifth edition 'will be happy with what they've invested in.' The book went on to win the 2015 Origins Award for Best Role Playing Supplement and the Fan Favorite Role Playing Supplement award that same year. It also picked up two gold ENnie Awards in 2015, for Best Monster/Adversary and Best Interior Art.