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This review is about a product with one of the longest names for any AD&D supplement. The full name (with a hyphen and colon to distinguish the title and subtitles) is "Monstrous Compendium: Dark Sun Appendix - Terrors of the Desert". Quite a mouthful, so I'll just call it the DSMC in the rest of this review.
The DSMC is the monster book for the Dark Sun setting. It's written for AD&D, Second Edition, but I won't pay much attention to the rules and stats, as I haven't played AD&D in nearly a decade. With that out of the way: on to the actual review.
Appearance and overview of content
Like the Dark Sun boxed set, the DSMC has a format that was common at the time, but which is now all but extinct.
Second Edition AD&D never had a Monster Manual. Instead it had a series of Monstrous Compendiums. These weren't books, but sets of loose sheets of paper, perforated to fit into a 3-ring D-binder, which came with the first compendium in the series. The idea was that this system allowed you to keep all the creatures from the various compendiums in a single alphabetically organized collection. And of course it also allowed you to take just the sheets containing the creatures you needed to a game, rather than an entire stack of books. Which is especially nice if you consider that TSR released a whopping 15 compendiums.
The major drawback of the system was that these sheets couldn't stand up to much wear and tear. You can only take binders to so many games until the paper around the holes in the sheets starts to tear. And since the sheets were printed on both sides, and the sides often contained separate entries, you still couldn't keep your collection entirely alphabetized. Because of issues like these, TSR abandoned the system for the later Monstrous Compendia, as well as the Monstrous Manual. (Note that they still didn't call it the "Monster Manual".)
The DSMC still used this system, and contains 48 sheets, which are formatted like the other MCs. This means that they are printed in black ink, with red ink for page and section headers only. A typical sheet has a different monster entry on both sides. An entry has a stat block and an illustration that take up about a quarter of a page each. The rest of the page contains a description of the creature, including information on combat tactics, habitat/society, and ecology. So even if you don't use AD&D, you can still use 75% of each entry. Nice!
Three of the sheets don't contain monster entries, but an introduction, an explanation of terms, and 20 encounter tables for various Athasian biomes. The DSMC also comes with 4 full-color divider pages, and a cover sheet to wrap around the other pages.
The cover sheet has a full-color illustration by Jeff Easley of 3 monsters from the supplement. I must say that Mr. Easley picked some of the weirdest looking monsters from the DSMC. Just going by this illustration, I would have figured that this compendium contains monsters for some sort of sci-fi setting. But Apart from this, it's a perfectly nice piece.
The interior illustrations are by Tom Baxa and Mark Nelson. These are true to the style of the non-Brom interior art in the boxed set, and of similar (good, but not exceptional) quality. The dividers feature recycled (but very nice) art by Brom, who, strangely enough, isn't listed on the credits page.
The Monsters
On to the meat of the product: the monsters. As the Dark Sun setting is quite different from most AD&D settings, the vast majority of monsters from the other compendia don't exist there. So until the release of the DSMC2 three years later, this compendium contained nearly all the monsters for the setting. Because of this, the DSMC tells you to keep its sheets in a separate section of your binder, rather than putting them in alphabetical order between the rest of the monsters.
As someone who prefers a more focused selection of monsters over the monster du jour approach of typical D&D, I quite like this. Though I don't think that this was intentional on the part of TSR.
Most of the monsters in the DSMC are original, though the Athasian giant was also featured in the boxed set, albeit with far less detail. While new monsters are arguably better value for money, I would have liked it if TSR had included all the creatures from the boxed set in this collection. I don't like to have to bring along an entire book, just so I can use one or two monster entries in my game. Having the creatures on sheets would have been much more practical. Oh well, I can't fault TSR for preferring to including more new monsters, and I really only need to bring copies of the illustrations to my games anyway, as I won't be using the stats.
So, what are these creatures like? Well, the first thing I noticed was that quite a few entries are not meant to be fought. In fact, one entry is a completely harmless plant, with no defenses whatsoever.
I absolutely love this! Entries for plants like these, for common herd animals, and for pets such as the hurrum, a bug that produces a pleasant humming sound, add so much atmosphere to a setting. To me, these are far more useful than yet another combat critter. It really is a shame that the creature books released for later editions of D&D contain only the latter.
That is not to say that the DSMC doesn't contain any potential opponents for the PCs, however. In fact, they still form the vast majority of the creatures in the supplement. But even these are usually at least somewhat integrated in the setting, rather than existing for the sole purpose of fighting PCs. For instance, the Cistern Fiend is a very nasty monster that communities nevertheless introduce to their water supplies, as it purifies them by feeding on the nutrients in the water. Other creatures are useful for providing food, water, entertainment, transport, or even metal. (Rasclinn extract traces of metal from the plants they eat. These traces are deposited in their hides, and with the proper equipment can be extracted from them.)
Because of this integration, I very much enjoyed reading the creature descriptions. They really are a source of inspiration for running games in Dark Sun.
That being said, not all creatures in the supplement are winners. The Nightmare Beast is nothing more than a ridiculously overpowered opponent, and there are a number of creatures of the "it's an animal, but now with psionics!" variety. (Psionics are highly common in Dark Sun, and most creatures in the DSMC have some psionic ability.) However, I do feel that the majority of the creatures in the supplement are at least an entertaining read.
Finally, I should note that the DSMC provides opponents for a wide range of power levels. It does on average contain noticeably more powerful creatures than other compendia, but this is appropriate for DS.
Conclusion
The DSMC is an interesting supplement. While it isn't perfect, it's an entertaining read, and certain to be inspirational for Dark Sun DMs.
On to the rating. Again, I don't consider the mechanical information in this set, as I haven't played AD&D in nearly a decade.
Style: The loose-leaf format of the book to me has a high nostalgia value. It is also quite practical if you want to use the monster stats or illustrations in a game. However, it doesn't look as nice as a book, and is less durable too. Also, D&D players are now used to full-color books, and most of this supplement is in black and white. By the standards of the time when it was released, this supplement would have deserved a 4. (And nostalgic gamers should still use this score.) These days, I'd still grant it a 3. Perfectly acceptable, but not beyond the norm.
Substance: The material in the DSMC is not as exciting as the boxed set, but it is still an enjoyable read. More enjoyable than any of the 3rd or 4th Edition critter books, actually, so I feel it deserves an above average score. A 4 it is.
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