Originally posted here: https://theotherside.timsbrannan.com/2022/02/monstrous-mondays-ad-2nd-ed-monstrous_28.html
There is no doubt that the biggest game world for AD&D 2nd Edition was the Forgotten Realms. I was fairly anti-Realms back then. I felt it was a cheap imitation of Greyhawk and I was a little irritated that Greyhawk got pushed to the side. The 3rd Edition Forgotten Realms setting book did a lot to change that for me and now, especially with my investigations around my This Old Dragon posts, I have come to better appreciate the Realms for what they really are, not for what I thought they were.
That all being said I still bought Realms-related products like these because, well, I love monsters.
MC13 Monstrous Compendium Al-Qadim Appendix (1992)
The Al-Qadim Monstrous Compendium had been the only product I ever purchased for the Al-Qadim setting back when it was new. Again the reasoning was I loved monsters. But while reading it over I discovered there was a very interesting setting here.
Like the Kara-Tur setting, Al-Qadim was pulled into the Realms. It was added to the Realms quickly after its release but the campaign setting box was designed a bit more for a general placement anywhere.
This PDF is listed at 74 pages and has a $4.95 price tag. The art is typical for the time color covers and color dividers with black & white pages. Interestingly the accent color here is gold and not blue. Ravenloft used red so I wonder how it would have been if all the settings had a different accent color to help separate them. A dark-gray for Greyhawk, burnt orange for Dark Sun, and so on.
There are 58 monsters from Ammut to Zin. This includes a large number of various Genie/Gin types.
Divorced from their setting the monsters certainly lose some of their best flavor, but I do plan on using these in a desert-based campaign I have coming up and I think they will work fine.
We are at a point with the Monstrous Compendiums where we get a bit of overlap. For example, the Ashira (MC13) has a lot in common with the Hamadryad (MC11). And the Black Cloud of Vengeance (MC13) is very much a larger, more evil version of the Tempest (MC11). This is not a surprise, there are over 2100 monsters created for AD&D 2nd Edition, there are bound to be places where they overlap.
The scans for all are pretty crisp and clear. I certainly can see printed out a couple of pages and using them in a smaller binder for a specific AD&D 2nd Ed campaign. Like I have said before, these PDF are fulfilling the promises made by the Monstrous Compendiums in the 1990s.
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