pugh@cornell.UUCP (William Pugh) (09/20/83)
in the stores, and refuse to buy it, so this will be a limited review. The format is much the same as in the previous MM. Charts for randomly dicing monsters from all three books (MM, Fiend Folio, MM II) are included in the back. About a quarter of the monsters are just very silly (e.g. Bowlders, creatures which look like rocks and bounce down slopes to crush characters). The official monsters from the past several issues of the Dragon are included. Some more non-human races/ species are included, but they only get the standard quarter of a page, which is no where near enough to properly describe another race. In addition, Gygax tells us that he expects to put out at least one or two more editions of the Monster Manual. Oppps, I almost forgot something: Monster Manual, Fiend Folio, Monster Manual II, Dungeons and Dragons, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, and Gygax are trademarks of TSR, and are used without permission. There, thats taken care of.I woundn't want to get sued by one of TSR's many lawers. I also saw the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon show on Saturday morning. The story concerns six kids who get sent to a fantasy world while riding an amusment park ride. They are given magic items and character classes by a weird gnome like creature who calls himself the Dungeon Master (side note: I'll bet official D&D never gets out of the dungeons and into role-playing until they start using the term Game Master). The items are somewhat interesting because Saturday morning censorship rules say that you can not hit someone with a weapon, or show a sharp or pointed weapons. So the ranger's bow fires arrows that seem to be made out of light and are conjured out of thin air. All the barbarian has done with his club so far is hit the ground and causes a bookcase to fall on their opponent. In order to avoid anything which looks like real magic, the magic-user character is limited to pulling things out of hat. Overall, it's an interesting effort, and perhaps preferable to watching the Smurfs. - Bill Pugh