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Fiend Folio (1e)
 
$9.99 $5.99
Average Rating:4.8 / 5
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Fiend Folio (1e)
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Fiend Folio (1e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Geoffrey T. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 03/19/2023 09:51:52

Good copy, and brings back memories. Print is very clear.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Fiend Folio (1e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Edward C. O. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 12/12/2021 20:06:24

the POD is pretty good, wish there was a hardcover option, but the soft cover is good enough.

the content itself adds on to the Adnd 1e collection of monsters, and it is also great for 2e as well.

highly recommend getting this book!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Fiend Folio (1e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Thomas P. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 03/19/2021 19:11:57

The British Monster Manual!

A collection of monsters from the pages of White Dwarf magazine - most of these have been well playtested and undergone significant development before release.

There are some classics here - the Giothyanki and Drow are notable highlights. I even liked the Flumphs. True there are also a few duds - but for the price this is a great deal.

Where this book really coms into its own is when your players have all bought the Monster Manaul and are now meta-gaming like mofo's because they memorised the stats blocks. You can spice it up with something now.

Softcover printed copy was a bit dark but very crisp and legible.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Fiend Folio (1e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Luke A. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 05/20/2020 08:11:20

I was happy with the PoD book - print is dark and crisp with good paper quality.

The PDF was scanned from a stained copy. There are a couple of pages with food (?) stains on them - disappointing for a product you paid for.

The PDF is bookmarked but not searchable nor is text selectable.

5 stars for the PoD book, 2 stars for the PDF



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Fiend Folio (1e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Nicolas L. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 04/03/2020 11:13:55

Though not a hard cover like the original, the quality of the reprint is OUTSTADNING, quite durable, and the clarity of the images, are more than I could have hoped for. I’m very pleased with the reproduction, only wish that other classic mods/classic booklets were also available in soft/hard cover print, and not just as a PDF.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Fiend Folio (1e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Mauro L. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 12/16/2019 11:46:49

A good reprint in softcover. Now we are waiting for Monster Manual in POD...



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Fiend Folio (1e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Timothy B. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 11/16/2019 18:00:04

I look at the second-ever produced AD&D monster book, and maybe one of the most loved OR most hated books, depending on who you ask; I mean of course 1981's Fiend Folio.

I will admit upfront, I enjoyed the hell out of this book. There was something so different, so strange and so British about it. I loved listening to Pink Floyd, The Who, The Beatles, and Led Zeppelin while watching Monte Python, the Young Ones, Doctor Who and more I was a died in the wool Anglophile. In the 80s if it was British it was good was my thinking. The Fiend Folio was all that to me.

Yes. I am 100% in the "I Loved It!" camp.

Now, that doesn't mean I was immune to the problems it had. But I'll get into that in detail in a bit.

Fiend Folio Tome

First available as a hardcover in 1981. Available as PDF ($9.99) and PoD ($11.99 or $13.99 combined) via DriveThruRPG. 128 pages, color covers, black & white interior art.

The Fiend Folio is something of the lost forgotten middle child of AD&D. Don Turnbull, then editor of White Dwarf magazine had been collecting monsters for his magazine since 1976. In 1979 He wanted to publish a book of these monsters through Games Workshop as a new monster tome companion to the then released Monster Manual. Through various legal wranglings which included TSR wanting to buy GW and then starting TSR UK, the book came to be published by TSR in 1981.

The hardcover was the fifth hardcover overall, the second "in a series of AD&D roleplaying aids", the last to use the classic cover art style and dress, and the only AD&D hardcover never updated to a new Jeff Easley cover. To cement the perception that this book was the "middle child" every book after it had the new Jeff Easley covers and about as many were published before it as after it.

When released the book caused a bit of a stir. In Dragon Magazine #55 we had no less of a personage than Ed Greenwood blasting the book with his Flat Taste Didn't Go Away. Ouch. That is a bit harsh Ed and the article doesn't get much lighter. I am sure there were plenty of old-school AD&D fans who were at the time saying "Who the hell is this Ed Greenwood guy and why do I care about his opinion?" Sy though, Ed is no fan of this book and calls many of the monsters incomplete, inadequate and many are redundant. AND to be 100% fair he is making some very good points here. The editing is all over the place, many of the monsters are useless or way overpowered in some respects.

Alan Zumwalt follows this with Observations of a Semi-Satisfied Customer. An endorsement, but not the ringing endorsement one might want.

Not to be forgotten Don Turnbull, Managing Director of TSR UK, Ltd. and Editor of the FIEND FOLIO Tome ends with his Apologies - and Arguments; his defense of the Fiend Folio.

All three articles make good points and overreach in others. In the end, I still love the Fiend Folio, not despite its weirdness, but because of it. I have decided though that when I run a pure Forgotten Realms game that I will not include any of the monsters that Ed found objectionable. I was going to say not include any from this book, but that includes Drow and we know that isn't going to happen!

There are some "translation" errors here too. In particular when the monster was written for OD&D and then later updated to AD&D. Others the art didn't seem to fit the description. I still find it hard to see how the T-Rex looking Babbler is supposed to be a mutation of the Lizard Man.

That is all great and a wonderful bit of historical context, but none of that had any effect on the way I played and how I used the book.

Everyone will talk about how that is the book that gave us the Adherer, the Flumph, Flail Snail, Lava Children, and my least favorite, the CIFAL. But it is also the book that gave us the Death Knight, Skeleton Warriors, Revenant, the Slaadi, Son of Kyuss and more.

The D&D cartoon featured the Shadow Demon and Hooked Horrors. The D&D toy line used the Bullywugs. And creatures like the Aarakocra, Kenku, Githyanki and Githzerai would go on to greater fame and use in future editions of D&D. Some even first appeared in other D&D modules that got their first-ever hardcover representations here; like the Daemons, Kuo-Toa, and the Drow.

Many monsters came from the pages of White Dwarf's Fiend Factory. Even these monsters were a mixed bag, but there were so many. So many in fact that there could have been a Fiend Folio II.

Flipping through this book I am struck with one thing. For a tome called the "Fiend Folio" there are not really a lot of fiends in it. Lolth, the Styx Devil, Mezzodaemon, Nycadaemon and maybe the Guardian Daemon.

While this book does not fill me with the deep nostalgia of the discover of D&D like the Monster Manual does, it fills me with another type of nostalgia. The nostalgia of long night playing and coming up with new and exciting adventures and using monsters that my players have never seen before.

For the record, here are some of my favorites: Apparition, Berbalang, Booka, Coffer Corpse, Crypt Thing, Dark Creeper, Dark Stalker (Labyrinth anyone?), Death Dog, Death Knight, Lolth, the new Dragons, the Elemental Princes of Evil, Drow, Errercap, Eye of Fear and Flame, Firedrake, Forlarren, Githyanki, Githzerai, Gorilla Bear (yes! I loved these guys), Grell, Grimlocks, Guardian Familiar, Hellcat, Hook Horrors (though I felt I had to use them), Hounds of Ill Omen, Huecuva, Kelpie, Kuo-toa, Lamia Noble, Lizard King (Jim Morrison jokes for D&D at last!), Meazel, Mephit, Mezzodaemon, Necrophidius, Neeleman (well...I didn't like the monster, I liked the SNL skit he reminded me of), Nilbogs (ok, no I didn't like these guys unless I was running the adventure), Norker, Nycadaemon, Ogrillon, Penanggalan (yes! loved these, but they should have been closer to the vampire as described in the MM), Poltergiest, Revenant, Scarecrow, Shadow Demon, Skeleton Warrior, Slaad, Son of Kyuss, Sussurus, Svirfneblin, the new trolls, Yellow Musk Creeper and Yellow Mush Zombie (Clark Ashton Smith for the win!).

The remainder of the book is given over to expanded tables.

The Future of the Folio

When I have talked about the Fiend Folio in the past most of the time I get a lot of positive remarks, so maybe the ages have been kind to the odd little middle child of D&D.

Since it's publication the Fiend Folio has seen a little more love.

The 14th (!) Monstrous Compendium Appendix for AD&D 2nd Edition was based on the Fiend Folio, though it would be almost 10 years after the hardcover version. MC14 Monstrous Compendium Fiend Folio Appendix is available in PDF.

The 3rd Edition years gave us TWO different versions of the Fiend Folio. The 3e Fiend Folio from WotC features many of the original Fiend Folio monsters, but also a lot more fiends; so living up to it's name a bit more. Not to be outdone, Necromancer Games gave us the first of the Tome of Horrors books which feature many more of the original Fiend Folio monsters for OGL/d20.

Back in Print

So imagine my delight when I saw that the Fiend Folio on DriveThruRPG was now offering a Print on Demand option. So, of course, I had to get it. It was soft cover only, but I thought it would work nicely next to my Games Workshop printing softcover Monster Manual.

I was not wrong.

Other than one is a hardcover and the other is a softcover it is very difficult to tell the two prints apart. Even the interiors compare well.

So maybe time has been kinder to the Fiend Folio. I still enjoy using it.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Fiend Folio (1e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Frank G. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/21/2019 12:27:53

Fantastic supplement to the monster manual. Great choice for any AD&D DM.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Fiend Folio (1e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Robin W. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 06/08/2019 11:46:28

I never owned the Fiend Folio. While I still have my DMG, PH, UA, MM and MM2, I used to borrow the FF and D&DG from one of my partners-in-roleplaying. I recently bought the print and PDF version of the FF in a fit of AD&D nostalgia. I'm not going to comment on the contents themselves as the FF has been critiqued to death over the years.

The PDF is fully indexed / bookmarked and is a reasonably clean scan. Artifacts around the text are low and the tone of the white background and block black of illustrations is even (no show-through from the opposite page side). As noted by others however, it's non-searchable and has some dirty marks on pages 13-15 and on the cover.

I am very happy with the print copy. It is 11" x 8.5" softcover, neatly cut and bound from good paper stock. The cover is thicker, glossy card, slightly blurry but acceptable. The general interior contrast is slightly stronger than in the PDF and black areas are solid, such that some minor detail is lost in illustrations, e.g. the Hellcat is noticeably less refined than in the PDF. Comparing it to my original MM it's as if the whole thing is printed in bold, but this just seems to bring out the general weirdness of the FF all the more. The print copy doesn't have any of the grimy marks that the PDF does.

I'd definitely recommend this FF reprint but I'd also like to see the defects of the PDF fixed.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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Fiend Folio (1e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Jay G. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 05/06/2019 20:11:54

As a kid who loved Fighting Fantasy novels I was super excited when I got my original Fiend Folio from TSR's UK studio. It had very much that same feel as the FF novels. A lot of people didn't like the sillier monsters but I always liked that flavour in my D&D.

Any collection of 1e monsters is (to be fair) of dubious use for 5e players, but in my opinion the real value in this book is a nostalgic collection of early British RPG artwork. I'm happy with my purchase and it ticks all the boxes I was hoping for as an older gamer but for anyone newer to the game and playing 5e you might find an actual adventure might be more easily translatable and perhaps more immediately useful.

Looks great on my bookshelf and I smile everytime I flip through it but I'm not sure any of it will make it to my game table in the 21st century.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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Fiend Folio (1e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by CA M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 12/22/2017 23:56:51

The 7/17 update is in better shape, but pages 13,14, & 15 appear to have dubious (hygienic?) stains on them! Hahaha, that's so disgusting. They're also still images instead of text which balloons the book to 39m. (However, such can be a benefit for people using less powerful/older device since there is no complicated rendering.) For 'old skool' people, it's a 'must have,' my rating is for the three page nastiness.



Rating:
[2 of 5 Stars!]
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Fiend Folio (1e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Stephan B. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/20/2017 09:40:08

This classic work is arguably the most iconic of the 1E books. Unfortunately, the publisher completely ruined this edition with their July 20, 2017 update, changing the format from text (copy/pasteable and searchable) to images (each page as a single image). Not only is it no longer searchable and copy/pasteable, but the visual quality of both the text and the pictures were sharply reduced (while the file's size more than doubled, from 18MB to 40MB). If you managed to keep your pre-July 20th copy, good for you. If you replaced your copy with that update (or haven't yet bought it), then tough luck. i would have heartily recommend this book before that update, but cannot at all recommend it now.



Rating:
[2 of 5 Stars!]
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Fiend Folio (1e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Jonas M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/25/2013 01:11:13

Out of all the D&D monster manuals this is the most imaginative, weird and fantastic. There great deal of variety to fill whatever you want, there are creepy and disturbing monsters, there is weird folklore and trash literature inspired critters and some clearly done just for the laughs. Special mention should go to art which really illustrates the weird and fantastic contained in this tome.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Fiend Folio (1e)
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
by Erik G. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 07/20/2008 02:40:03

I always wanted this book when I was a kid because I already had MM I and MM II. I looked everywhere for it but it was out of print(this was probably in the mid-1980's). Its a pleasure to finally have it now and at such a bargain price.

Great value for a hard to find book.

Highly recommended for old-school AD&Ders.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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