The Monstrous Compendium is a series of accessories for the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game released from 1989 to 1998. The title was then used for a series of 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons supplements released on D&D Beyond.
Volumes
MC1 Monstrous Compendium, Volume One was published by TSR in 1989. It was written by the TSR staff, with a cover by Jeff Easley, and interior illustrations by Jim Holloway, and came boxed with 144 loose-leaf pages and eight color cardstock dividers (each with a color painting on it) in a three-ring binder. This supplement was presented as the base monster supplement intended to containing all the enemies required for most campaigns using 2nd edition AD&D rules.
thumb|right|150px|The cover of the Fiend Folio Appendix (1992)
Further volumes included the following:
- MC8 Monstrous Compendium Outer Planes Appendix (1991)—96 pages, 4 dividers
- MC9 Monstrous Compendium Spelljammer Appendix II (1991)—64 pages, 4 dividers
- MC10 Monstrous Compendium Ravenloft Appendix (1991)—64 pages, 4 dividers
- MC11 Monstrous Compendium Forgotten Realms Appendix II (1991)—64 pages, 4 dividers
- MC12 Monstrous Compendium Dark Sun Appendix: Terrors of the Desert (1992)—96 pages, 4 dividers
- MC13 Monstrous Compendium Al-Qadim Appendix (1992)—64 pages, 4 dividers
- MC14 Monstrous Compendium Fiend Folio Appendix (1992)—64 pages, 4 dividers
- MC15 Monstrous Compendium Ravenloft Appendix II: Children of the Night (1993)—64 pages, 4 dividers
Annuals
- Monstrous Compendium Annual Volume One (1994)—reprints from modules and magazines of 1993
- Monstrous Compendium Annual Volume Two (1995)—reprints from modules and magazines of 1994
{| class="wikitable sortable" style="margins:auto; width=95%; font-size: 95%;"
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!width="30%"| Title
!width="15%"| Author(s)
!width="15%"| Date
!width="40%"| Notes
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| Monstrous Compendium Vol 1: Spelljammer Creatures
| Christopher Perkins, Jeremy Crawford
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| Introduced ten creatures from the Spelljammer setting to the 5th Edition.
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| Monstrous Compendium Vol 2: Dragonlance Creatures
| F. Wesley Schneider, Makenzie De Armas, Ron Lundeen, Jeremy Crawford
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| Introduced ten creatures from the Dragonlance campaign setting to the 5th Edition.
|-
|Monstrous Compendium Vol 3: Minecraft Creatures
|Christopher Perkins
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| Introduced five creatures from the Minecraft video game to the 5th Edition to promote the Dungeons & Dragons DLC for Minecraft.
|-
|Monstrous Compendium Vol 4: Eldraine Creatures
|James Wyatt, Jeremy Crawford, Ron Lundeen, Ben Petrisor
|
| Features "creatures from Eldraine, the Magic: The Gathering plane recently featured in the Wilds of Eldraine set".
|-
|}
Reception
Stephan Wieck reviewed Monster Compendium Volume One in White Wolf #17 (1989) and stated that "Of the three new 2nd Edition books, the monster compendium is the one that I feel improves the most over its predecessor."
Berin Kinsman reviewed Terrors of the Desert in the Mar–Apr 1993 issue of White Wolf. This 96-page manual was written by Tom Prusa, Louis J. Prosperi, Walter M. Bass, and Kira Glass and is "the first Monstrous Compendium appendix to deal with the AD&D Dark Sun setting". He commented on the proliferation of monster books from TSR and other publishers: "Role-players seem to have an insatiable appetite for monsters. The sound you hear is that of publishers scraping the bottom of the barrel for new ones." He commented that the book "has a great cover and it's a top read too" and that the artwork "isn't exactly exactly inspired but it does sport a coherence and consistency rarely seen in roleplaying books. There are no 'well it's a man's head on a chicken's body' Crimewatch photofit embarrassments'" found in many other monster books. He comments: "Serious work goes into bringing the beasties to life, but the crippling list format means they limp rather than leap (or crawl, or slither, or fly for that matter) from the page. A fault this work compounds by further tweaking the experience points system. A factor that's made all the more frustrating when it becomes apparent that the Monstrous Annual 2 dangles some delightful creatures before the referee's eyes." He noted that this product was a re-release of the first two Monstrous Compendium appendices for Ravenloft, in a single bound volume, and that Appendix I details "the variants, updates and unique monsters which lurk in the Demiplane's mists" while Appendix II "takes these new creatures and fleshes them out into full NPCs, expanding the descriptions in Appendix I". He commented that "The strength of the annual is that the contents are drawn from a variety of AD&D settings. Creatures from the TSR magazines, Forgotten Realms, Birthright, Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Al-Quadim and Greyhawk can be found giving referees access to monsters with abilities that otherwise might not have been thought of."
- Backstab #9 (Planescape Monstrous Compendium III)
- Backstab #14 (Annual Volume Four)
- Australian Realms #19 (Planescape Appendix)
- Australian Realms #22 (MC Annual One)
-->== See also ==
- List of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition monsters
- Monster Manual