 | Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual: Roleplaying Game Core Rules, 4th Edition
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 2008-11-15 - A Sold Buy
I believe this title to be a sold buy. Most people are distressing over the fluff that was left out of the book; I rather like this approach. It gives me as a DM the ability to customize most of my monster selection to what I need.
This title gives you everything to run monsters. Thats what it is a monster manual. The stats are streamlined into easy to read and run stat blocks, and the encounter experience is labeled right with each monster. Over-all this is a easy to use and master Monster Manual.
It is nothing more or less; if you are looking for a fluff filled book with more about the back story then tactics and stats find one of the upcoming specialized monster handbooks (for instance Open Grave).
 2008-11-03 - Great Ideas--Hurt by Bad Presentation
This Monster Manual shakes things up a lot. Like a lot of the new edition, it's about reimagining the old in a fun new way. Once you get to the good stuff, it's really wonderful. The problem is the good stuff is buried in the monster entries (scattered between the two to three sentence introduction, and the lore bits that give backstory to characters depending on how well they roll). You end up having to hunt around and end up missing a lot of stuff that gets buried in between big striped blocks of stats.
There's not a lot written, but man is it tightly written. No waste, very efficient and packed with new flavor and background information. Just think what they could have done if they spent a whole page on each monster. Unfortunately none of the monsters get that depth of coverage--just a few sentences. That's it. They get in a lot in those few sentences, but it's a shame they didn't expand on that. It's one of the things I really miss from the old 2nd edition books. Now it's all statblocks.
Each monster has several statblocks at different levels with different names. No time is given describing the differences between the various types of monster, in fact in most cases the name seems to be entirely about what level the monster is and what special attacks it has--rather than any particular role in it's society or anything. The difference between a drider fanglord and shadowspinner? Beats me.
The art is good and pretty consistant, but a lot of it feels like redone versions of art from the old books--and some of it is copied straight out of the old books. Not cool. The night hag, or the deathknight for example, yanked right out of their original Monster Manual entries. When they redo one though, it's ususally real eyecandy. The lich, for example, or the foulspawn, or the new take on the lamia.
I love the new ideas they're rolling out for fourth edition. Certainly the new Monster Manual gives lots of fun new twists on even the most boring of the classic monsters. But the format. Argh, the format. They really needed to devote more space fresh art and to talking about the monsters and less time statting up multiple versions of each one. Who needs six kinds of kobold? Certainly not me.
 2008-10-01 - A book of miniatures / card game stat blocks
This product is purely a straightforward down to the point book of creatures with stats, nothing more. There is hardly any interesting tidbits about the monsters and their behaviors. No ecology or terrain types or lair fluff and barely any aquatic monsters which irked me.
The tactics are clearly laid out. While the stat blocks are interesting in keeping the players on their toes the creatures themselves are more like video game automatons with push button type functions (much like the player characters). Not recommended for those who love interesting juicy monster books. Considering the thickness of this volume most of the space is consumed by stat blocks making this volume a snore to enjoy outside of DMing sessions.
 2008-09-08 - no longer D&D
The other reviews are right. This is no longer D&D, it's simply a board game. A board game involving stats. The monster manual has virtually no actual description of the monsters. No ecology, no habits, no history... just numbers. I was looking forward to this... extremely disappointed. Basically all I paid for is a bunch of pretty pictures. The 4th edition should have been released as a separate product from D&D. Maybe as an add on. If you don't have the time to play a real D&D game, you could play this board game version. The 4th edition is nothing but a waste. It really is a shame.
2008-08-31 - Try again WOC rolled a 1 on this one
I have been playing Dungeons and Dragons since the first boxed set and I have looked forward to each new version and this is no exception. Each new version has tried to improve on the core Dungeon and Dragon experience until now. This new version is not really a new version but an entirely new game with very little of the flavor or magic feeling of the original. Now it feels more like a version of WOW or another of the online games. I am not knocking the online games they can be great if that is what you want to play but if you are looking for an intense good old fashioned role playing session with a group of your friends this new version is not for you unless you are under 12. If you are an experienced role player I would suggest that you save your money and stick to 3.5 there should be a lot of second hand material for that around and several other good companies are still supporting it like Necromancer Games. I wish those people bought Dungeons and Dragons as they know what D&D should feel like. Also look for the games put out by pazzio publishing the company that used to put out the Dragon and Dungeon. In short if you are a veteran of the Dungeons and Dragons and enjoyed the old game save your money or better yet spend it elsceware there are a lot of fine games out there unfortunately this company is no longer make such products.
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