The Monster Manual 2 and Beyond!

One of my brothers called me the other day.  It seems that he had some of my gaming stuff in his closet at my parents house and wanted me to come pick it up.  The whole way over I was trying to figure out what this cache could be.  It must have gotten thrown in there as an emergency measure to ensure that they weren't found by my girlfriend and completely forgotten about.  Well it worked, and obviously too well for I also didn't find it... for about 4 years.





These lost materials turned out to be my blue binder from the New Lago campaign (precursor to Legacy of New Lago), my third edition manual of the planes, and a copy of the Monster Manual 2 that I borrowed from Revil, you guessed it, four years ago.

I was taking a look at the Monster Manual 2 last night and was struck by one overwhelming fact... It is total garbage.

I don't remember why I borrowed it to begin with, but I suspect it was for the Death Knight.  Appearing on page 207 the Death Knight is one of the ONLY decent monster entries to be found in the entire book.  The rest of it is filled with crap like Clockwork Horror, The Cloaked Ape, and the always popular Needlefolk!  As if that weren't enough stupidity such as the Half-Golem template and a new type of Dragon subcategory-Gems can be found.  Yes, the Dragons are literally made out ofprecious stone such as Amethyst, Emerald, and Sapphire.

See what I mean?

Now the book isn't all bad.  As I mentioned there are a few decent entries like the Sylph, the Banshee, the Leviathan, the Phoenix, and as I mentioned previously the Death Knight.  But for each of those there are ten foolish ones like the Glimmerskin and Teratomorph.  What the hell is a Teratomorph you ask?  I've put a picture to your right.  Cool isn't it?  Wouldn't it make a great story?

"Yeah my character died heroically trying to save the party last week"

"Eaten by a Dragon?"

"No he got whipped upside the head by a Teratopmorph."  

"Huh?"

So many of these creatures were obviously half ass.  Essentially after the first monster manual they ran out of creatures from myth and legend and had to start creating new ones.  Some were ok, but more often you end up with something like the Gem Dragon.  "How can we make a new kind of dragon?  I know let's make him out of gems!"

Brilliant.

Maybe it was a lack of creativity and imagination or maybe it was a lack of effort.  I think I would rather believe that WotC "phoned it in" rather than think that they tried as hard as they could and came up with this piece of garbage.

The most frightening thing about the Monster Manual 2 isn't the book itself, it's the Monster Manual 3...and 4... and 5!  If the Monster Manual 2 sucked this bad and contained few creatures that anyone with self respect would actually use then what the hell was in the other three?  Dirt Dragons perhaps, all made from different kinds of soil?  I'm sure the Top Soil Dragon was a huge hit, but fortunately I never found out.  It was apparent to me after taking a look at the Monster Manual 2 that there was little quality to be had in any of these sequels.

Maybe that is why the book really ended up in the closest.  Maybe I thought that was the best place for it.