Review by C.J. Bunce
A little more than a decade since we first encountered a new edition of rules from Dungeons & Dragons, the new, updated trilogy of Core Rulebooks is complete with tomorrow’s release of the new Monster Manual, coming to online and brick and mortar shops and available for pre-order here at Amazon. It began with the D&D Player’s Handbook, discussed here in September, and continued with the updated D&D Dungeon Master’s Guide here in November. Was it worth the wait? Yes, it is, and for some unexpected reasons we’ll get into below. Based on a decade of feedback, the Monster Manual follows through on promises by Wizards of the Coast to provide a “new and improved” system for the 5th Edition of “the world’s greatest roleplaying game” that attempts to make gaming easier and all the content more accessible.
Long-time players get all the monsters they’ve known and loved since the 2014 version and before, and new players have a clean start chock full of monsters–more than 500 in this thicker resource book that features 85 all-new entries. Let’s face it–D&D has always been more about monsters than merely dungeons or dragons–although this book is an improvement on that point, too.
Creatures can be incorporated into any campaign setting and challenge rating, with updates peppered throughout to some entries’ abilities, treasure, and lore. All creatures from the 2014 edition are back (with a handy appendix to show differences). If there’s ever been a clear demonstration of how diversity, equity, and inclusion makes sense and is a beneficial feature for a global community, it’s in the past 10 years of roleplaying–a feature that has emulated by every gaming system we’ve reviewed at borg in the past 15 years–from hard-coding Session Zero into play to redefining species and races with a common, better nomenclature. It’s all just another term for fairness at every level, and that means more fun for everyone on game night. In D&D it’s here to stay and it’s present in page after of page of the Monster Manual.
There be dragons here.
The best feature of this edition is the artwork. It’s just better, richer, and more vibrant. The only negative I always have is the shift from including artists’ names immediately adjacent to the images in these books. You can do extra work learning this information on your own, but you can learn the artists easier with their names front and center, or in this case at leat nearby. The best of the new art in this volume goes to the dragons. Not only does every primary entry have an illustration as in the 2014 edition, the dragons take center stage, getting full-page spreads highlighting each of the Ancient Black Dragon, the Ancient Blue Dragon, the Ancient Brass Dragon, the Ancient Bronze Dragon, the Ancient Copper Dragon, the Ancient Gold Dragon, the Ancient Green Dragon, the Ancient Red Dragon, the Ancient Silver Dragon, and Ancient White Dragon. Because of staggering entries alphabetically by type, these are evenly distributed throughout the book. Does this matter? Not to gameplay, but it’s nice to look at.
I’ve known several writers for Marvel Comics and DC Comics, and they all like to pull obscure characters from decades of lore into their modern stories. Dungeon Masters should take it as a challenge to incorporate one or more of the more obscure characters in these pages into each new campaign. It’s ultimately up to DMs how these monsters and animal characters will be used, but the elements are there.
Although you’ll still want all the lore and supplemental information from the likes of Mordenkainen’s Monsters of the Multiverse, which collected monsters from Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes, and Volo’s Guide to Monsters, the Monster Manual provides the necessary stats for Dungeon Masters to set up gameplay. And if Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk and Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft weren’t dark enough for you, note that Wizards of the Coast has hiked up the villainy on several monster stat blocks. Look for higher challenge ratings for many of the entirely new creatures in this edition, along with lower CRs for some previously included monsters. Higher CR creatures include new abilities and options, and there are group mechanics for families of monsters. Combining types of monsters with their own will make it easier for players to look up monsters at the table.
And it’s intended to be easier, with a streamlined stat box format not all that different from the past. As with the new D&D Player’s Handbook and D&D Dungeon Master’s Guide, you’ll notice this book is much bigger than the edition from 2014, adding 32 more pages to make a hefty 384-page book, incorporating all the new full-page artwork and the 85 new monster entries. Note that the book hasn’t forgotten the appendix of real-world animals as included in the 2014 edition, plus lists of monsters by type, group, and challenge rating.
Two covers are available, the standard edition with artwork by Tyler Jacobson, and the variant edition by Simen Meyer:
In 50 years D&D has come a long way from the first Gary Gygax edition:
Yes, the Monster Manual is bigger and better, reviewed and vetted by the community of fans who love the game. As stated above, the new D&D Player’s Handbook was the first of three updates to the Core Rulebooks. The second, the 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide, is now available here at Amazon, and the 2024 Monster Manual is available for pre-order now here, available to everyone everywhere tomorrow.
