[Abe Sargent]

After that, it’s up to you to suit your campaign. The next I would recommend are the Monstrous Compendium Annuals, which are softcover, and have all of the monsters published that year in modules, magazines and books. There are also some for specific campaign worlds and they usually have good monsters for any world. I like the Mystara Monstrous Compendium Appendix, because a lot of the creatures here make sense and aren’t too crazy for my campaign (I have a no stupid allowed policy for my critters). In particular, check out the Hivebrood. These are all of the creatures published for the basic D&D game in rulebooks or modules that aren’t in AD&D books already. Some of the best are the Velya – underwater vampire, living statue constructs, the various dangerous plants, mujina, magen, wereswine, a nice selection of new but useful golems (I hate stupid golems, like brain golems), and the aforementioned Hivebrood.

Lots of sourcebooks for campaigns are good for yours as well. I generally would stay away from any which involves a specific place, but those that focus on others can be really good – such as Volo’s Guide to All Things Magical above. For a generic campaign, I like supplements from Planescape, Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft, and Greyhawk‘s single one – Greyhawk Adventures is pretty good, and cheap to acquire. Oriental Adventures is amazing but really needs that sort of campaign to work. Others that feel similarly are campaigns such as Dark Sun, Al-Qadim, Odyssey, and Maztica.

For example,, some of the Van Richten Guides in Ravenloft are really good for fleshing out those monsters. In particular, I recommend his Guides to Ancient Dead, Lich and Vampires, in that order. The rest aren’t that much. Steer clear of Fiends, which looks better than it is, Created which is the same, and others. Don’t touch the Vistani one. I wouldn’t even get these for those running a Ravenloft campaign.

There are many other books I would recommend you steer clear of. The DM’s books in the blue book series that included Castle Guide, Complete Book of Necromancers and Campaign Sourcebook and Catacomb Book has a lot of really bad entries too. Don’t waste time or money on The Arms and Equipment Guide, Complete Book of Villains, Sages and Specialists or Creative Campaigning. I have not read Of Ships and the Sea.

If you want to incorporate deities from established D&D sources into your world, then Monster Mythology is not bad, and you’ll want Deities and Demigods and Legends and Lore. If you just want to take one pantheon straight from another world, such as Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk, then get that world’s sourcebook instead. If you make your own, these aren’t even a little bit useful .

Of the Player’s Handbook series that includes the complete books, I’d not suggest the Realms ones, the ninjas, the barbarians, and I think the elves, dwarves, gnomes and Halflings aren’t that useful, but they all have some good things in them. (Not elves, it sucks balls) Priest and Wizard are just okay at best. The Wizards, for example, has just 10 kits, many of which are boring, and some good spells repeated later, and rules for things you should already know how to do, such as pages on how to make your own school of magic. Paladin and Ranger’s books don’t add much. The earlier books in this series are good and useful, but as time went on, good more shoddy and unbalanced. I never read the Druid’s one though.